Confession Tuesday

I have an idea.  It is a project I’m going to run at Speakeasy, and I’m totally excited about it for some reason. 

Probably ten years ago, the Jaycees made a trip to the Hands-On Children’s Museum in Olympia.  We had a blast.  I don’t know who had more fun… the adults or the kids.  Anyway, I have wanted to start a kids’ museum ever since. 

I was thinking about that the other day and thought about doing a major event at Speakeasy where we’d basically put on a kids’ museum for the day.  But then when I was thinking about all of the ideas I had for that, I thought it might be a little bigger than I would be able to do (without help) in the next couple of months, so I pared it back to just one of the elements. 

We are going to put on an archeological adventure day for kids.  They will come into the gallery and receive a passport/adventure book.  Each station will have a stamp to add to their passports. 

• We will have the first station be the picture taking/identification station.  They will get their pictures taken and printed for their passport booklet and have a badge with their names. 
• The next station will be an introductory meeting at “base camp” on Speakeasy Island.  Everyone will introduce themselves and get an itinerary of the day’s events. 
• They will move on to the “map room” where they will be able to color and decorate their maps. 
• Then the group will move ahead to the “fossil station” where they will make bones from clay and fossils with plaster of paris.
• While those items are drying, they will move on to the station where they will hear a story and get more info about digs and other cultures.
• Finally, they will put together their own archeological dig box (a rubbermaid tote with sand/soil) and add a coordinates grid.  someone will then place their bones in the box to be dug up later.  The kit will have a brush for cleaning the items and a notebook for documenting where the items were found.

The Speakeasy artists can help with decorations and being guides for the stations.  We will project dinosaurs onto the walls and have a big volcano.  There will be greenery around and then a canopy tent for base camp.  I’m pricing sand, containers and other components and putting together a project/event proposal. 

I just hope that it will work and that we could actually get some kids to come out and join in the fun.  :)  If so, then I will start working on the bigger plan of the kids’ museum for the day.  Yay!

If you want to help out/volunteer or have any ideas to add on, let me know.  :D 

So many photos, so little time...

So I thought that my photo wall project would be way easier than it was in actuality.  Wait, let me take that back.  It wasn't that it was *difficult* it was really just time consuming.  I never really thought about what was going inside of the frames.  I just had focused on the layout of the frames on the walls and how it would all look once I got it up there.  But, alas, that was the easy part.  The tough part is finding the pictures to fit inside all of the frames and to try to balance it out.  I had a couple of pictures of Emily to frame, and then I realized that I only had one of Sam.  So I had to flip through (literally) thousands of pictures we have stored in photo boxes and then look through what is on my laptop.  During this time, I also realized that I've misplaced my external hard drive that also houses thousands of pictures.  And once you find the picture, you have to make sure it is the right size or the right orientation (portrait vs. landscape) so it adds another layer of complexity onto the already-time-consuming task. 


I got everything lined up, but then figured out that craft stores don't sell large wooden numbers (so we're going to have to make our own), and then I found other pictures that I felt needed to be out as well.  So then it was back to the store to get more frames.  And then a printing photos project, and then another trip yesterday to get more frames.  It is insane.  So now it has turned into more than one wall.  It will be one big wall and a smaller section of another wall.  And that doesn't even include any of our wedding photos (still not printed).  But I think I have a relative balance of photos between the kids (much harder to find pics of Tim's kids since it appears that Allison must have custody of those).  Then I had to balance out the pictures of Bobby and Kate, and then threw in some of the cats as well.  While I was at it, I found a couple cute pics of Tim's parents, which led me to looking for pics of my mom (hard to find) and my brother and grandma as well.  Now I have a nice mix, and once they are all up, it will be good. 

I'm posting a picture from phase 1 which is the rough draft of hanging stuff (before the photo printing and second/third trips for frames).