Progress on the Mural

 Every year we make a holiday mural. Well, we actually do this a bunch of times during the year as we have birthday ones and other "days of note" that have made the kids suggest a mural was needed.  But Yule was what began the murals in our lives.  The driving mural force is my wife who is clearly rather talented  at this type of thing.  But the cool thing is that the kids have things they can do to help bring the mural to life.  This year the kids are all going to be elves bringing presents to a tree.  The elves are faceless at this point because what we are going to do is print of pics of the kids faces and glue them on the mural.  Then we will take sticky felt and make the elves hats. The tallest elf will be Chet, the kneeling elf is going to be Lissa.  The two elves on the far side are KC and Robbie.

The other side of the mural is this faux fireplace with "you know who" going up the chimney.  The kids painted the bricks (they are pieces of construction paper that they spatter painted with black and gray)  K cuts them into bricks and fastens them.  KC painted the boots and I think he helped with the fur at the top of the boots as well.  The knobs on the mantel will eventually hold 4 construction paper stockings.  This is a clever little thing.  The far left knob is real. It is the dimmer switch for our dining room light. Every year, Kirsty's personal mission is finding a way to disguise it in the mural.  In previous years it has become Rudolph's nose or a snowflake. This year, she disguised it by painting more and they will all look like they are holding up the stockings.  She is so clever, my wife!  The mantel painting is going to change a little. The fat candle is going to morph into Lissa's birthday cake.  The kids didn't like the 3 wick pillar candle effect Kirsty was going for--maybe cause we have never had one?  Someone said they thought it looked like a cake so I suggested changing it to Lissa's birthday cake.

Tomorrow the kids are supposed to put glitter on the ornaments on the tree and some other gew gaws.  Maybe also make the stockings.  I love watching this unfold as much as I love looking at the finished product!