Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Can You Tell We Miss Maine?

Claire's school had a "pumpkin pageant" last week. Kids were encouraged to decorate real pumpkins and display them in the hall in front of their classrooms. Claire was super excited to participate. She quickly came up with the idea of making a pumpkin snowman. She made this sketch with all her ideas.


She searched the refrigerator and found "golden raisins" and "chocolate raisins" -- so those got incorporated. She is quite familiar with my button box, so she was confident they would be included. She even dug her gloves out of the hall closet in preparation.

We found three appropriately sized pumpkins and I picked up some white spray paint. We have a "snow man kit" that includes a felt hat and scarf, so those were perfect.

Here is Claire with her creation!

Isn't it cute?! Those arms are crepe myrtle branches -- don't those seed pods make funky hands?! We actually had to buy a bag of carrots to make that nose. I usually only have baby carrots on hand. (Since we had that whole bag of carrots, I made carrot cake later in the week. I must say, usually I pass right by any dessert that does not include chocolate, but the carrot cake was delicious!)

The music, art and gym teachers, plus the librarian came around and picked one winner from each grade level. And Claire won for the second grade! She was so thrilled! And we'll all enjoy the $5 gift certificate she won to the local ice cream shop.

Snippets
Have you heard about the new RED campaign to fight AIDS in Africa? I've seen lots of advertisments and Oprah spent a whole day shopping with Bono and promoting the program. It sounds wonderful and I love the red t-shirts emblazoned with words like INSPI(RED), CENTE(RED), ASSU(RED) and UNCENSO(RED). So how come when I passed by a Gap store at the mall the only shirts they had from the campaign said HAMME(RED) and BO(RED)? I consider this an enormously ignorant and irresponsible design choice on the part of the marketing team. What is cool about being hammered? (A euphomism for extremely drunk.) And what is cool about being bored? Sure, we all get bored sometimes, but if you are wearing it on your t-shirt, you are a miserable pool of apathy. I could go on and on about t-shirts that are printed with irresponsible and offensive phrases, but to find them in the context of this amazing campaign to make our world a better place is very disappointing.

9 comments:

kathy said...

yes. yes. and YES!! I haven't seen them but I feel the very same way about t shirts with less than stellar comments on them. We see a lot come through our office and I wonder what parents let their kids leave home with these shirts on. And I love the snowpunkin...:)

Joanna Stein said...

I only like t's with less than stellar comments if they are homemade.

Gerrie said...

mia just walked by when I was looking at your blog and said "Is it Christmas already?" I explained Clare's pumpkin project and she thought it was pretty cool!

Debra said...

What Kathy said... in triplicate. Why develop t's for a campaign and then include such uninspi(red) sayings?

BTW, dogs love carrots. I often give mine carrots instead of rawhide chews.

literarylisa said...

Around here there are billboards for beer, I think maybe Sam Adams Red lagar that say similar things (desiRED, etc) maybe the Gap shirts were from that campaign?

Micki said...

Claire did a wonderful job on her pumpkin snowman. I bet she was thrilled to win.

Anonymous said...

I am not too sure about 'this campaign being amazing', it has taken far too long for people to stop and take notice, as usual as with everything else pertaining to Africa. There is no money to be earned off the poor and at the end of this campaign there will be lots more pockets filled with larger sums than money actually in the 'help for africans' kitty, and that is the real disgrace and once again no one takes notice.

Shelina said...

Your daughter is so creative. Wonder where she gets that from? :)

I agree, those tshirts are inappropriate.

Jules said...

I had no idea some of the t-shirts had those words. But, I must say I love the idea of the appropriately worded shirts. I heard that they sold out of just about everything by noon the first day. However, the Gap should be getting more soon.

I love the snowman pumpkin sculpture. It is so creative. I am glad she won. My son just entered his first art contest, and I was so excited. (I should mention that he entered because it gave him extra credit in his language arts class, but he entered none the less.)