recyc-a-belle

Last September/October, Ivy came up with the idea to make a "scary person" (a scarecrow) so she and Daddy made one. After attending the local fair last year and telling a fair official that we know about our scary person, she talked to us about entering a scarecrow into the fair next year.

This past August rolled around, and we signed Ivy up to make a scarecrow made out of mostly recycled materials. (It was the only category that Ivy, being the age that she was, fit into.) Of course, Ivy did have some help from her family; however, she did come up with what to make and how to make it and gathered supplies for it and did everything that she could do for it.

Ivy decided that her scary person would be a princess, and we started collecting and planning and thinking of a name for our princess. We collected cereal boxes, plastic milk jug lids, paper towel rolls, newspapers, toilet paper rolls, anything that we thought our princess scary person could use.

Now, it was time to make our princess scary person. We cut the fronts off of the cereal boxes for the princess's dress...

Eventually, Owen gave up helping and went to playing with his cars and whatever else he could find to keep himself entertained...

Ivy had to cut her own special pictures for the princess...

Daddy and Ivy made the frame of the scary person out of plastic piping and a tire that we got out of Papa Roger's could-maybe-use-later pile, a cardboard carpet tube that we got from a local carpet store, and an old rake-type yard tool that Daddy got from the town dump. Over the frame, we connected two swimming noodles that someone threw away at the town dump to use as the arms and then put 2 feed/seed bags that we got from our friend Justin to use at a Vacation Bible School one summer for a sack race over the frame and shoved old newspapers that we had been collecting to start forming the body.

Once Daddy got home from work, he joined the fun and helped finish the construction of the scary person. Ivy painted a milk jug to use as the head...

And then, Letty woke up from her nap so she joined the fun, too!

Soon, our princess scary person was complete, and we had to load her up in our van to deliver her to the Fair...

AND NOW, without further ado, may I present... (*drum roll, please*) ;)

RECYC-A-BELLE!

Later in the week, we went to the Fair to see "Belle" and to see how Ivy did with the judging. AND,...

Ivy WON 1st place for the Best Recycled Materials Scarecrow, and she was awarded the Judge's Special Award!!! How exciting! Great job, Ivy and the rest of the Zipf team!

All in all, this was a GREAT and FUN project that our whole family enjoyed doing!!! We're already making our plans for next year's scarecrow. :-)