I love beautiful things, but I don’t create my own beautiful things. I’m not one of those homeschooling moms that creates her own art curriculum and spends hours at the kitchen table with my little cherubs around me, lovingly teaching them to appreciate art.

But God blessed our family first with two girls who love the glitter. Even now, at age 8 and 10, they love to get out the craft supplies, including the glitter, and just snip and clip and sprinkle and glue and twist and modpodge and all other kinds of art things.

I’m not normally an uptight person. A little mess doesn’t bother me. I try really hard to be a Yes Mom. But when I see the glitter come out, my eye gets a little twitchy.

What's the Solution?

Well, my first solution was to hide the glitter so it wasn’t easily accessible. I didn’t want little girls to have access to the glitter whenever they wanted, otherwise we’d be living in a sparkling fairy land all the time. Nothing like going to the supermarket with a little glittler in mom’s hair and she has no idea!

My second solution was still to keep the glitter up high so they couldn’t reach it. But then whenever they would ask for the glitter I would remind them of our rules: you make a mess, you clean it up. They had to be completely responsible for cleaning up all the glitter. Every last speck.

They quickly learned that Mom meant business about the glitter. If they chose not to follow through on our rules about the glitter, then they got to do a whole bunch of jobs to bless the family.

Now that my girls are older, they have a bit freer reign with the art supplies. They can paint or glue or glitter. And the oldest one knows how to use the sewing machine, so she can get out the fabric and all that fun stuff and create sparkly doll clothes. As long as they both clean up their mess.

-Michele

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