Melt for you

We did this super easy project on Valentine’s day. Crayons – wrappers + silicone mold + 10 minutes @ 250 degrees (give or take) = heart crayons!

For the first round I had her keep colors similar, then let her go nuts once I realized they don’t blend too much.

Old glitter crayons (from my way back stash) were a big hit.

If you do this use Carmen’s tip and soak the crayons to take off the wrappers, way easier.
 

Have you made DIY play dough yet?

Because it’s so easy and awesome! I think I’ve mentioned it before that I made some with Tuesday a while ago (months ago actually, and it’s still good, in it’s airtight container). There are tons of recipes on Pinterest, but I like this one. I haven’t actually made the dyes, but I do still dye the water and then add it to the play dough. The nice thing about doing it that way is letting Tuesday make the colored water (we use regular, gel, and neon food colors for crafts).

This is the most wonderfully soft lovely dough. I feel so silly for buying dough before, that’s how dead easy this is. Basically mix everything together and heat on the stove, continuously stirring. There is flour on their pans because you knead it in flour a bit after it comes out of the pan.

Also fun? Hiding things in the dough for them to find!

Ohh how many little stones are in here?
I love that I don’t have to worry if Tuesday dries it out or mixes it up or gets stuff in it. It’s cheap and easy to make more, so try it!

Big Snow

It’s strange thinking about this snow now that we are home. It’s very warm here for winter (as it is most places), and doesn’t seem very wintery at all. The bursts of sun we are getting surprise me. I really like our rainy winter days, and love hunkering down to craft and play, so they kind of throw me off. Despite the lack of winter weather here, we had plenty of snow up in Alaska.

See that playground in the background? Crazy! And the trees, all so beautiful! Like I showed, we took some snow inside to play when it was seriously too cold to go out, way under zero degrees. Finally at zero degrees I figured we could go out very briefly. To be sure it took our breath away, but the girls had fun. This was right down their street so we bundled them up, covered them in vaseline and set off.

I pulled the sled up a block with one girl and then back with the other. Chloe helped 🙂

It really didn’t feel that cold, well unless you tried breathing 🙂 We stayed out for probably 15 minutes. I tried to take them to the same place later in the week, after it had snowed a couple of feet and it was impossible, such deep powder! So hard to walk in. We did hit the zoo up on a warmer day:

Because we’re awesome moms like that!

Let me tell you, it did get quite chilly once the snow really started coming down!
I’m almost done with Alaska pics, and I was going to share the before and after of Carmen’s place, but she did it already so I’ll link you to it instead. We did such a great job staging/cleaning/organizing/updating that I’m happy to say it’s sold already (yes, under  a week!!!), congrats guys!

Tuesday’s Room

It’s been a while since I’ve shown Tuesday’s room. I never really did finish her “nursery” I had a kind of space theme in mind, but quickly realized that themes don’t really work that well for me. We finally moved her crib out and just put the mattress on the floor. Its been, interesting. Tuesday didn’t want to get rid of the crib, but has to pee every night no matter what, and it was so silly to go lift her out of the crib, when she could easily take herself.

So this is her room now (that big purple thing is a bean bag we read on).

I think we have to get a bigger bed… let’s just say her and I don’t fit too well on that crib mattress together. The little basket holds hankies. I should have thought of that before, as she was going through tissues like crazy. Oh, see that darling pillow?

It was a swap from my quilt guild. Bianca made it for me from some of my favorite scraps. Per our rules she was allowed to add one fabric. We missed each other at a couple of meetings so she sent it to me, along with a bracelet from her company, Urban Creatures (made from recycled tees!). She also sent me the extra material. After I saw the preview of this pillow in December I knew it had to go in Tuesday’s room, and I want to make a matching banner for over her bed. That has yet to be done, but we did get a lot of other things done in the room, like putting together the big EXPEDIT shelving unit from Ikea.

I would say if Tuesday had to pick one kind of toy to play with it would be books, and we’ve collected a lot of them for her! I should do a post on how I find great deals on books, and will if you’re interested. I really want to put some funky knobs on the drawers, but haven’t gotten to it. I just moved the old dresser to the closet (and took “paint dresser” off my list!):

My grandfather made it and I’ll probably paint it someday (the top I started to paint in high school). The shelf is a bit disorganized. I have more than a hundred book jackets up there, because Tuesday is not a fan and I feel weird throwing them away…

This chair (which rocks and reclines) is still in use, but not as much. I prefer laying next to her and patting her back to get her to sleep, vs. having her try to crawl all over me to get “comfy cozy”.
I like her room, it works much better now. I was thinking that she would have quiet play time in here instead of a nap (which she’s growing out of), but that hasn’t really happened much yet. I think she needs to be bigger, but I would love some kind of loft bed with a desk or something under it. She has that high window (it has a blackout curtain in it now) and I think it would be a cool hideout up there. I just want to keep the room working for her, and us. Hopefully someday we won’t have to spend hours in there at night, but that’s the way it is for now!
 
 

Quick painting project

I found this link via Pinterest, and thought it sounded fun. I’ve used watercolor masks, but rubber cement was a quick and easy alternative.

When I was up in Alaska I drove Tuesday and I out in the snow one day, and of course got lost. I ended up at a Michael’s though so it wasn’t all bad 🙂 I decided to pick up cheap watercolors, some watercolor paper, and the rubber cement. I tried to let Tuesday dribble the cement, but it wasn’t that easy for her, so I did most of it. I’ll admit this wasn’t a huge hit. Or I should say it wasn’t a bigger hit than painting. She loves painting, and when the dried rubber cement is on the paper (it takes a while to dry FYI), it doesn’t seem that different. When we got home I used a rubber cement eraser to remove the paint over those areas. It worked pretty well, even over the thicker areas.

I think I’ll try this again at home with the liquid water colors I picked up a while ago that we have yet to use.

Be mine

Tuesday, Bj and I got out the glitter baby! We assisted our glue loving daughter in her Valentine’s making. It was pretty dang cute.

(side note; so glad I stocked up on eight cent bottles of glitter glue this summer!). She had us write cute things inside. One of them, “star, I love you.” to a boy named Ewan. So random. Or “you’re sweet, smiley face.” We were trying not to blatantly laugh at her, but it was hard. I mean the cute! I let Tuesday pick out some shapes and we put a sheet of pink vinyl through my Silhouette so she could have some custom stickers. In case you were wondering we got schooled on this shape. It is NOT a Brachiosaurus (what she had me write in the card). It was an Apatosaurus (because you know, the Brontosaurus does not exist anymore, “That’s from before they knew they were Apatosaurus.”). Man, smart four year olds can be hard to keep up with (and pretty freaking adorable).

Oh, and she also wanted mustaches.
For a holiday that Bj and I have never really celebrated, I’m kind of digging it now. Today? Heart crafts!

(not so) Clean Mud

I have pinned so many great activities on my Montessori and Pre-school board. I decided to pick out a few ideas to take with me up to Alaska. When we were up there five months ago the girls got at each other a bit and I wanted to have some things ready to go. Luckily they played better this time, but activities were still handy. I found this and this a while ago, and thought, “clean mud, awesome!” Ok, it was awesome, but to be fair, it’s not that clean of a project! First of all, how weird is Ivory soap? I mean weird in an awesome way. Check out what happens when you microwave it for 45 seconds:

That’s about a quarter a bar, it’s so awesome! A note, it did take me a while to find Ivory Soap, and I don’t think other brands work. The local grocery store had it (in Alaska). The first night we played with the soap I let the kids paint it with watercolors. It was ok. I think I might try it again, but now that Tuesday knows it makes mud I don’t know if she’ll want to do it. It’s also quite crumbly.

So the big hit comes when you crumble this stuff up, mix it with toilet paper, torn into pieces, and add water.

Then you mush it all together (I did this part mostly).

“Oh it’s so squishy!”

So about that clean part…

I mean it’s basically soap, and dried it’s basically dried soap on everything. What am I doing in the background there?

Getting lots of soap off of miss Tuesday! We tried to get as much off as possible before letting anything down the drain; we were afraid it would clog it up. I was worried about all the soap on Tuesday’s sensitive skin, but it didn’t seem to bother her at all. And despite the messiness of clean mud I really liked the activity. I thought it was a great sensory experience, and perfect for open ended play. We just gave them each one spoon and cup and they played for quite a while.
And a note on the photos: I brought with me to Alaska only my iPhone and a new point and shoot for photos. Bj really wanted to support my Project Life endeavor this year and was kind enough to get me a smaller camera I could take with me. First he got me a Panasonic DMC-LX5. I tried it out for a weekend and I just couldn’t get it to feel right to me. I thought it had too much grain and I thought the pictures were about on par with my iPhone (4s), or at least not so much better that I’d actually get it out. I asked him about a camera Sciarrino has, and he got me the newer model a Canon PowerShot S100. I’m liking it, but it’s still not my DSLR (I have a Nikon D300 with variouslenses. I mean, of course it’s not, right? But I am getting decent photos from it, it shoots in RAW, which is great because the one downside to having a point and shoot is the inability of manufacturers to put every function at your fingertips. So having to go into a menu to change focus points, white balance, ISO, etc. is very time consuming. Shooting RAW lets me forget about some of those (mainly I don’t worry about white balance), then I can fix it in Lightroom. Of course if I have time I’d much rather get everything perfect in the camera but the nature of point and shoot photography is that you usually don’t have time. I think I’ll get better at is, and I don’t think I’ll ever ditch my DSLR, but it is nice having something under a pound that fits easily in a bag.