Winter Week

Summer vacation has just begun, and we are already on a crazy non-schedule and in the thick of our activities. Summertime is actually when my teacher-brain activates, now that I'm not teaching in a classroom anymore and I have lots of time with my kids at home. So in order to defeat the doldrums of summer, I keep us busy with different theme weeks, filled with crafts, games, sensory activities, and field trips. Last summer was a great success, so we're doing it again, with some new themes. 

This week was Winter Week, mainly because Ellie had "Snow Princess" dance camp in the mornings. When planning the week, I intended for it to be a "mini-theme," with fewer than usual activities, but as we get busy, the girls keep wanting more, so I added more to do, and many of our activities often morph and extend into something else... Which I love, because they are learning and growing and just enjoying the time. The week was a combination of "Frozen", snow/ice, and science activities that turned out to be a lot of fun!

On Monday, I gave the girls Elsa and Anna hair. 

After dance camp, we microwaved Ivory soap to make "snow," then played with it in the water table. 

After that, we made an "icy palace" fort out of the couch cushions, and we made "icy power" hands with ribbons tied to hair bands that the girls wore on their wrists and went all around, "freezing" things and singing "Let it Go."

Even Anthony got in on the freezing. 

The girls also helped me prep the next day's main activity, and for dinner, they had meatloaf and snowman mashed potatoes. 

Not my best plate art, but they loved it anyway. 

On Tuesday, we built structures out of the colorful ice we froze in different shaped molds, then we poured salt on the ice and then food coloring to see the trails and crevasses made by the salt... Both really cool and beautiful! 

The best part was that the salt and food coloring part wasn't even part of the original plan, but the girls loved it! 

One thing they didn't love so much was my attempt at getting them to "ice skate" on carpet with wax paper on their feet. They thought I was crazy and wouldn't even try. For the record, it does work. I slid around for a bit until they rolled their eyes at me. Fortunately, I had happened to pick up some glitter putty randomly at Kroger (to resemble snow, maybe?), so they played with that and made beards and jewelry and kept busy while I made dinner. 

On Wednesday they painted Anna and Elsa with watercolors and glitter glue, then we built sugar cube igloos, which also turned into more food coloring science. 

They ended up learning about color mixing and dissolving sugar thanks to some droppers, water, and food coloring.

I'm hoping there's enough sugar in those solutions to make rock candy. Yay science! 

At the end of the day, we went out for frozen yogurt for dessert. 

On Thursday, we had an ice excavation for the toys and jewelry we froze the day before. The girls had fun using different methods to melt and chip away at the ice, including my brulee torch, forks, knives, warm water, and rock salt. 

We also played with shaving cream "snow". First, I mixed it with glue. The girls painted with it, though it wasn't easy to spread with their paintbrushes. Their paintings looked like clouds. Then we glittered them. 

Next, I mixed the shaving cream with cornstarch. I had seen this on Pinterest, but it was much messier than it looked and not worth the trouble. Instead, we ended up just playing with shaving cream. 

Anthony woke from his nap just in time to join the fun. 

All three kids loved getting covered in shaving cream. 

Lastly, we finished up the Frozen characters from the day before. 

On Friday, the last day, we made snowflake suncatchers with tissue paper. I cut out the snowflake design, and then we glued tissue paper in the gaps to make it colorful. 

Then we made snowmen. Ice men really. I had frozen some filled water balloons, and we used rock salt to stick the ice balls together. Ellie added paper buttons and a "carrot" nose. 

The younger two weren't all that interested in making an ice man... But all three kids did like throwing the ice balls in the pool and splashing in it for an hour or two (this has pretty much been a daily activity). 

Lastly, for dessert, I made them ice cream/marshmallow build-your-own "snowmen." Ellie built hers, but it was slippery. Building an ice cream man is harder than I thought it'd be!

Fortunately, it was still delicious. 

And that was Winter Week! If the rest of our summer goes as well as this week, it's going to be a great one! I love being able to do fun activities with my kids, and even when days are tough or things don't go exactly as planned, I'm still thankful that I get these moments with my munchkins... And that they still want to do this stuff with me. 

The key to having successful theme weeks is to keep planning simple and go with the flow. I try to plan one or two main activities for each day, then we just go where our playing takes us. It really doesn't involve much work, especially if the kids get involved. Often Ellie keeps asking for more activities, so I just use one planned for later in the week and end up adding others at the last minute, and it works out fine. I have a science week planned for July, but Ellie requested "Wizard Week," so I'm thinking of turning science week into that.  Sounds more fun anyway. Stay tuned!

Baby bunny

My favorite roommate from college (I had many) just had a baby girl, and I am beyond thrilled for her and her husband. They are really awesome people whom I wish I could see more often than once every other year! I pretty much can't not knit for new babies, so I knitted up this baby blanket and bunny in my favorite yarn for babies, Spud and Chloe. 

I hope both baby and parents love these handmade gifts. 

Caterpillars

Our humble parsley plant has been growing for over two years, and twice now has it hosted black swallowtail butterfly offspring. Last year we discovered our caterpillar guests after one had the misfortune of getting cut in half as I chopped a bunch of parsley for dinner. We caught a couple of its surviving brothers, but then we made the mistake of feeding them non-organic parsley from the grocery store after our plant was picked bare. Oops. So no butterflies for us last year. 

This year, we are (hopefully) wiser because we learn from our mistakes and already luckier because we got to witness two butterflies (on separate occasions) lay their eggs on our plant. 

The only part that was more exciting than seeing these little mommies fluttering around was seeing and hearing my kids' expressions of awe and amazement as we watched them and then found their eggs nestled in the leaves and flowers. 

This was pretty cool too. 

We decided to try to raise some of the babies into butterflies again, so I cut a few branches that had eggs on them. About 3 or 4 days later, we found this:

Our first hatchling! Fresh from its egg! Eating it, in fact. The rest hatched, and they continue to grow. We added a few others from the parsley plant after Paul and the kids built a caterpillar habitat. 

We just stopped at Home Depot for supplies on our way home from Mass last Sunday, and our caterpillars have a pretty nifty home now!

I'll admit (and Paul teases me about this) that I am more excited and interested in the caterpillars than the kids are, but it is a really cool project! 

And the kids aren't totally indifferent. They like to "check on the caterpillars" with me, even if it's just an excuse to go outside for a while. 

"Wow!"

I hope to have exciting (or just living/growing caterpillar) updates next week!

Water Fight Date Night

This year, we started having monthly stay-in date nights. Because finding a babysitter for 3 kids isn't always easy or cheap. And because we needed to have time intentionally spent together, even if it's just a couple of hours after the kids go to bed. In May, it was my turn to plan our date, and it turned out to be a lot of fun! 

I keep a list of possible activities, so I decided it was the best time for a water fight. The sun starts setting after the kids' bedtime now, and any later in the year is too hot and mosquito-infested outside. I gathered my supplies, which amounted to an arsenal of water guns and balloons.

 

To make it interesting, I set it up like a "Hunger Games"- style cornucopia of weapons, with a few additional weapons hidden around the yard. I set out Paul's swimsuit and a white t-shirt with a war declaration note and instructions to meet me at the marked spot on the back porch after he was dressed. At my signal, we ran to arm outselves, and the battle began. We had so much fun! We both ended up soaked, especially after a few dunkings in the kids' blow-up pool that I left out as a refilling station. 

To determine the victor of the war, we took off our tshirts, traded, and wrung them out into buckets, then weighed them. Paul won by 3 ounces! We wrote up a peace treaty and drank wine by the fire pit (while wearing glowstick necklaces I had bought in case it got dark during our fight). 

We had so much fun, and Paul really loved doing something that was totally out of the box for us (so did I!). I'm looking forward to whatever he has planned for our next date. 

Toothless

Katie's obsession of the week is "How to Train Your Dragon" again... and she's potty training, though I wonder who is training whom some days! Anyway, to motivate her a little, I knitted up an incentive for her... Toothless!

I bought the pattern on Ravelry.

This is the second Toothless I've made. The first one was for Ellie, and I used the pipe cleaner method for that one, but the pipe cleaners were pokey, so I didn't use them for this one. I like it better.

I also got a Hiccup and an Astrid for cheap on zulilly... now I just need her to earn her prizes by not having any more potty accidents!!!

Ellie's 6th birthday party

For Ellie's 6th birthday, we had a small Sofia the First-themed tea party. Initially, we were going to have a picnic in our backyard, but the weather was a little questionable, so we moved it inside.

 

The table

The place setting, with tiaras and fans

Decorations were simple, but nice. I made a doily garland and we had fresh flowers and a few banners and tissue paper flowers. I even kept the food simple... most of it was store-bought, like mini quiches and sandwich rolls. I did make edible teacups filled with fruit, and my homemade cheese crackers that I make for almost every party.

The adults ate more than the kids

The guests arrived and went out to the porch for our first activity, a craft. We started with the painting so that the paint would dry by the time the girls went home.

The girls painted tea cups and saucers

When they were done painting, I sent them on a scavenger hunt around the backyard for Sofia's amulets, one for each. They had fun running around, helping each other find their necklaces.


Posing with their amulets.

 Then they moved inside to dance to music from the Sofia soundtrack.

They danced... a lot

As with little girls, there is always a little bit of drama, so after the dancing got a little crazy, I pulled out my "maybe" activity to settle them down before cake time. They built sugar cube towers, and it turned out to be their favorite activity in the party! I really was surprised, because it was a "just in case" game. I was very thankful that I had it up my sleeve!

Building sugar cube towers

Katie was thrilled to be included in her big sister's party

 After the sugar cube game, we cut the cake, and then Ellie opened her gifts.

We sent her friends home with their painted tea cups and saucers, their tiaras, teacup drinks, and fans. And the birthday girl had a great time! The party was small, simple, and just right.

Ellie's 6th Birthday Cake

 

I like making fondant figurines, and some people think I have a knack for it. To me, it's like playing with edible (but not very yummy) Play-doh, which is good because I can give some to the kids to play with while I work on my pieces, and we all have fun together.

Ellie's princess

This cake has some fun figurines, plus a few new-to-me techniques. It took me a little while to decide how to make the cake, but once I felt inspired, the design just came, and it turned out exactly the way I wanted. I found a great tutorial for the Sofia figurine at MG Sugarcake's Facebook page, and by the way... wowie! Her work is incredible! My Sofia doesn't come close to hers, but maybe with enough practice...

I used the tutorial's techniques for my face sculpting, which I have never attempted before, but now I want to practice making faces all the time to get better and figure out where I need to push and pull to make different features!

Sofia, minus her tiara

 

I had no tutorial for Amber, so I just figured her out on my own. The arms gave me a lot of trouble because they kept falling off! 

Amber, minus her tiara
 

The teapot was Rice Krispy treat (with a big dowel all the way through the cake for stability) covered in fondant. I was so worried it would topple, but the dowel did its job!

 

Close-up of Sofia on the cake... note that her dress turned blue. Apparently pink/red Wilton coloring fades, especially under fluorescent lights (which describes ALL the lights in our house now, since everything has to be "green"). Thankfully, the blue is still pretty because NO WAY was I going to make her again!

Close-up of Amber and the tea cup, which I made with gumpaste... my first attempt at using it. It's a little harder to use than fondant, but it definitely has its place, and I hope to get more practice with it and see what I can do.

Clover and Mia.

The whole cake

View from above

And then... as if I wasn't busy enough making a cake and planning a 6-year-old's tea party, we decided to celebrate the April cousin birthdays right after Ellie's tea party. We figured we'd save Sofia and Amber for the girls to eat with family, so cousin David needed his own fondant figurine too. Thus, Batman:

I had always wanted to make ice cream cone cupcakes. They were fun.

And of course we also had to celebrate Ellie's birthday at school on the actual day, so I just whipped up these cookies. I will say, I MUCH prefer playing with fondant. Sugar cookies with royal icing just aren't my thing. Too time-consuming and repetitive. I made 16 of these castles. I much prefer making just ONE Sofia.

 

 

I was pretty happy with the results of my labors. My next post will be about her party, which was a lot of fun. The cake got its share of compliments, and of course, it got eaten up too.

 

People ask me if it hurts a little to see my creations destroyed, but actually, I get a great deal of satisfaction from it.