Author: Sarah

Random Bits of Cuteness

Sarah Anna

It’s been a while since I posted any of the silly things my kids say.  I feel a bit sad, because all of the adorable learning language things that I made note of with Carolyn, have been lost for Anna.  But, all is not quite lost – she still comes out with mispronunciations and silly things now and then.  So, without further ado…

Heard Friday at the pool:

My brother (Dan) and my sister-in-law (Genevra) were over swimming.  All afternoon: “Uncle Dad! Aunt Ge-evra! Look, I’m pedaling around the pool!” (She can definitely say ‘n’ sounds, so I’m not quite sure where Uncle Dad came from.  And Aunt Ge-evra is just adorable!)

Also.  Carolyn has a pair of “gobbles”.  You know, the things that keep water out of your eyes in the pool?

And then this afternoon at the library:

Little Girl: “Hi!  What’s your name?”
Anna: “Anna.”
Little Girl’s Dad: “Alma?  That’s a nice name.”
Anna: “No, Anna. ‘A’, ‘n’, ‘n’, ‘n’, ‘a’!”

Um.  Well, I suppose Annna would sound just about the same as Anna.  Looks a bit odd.  But, it’s still a palindrome!

Just Keep Swimming…

Sarah Summer Fun

Carolyn passed Red Cross Learn to Swim Level 1 today!  I am so impressed with the amount of hard work she put in to her class these past two weeks – her water confidence has improved by leaps and bounds, and just today she was jumping off of our backyard pool’s diving board with only a life vest on.  (She started out with two noodles.  Then one.  Then realized that she could probably do it with no noodles.  Which she did.  Repeatedly.)

Carolyn jumping off the diving board!

And Anna’s new-found confidence in the water, while exhausting, is fun too.  She “pedals” all around the pool in her little yellow Puddle Jumper life vest, “as fast as I can pedal!”

Anna "pedaling" around the pool.

As hard as it is to spend the better part of the morning getting ready for and at swimming lessons every single day for four solid weeks, I think it’s well and truly worth it!

Please ignore the jungle of weeds in the background...

Tissue Paper Flowers

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

Today’s project is a good example of why you need to flexible when planning kids’ crafts.  The plan was tissue paper flowers:

Paper, pipe cleaners, and a pair of scissors.
Maybe we should have added bit of perfume?

I thought they would be pretty easy, and sort of an instant-gratification thing.  But they were completely beyond Anna’s abilities, and Carolyn didn’t like how hers turned out compared the ones I made to demonstrate what we were doing.

I think Carolyn's flowers turned out beautifully!

So, now I had a bunch of cut-up tissue paper, frustrated kids, and some time to fill.  Luckily, I also had green paper plates left from Anna’s birthday party, wax paper, and tape.  Oh, and glue!  I cut out the middle of paper plates, cut a square of wax paper, taped it to the back of the plates, and let them glue tissue paper all over the wax paper.

A paper plate & wax paper canvas.
Glue. I should buy stock in glue...
Adding some three-dimensional elements.
Colorful tissue paper.

And now we have pretty tissue paper flower suncatchers!

A garden of tissue paper colors in the sun!

My Little Swimmers

Sarah Anna, Summer Fun

It’s been hot here.  Really hot.  No-air-outside-to-breathe hot.

So we invited a few friends over to swim this afternoon, and had tons of fun.  I don’t know why I don’t do this more often…

Out of the pool for a bit to warm up, believe it or not!

And Anna, who had earned the nickname “barnacle baby” since she clings to you with a death grip in the pool, suddenly realized that her life vest will, in fact, keep her afloat.  And she started “peddling” (her word) around the pool like a little fish.  All over the pool, including in the deep end.  With me following.

I am exhausted.

Birds and Bugs

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

Our birdhouses, according to Anna, needed birdies.  So I bought a big bag of assorted pompoms and pulled out a few other supplies:

Ready for some crafty fun!

A little glue here, a little cutting there…

(Please excuse the post-swimming-lesson hair...)

…and we had fuzzy little googly-eyed birds!

Chirp, chirp!

And then we made some name caterpillars because gluing pompoms is kind of addictive.

This caterpillar is named "Anna".
All of our fuzzy creations.

After that, the girls went to town with glue, pompoms, googly eyes and construction paper.

Googly eyes are small, and glue is kind of runny...
Anna glued about 10 pairs of googly eyes to that paper!
A plethora of pompoms.

I think the message I need to take away from today’s project is that I need to go hit the back-to-school sales to stock up on more glue.  The girls love glue almost as much as paint.  Especially if it involves googly eyes!

Painted Birdhouses

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

This week’s theme is “In the Garden”.  I spotted these cute little wooden birdhouses (I keep wanting to call them “dollhouses”!) at JoAnn’s for $1 apiece the other day and thought it might be fun to paint them.

Little wooden birdhouses.

Conveniently enough, they were located right next to a display of Delta Soy Paint.  I let the girls each pick out a few colors, so we ended up with Pink Carnation, Pink Hibiscus, Sunflower, Kiwi, Blue Sky and Wisteria.  Even the paint colors fit in with the theme!  (Although maybe not so much Kiwi.  It sure wouldn’t grow in a garden around here…)

Pretty paint colors!

I learned my lesson from the last multi-color painting project and gave each girl their own palette of colors and cup to rinse brushes in so Anna could mix away to her heart’s content and Carolyn could be more particular about her colors.

Pig-tailed painter.
Fine details.
The slap-and-slather technique.
Great color combo!

I think they turned out very cute!

Anna wants to know where the birdies are...?
Why yes, I painted one too!

And I already have a glimmer of an idea of how to make birds for them.  Need to go check the random craft stash for pompoms…

A Berry Fun Birthday Party

Sarah Anna, Cakes

Anna had a birthday party to celebrate turning 3 today.  She wanted a Strawberry Shortcake party, which was a pretty easy theme to work with!Carolyn made the little strawberries on the wall.

For food, we made a variety of pinwheel wrap sandwiches, a veggie tray with dip, a layered fruit salad (in my new Pampered Chef trifle bowl – it was pretty as well as tasty!) and chips with homemade french onion dip.  I also made some blueberry muffins, my mom picked up some incredibly delicious lemon bars, and I made these strawberry shortcake cupcakes in lieu of a fancy decorated cake.  (We skipped the raspberry torte and the apple dumplings.  There were plenty of desserts already!)

A cupcake with a tasty surprise inside!
Strawberry mascarpone frosting. Sinfully delicious!
Topped with a strawberry, of course!
A tower of berry delicious strawberry cupcakes!

I’ve never made cupcakes from scratch, so I was really happy with how they turned out.  The baking was the easy bit – filling them was a bit fiddly and time consuming.  And then the icing started sliding off the cupcakes while they were in the stand and it was a messy disaster, so they were on there approximately long enough to take the above picture and then went back in the cupcake carriers.  But even though they turned out a bit messy, they were delicious!

I made a bean bag toss game a couple of weeks ago, which we put out but didn’t really organize.  The kids were mainly more interested in just playing with each other.  So much so that I don’t think any of them ate lunch!  And then it was time for cupcakes.  Anna was very excited to blow out her birthday candle!

Cupcake and candle, ready to go!
Happy Birthday to Anna!
Make a wish!
Delicious strawberry cupcake!

It was a “berry” fun birthday party, and it was followed by some time in the pool for those who could stay and play.  Thanks to all who came and made Anna’s birthday party fantastic!

Opening a card.
A viewmaster!
Aunt Genevra & Uncle Dan
Lizzy & Michelle by the pool.
Denis and his girls in the pool.

Sand Dough & Sea Shells

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

The one thing that was (slightly) disappointing to Carolyn about the beach we visited the other day was that there were no shells to collect.  So, I bought a bag at the craft store.  And I found this great recipe for sand dough.  Luckily, we have a sandbox full of nice sand waiting to be used in the kitchen.  Or something.

Sand dough, sea shells and sea horses.

We tried using the seahorse molds, but they wouldn’t release, so we had to clean them out and try again, spraying them with vegetable oil spray first.  I have my doubts as to whether these will hold together when dry, but both girls wanted to keep them, so we’ll see!

Filling the seahorse molds.
Seahorses waiting to dry.

Then they went to town with the shells.  Carolyn wanted to make a seashell windchime, but none of the shells had convenient holes and I didn’t quite know how to make holes in them without breaking them.  So we settled for making sand dough/sea shell decorative nick-knacks.

Shells make interesting patterns and holes in sand dough!
Tall shells in dough.
Our creations.

And that concludes our beach week!  And not a moment too soon…I’m getting tired of cleaning sand off of the kitchen table from all these projects!

Sparkly Starfish

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

Our second craft project of the day was starfish.  I cut cardstock into starfish shapes, got some colored sequins, and broke out some more of that leftover colored sand.

Starfish and sequins.

I watered down glue a bit so the girls could paint the starfish with it.  Then they sprinkled colored sand on them.

Anna liked matching the sand color to the cardstock color.

They dabbed on more glue and stuck sequins on.

Pretty pink starfish.

And now we have a pile of sandy, sparkly starfish.  These came out pretty cute!

A little more colorful than the ones in the sea.

Watercolor Fishies

Sarah Kid's Crafts, Summer Fun

My plan for yesterday’s craft project had to be postponed, so we did two today!  The first one was heavily inspired by this fishing game, but at the last minute I discovered that none of the large collection of eyelets I’ve amassed are magnetic, and I inexplicably have no paper clips in the entire house.  But I did have googly eyes.  (I have my priorities straight, obviously.)

First, the girls painted the fish with our well-used set of watercolor paints.

Concentrating deeply.
She'd rather be finger painting...or painting her fingers!
The rare polka-dot fish.
The even rarer plaid fish.

Then they glued on googly eyes.  (This was Anna’s favorite part.  I need to come up with a project that will use a lot of googly eyes for her.)

We're on our second bottle of glue this summer...
A school of googly-eyed fish!

We did our second project to give these a chance to dry, and then I punched holes in the tops of all the fish and Carolyn and I strung them on thread.  We tied the strands to a stick we found outside, and, voilá: a giant fish mobile!

Fish. On a stick.
Fishiest door decoration ever?