I am so proud of Carolyn! She had her second piano lesson today, and it’s really obvious that she’s been practicing daily (mostly without prompting). Her piano teacher was pretty pleased with her progress.
Author: Sarah
Happy Fourth of July!
This week the theme is: Red, White & Blue. Of course!
We started out this morning picking black caps. My parents had a wild bunch start growing near their deck, and every year about this time they start getting ripe. They have to pack the most sweetness in the smallest berry space – they’re tiny, but so, so yummy. (Not quite blue. But they do stain red when squished!)
Then we spent the afternoon at my grandparents’ house. My great uncle lives next door and has a retired race horse living on his farm. Carolyn and Anna and their cousins Benny and Ryan wanted to go feed Brownie, so we walked over to the pasture and fed Brownie apples, carrots and many handfuls of tall grass. Poor Brownie probably had a stomachache after eating all that grass!
We decided Anna was not going to make it through a late night of fireworks, so Denis took Carolyn to see them while I’m at home with a sleeping kid and a neurotic dog who feels the need to growl and bark at every pop of a firecracker outside. It’s been a long evening…
There and Back Again
We made a quick trip this weekend to NYC. Our first trip with Anna out of diapers…let’s just say, I would be happy to never see the inside of a rest stop bathroom again! The purpose of our visit? To surprise Poppy for his birthday, of course!
It was fun to get all the cousins together again – it happens so rarely, everyone seems to grow many inches in between visits. (Shhh, don’t tell anyone – I think my eldest niece is very nearly as tall as I am…) The girls had so much fun playing with their cousins, and were very sad to have to leave.
Now we’re home again, with two rather grumpy children who have sat in the car for far too many hours in the past three days. Hopefully everyone will get a reasonable amount of sleep tonight!
Strawberry Potato Stamping
For our final strawberry week activity, we decorated the goody bags for Anna’s upcoming birthday party. I wanted to stamp strawberries on these neon green bags I found in Target’s dollar spot, but I couldn’t find a simple strawberry rubber stamp. I ran across this post that used potatoes to make stamps, which seemed pretty easy (even if I couldn’t use cookie cutters to make the stamps). This part needs an adult, a steady hand, and a good sharp paring knife:
There aren’t any action shots of the stamping, since this needed to be a very hands-on activity for me. Basically, we dipped the potatoes in a paper plate with some paint on it to “ink” them:
Then we stamped the bags. (If you try this at home, be sure to put some folded up newspaper in there to keep the paint from soaking through to the other side of the bag!) It was hard to line up the leaves with the tops of the strawberries, so they’re all a little…unique:
Finally, a toothpick dipped in yellow paint to add some seeds:
And we now have a pile of inexpensive, homemade, (hopefully) reusable goody bags:
Of course, with the paints already out, the girls wanted to paint some more things. So we added a number of other colors to the paper plate and broke out some paper and paint brushes.
But the temptation of paint…oh, so tempting to squish little fingers in…
Luckily, we had nothing else planned, so we could go straight from painting to the bathtub!
The plate itself is a little work of art, or at least evidence of a thoroughly messy and fun painting session!
Strawberry Picking
Continuing with the strawberry theme of the week, and to celebrate Lisa’s birthday, we went strawberry (and raspberry) picking last night. It’s sort of the tail end of a not-so-great season for strawberries, but the ones we got are quite sweet and everyone had a good time!
Strawberry Playdough
I found a recipe for making homemade strawberry playdough (scroll down on that page) and decided to try it this morning. I will never buy commercial playdough again – this smells better, is more malleable, and I know exactly what’s in it. It would taste awful, but if some ended up in a little mouth it certainly wouldn’t hurt anyone!
So, I had my doubts at this stage:
But then after a bit of kneading it looked like this:
Add a toothpick for a tool, and here’s a strawberry made out of strawberry playdough:
The kids have spent the past hour and a half playing with this stuff. I think we have a winner!
Piano Lessons
Carolyn has been asking to learn how to play piano for a while, and I went out and bought a couple of beginner books, and tried to work through them with her. I’ve discovered that while I am very proficient at playing piano, I am absolutely terrible at teaching piano.
A friend recommended her teacher, who conveniently lives just a few minutes away, and Carolyn had her first lesson today. How exciting!
Summer Camp, At Home!
In an effort to avoid relying on the TV to occupy the kids, I’ve planned out some themes for every week of the summer, and come up with some craft ideas, “field trips” and other activities around each theme.
This week is “Strawberry Week”. We’ll see how it goes!
What I did *before* my summer vacation!
It all started seven years ago. Seven years ago, we took a guest room and turned it into a nursery. Lots of stuff from the guest room migrated into the craft room. Sometime later, I sort of cleaned it up so it was partly usable. Then three years ago, we took an office and turned it into another nursery. Lots of stuff from the office migrated into the craft room. With two small children and a small business, I’ve had no time to try to clean it up, though I have made a couple of half-hearted attempts over these past three years.
Last summer it looked like this:
And really, it’s only gotten worse since then. Much, much worse. Two weeks ago I decided I was either going to have this room cleaned up before school let out, or I was going to rent a dumpster, park it outside the window, and throw it all out.
This is what it looks like today:
(We won’t talk about how much I’ve neglected the rest of the house in order to get this room clean. That’s a project for this weekend!)
Newly Minted 2nd Grader
Carolyn came home with a backpack stuffed with stuff and a shirt covered with her classmates’ handprints. Let summer vacation begin!