Summer Kick-Off

What better way to kick-off summer break than with a big mess?

My husband had to tear our rotting deck down this weekend, so we seized the opportunity to use it as a giant canvas before the destruction! Even babies were allowed. 

Even my boring tomato plant pots were livened up in the process.

We decided to add to our mess by getting out the shaving cream. My sisters kids were terrified of it, but we doused them a little anyway. Rachel, being 3, went to town.

My sister enjoyed it too

(I didn't ask her permission to post this photo . . . Oops :o)

We cleaned it off in the kiddie pool and the sprinkler.

It was definitely a day of awesome for the kids, and clean-up was painless (I promise)!

What made today fun

What made today fun, even though it was a rainy day:

*Having Angelus over to play
*Eating almost a whole cantaloupe between the 4 of us
*Dancing to ballerina music in costumes (I didn't do this part. No costumes fit me!)
*Making Kool-aid playdough
*Making old-fashioned sugar cookies, simply because there was sour cream in the house that needed to be made up (such a burden)
*Enjoying every morsel of cookie because I sought out the low-fat recipe
*Running in circles around the house, with Mommy helping a laughing Micah join in
*Having nap time in a cardboard house (Rachel) and a cubby hole for blankets (Angelus)
As you can see, Rachel's house is well used and on its last leg. She's had it for a year and a half. It's amazing it's made it this far!

And it's only one o'clock!

The latest fun toy at our house

Battery and toy companies beware: We discovered long ago that we don't have to fork out all of our hard earned money to you to keep our children occupied, entertained, or immersed in learning! Here is the latest toy in our house that my one year old LOVES and will play with for long periods of time:

Supplies needed: a spoon of any type, and a metal or glass bow.  This bowl is fun because it has a neat bell sound when hit on the outside, and we have 4 different sizes, so you can line them up and play different tones!

This sound is true music to my ears (it's not some repetitive or annoying voice I have to listen to or replace batteries in). Not only can your child make music, and experiment with sound, they also use their imagination and put objects inside and stir them around to make soup, or pancakes. You can turn it upside down and hide objects underneath, or turn it into a home for a small figurine, AND Mommy can cook delicious, REAL food inside of it!

Micah Turns 1!

What we used our Fly Swatter Mural for:

This was Rachel's idea. She said: "We have to make a 'Happy Birthday Micah' sign!' So we got to work decorating letters with all different objects and stickers. I decided to stick them on our Fly Swatter painting, and it turned into a really fun, colourful birthday sign! I feel reluctant to even take it down, as it's so fun. I think I'll fold it up and store it for next year, and we can make new letters for each family member when their birthday comes up!

Enjoying nature

Who says you need to make a mess, or spend time getting materials ready, to spend quality time with your kids? We have been really enjoying discovering the different flowers that are constantly blooming this time of year, as we live on a property that has various trees and bushes planted on it, as well as having a little bit of woods to 'explore.' There's always something new to discover in Spring. Recently, the butterflies have come out. I don't remember seeing them last year, but they are everywhere!!!! We have some blooming bushes that they are in love with. Rachel and I were able to stand and watch them fly all around, as well as even get close enough to watch their long tongues/mouth furl and unfurl into the flowers for a drink. We've discovered three 'colors' of butterfly, and now I'm off to find some books from the library with photographs of lots of different butterflies for us to discover!

Fly Swatters + paint = oh yeah!!!!!

I was inspired by Teacher Tom, preschool teacher and Blogger, to do this activity. We chose to do our Fly Swatter painting outdoors.

I thought it'd be great to set up our paper (we purchased a butt end of a really big roll from the paper mill in town for only a few bucks) on the side of the shed, but it had rained recently and trying to use masking tape on wet wood just doesn't work! Maybe thumb tacks would have worked, but I was too anxious to get started, so we moved it to the deck. We have the benefit of having an old, rotting deck that we'll be (hopefully) tearing down this summer, so if I get paint all over it, it doesn't matter!

First, you dip . .  .

Shaving Cream is not just for your face or legs!

If you're inspired to get REALLY messy, here's a GREAT one. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you do this outdoors. It's easier to clean, and your house will smell normal if you do!

Make shaving cream mountains, add food coloring,

mix well,

and make a big mess!!! You can add people and cars, but we just had fun squishing!  I sprayed Rachel and her friend, as well as my tray and my deck down with the hose, when we were all done. Even I had a lot of fun squishing the shave cream!

As an update to a previous post where we made colorful paper towels with droppers and food coloring, we made a few more one day. We've used them as a long table runner at Rachel's birthday (it complimented her rainbow cake, which I got inspired to do here at 'Whatever').

(*Note - I made a princess cake, so there used to be a barbie in that hole if you're wondering ;o)

We also made some into little butterflies, adding stickers to their wings!