Chill OUT (Jar)

Today was one of those days that almost made me want to turn in my mom card and declare, "I'm done." Hehe. I don't often have those days as a mama, but being sick when the husband is at work all day long (and night, too!) can usually push me to the edge. All I wanted to do was sleep or at the very least, lay horizontally and moan pitifully at the world. Lily and Sage were good for a while, but as the day wore on, they got progressively stir crazy. After about the 100th time of Sage swiping every single thing off the table or Lily getting upset because she was told no, she couldn't watch another episode of Cake Boss, this mama had reached the end.

So what do I do when I'm going bonkers and my kids are going bonkers and we're all driving each other insane? Why, we get creative and craft something of course!!! Especially dour moods call for especially sparkly projects. Frustration, you have met your match in this household. I present to you, the "Chill Out Jar."

Some of you may have seen this on pinterest under similar names such as the Time Out Jar. We've actually used this quite a bit over the years for Lily when she gets stressed or upset, but the last one started leaking and it's been about a year and a half since we've had one in the house. 

Basically, it's like this. The jar (plastic bottle in this house because Sage likes to throw) is full of colored water, a bit of glue, and a crap ton of glitter. You shake it, you zone out on the sparkly swirliness and poof! Your mad gets gone real quick. Fun for all ages, too. Sage zoned on it, Lily took a turn, then I got distracted while I was taking pictures. 

Lily helped me pour the glitter and count the food drops. Most important jobs, you know. I came up with the quick little poem for the side and used my trusty label maker. The poem had the added benefit of covering the bits and pieces left over from the bottle wrapper. Creative laziness, no? Sage shook the crap out of it to test it. Success! 

I know in the past this has been a life saver with Lily when she had her tantrum phase. I'm sure it will work with Sage muffin too, but if not, it's still good. After all, it's a  homemade toy that reaches both ends of  the 8 year age gap between my kids. That's a lot of win in my book. Plus, sparkly.

If you would like the instructions to make your own Time Out/Chill Out Jar, you can visit here. There are bunches of recipes on how to do this, but According to L is my favorite because who doesn't want to say something looks like "glitter poop" at least once in their life? Also, she shows pictures of her kid using the jar over time as proof it works. 

Random Roundup: what I've been up to.

Those of you bloggers out there who do this regularly in the summer have my deepest respect! It's tough to fit in. I have five million things to blog about, but no time. So, I'm doing a roundup of things I have been wanting to blog about.

#1: My dreadlocks are now 4 years old! Happy dreadiversary!



I'm kind of to the point where I want to cut them. I have to do so in 6 months anyway, and I'm really loving on short hairstyles right now. Dreads are hot, yo. I'm waffling. I would keep them forever if I knew I could, but teaching with dreadlocks in my area is probably as possible as Lily eating broccoli. So now that I know I have to cut them, I want to cut them when I want to, not when I have to. And yes, I'm listening to how much sense I'm not making. I think it's time to break out some funky dye and do something wild. When in doubt, add a rainbow. That's my motto.

#2: Colored. Ice cubes.



I randomly saw this on pinterest and can't remember who had the original idea to credit. I threw some neon food dye in a batch of star shaped ice cubes and let the kids play with them in the pool. They were so entertained I was able to read a whole chapter in my book. That's rare during the monsters being awake portion of the day. You should probably put kiddos in older swimsuits in case of staining.

#3: The coolest mushroom in existence.



It's called a lionhead mushroom. It's furry. And delicious with a bunch of other mushrooms in mushroom risotto.

#4: ANT INFESTATION.



I feel like a mass murderer lately. They just won't. stop. coming. out. of my front porch. Normally I'm a let live type, but it's gross and Sage sits there and tries to eat them. Ugg. I have kids and dogs and can't use chemicals.  Tried a gazillion non-chemical remedies. Verdict? Soapy dishwater and cornmeal. Worked amazingly. My walkway is covered with the little ant bodies. (Note to self: spray off the walkway.)

#5: Lily left us last week. So Sage decided to practice for when she gets her Hogwarts letter.



She crawled into one of Dad's shirts and grabbed my wand off the bookshelf. Much hilarity ensued.

#6: Sage also had her first painting session! She painted almost as much as she ate the paint.



I simply put food dye into corn syrup. Once her masterpiece dried, I sprayed it with some top coat and I'm going to frame it for our wall. Clean up was not easy, but the rainbow colored water did look pretty.

#7: I made another baby shower gift. This time it was an owl lovey. Turned out super cute. It even rattled! Working on writing the pattern for it, possibly to share later.



#8: I wore makeup. Haha. I nearly made it to 60 days makeup free! Oh well. It was date night and the Hubster got all fancy, so I did too. I forgot how much fun makeup is when it's not a daily chore!!



So there you go. What we've been up to lately, if you leave out about half the stuff we're doing. Hehe. Who agrees with me that there needs to be at least two more hours added to the day?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Move over Jackson Pollock, Miss Lily is in town.

Miss Lily had her art class this week and we had so much messy fun!The theme this week was a Jackson Pollock style painting. I absolutely adore how it turned out and am taking it to be framed so we can hang it in our living room. Isn't it stunning?
I really wish I had my camera during the process, so I could post more how to pictures, but I'll try and explain the process. The art teacher explained who Jackson Pollock was in a 30-second biography. Smart to keep it short since there was paint and cool stuff to play with in front of about 50 or so kids.

There were five stations set up: Drip, Splatter, Spray, Roll, and Smear. Each child was given a poster board sized piece of light weight cardboard and a slightly larger sized piece of white paper to keep messes on the cardboard. Which sort of worked.

Drip was a station with kiddie pools on the floor. The kids put their pieces of cardboard in the pool, grabbed a cup of paint with a sponge brush and dripped paint until their hearts were content.

Splatter was a cardboard box with paper on the floor and walls to protect against messes. The kids had these cool foam brushes in two sizes to throw paint on their canvas. This was a station where bystanders walked away with more paint on them than on the intended targets. Haha, We did this station first. I would say save this for one of the last, as all the cool splatter was eventually covered by the other stations.

Spray was another cardboard box and paper set up. Kids were given water guns with watered paint in them to spray paint. Guess which station was Lily's favorite? This could be an art project in of itself, and with towels on the floor, the mess was actually the smallest here.

Roll was a table filled with beads, foam stickers, fish rocks, and buttons. Jackson Pollock used to hide bits and pieces of things in his paintings, so that was the idea here.Kids could grab whatever and roll it around in the paint and stick it to their cardboard. Plastic gloves were given to kids to protect their hands, but wow, was this a mess. There was a lot of handprints in paint going on.

Smear was a station with pieces of sponge and paint. This station, along with Roll, was one of the stations where kids actually touched their art as they were working on it. If it was me, this is where I would start as it gives a colorful background to do some of the other stations on.

The mess this created was incredible, but it was so much fun and the kids were absolutely free to just play with the color and didn't have to worry about what was right versus wrong. I would caution that too much paint leads to a big brown mess, but we avoided that. It's a fantastic project. The paint used was all water based and kids were given garbage bags to wear over clothing, so no harm done. I think this would make a wonderful play date or birthday party activity, outside. I am not brave enough to have this inside.

Lily loved the water gun painting station, so we may set something like that up here at home. Jackson Pollock is a favorite artist of mine, so I may plan on joining her...

If you try this with your kids, I would love to see the results! Have some messy, colorful fun!

I have linked this post to...
   

Cornstarch Paint and a surprise...

 I saw this on pinterest as soon as warm weather hit and have been wanting to try it out. Lily is a painter. When she grows up, she wants to be an artist. The hard part of getting this marked off my to-do list though, has been remembering cornstarch at the grocery store. I finally got it though, yay me!

You can find a million recipes for this, but my favorite was the one at Pink and Green Mama because it was pretty simple. Cornstarch, food dye, water. Go. Ha! I'd add a little cornstarch here, water there, and had way too much fun playing.

The darker colors were much more vibrant. They had quite a bit of food dye, at least 15 drops or so. I had a mini muffin tin, which was the perfect size for quite a bit of paint in more colors than a regular pan. Lily is all about the color selection. I did get asked why there was no yellow, brown, or black. How was she supposed to draw trees or the sun? *smirk*

Nic was setting up the pool in the backyard. This has been an epic battle that the pool is currently winning. Pool: 2. Humans: 0. Tomorrow we have to drain it and fill it for a third time. Our back yard is slowly forming into a mountain or something, because that pool leans like crazy when we fill it up no matter where we put it. Anyway, Lily decided that painting the table we have in the yard was better than the sidewalks out front. I thought it was fun and it washed off fine, so I gave the green light. I don't know what part she liked better, painting or playing with the hose under the guise of washing off her "canvas" so she could start over again. She painted for two hours.

Two warnings:

1) Wear clothes that can be stained. Lily has an eclectic mix of play clothes. She's very much a girly girl and has to wear sparkles and skirts even when painting her masterpieces. Fancy Nancy has nothing on my girl. She was devastated for about five minutes when she realized she had blue on her cupcake shirt. When I reminded her it was too small to wear to school anymore and it was play clothes, she then asked if she could paint the shirt. Haha.

2) It might not be the smartest idea to paint on glass with this stuff. We had the weirdest thing happen today and the the only thing we can think of as a cause is something to do with the cornstarch paint. We went outside to find our table like this:

The glass completely shattered. We could hear the glass crackling and breaking as we stood over it in disbelief and confusion. It was the strangest thing. I washed off most of the paint yesterday, but there was still some on there. The table had sat overnight completely fine, and then half way through the morning, boom. Nothing heavy enough around it that could have hit the glass to shatter it. No pre-existing cracks. Just millions of pieces. There could be other reasons, but where kids are the ones painting, I wouldn't want someone to get hurt. I can't wait to make this again for Lily to play with, but I'll stick with sidewalks from now on to be safe.

I'm bummed about the table. We just got it last summer. I only ate dinner on it one time this summer. Boo. Nic cheered me up by suggesting several different options of fixing it. His favorite is to turn it into a wood top and letting me paint a mural and sealing it. My husband has a secret crafty side.

 Anyone have any good ideas? It's a metal frame.

Moral of the story: sidewalks, people.

Linked up to...

Inspiration Station

So after a wonderful weekend with the mother-in-law (who was kind enough to buy us a shiny, new air conditioner!!!!) and my sister, and my other sister's baby shower (new baby!!!!!) .... I am exhausted.

At least my sunburn is from actual sunshine this time.

I haven't had much crafty creative time, but I sure found some great ideas to try! So I am going to annoy you with commentary on each idea. :)

I have been working on this post for two days and I keep getting sidetracked. The internet had too many arty crafty fun blogs and ideas! My brain wants to implode!

So welcome to Inspiration Station... I'll be your tour guide through some happy fun today!

First up, we have a fun kiddo craft that is happening at my house as soon as the Idaho weather decides to cooperate. Key words there are "Idaho weather" so it could be August. It's Bubble Prints!

Side note: this is hands down one of the best kid art blogs I have ever seen. The blog is run by a K-6 art teacher and there are HUNDREDS of ideas. If you need something to do with your kiddo, go here. I spent an hour looking around and still didn't get bored. I want to try about 15 other things with Lily including a summer memory quilt idea that was inspired by this blog.

Next up, we have pure genius. If you are on pinterest, chances are you've seen this, but it is so amazing that I have to share it. Addicted 2 Decorating has made this amazing mirror out of.... SPOONS!

I love everything about this. It's from spoons. It has a gorgeous color fade. It's pretty. I have seen other spoon mirrors out there, but this one takes the cake. It is full of win and I can only hope some nice family member will take my children for a day sometime in the future so I can make this. It would look awesome in yellow or maybe purple.

Moving on... is an adorable headband from Love Stitched. I actually made a bracelet using this knot the other day, but I want to do a headband for each of us three girls in the house. It took five minutes to learn the knot. Plus, t-shirt recycling, always a favorite of mine. 

If you're more attached to your glue gun than your sewing machine, this is a crafty must do for you! I think I personally would sew the ends together, but that's just cause I want to use my sewing machine as often as I can get my sticky, grubby mom hands on it. I love the two-tone bands she has done as well.

And finally, for the knock-off win of the century, Besserina takes home the gold. I fell in LOVE with the Georgina duvet cover from Anthropologie.  I tried for several months to figure out how to afford a duvet that was worth as much as several months rent. I still have the picture of it. This is the original:

Isn't it stunning? Gah! Love love love it. Well, Besserina has a wonderful tutorial on how to make my own. It might take me a few years to get all the flowers done, but I am DOING this some day. She does her's for a toddler bed size...so very adorable.

It may say something about me, but I think a good knock off is even better than the original. It takes some pretty fine talent to create something from a picture and make it as good (or better) than the original. I love this in white, but it would last about 2.5 seconds at my house before getting stained, so I would have to make it colorful. 

Well, this was super fun, so I'll have to do it again. Hope you find some time to get lost in Blog land and find some lovely adventures to undertake!

Magical Melty Beady Bowls

I found out today as Lily and I chattered our way home from school that tomorrow is her teacher's birthday. She was pretty insistent that we get her a present and I couldn't disagree because this teacher has done amazing things with Lily and has been wonderful all year long. Every day as the first graders pile out of the room past her, she smiles and hugs every single one. Ever since I started working on my teaching degree, I pay attention to which teachers do things I would do in my, as of now, imaginary classroom. And while I would probably be labeled a weirdo if I hugged my high school students, the simple patience to take a moment to acknowledge each one every day is absolutely going to be filed away for future use.

Anyway, when I asked Lily what she wanted to give, she told me something that she had to make with her imagination. It took me a few minutes, but I thought of something. Please welcome what Lily named Magic Melty Beady Bowls.

It's a pretty simple concept. You take plastic beads, arrange them, throw them in the oven, shape and cool.

Handy for me, I still have a huge box of pony beads. When I say huge, I mean a tool box that unfolds and has tons of little compartments. I've had the box since I was younger and spent hours making candy bracelets with friends of mine. It refuses to empty itself of beads.

Since this was my first time attempting this, I wrapped my cookie sheet in foil. The plastic didn't stick, but I make a lot of cookies at my house and I need my cookie sheets. Lily and I each made our circles. I was stuck in pattern mode, but she just kind of went wild. She really liked the glitter beads.

I popped them in the oven at about 450 degrees for ten minutes or so. I kept checking them until they were totally melted. I've read lots of complaints about the fumes this creates. I opened my back door and had a fan going and it wasn't a problem for us. It also gave me an excuse to use my newest Scentsy scent. :) Once they were out of the oven, I shaped them with oven mitts on. They're pretty hot and harden quickly, so I put them back in the oven once or twice until the shapes were what I wanted.  I let them cool and that was that!

Lily wanted hers to more bowl shaped so her teacher could use it for paper clips or whatever. I love the random colors!

Here it is all wrapped up in fabric since Lily doesn't believe it counts as a present unless it's wrapped.

We kept the crafty going by making a card to go with it. I can't exactly remember where I got the general concept for the card, but it is made with an apple stamp.

Lily loved this one too. She adores painting and she was chomping at the bit to get to this part. She had a paintbrush in her hand for an hour waiting to get to it. Haha. She did a few practice runs and then we stamped the card, I added  the stem, leaf, and seeds, and the twine knot and message. I am so making more of these for a teacher stash. They are perfectly adorable.

I had an absolute blast doing all of this with Lily today. It was so much more fun than watching My Little Pony for the umpteenth time. I want to try and make bowls out of vinyl records or green army men. The pictures I have seen are awesome. I get the impression that if you have anything small and plastic, it works, but I'm a little hesitant to just try melting things in my oven all willy nilly. I hope her teacher likes the gift and I have to find a place or use for my pretty rainbow bowl. I'm sure this is another one we'll be doing again as Lily wants one for her room and I think they would also make cool coasters or light catchers.


I have linked this post to....

Lazy Weekends.

This weekend has been lovely.

Friday afternoon, Lily got "the biggest cookie dough blizzard there is Mom!" All year we have been struggling with her behavior in school. My daughter is strong willed, full of scary logic, and entirely too smart for a 1st grader. If she doesn't understand why she has to do it, or doesn't like the reason she's been told, she won't do it. Also, the reason "because I said so" doesn't work. Ha. It's one of the most frustrating and wonderful things about her. No worries about a lack of individuality or confidence with my Lily, she's got it down. So this week was the very first week in the whole school year that she got all stickers and met her HUGS goals for each day. Pretty much that translates to she did AWESOME. Though there's only two weeks of school left, I'll take it. So off we went to grab blizzards as a sweetie treat.

Saturday had us playing with blow pens (do you remember those?? So fun!) and coloring for hours. When that got boring, I broke out construction paper, scissors, and staples to make a paper chain.

A child after my own heart, she headed straight to a rainbow pattern. What was more surprising to me was that she was able to put the colors in the correct order from red to violet all by herself. Remember how I said the girl was smart? Once we went through about a hundred staples, I broke out the tape and we went through nearly a roll of that. She just kept going. I am totally remembering this one for the next time she's bored.

After we spent the day being creative, she went off to a sleep over and I had little miss Sage all to myself. We snuggled and slept only to wake up with the husband came home and then went back to snuggling and sleeping. Is there anything better than curling up and breathing in the happy scent of a baby? I can't believe that little girl is already 4 months old. It feels like I was still pregnant yesterday.

Today has been more laziness with which we'll cap off with dinner at Grandma's. There is no better place to eat in town, trust me. The husband even gets off work early so I won't have to wait up (or pretend to wait up) until 12:30 tonight. Win!

My goal for the next week is to finish a rag quilt. I WILL do it. I read 5 books this week, it's time to do something else. Wish me luck! Also, I've been playing around with the blog, so if you see anything wonky, let me know, ok?