Craft time!

Lily, Sophie and I had the best time over the weekend making cool crafts! I let Lily pick out a couple of craft ideas out of her Angelina Ballerina step by step craft book and, amazingly, we had most of the items for the crafts she chose- unheard of at our house! Best yet, both crafts were fun, very cheap and turned out great!- to us anyway:)

The first craft was a ballerina skirt. We used some mesh material that was left over from the curtains that I had to shorten for the girls' bedroom, cut into petal shapes. Prior to this, Lily used her paints to create a watercolor design on the material. Then we glued the petal shapes to some leftover birthday ribbon and voila!- a beautiful watercolor skirt!

Next, we made our own jewelry from scratch:) First, we made the dough from flour, salt and water and created our own beads and other various shapes. The craft book suggested the use of mini cookie cutters, which we do not have, but then I remembered the girls' play dough ice cream shoppe maker. The ice cream shoppe has cute little indented molds all over its base, which are used to make the ice cream toppings. They worked perfectly with our dough to make the cutest little trinkets for our necklaces!

Here are our cute creations, which included hearts, teddy bears, roses, bunches of grapes, watermelons, pretzels, and beads of course:

Finally, I used a tooth pick to poke a hole through the dough and off to the oven they went for 2 hours

The hardest part was waiting for our creations to finish baking:

After they were finished came the fun part: painting and stringing the beads. The downside, of course, was cleaning up the huge mess that we created- this part made me remember why we don't craft all too often;)

 Here is Lily modeling her beautiful necklace:

Unfortunately, Sophie painted the holes shut on her beads- didn't know it was possible to do that with watercolor paints, but all things are possible with Sophie! Anyway, she got to model my rose necklace:)

This teddy bear necklace is my favorite- can you tell I was kinda into this craft:)

Snowed in!!!

Wow, can't believe we've gotten over 30 inches of snow in less than a week's time! Wow, can't believe I've only been outside of this little condo once in the past 8 days! Wow, can't believe my car is actually dug out, but I still have no desire to go anywhere- despite a bit of stir craziness, we are having fun!

Here's what we girls have been up to (yes, mostly just us girls- Will has not missed one day of work during this entire winter season- amazing!):

Well for starters, Lily has been obsessed with being dressed up as Word Girl- a super girl from her new favorite TV show:

Sophie has been obsessed with carrying around this ice cream cone and offering everyone a lick whenever she remembers that she is holding it. The fact that she has a very wet cold at the moment and that she always takes a lick before offering it to others makes this quite unappealing. One time, I even overheard Lily responding "No, thank you- Ewww, get that thing away from me!!!"

(She has also become a fan of saying "Not fair!" every time I wipe her nose)

Take a lick, I insist!

We ventured out once in between storms, but Lily got a bad earache when we came back inside, so we opted to stay in the rest of the week. Besides, it was really too deep to do much of anything:(

So, we've been keeping busy. . .

Crafting

(This is a Valentine dragonfly- the fact that it looks a little devil-ish was unintended)

Whoooo will be my Valentine?

Coloring

Selling lemonade

*disclaimer- those are window markers

Lily even got to make her own snow

Building

Painting

(Lily actually did this a few weeks ago, but since it is one of her best I thought I'd include it here before I forget)

 

Ok. I admit it. We've also gotten plenty of TV time in during this snowy week:

Time for the Magic Show!

Kids n motion!

Here's how we spent our Columbus day: we went to a place called Kids n Motion per a tip given to me by a co-worker and had the best time! The place is filled with blow up slides and rock walls, moon bounces and much more! Lily couldn't believe her eyes when she first stepped into the first huge room. It cost about ten dollars total for an hour and a half of great and tiring fun- an incredible deal in my opinion! Enjoy the pics!














Will and I couldn't resist being big kids too, as you can see from the videos below. and thanks to his recent weight loss, Will came in just under the 200 lb weight limit to get on the inflatables- Way to go, honey!

Watch the kid on the left-hehe:)

Sophie's first painting experience!

I don't know what got into me, but today when Lily was painting, instead of giving Sophie a few crayons, I gave her paint! It actually went fine; no disasters occurred-as you can see from the video below, Sophie does not really like to have messy hands:) Wow, differences between my two children continue to surface quite frequently!

Hidden Oaks Nature Center

Last Thursday morning after Lily's swimming lessons, the girls and I went to the Hidden Oaks Nature Center for a very fun little trip. They have an outdoor play/discovery area, as well as a very cool children's corner inside of the nature center, including interactive stations and wildlife. Here are some pics. Enjoy:)



The outdoor turtle pond.




Here's Lily looking at the rings in this tree stump through the magnifying glass that a Hidden oaks employee was giving out to the kids along with a fun activity sheet.

The sand table had lots of hidden dinosaurs to find. Instead of playing dinosaurs with the boys around her, she decided to pretend her dinosaur was a flower and proceeded to "plant" and water it in the "garden".

Sophie hard at work- busy flinging sand everywhere with her magnifying glass:)

Lily's favorite part of the outdoor area: digging in the giant mulch pile with these cute kid sized shovels. Again, she decided to plant a flower- I think its about time I finally buy a planter for our balcony.

Here is Lily creating her own little wildlife habitat on the felt wall inside the nature center.

They have a bunch of animal costumes for kids to try on, which Lily absolutely LOVED! The bird costume was her favorite.

Lily the snake slithering through this log tunnel.

More slithering! And there's Sophie with hair clip in hand and not in hair, as usual- arrrgh!

And finally, here's my very busy little bumblebee!