On Wednesday

On Wednesday we went to the park. It was gloriously warm. The whole neighborhood came out to bask in the sun. We had to soak up every moment of warmth since this weekend it is supposed to be freezing cold again. Sigh.

On Monday

On Monday, we took a walk.

We found some pine cones and picked them up.


We checked out a new house being built. Anyone want to buy me this house? It is conveniently located right behind the kid's school and would solve a myriad of problems in my life right now. No? Anyone? No? You're right. It is too large. I would not want to clean it.


The work site had some really good looking mud.


We considered checking out this home and then thought they might not like five children traipsing through - one in his pajamas.


It started to rain a bit, but we did not mind. Baby Lily did not seem to care either.


The kids made each other laugh.


We followed this sign. It seemed like the thing to do.


We listened to this bird. Calvin told me that the bird said it should kill his mean Mommy. His mean Mommy had just yelled at him for darting in front of a car. Later he told me the bird said he would love his Mommy again if she would let him go on the Wii.


We saw some local wildlife. Click to enlarge . One of the wildlife fell over.


We got home and found little things growing in the garden. We told them to stop immediately as it is March in Minnesota and we expect another 15 inches of snow soon.


We also saw signs of the *&%*ing rabbits. I HATE them! This year I vow to stop them - any suggestions besides shooting them?

Rainbow Craft

Here's a super quick rainbow craft for a rainy day. Yesterday we had a gorgeous day.

g.o.r.g.e.u.o.u.s.

It was a sunny, warm day with bad, bad news in the mail BUT, we are talking about rainbow crafts right now!

Simply cut up a bunch of squares of rainbow colored tissue paper. I found a pack at Dollar Tree. Give each child a sheet of light blue craft paper and a bottle of glue.

Have each child make the arch shape of a rainbow with the glue. Then, start sticking on tissue paper squares. Repeat.


That's it. Super simple. Have the kids write their names on their rainbows and set them aside to dry.

Rainbow Cookies

On Tuesday, we made rainbow cookies. We'd been having a lot of rain.

These are pretty easy and frankly, I changed what we were doing half way through and it turned out just fine.

Make a sugar-cookie dough. I tried a new one for cream cheese sugar cookies and in typical Stacey style, did not read the entire recipe until I was almost done. Chill dough for 8 hours or overnight? Not going to happen. I popped it into the freezer while we had lunch.

Divide the dough into zip-lock bags.


Add a bit of food coloring to each and tell the kids to squish them until colored. Be careful of over exuberant children who pop open the seal on the bags!


Now, at this point, I planned to have everyone make a long snake with their color and then form mini-rainbows, but the dough was too soft - see note about reading the recipe above. So instead, we squeezed out each color, tapped it out into a flat line and kept adding the colors all in a row until we had a rainbow rectangle.


Then, I cut long strips with a pizza wheel and using an off-set spatula, transferred them to a cookie sheet. The kids brushed the tops with egg white and water (I skipped this step on the next batch).


When baked, they looked like this! Pretty cute and very tasty!

The Easter Tree

It is St. Patrick's Day and I am showing you Easter decorations. I did not even wear green today though I did start the day with some ratty looking green nail polish on my fingernails. I took it off though so it does not count.

I did not make green eggs for breakfast, we did not make a St. Patrick's Day craft (it was way to gorgeous outside to be inside) and we did not have corned beef and cabbage for dinner because I did not get to the store to buy any and the last daycare child left at 6:15 and Max had to be to scouts at 6:30 and Sophie had to be at Achievement Day girls at 7:00 and I had to go to the bank and the point of this run-on sentence is, we did not celebrate our Irishness today.

Sophie did wear a green necklace to school and she has to have oral surgery on Friday ($1,048.00). Yipee! That's not lucky at all.

St. Patrick's Day Crafts

On Thursday we made St. Patrick's Day crafts. I saw this idea online (here) and it looked pretty simple. If you are local, I'll even tell you where to find your supplies.

You'll need little pots (Dollar Tree in packs of three for $1), a bag of stones, shredded brown paper (both from the Dollar Tree as well), primary color chenille sticks (Michaels for $2.99) and gold coins (I found some plastic ones at Michaels with a shamrock on them for about $1.00 (on sale) for 10. Marsha picked up some chocolate coins at Walgreen's from Chinese New Year and the kids loved them because they had dragons on them and chocolate inside. We hid them under the Shamrock coins). You'll also need glue, paper plates, markers and crayons and cotton balls and black paint.

DO NOT use the little crafts paints they show on the inspiration blog unless you are making this craft as an adult. That kind of paint does not come out of kids clothes. If you are making this craft with children, use the large bottles of black tempura or washable paint. You've been warned.

Start by painting your pot black. Try and not paint the bottom so you can write the kid's name there. You need to paint about an inch inside as well.


Set the pots aside to try. Note for you: they dry really quickly!

Meanwhile, give every kid a paper plate and have them draw a rainbow. We went over the traditional colors of the rainbow and then the kids pretty much did their own thing.


Add some blobs of glue to the end of the rainbow.


Give each child a cotton ball that you have pulled apart and have them stick it to the glue for clouds.


Back to the pots! Give each child a pile a pebbles and have them fill up their pots.


Then start handing out the chenille sticks. The trick is to cut a small section off each color after the red so they fit under one another - so your last color will be the shortest. Got it?


Take some shredded brown paper and put on top of the rocks.


Do it right or Evi will give you the hairy eyeball.


Add gold coins and you are done! Pretty cute and this one was great for this group (ages 2-5) as they could do almost all of it on their own.