Treasured Thursdays - Party time

Happy birthday to me! My daughter thinks I have birthday just about once a week... but how can you say otherwise, when she prepares such a cute looking party?

Treasured Thursdays - kitchen memories

I love when my kids help me in the kitchen. It causes a great mess but even greater memories! Today my daughter helped me bread chicken breast and we made chicken nuggets from scratch for dinner. And the bonus is when they make something, they can't wait to eat it!

Treasured Thursdays

I just treasure these moments!

Treasured Thursday

Kids have been enjoying my Valentine's Day present to them - the Window Markers!!! Clearly the Dog has been amused as well!

At this point we will do anything to get through the last few weeks of cold weather ;-)

Old fashion catapult fun

Sometimes we come across the best books in our library. One of them is "How things work in the house" by Lisa Campbell Ernst. The kids are obsessed with this book. They looked thru it about million times and every time they do, they come up to me and ask to make a project they are showing on one of the pages. On the page about Spoons, there was a catapult made out of a plastic spoon and a piece of wood. Since we had all the supplies, I couldn't say no. And the fact that we used marshmallows could not have been any better for the kids. Try it! I guarantee you hours of laughter!

Fairy garden

We finally got around to build our fairy garden! I kept thinking where in the world would we do it without the dog digging thru it, the chickens and the turkeys stomp all over it and visitor kids destroying it! The perfect site was right in front of me! This wooden planter under a tree looked like the perfect location. These plants were placed in the pot last year, completely forgotten about, and hardly ever watered. That's why they are so small. I guess things happen for reason ;-)

First get your area nice and ready, remove all the weeds and add new soil if you need to.

Then help the kids decide what fairies need in order to enjoy your garden. Their first response was swimming pool! We added a plastic container that will serve that purpose. I am hoping to find a small ceramic one to give it a better look. We decorated the area with small pebbles we found on the Lake Michigan Beach earlier this summer.

Here comes the water!

Don't you just love garage sales? You junk becomes my treasure! And that is what happened to this small bird house we found with the kids at our neighborhood garage sale. And the name sounded so perfect for a fairy garden! The solar light came from Home Depot ;-) It is used for the night so fairies find their way back to us <3

The small cage came from the same garage sale. T is worried that the fairies might think it's a trap but I keep telling him that it's their garden house ;-)

Sorry for this blurry picture, but I tried to capture the garden at night, all lit up. It looks magical. And did you notice the small chair? lol - the kids found it in Target in their dollar section (it's really a cell phone holder) and they thought it would be a perfect lounge chair for the fairies. I was hoping for something wooden but you can't say no to those begging little eyes! Now we are looking up what fairies like to eat so they really like our garden the best!!!

When the kids want to send message to grandma

Here is an idea for a cute and thoughtful present for grandma's, daddy's, grandpa's or mom's birthday or any other special occasion! 

We made this to send grandma a special message for her birthday. Something she can read over and over again. 

All we needed was a chalk and chalk board. We thought about what the message should say and came up with this:

And I had both kids hold that up for the first picture.

T told me why he loves grandma so much, I wrote it down, and took a picture of him with his note. 

Next up was B and her note to grandma. 

Then I just had to send it through the internet to have the pictures developed, buy the frame, and put it all together. We sent it to grandma and she loved it!

I am linking this to the Creative Friday Linky Party at the fabulous www.jenniferrizzo.com.

10 things to do with your kids this summer

Are you looking for some fun activities to do with your kids this summer? I thought I would share some simple fun we have been having around our house for the past couple of weeks.

1. Pick herbs together

and tell them what they can use them for. Show them how to dry the herbs and finally how to store them. It is fun for the kids to find out what makes them better when they get sick.

2. Learn to hoola hoop

Find a hoola hoop and learn how to use it. This guarantees hours of fun on and off during the day. And you will be surprised who will join in on the fun ;-)

3. Grow butterflies

Who doesn't want to witness the miracle of a caterpillar changing into a cocoon and then into a butterfly? You can order caterpillars online or you can find them in your backyard - if you have milkweed growing in your garden. 

4. Have a bon fire

I have many memories as a child having bon fires at our cabin, singing songs, and making sausages above the fire. Stay up later and watch the stars if you can see them or try to catch fireflies.

5. Tie dye some shirts

Summer is the perfect time for tie dying because you can work outside and not risk any smudges around your house. Kids will be so proud to wear their creations!

6. Build a fairy garden

We are still in the process but the kids are so excited to welcome some good fairies into our backyard! Pick a large container, fill it up with dirt, plant small plants and then let your imagination roll. I will post the whole process once it's finished and link it up here. 

7. Go to the beach. 

You don't have to live by the ocean, lake will do as well! Go and soak up the sun, get some sand into your hair (and everywhere else), and splash in the waves.

8. Visit local attractions

If the weather lets you, go to the ZOO, park, forest preserves, or waterparks. Once you get home, talk about their favorite things and follow up with some art work about the experience. 

9. Paint outside

Get your art supplies outside and start creating some messy art! We did some spray painting using large easel paper, spray bottles, water and paint. This was a huge hit!

10. Bake Bake Bake

Kids love their sweets and they love participating in the process of making them. Have fun together this summer in your kitchen making magic and then eating it too!

There is tons more we have been doing so it was difficult to find 10 activities. But I hope this will help you schedule some fun with your little ones this summer!

Let the sun shine thru

This is one of the toys that we treasure around our house for the past few months. Right now it has it's temporary spot right by the porch door and that is so the kids can play with it first thing in the morning. The sun shines right thru the back door early in the morning and as you can see, that is the point of the whole game. 

How cool is this?

They try to build different kinds of creations and see how that effects the light and the color shining thru. Seeing them having fun together like this, brings the light into my day... so keep the sun shining thru. :-)

Fresh squeezed orange juice

Do you know the time when you bought way too many oranges? Well, that happened to me the other week. Kids wanted to pull out the juicer and make a fruit juice but I had a better idea that would keep them busy for a while ;-)

When I went to a Kane County Flea Market, I found a booth that had tons of these vintage green glass orange juicers and couldn't resist. I pulled it out, cut the oranges in half and set the kids around our dining room table. 

This is a good way to practice those fine motor skills for the little guys and they had fun doing it :-)

Now just pour it into a glass ...

and let them enjoy a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. 

What is this template?

Happy Father's Day

What a cute idea my friend got from Pinterest! The original post comes from this cute blog called twogirlzstuff so we thought we could show you step by step how to make this actually happen and some "behind the scenes" shots.

This is the final product:

First you will have to get one large poster board and cut it in half. We used exacto knife to cut through the thick board.

Then take a pencil and write the letters in a font that is easy to cut out. Don't forget to leave the small lines connecting middle of the letters "d", "a", and "e". This will not be visible on your picture!

These are the finished poster boards.

Behind the scenes

Here are the kids trying to figure out how to hold the boards so that the shadow reads the right way.

This is the way to hold the poster boards - upside down and backwards.

We went to an open church parking lot in the middle of the day when the sun was high. We had the kids hold the sign high above their heads (as we found out, the shadow looks better if the kids hold the sign higher above their heads instead on top of their heads). They will have to tilt it so it shows nice and wide on the ground. 

Happy Father's Day to all the great dads out there! Hope you had a great day!

Enjoying summer

Homeschool is out so we are enjoying summer! Here we are at the Weko Beach in Michigan. Only two hour drive and we were in paradise!

We went downtown Chicago!

We also saw the Kratt brothers at the ZOO!

Hi Chris!!!

The ZOO also has Xtreme Bugs exhibit! You know we cannot pass that up!

I hope you are enjoying your summer as much as we do! (even though summer doesn't begin till the next couple of week the weather makes us feel it already started ;-)

Our visit to the barn

Since my hard drive crashed, I wasn't able to keep up with my posts. Luckily my husband doesn't need his computer tonight so I am catching up on both blogs. 

Last week we took a trip to the Arabian Knights Farm. My very good friend Gabi volunteers there on the weekend so she was so nice to invite us and let us get up close to some beautiful animals!

Here T is being bugged by the "bosses of the petting ZOO". Apparently they are not suppose to get up there... Now you know who is the boss!

T giving a back rub to the boss! 

 

T learned how to feed the horses.  

 

He wasn't a bit scared even of the bigger horse. This is BJ taking a carrot. The carrot was big so T was allowed to feed it to him by just holding it between the fingers. B wasn't so brave and so she is hardly pictured on these...

This guy was the best. Llama and his name is Chris! Isn't it awesome!

We had some time for extra fun in the barn!

And a picture I really like! This is T and Nightlight.

Kids always enjoy a trip to meet some animals. They make amazing connections. B needs a bit more warming up to do. I hope we will be back soon!

I am linking to the the very inspiring It's a Boy's Life Blog Field Trip Friday :-)