Paint In A Bag

I am constantly trying to find new ways to entertain The Princess without making a huge mess. Today we tried - Paint In A Bag.

It is as simple as it sounds. You take a large ziploc bag (I used Dollar Tree bags), squirt some paint inside, and tape it to a white piece of paper on a flat surface. 

I decided to do two bags. One with red and blue, the other with red and yellow. I wanted to make it a fun learning activity in which we could learn what colors are made when primary colors are mixed.

She smashed, squished, and pushed with her hands.

She used the soft end of a paint brush.

And she used the hard end of the paint brush.

 *Helpful Tip: I wanted the bags to be totally clear (no writing). I read somewhere that fingernail polish would take the writing off of plastic bags. Success!!! I used cotton balls and a little fingernail polish. Took all of the paint/writing right off of both bags.

Oh What A Beautiful Morning.....

Cupcake woke up hungry around 6 this morning, so I fed her and then decided to enjoy the quiet peace of morning. I forgot how much I enjoy spending time alone in the morning. I had breakfast, a nice hot cup of chai tea, and then read my book and enjoyed SILENCE in my house for the first time in months. It was a beautiful thing.....and then The Princess woke up. OK, so much for silence! 

Cupcake went back to sleep after her bottle, so I had a couple of hours to spend alone with The Princess. It started to rain soon after she got up. I noticed it was a gentle rain (good for quiet walks) so I said, "Let's go outside and play in the rain!" Of course, she was super excited. At first we walked around using our umbrellas, but she soon ditched her Dora cover and was running around getting soaked. "Can I eat the rain?", she asked. Of course! You can do whatever you want when you play in the rain!

She finally decided that she had had enough so we came inside dripping wet. We ran to the bathroom and got The Princess into a warm bath. She played for a while and then I decided it was time to play "Beauty Salon".

You play 'Beauty Salon' a little bit like this:

1. Spray and Comb Hair while sitting in your 'salon' chair
2. Cut fingernails
3. Choose fingernail polish color
4. Paint fingernails, toes, or both - Then dry
5. Get dressed in fancy outfit - Preferably something with sparkles, glitter, sequins, jewels, etc.
6. Dry hair with 'salon' hair dryer and add accessories
7. Apply lipstick
8. Show Daddy how beautiful you are and spend lots of time admiring yourself  in the mirror

The finished product.

Lovely trimmed and painted nails.

Beautiful!

Not only is this a fun way to spend time with your girl, it's also a great way to get hair washed, dried, and combed AND fingernails trimmed (which is super hard if you have a child that won't sit still long enough to get all ten nails cut!).

Water Blob!!

After a week of weather in the 90's, which meant basically hanging out inside most of the time, I decided that we needed to have some outdoor fun known as 'The Water Blob'! I found this idea...on Pinterest of course! I came across a pin for the water blob from We-Made-That.com. Her blog has lots of great ideas for fun things to do with your little ones.

I have been wanting to make the blob for a while and decided that this was a great time to bring it out. This is such a simple and fun thing to make! All you need is: plastic sheeting (10 feet by 25 feet - Home Depot), duct tape, and water. I taped it together in about 15 minutes. Then it took another 15-20 to fill the sucker up with water (lord knows what my water bill is going to be this month, but it was totally worth it!). If you want to be more creative, you can also add food coloring, glitter, rubber toys, etc. to the water....but since this was our first attempt I decided to keep it super simple.

This is the blob after I had duct taped the three sides and started to fill it with water. I tried using blue food coloring, but didn't put nearly enough in it to color all of the water.

 

Needless to say, The Princess was on the blob before it was even partially filled up. She was stomping, rolling, jumping, making waves, inspecting the air bubbles, etc. After playing for a bit, she asked me to go get some of her tub toys to play with. She pretended that they were swimming in the water.

The seams were starting to leak a little and, as you might see, we had to put weights on one side. Our back yard is very sloped. I thought I had found a fairly flat area, but as the water filled in, the blob started to roll! Haha! Husband went and put some weights on the high side to keep it from rolling away. Eventually we got too hot and had to go inside, but The Princess spent a good hour and a half playing on the water blob. We sure wish Neenee and Papaw could have been here to enjoy the fun time!

Where We Go, Nature Follows

My husband and I both love nature. We enjoy going to parks, hiking, gardening, etc. Nothing too wild, just the peace of being outdoors. Over the years we have had many wildlife sightings around our home. We have always had the usual blue jays, cardinals, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, finch, butterflies, bees, deer, fox, etc. But occasionally we have been blessed with some unusual visitors. These are some of my favorites!

A Praying Mantis on our Bee Box.We thought she had possibly left an egg case, but never saw any babies.










A large green frog on top of our hummingbird feeder.

     This beautiful family of barn swallows nested in the curve of our rain gutter.

 It was amazing to watch the parents make the nest, lay eggs, and eventually watch

 the babies crowding the nest as they learned to fly.

And these guys were my all time favorite. Our neighbor had an abandoned silo that a mother hawk decided was perfect for nesting. That summer, we had the privilege of watching the babies grow and fly around our home. You could hear their screeches each morning as they rested on the phone lines along our road.

Today, we were eating lunch and I looked out the window and noticed something moving in one of our trees.   Brian and I ran outside to find this big guy making his way to the ground. From what we could tell he is a rat snake. I'm not a huge fan of snakes, but he was pretty cool.

NOT my dream garden...

When my husband and I were just married and living in our country farm house our garden looked like this....

Raised beds
Honeysuckle arch
Grape arbor
and all the vegetables we could plant.











We were also surrounded by flowers of every sort.
Bleeding Heart
Phlox
Lilies
Blue Indigo
Sweet Peas.....

I could go on, and on, and on.....I'm a flower lover.


I loved being surrounded by nature and working hard to make something beautiful.

Now, 2 babies later,and a move to a small town, home and yard...if you can call it that.
Our garden looks like this....

Yikes! I know!

My husband and I weren't ready to completely give up our love of gardening. But due to lack of time, space, and the fact that most of our money is going to diapers and formula right now....this is what you get.

I have been impressed by how well our squash, zuccini, and cucumber are doing in....that's right folks....window boxes! They are self watering boxes that we had on our old house, but they are providing the plants with just the right amount of water, as you can see, they are thriving!

So while this isn't my dream garden. I am happy that my daughter went out and helped me plant seeds tonight. I am happy that we will have some fresh vegetables to feed our family. And I am happy that I haven't given up one of my passions, because life is crazy hectic and I need this.