hearts and more hearts

I hung up our melted-crayon, wax-paper
 hearts this week. Martha Stewart has an easy

 step-by-step guide if you are interested
 in making them.

They do add that extra color

that is desperately lacking in the month of February.

I also cut out some little, paper hearts

 and put happy words on them.

Later on, when we went to a park,

which the boys lovingly call, “The Dinosaur Park,”

I taped a couple of the hearts around the playground.

My boys asked if it was alright to do that.

I told them it was O.K.

Plus it wasn’t permanent and when

we come back another day I would take the tape off.

Those hearts made me smile.

And thinking of some tired mother

or lonely child reading them

makes me smile even bigger!

Have a great day!



happy ice decorations

The weather has been very cold and as grey and gloomy as Eeyore. So I made some happy, colored, ice decorations to hang on the tree out back and they turned out pretty cute!

I filled five silicone, heart baking cups with water and put a couple drops of red food coloring in them and set them outside to freeze. It was colder than the ‘Hundred Years of Winter’ in Narnia so they froze pretty quickly. Next, I put cold water in a cake pan and set it out side for about an hour to chill. When I brought the cake pan back inside, I popped the red hearts out of the baking cups and put them in the cake pan and then set a small glass in the top where the ribbon would go. I put the whole pan back outside. Again, it froze pretty quickly. When it was completely frozen, I brought the pan back in for a couple minutes and the heat in the house loosened the ice and it slid right out. The glass somehow tilted and a little water froze underneath. I just filled the glass with hot water twisted the glass out and then chipped the ice away to finish the hole for the ribbon.

I really liked how it turned out!

The heart one was easy too. I just took a Jello mold, filled it with water and put a couple drops of red food coloring. I set it outside and stuck the middle of a pink, satin ribbon down in the water and it froze with that little bit of ribbon inside. I then popped it out and tied it up on a branch where the boys and I could see it.

It’s something small but it adds a bit of color to my day!

s.m.i.l.e

I stumbled upon Color Me Katie’s blog a while ago and found it happy and, well, happy! When life gets blue, I bypass my regular news websites and choose to focus on positive things to keep moving. Those things are, in order; God’s promises in the Bible, going down my mental list of things I am forever thankful for, extra sleep, eating healthy food, saying no to unnecessary stuff, calling family, taking a walk and perusing happy/inspiring websites.

When I saw the little things Katie did around her neighborhood just to make someone smile, I giggled. Check out this link that inspired me to paint my own little rock. I have it outside my door and every time I walk in my house I smile.

I may just make some more and put them around the neighborhood!

A Garland of Love

I wanted to make a garland or a banner for my mother’s 70th birthday party. I wanted something unique that involved her twelve grandchildren in someway. I thought maybe silhouettes of each grandchild’s profile, large hearts with hand written notes or a mural of some kind.

We already made a scrapbook where each grandchild had a page they could color and write something they liked about Grandma with their pictures in it as well. So, (late at night) I kept on thinking.

I thought of how mothers like to have a snapshot of their children at certain time periods; pencil markings of height climbing up a wall, a little envelope with wisps of a first haircut, and a tiny handprint in plaster. These items are reminders of moments, fleeting moments, when at the time, they seemed like endless hours. Once they pass, we can’t go back and recreate those moments. They are forever etched in time.

That’s when I got the idea of hands. I decided to trace the hands of each grandchild onto colorful paper, cut them out and string them along a pretty ribbon! A snapshot of all of her grandchildren’s hands at this moment of their lives!



My mother has kissed, walked with and held all these hands many days and nights.

She has also helped teach these hands to clap, put puzzle pieces together, use scissors, paint, draw, set the table, tie shoes strings, zip a zipper, fold in prayer, sew, plant seeds, follow words in a book, refrain from touching a window, play Rummikub and Bananagrams, cook, play the piano, love and hug!

These hands are not entirely separate for my mother.
She will forever be a part of what these hands do.
And I wanted her to see that in this Garland of Love!

Thanks, Mom, for helping all my boys so much!

kitchen table fun

I like to keep an activity out on the kitchen table
for the kids to get into that is fun, educational and not too messy.
This is one of them.

In art we have been going over primary and secondary colors and working on some art projects along that theme. I had this plastic organizing container that I was no longer using and I put some water in each square (You could also use a white ice cube tray). I put McCormick's red food coloring in one square, yellow in another and blue in another.




I gave them a plastic dropper and a little bowl of water to rinse it in and let them experiment.


What I like about this activity is that they can do it at their own leisure and come back to it through out the day adding more color to different squares. They loved the different shades of color and the dropper and it kept them occupied during this rainy week.

It was fun to walk by and see the transformation of colors.



Some of the combinations looked like paint samples or sample color schemes.



Ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there add up throughout a long, rainy day for a parent. If it totals forty-five minutes of quiet play for one child and thirty minutes for another child it is well worth it.

The trick is not to leave it out all the time. Put the activity away for several weeks and rotate something else fun. If you have ten simple activities that you can rotate every so often then you can keep them pretty interested.

random red heart

These are random, red items

you can find scattered around our house.

I think the only edible item in this photo

is the tiny, red-hot, cinnamon, candy heart.

Although, I am positive one of my boys

chewed on a crayon at some point when they were younger.

***

In case you are wondering

why I am still posting pictures of hearts and such,

I mentioned that I would post a picture

around the theme of love

each day in the month of February.

Hope you enjoy them.

robin's egg blue

Today, my youngest found a lone, blue, robin’s egg. The smooth, tiny shell didn’t have a crack on it and was still warm. The spot where it was found was in one of my flower gardens and nowhere near a nest. The boys cradled the blue egg wondering if there was a tiny, baby bird inside. My six year old suggested we put it in a spare nest that sits tucked away under some vines in hopes a mother robin would find it and keep it warm. With high hopes they carefully set it inside the artfully woven nest promising to check on it in the morning.

nesting

Last spring the boys were delighted to find this bird nest tucked neatly in our tool shed. I particularly like how the bird used the pale blue and silver ribbons to compliment the orange power cord and baby blue broom!