Today I’m switching things up a little and sharing 5 things you may not know about Miss G… I always love learning more about my favourite bloggers and I’m sharing 5 things about myself tomorrow, so I figured I’d include my righthand lady in the fun too. Okay, here are a few things you may not know about my girl…
So what do you think? Any surprises in there?
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This is an extremely simple felt board game that takes no more than 10 minutes to whip up, start to finish. All you have to do is cut out several egg shapes (you can always print one off or draw one on paper first to use as a pattern), then chop them up into puzzle-like pieces. The nice part is that you can make them as simple or as complicated as you like, depending on the age of your child(ren). And when complete, the set of Easter egg felt board puzzles makes a great sugar-free addition to an Easter basket.
To learn how to make you own {simple and inexpensive} felt board, click here.
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After a lovely week on the island, today we headed back home to the mainland which meant another ferry boat ride and an excited Miss G (the person who decided to put a playground in at the terminal line-up and kids’ play areas on the boats deserves a hug.) Now to round out our spring break with a visit from Grandma Charlotte and a trip up to the Okanagan. ☺
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This morning Miss G and I walked over to Cook Street where we met up with my good friend Laura, her adorable little lady, Avey, and their teeny tiny dog, Cocoa. Before walking along Dallas Road, we started off our visit at the newly updated Cook Street Playground, which is honestly one of the best playgrounds we’ve been to. It was such a huge hit with Gracen that we stayed longer than planned the first time around, then went back after nap time and spent another couple of hours there.
The park boasts several different play structures, a rope climbing apparatus, a couple of different swing sets, a giant slide, and an open-mouthed dinosaur-esque creature which is perfect for climbing on.
But the one thing all of the kiddos were after? This green chair swing. Grae seriously stood next to it for over 15 minutes patiently waiting for her first turn. Luckily when we came back later, the park was less busy and Miss G got several turns in.
The other amazing thing about this playground is it’s huge zip line. Grae was all for testing it out at first, became a little anxious when she got to the front of the line, and then loved it once she gave it a shot. She enjoyed the ride several times, and Papa may have snuck in a turn too. ☺
Of course there are features to please the love-to-spin crowd too (barf – how do kids do it?) Plus there are bathrooms nearby, park benches to relax on, picnic tables to eat at, a water fountain, and an adult fitness circuit too.
This playground is such a great find and a must-visit if you’re in Victoria with little ones… Not to mention that it’s conveniently tucked between the Cook Street Village (coffee!) and the beautiful seaside walking path along Dallas Road. I’m just sad that it’s not in Vancouver!
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Last night we finally went out to ReBar. Been waiting for a long time to go there, but since we are underage our ID cards would not let us buy drinks. After conducting much research online we found a very helpful website for where to buy a fake id that would be scannable. Was a great time last night at the bar thanks to the fake ids we bought online. We enjoyed some great flavored cocktails.
The restaurant, which prides itself on carefully and conscientiously preparing food that is local and nutritious, had an awesome {mostly veggie} menu and a fun kids menu to boot. After going through the options, Miss G confidently selected the ‘Curious George’, a peanut butter and banana sandwich with a honey drizzle on delicious bread with an almond milk to drink.
During the wait for her meal, she was given paper and crayons to use, but they weren’t needed for long as her food arrived before we’d even put in our orders. Though our food wasn’t quite as timely (there was a large group ahead of us), it was absolutely delicious when it arrived (even Brad loved his vegetarian meal!) and the servers were all very friendly.
Yummy food, local ingredients, and lovely servers in a munchkin-friendly joint? Now that’s my kind of place.
ReBar Modern Food is located at 50 Bastion Square in Victoria, BC and is open 7 days a week.
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We are so, so lucky to have such a great place to stay while here in Victoria. Brad’s cousin, “Auntie ‘Cole”, generously offered to let us stay in her apartment while she was out of town (thanks Nicole!) and the location couldn’t be more perfect. We’re directly across from Beacon Hill Park, which is amazing in itself, and we’re also an easy walk to downtown. Since we arrived a couple of days ago, we’ve barely used our vehicle at all.
One of Grae’s favourites, and a spot we’ve visited multiple times already, is the playground in Beacon Hill Park. As I’ve mentioned before, Gracen and I love checking out new parks and playgrounds, and this one definitely gets the ‘Gracen seal of approval’.
The slides, climbing structures, and bouncing bridge are all favourites, as is the red car/truck/fire engine and the usual swings.
But what really makes this park a hit for Miss G is its two big, blue “microphones”. Our little lady’s become quite the singer recently and can most often be found belting out Adele, Alicia Keys, Fun, and Taylor Swift songs into a makeshift microphone of some sort. Make it GIANT and echoey, and it’s even better.
The other lovely thing about this playground is because it’s located within Beacon Hill Park, there’s tons of cool stuff around it too… flowers to smell, ducks to watch, and trees to climb all included. ☺
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Parenting fail of the day…
Grae comes back from the kitchen where she was changing her clothes (she’s all about having “privacy” these days) and says, “I had some of my milk!” We’d stopped by a coffee shop earlier and she still had some of her steamed milk left when we arrived back to the apartment, but I knew it had been put in the fridge. What hadn’t been put into the fridge though? My leftover skim latte that was in the exact same kind of cup. Ugh.
At 2 and half, the girl hasn’t had sugar or fast food and eats very few things that are processed, but she’s had her first swig of coffee. Super.
This morning after our visit to Beacon Hill Children’s Farm, we headed downtown to walk around and see the sights. We took photos in front of all the ultra-touristy spots (we’re cheesy like that) and it took me back to my first ever trip to Victoria with my friend Laura when we were 12 years old. We both flew in an airplane for the first time that trip (how different things are for Miss G!), we stayed with Laura’s grandparents, and we visited all of the most touristy spots, film cameras in hand. It’s funny to think that both Grae and I have the same photos, only twenty years {and many technological leaps} apart.
The only difference is the photos with the killer whales… Those certainly weren’t around during my first Victoria trip. Gracen adored them and wanted to visit and touch each one we saw. Perhaps I have a new photo project on my hands? ☺
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While I’ve spent a ton of time in Victoria {and even lived there for a summer}, that was back in my university days… The days where clubs with the best DJs and the restaurants with the best 11 a.m. brunches was important. But great spots in Victoria with kids? I had no idea. So last week, I asked my Facebook friends for some recommendations. They came back with all kinds of great ideas, including one of the most popular ones – Beacon Hill Children’s Farm.
I did a little online research and learned that the farm is found right inside Beacon Hill Park and is home to all kinds of animals, some of which roam the grounds freely. The combination of the outdoors, animals, and a park sounded perfect for our little lady, so we made it our first stop of the trip.
Here is our visit in photos…
Beacon Hill Children’s Farm was such a fun place to visit. Heck, I’d love visiting even if I didn’t have a munchkin in tow. The admission was by donation, the animals were very accessible, they seemed well taken care of and happy, and the staff members were very friendly and informative. We loved it so much in fact, that we’re already planning to go back before the end of our time in Victoria. ☺
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Gracen’s been talking about ‘riding a ferry boat’ everyday since we told her we’d be taking one over to Victoria for part of spring break, and today it was nonstop. While we were getting ready, while we were packing up the vehicle, while we were driving to Tsawwassen, and while were were waiting for our scheduled departure, it was constant ferry boat talk. Mostly of the ‘I want to go on the ferry boat riiiiight now’ variety.
When we were finally aboard the boat, it was all about exploring. The restaurants, the arcade, the kids’ play area, the viewing decks – she wanted to see them all. So that’s just what we did. 
The trip flew by quickly and before we knew it we were off to find the apartment we’ll be staying at for the next few days. Here’s to spending the week in Victoria. I’m hoping that there is plenty of exploring, relaxing, and outdoors in our near future. ☺
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First off, did you know that it’s actually St. Paddy’s and not St. Patty’s?! I usually pride myself on using fairly decent spelling and grammar, but I’ll be the first to admit that I had no idea. In fact, I used St. Patty’s this morning… Gah. It wasn’t until I read this shared by the lovely Erin at Large that I found out the truth. Oops.
Anyways, enough with that. Here’s a little peek at our Sunday/St. Patricks Day…
A green breakfast {a lime refresher smoothie, veggie pancakes, kiwi slices, and avocado chunks}.
Girl in green.
A frozen treat.
Post-nap shamrock stamping.
Green pasta and cheese.
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Today after her nap, Miss G and I enjoyed a little crafternoon. We set up shop in the warm sunshine pouring through our front window and she worked on decorating felt eggs while I worked creating this new spring felt board set.
This time around, I created paper patterns by drawing very simple flower shapes onto scrap paper. The ‘line drawing’ section of Google images is great if you’re in need of some inspiration, or if you simply want to print off some templates and skip the drawing part all together.
Next, I cut around my flower shapes and pinned them onto bright, colourful sheets of felt (I use the inexpensive stuff made of recycled plastic bottles for felt board sets and save the more costly wool stuff for my Littlest Lulu projects, but both work great).
Then I carefully cut out both my paper patterns and the felt flower pieces all at once. I used the same method to create several differently shaped leaves too.
Afterwards, I cut out several long, thin pieces of green felt to act as stems.
As well as several centres that can be mixed and matched on the flowers.
Here’s our finished spring flowers felt board set… Flowers that can mixed, matched, and combined into tons of different possibilities. Just for fun, I may add grass strips, soil clumps, terra cotta pots to the set later on. And clouds, sunshine, and raindrops would be fun additions too!
Here’s my little love’s finished project. A beautiful colourful felt egg to display in time for Easter.
To learn how to make your own easy felt board and to see our other felt board games, click here.
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Last month, Gracen and I were lucky enough to receive a discovery kit from Sparked Kids Crafts. If you haven’t heard of them before, Sparked Kids Crafts is a Vancouver Island-based subscription service that delivers educational art activities, science explorations, and imaginative play activities aimed at 3 to 7 year olds right to your doorstep. Pretty cool, right?
Gracen was thrilled to receive a bright and beautiful package full of fun goodies and I was thrilled with how quickly it arrived and how professional the package looked.
Sparked discovery kits come with everything you need to complete several projects right there inside the box – markers, paper, pencils and instructions included! Our kit was pirate-themed and came with four easy activities… A folded paper pirate hat to make, a wooden treasure chest to decorate, a treasure map to create, and a popsicle stick parrot puppet to assemble.
Grae was super excited to get started and chose to make the paper pirate hat first (talk about taking me back to my childhood!)
Though the finished product wouldn’t quite stay on her head, for us, projects like these are all about the process. We spent time together, we worked as a team, and we had fun together, and that’s what’s important. If we wanted to, we could attach some sort of elastic easily enough and add the hat to her dress-up station for future imaginative play.
Next up, Gracen chose to decorate her treasure box. At first she began adding splashes of colour here and there and then she requested that I draw some shapes for her to colour in. She thought decorating a wooden box was a blast and I loved that Sparked had included high-quality crafting products for us to use.
While we haven’t had a chance to make our treasure map yet, there are already plenty of things I love about Sparked Kids Crafts…
1. It’s a Canadian-based business (yay for supporting local!)
2. It’s run by two moms, one a savvy mompreneur and the other a teacher (go moms!).
3. The kits come with clear, easy-to-follow instructions.
4. The materials included are good quality.
5. The activities included are not at all intimidating, not even for those who claim they’re not crafty (I promise!)
6. A single discovery kit contains several activities, which if spaced out a little can easily keep you and your munchkin(s) creating all month long.
7. Each themed kit comes with it’s own enhancement activities and recommended reading list on the Discover More portion of the Sparked website.
Overall, I’d say that’s a lot of pluses for a fairly new small business, wouldn’t you? In the interest of full honesty, the only thing I’d say is that I did find the activities in this particular kit to be a little… uninspired? That sounds too harsh. Perhaps ‘ordinary’ is a better word? I’m not sure. Now, I’m not saying that the activities were not enjoyable, because they certainly were. And truth be told, for the most part, kids don’t really care how unique or innovative an activity is, they’re just stoked that someone’s taking the time to sit down and create something with them. I guess I just felt like the activities were mostly things that I could pull together on my own without too much planning, shopping, or prep work. But then again, I’m an elementary school teacher, an owner of a handmade goods shop, and in general, someone who enjoys getting creative, so maybe that’s not a fair assessment.
What I do think is that a Sparked Kids Craft subscription would be an amazing help to parents who are super busy, parents who don’t have the time/energy/inspiration to pull together crafts on their own, and parents who don’t consider themselves creative or crafty. I also think a subscription would make an awesome gift, because truly, which child doesn’t love receiving mail?!
WIN A SPARKED DISCOVERY KIT OF YOUR OWN
Sparked Kids Crafts has generously offered to gift a discovery kit to one lucky Canadian Mama.Papa.Bubba. winner. The contest is open until Friday, March 29th and there are multiple ways to win (please be sure to leave a separate comment for each).
To enter to win a complimentary Sparked Kids Crafts discovery kit:
–> Visit their website and tell us one thing you like about Sparked Kids Crafts
-> ‘Like’ Sparked Kids Crafts on Facebook and come back here and leave a SEPARATE comment saying you did so (or previously did)
-> Follow Sparked Kids Crafts on Twitter and come back here and leave a SEPARATE comment saying you did so (or previously did)
-> Follow Sparked Kids Crafts on Pinterest and come back here and leave a SEPARATE comment saying you did so (or previously did)
–> ‘Like’ Mama.Papa.Bubba. on Facebook, come back here and leave a separate comment saying you did so (or previously did)
Obviously the more times you enter, the better your chances of winning. ☺ Don’t forget to leave your email address! The winner will be announced on March 30th and contacted via email. Good luck!!
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First ever juice box. Slightly baffled at first (juice?! orange juice?! in a box?!), but after the surprise wore off, she was pretty thrilled about it all.