Knowing Grae’s love of popsicles, my mom sent her home from the Okanagan with a couple of new popsicle mould sets the other day. While I knew she’d be excited, what I wasn’t expecting was for two new popsicle moulds to keep her happily playing in her rear-facing car seat for at least 1/2 of our 7 hour drive home. She was so engaged with them that Brad actually said, “Well I know what we need to bring on the plane to Kuwait.” (If you’re travelling through Germany in August and see a woman with popsicle mould parts clumsily falling out of her purse, that’ll be me.)
When we got home and I started thinking about fun play opportunities for the week, I thought it would be fun to try to set up a popsicle-themed pretend play station. Of course, the first thing that came to mind was making the pretend pops out of ice, but I wanted something a little different. Enter gelatine. With a fun texture that can be jiggled, squished, and crumbled, I knew it would be a hit.
To make the pops quite sturdy, I mixed up 3 packets of Knox unflavoured gelatine with 3/4 of a cup of boiling water, then added 3/4 of a cup of cool water once the gelatine had been dissolved. I popped a few drops of liquid food colouring into each of my popsicle cups, poured the gelatine mixture in, mixed it up, and put the faux popsicles in the refrigerator over night.
This morning while we were preparing breakfast together, Miss G immediately noticed the rainbow coloured popsicles in the fridge and asked if they were for playing with. Let me tell you, this girl doesn’t miss a thing. She patiently waited until after our morning outing, lunchtime, and her nap, and I had this little set up ready ready for her when she woke up.
She was delighted to see it and immediately asked, “Are these just for playing, Mama? Or are they for eating?” With the fact that they were for playing with cleared up, she began naming the flavours – my favourite of which was tomato soup (the red one). Then she began doling out the treats in bowls with spoons, as she often likes her popsicles.
Next up, all of the popsicles went back into their moulds and got put into her pretend freezer. Then she took them out, one by one (with the help of a spoon and some serious shaking) as though she were filling customer orders.
For the customers who preferred to eat their frozen treats from a bowl rather than a stick, she happily crumbled the popsicles up. As you do.
There was lots of play with the popsicles in their smushed up state…
Then she moved onto making rainbow pops. Because I mean, who wants only one flavour when you can have several, right?
And then there was soup. Oh, was there ever. Soup stirred so enthusiastically that bits flew out of the bowl and landed in various spots around our living room.
I’d say pretend popsicles were a hit, wouldn’t you? A colourful, messy, joyful hit.
♥
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From raggedy to polished {and braided and sparkly} in no time. We ♥ 
Gracen absolutely adores special baths. So much so, that tonight while eating dinner, she was already requesting something fun. “I want a really, really, reeeeeaaaally special bath tonight. Soooo special please, Mama.” I was drawing a bit of a blank at the time, so I turned to Pinterest for some inspiration and found 
While we didn’t have liquid watercolours on hand, all I did was collect a few spray bottles, fill them up with a little warm water, and add a few drops of gel food colouring to each. I was going for vibrant colours, but if you want to ensure that the colours don’ stain your grout and child, you may opt for just one or two drops instead (or just avoid red/pink as it’s the only one that ever seems to stain!)
Then I filled up a big tub full of bubbly water using a bubble wand from 
When ready, she hopped into the water and continued her masterpiece. The fun part was that as she moved around in the water, more white bubbles were uncovered, so there was always a great blank canvas to paint.
Simple spray paints were such a fun addition to the traditional bubble bath. And though I may have been a little over generous with the food colouring, the good news is that our grout is only slightly tinged pink – everything else washed off with a quick rinse with the shower head. ☺
The other day, while washing a giant sink full of plastic cups and containers for what felt like the gazillionth time, I realized our 
Besides our stick anywhere name labels, we also got these adorable 
In addition to being very durable and ridiculously cute, these labels will be so great for when Miss G begins school or preschool (yes, I count on them lasting that long ☺). As a teacher, I see the overflowing lost and found bins at the end of the school year, and though we do try to return as much of it as possible, it’s nearly impossible as most of it is not properly labeled. But if every student had Stuck On You labels adhered onto their clothing items, books, and lunch containers, finding the items’ rightful owners would be no problem at all.
This morning Gracen asked to help me cut out some new activity cards for her 
Day 13: We woke up to our very first butterfly! We’re not sure when it actually emerged, but we found it still hanging upside down from it’s chrysalis pumping up and drying out its wings.
Then, not an hour later, as we were checking on our lone butterfly, we noticed a second one fully emerged too (quick little thing!)
Gracen was over the moon and wanted to call Papa at work immediately to let him know her big news.
It’s really hard to take a decent photo through the blinding pink of our 
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A scene that doesn’t happen often enough, but we’re very thankful that Gracen’s Gido was able to meet us in the Okanagan for the weekend. 
If you haven’t already entered to win a Just: Be session of your own, and you live in the Greater Vancouver area, visit 
Breakfast // Plain organic yogurt with 
Breakfast // Ezekiel cinnamon raisin toast with all-natural peanut butter. Berries. Chinese pear slices. Satsuma slices.
Breakfast // Crispy brown rice cereal with chia seeds, sunflower seeds, cinnamon, and almond milk.
Breakfast // Plain organic yogurt with strawberry slices, almond slices, and chia seeds.
Lunch // Wholewheat couscous with steamed asparagus, edamame, baby green peas, feta, and herbs.
Lunch // Grilled chicken, spinach, and brie on wholewheat flax seed bread. Green grapes. Red pepper slices.
Lunch {for 2 on the go} // Homemade carrot zucchini muffins. Almond butter, oat, hemp heart, and chia multi-grain roll-up. Baby cucumbers. Avocado. Orange pepper slices. Seedy crackers. Apple slices. Grapes. Mango. Mixed raw nuts.
Lunch // Quick Gracen-made pizza (all-natural apple chardonnay chicken sausage, orange pepper pieces, asparagus chunks, and grilled onions).
Lunch // Mixed brown rice bowl with grilled corn, onions, peppers, black beans, fresh avocado, fresh mozzarella, and sour cream.
Lunch // Baby potatoes, asparagus, snap peas, cucumbers, green onions, and chickpeas in plain yogurt and dill.
Dinner // Mexican black bean salad. Asian noodle salad. Edamame salad.
Dinner // Sweet potato hash, asparagus chunks, grilled onions, spinach, and all-natural herb and garlic chicken sausage with a dollop of sour cream.
Dinner // Grilled coconut chicken. Avocado chunks. Rocket and harvest grains salad. Strawberries.
Dinner // Wholewheat roasted veggie calzone.
Dinner // Wholewheat spaghetti with ground turkey and tomato basil spinach sauce. Roasted beets.
Dinner // Grilled chicken. Warm beet salad. Warm baby potato salad.
Have you every come home from a shopping trip with surprise item in your bags? That’s exactly what happened with this hair gel… I do not use hair gel. Brad does not use hair gel. No one in our house uses hair gel. Yet after returning home from a grocery shopping trip with Miss G a few weeks ago, there it was in one of our bags. My immediate thought was, ‘Crap! Did we accidentally steal this?!’ I checked the bill and nope, we’d paid for it. How it got through the checkout and into our bags, I have no idea. 
Anyways, knowing that we wouldn’t be using it in our hair anytime soon, I decided we’d use it for some sort of play. And when nothing brilliant had come to mind in a few week’s time, I decided that we’d mix it with cornstarch. Because cornstarch mixed with any sort of liquid = cool, right?
It took some serious mixing to bring the ingredients together first, then it took some serious kneading to smooth it out and soften it up. The result, however, was quite lovely. Pillowy soft and lightweight, this dough behaves a lot like 
Gracen wanted to play with it immediately, so together we collected some bowls, silicon moulds, and plastic utensils and brought everything outside to play with.
She began exploring her new dough by sinking her hands into it, squishing it between her fingers, and poking holes into it…
Then it was time to fill all of the containers with “oatmeal”.
With a good breakfast in our tummies, it was time for dessert. ☺ The dough rolls into balls really nicely, so Miss G turned our ball collection into cupcakes with cherries on top.
When we were done with our first round of dessert, Gracen shouted, “Cookies next!” and took off into the house running. She returned with a tray of creative table goodies – buttons, pony beads, straw pieces, gems, and sparkly pompoms. I was put in charge of forming the cookies and she was in charge of decorating.
To show that we had eaten the cookies all up, Miss G crumbled them all into a bowl. 
The cool part was that as soon as she was done, the crumbles had already started melting together to form one mass. 
Day 7: It’s official. All of our fuzzy little caterpillars have successfully built chrysalises and are hanging from their container lids waiting for the big transformation to occur.
Though it’ll still be several days until they start emerging as butterflies, this morning we moved our little table and hanging structure directly under our 
One thing I love surprising Grae with is a fun, playful baths before bedtime. While sometimes that means simply giving her a little container of epsom salts to sprinkle into her tub or putting a couple of drops of food colouring into the water, and other times it means something a little more elaborate (some of our favourites are 
With the water tinted blue with a few drops of food colouring, I added in some blue and green flat glass beads we keep on hand for sensory play, as well as some {well washed} driftwood pieces collected from the beach.
Next, using a large sheet of green craft foam, I cut out several lily pads to float on the surface. While I kept some plain, I added water lily-ish faux flowers to others with a dab of hot glue.
The final addition was these cute stretchy frogs I found at the dollar store. While we have another set of harder ones, I particularly like these because they float and can be stuck to the bath tub walls and tiles.
Gracen absolutely adored this bath and had great fun seeing how many frogs she could balance on a lily pad at once. 
After the bath was done, we simply scooped everything up and put it into an empty plastic bin to dry out. The best part is that next time we’re in need of a sensory bin, all we’ll have to do is add water!