When I saw that the awesome teachers’ store in our hometown, Vernon Teach & Learn, was selling butterfly larvae, I jumped on the opportunity and immediately put an order through by phone. Now while I’m well aware that some people may think raising butterflies in your home is a tad on the crazy side, I actually think it’s pretty awesome. It’s something I’ve done with my Kindergarten classes in the past and the process is nothing short of amazing. For a child to be able to witness tiny caterpillars grow, build chrysalises, and emerge as butterflies up close and personal all in a span of a few weeks is pretty special. I can’t wait to share the experience with Grae. Ten fuzzy little caterpillars (two of which will be adopted by a friend tomorrow) arrived to our doorstep today and we couldn’t be more excited.
To order butterfly larvae of your own, contact Vernon Teach & Learn. They are incredibly helpful and kind, and our caterpillars arrived here to Vancouver the day after ordering. Their larvae packages can be found here.
♥
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Gracen and I have been spending a whole lot of time at the beach lately (yay!), but this afternoon, we finally got around to finishing off a fun little project we started days and days ago.
It began like this. Coffee filters, coloured water, and a plastic dropper out, 
Of course it didn’t take Grae long to find a table full of fun materials to experiment with. Without hesitation, she began using her dropper to slurp up coloured water and spew it back out on the filters.
She really loved watching how the colours spread and mixed with one another.
So much in fact, that she fully covered upwards of 30 separate filters. Thank goodness for a big laundry drying rack! We placed the filters on the rack in our solarium, and they dried in no time.
After tucking them away for several days, we came home from the beach today {some of us still sporting our bathing suits and sandy fingernails} and dug them out for a quick pre-nap project. We also gathered a pair of scissors, some long green pipe cleaners, and some short colourful pipe cleaners (regular pipe cleaners cut into thirds).
To transform our beautiful watercolour-y filters into flowers, we started by carefully folding them in half three times. 
Then Grae would give me some sort of petal description (‘long and skinny!’, ‘pokey like the rose bush!’, ‘big, big, big, big, BIIIIIIIG!’, and ‘you know…..like….ummmm….like the little circle circle ones?’ were a few) and I’d cut the curved edge to match. I also snipped the very tip of the point off at this point too.
Then came her very favourite part – carefully unfolding the cut filter to reveal its shape.
Here are a few of the other shapes we came up with together.
Next, Grae would pick a small pipe cleaner, bend over the top so it was no longer pokey, and place the bottom through the tiny hole in the centre of the filter.
Then she’d bring the filter up around the pipe cleaner and pinch it at the base.
While she held it tightly, I’d wrap a long green pipe cleaner around the filter and short pipe cleaner to form the stem.
Fun, right?
Every flower turned out completely different from the last…
And by the end we had a beautiful bouquet of colourful flowers perfect for the mantle, a table centrepiece, or a Mother’s Day gift. 
Another day at the beach. Because it’s too gorgeous to be anywhere else. 
Breakfast // Plain organic yogurt with 
Breakfast // Scrambled eggs. Fruit salad. 
Breakfast // Hot oatmeal with almond milk, fresh blueberries, and chia seeds.
Breakfast // Wholewheat sourdough french toast with all-natural peanut butter. Plain organic yogurt for dipping.
Breakfast // Plain organic yogurt with 
Breakfast // Scrambled basil parmesan eggs. Sweet potato hash. Pink lady slices.
Breakfast // Plain organic yogurt with fresh mango, unsweetened coconut, and chia seeds.
Snack // 
Snack // 
Lunch {on the go} // Steamed beets. Cottage cheese. Blackberries. Satsuma slices. Pistachios and cashews. Yellow pepper slices. Baby carrots. Unsweetened banana slices. Organic yogurt-covered raisins (the queen of all treats in our house!)
Lunch // 
Lunch {on the go} // Avocado. Banana coins. Seedy crackers with sharp cheddar. Cashews. Apple sandwiches filled with almond butter, oats, and chia. Baby carrots. Broccoli florets.
Lunch // Wholewheat pita pockets filled with almond butter, banana slices, and chia seeds.
Lunch {on the go} // Strawberries. Blackberries. Starfruit. Mini wholewheat flatbread. Seedy crackers. Avocado. Miniature 
Dinner // 
Dinner // Coconut encrusted chicken. Roasted sweet potato. Roasted Brussels sprouts. Steamed beets.
Dinner // Ravioli soup with fresh parmesan. Roasted broccoli.
Dinner // Roasted sweet potato, cauliflower, beets, and carrots with pan-fried onions and all-natural apple chardonnay chicken sausage.
Dinner // Baked potato. Barbecued chicken and veggie skewers. Green salad.
Dinner // Baked spinach pasta and cheese with turkey and green peas.
Dinner // Chicken and bean ‘soft tacos’ with sautéed peppers, cheddar, avocado, and black beans on the side. Sour cream and green salsa for dipping.
Dinner // 
While we’ve done plenty of 
With days as gorgeous as today, there’s no choice but to soak it all in. It was a morning of sand and sunshine at Spanish Banks for us today.
Saturdays don’t come better than this.
This afternoon the sun was out and I decided to set up something really fun for Grae to explore and experiment with in the backyard.
The set up was pretty simple… Several differently shaped jars and medicine bottles filled with coloured vinegar (we used gel food colouring), a couple of small jars of baking soda, a couple of spoons, and a few empty mixing containers all on a tray. Oh, and some safety goggles. Because in Gracen’s world, science equals goggles. ☺
After helping her with her goggles, Grae set off to work.
As I usually do with this kind of activity, I didn’t give her any instructions. I simply said, “Do you want to play?”
The answer was an excited ‘yes’, and after a few questions about whether or not she could dump/mix/pour things (of course the answer to all was yes), she got started.
While she’s seen the reaction baking soda and vinegar have while 
And she loved it. Mixing a little bit of this with a little bit of that in order to cause colour changes and fizzy foam eruptions was right up her alley.
My little scientist made reaction after reaction, delighting each time she caused foam to spew out of the top of her jar.
One thing that was interesting is how the colour of the vinegar seemed to change with the addition of baking soda. In the case of the orange and the pink, the colours seemed to explode with brightness as the reactions occurred.
With almost all of her baking soda resources used up and her largest jar of vinegar left, we fetched just a little more baking soda from in the house.
It started off slowly, but the reaction did not disappoint. After scrounging leftover baking soda from wherever she could, she managed to create enough fizzing foam to have it flow generously out of the top of the jar. Success!
A Grae-nado as we call it. 
Yesterday, when I told Gracen that we’d be celebrating Papa’s birthday soon, the first thing she said was, “We need to make a cake!” Then she went on about painting him party hats and getting 3 pink gifts, but I digress. Originally, I was thinking about doing two cakes. Something delicious and wildly unhealthy from 
Here’s the lineup of ingredients my little sous chef and I used to make our mini mason jar cheesecakes… Sour cream, cream cheese, lemon zest, pure maple syrup, pure vanilla, almonds, an egg, and coconut. Plus the mini mason jars themselves, of course. 5 of these little jelly jars works perfectly with this recipe.
To make our crust, we added some coconut, some raw almonds, a little bit of pure maple syrup, and a little bit of pure vanilla into our food processor and blended until it was thick and sticky.
Then we scooped the crust mixture evenly into our 5 jars, and Miss G used a cork to flatten them out.
This was the end result.
With our crusts ready to go, we switched our focus over to the actual cheesecake part. First, we added our room temperature cream cheese and egg into our mixer and beat until smooth. 
Next we added our sour cream, pure maple syrup, pure vanilla, and lemon zest, and mixed again.
Baking is ridiculously fun, wouldn’t you agree?
With our cheesecake filling prepared, we poured the mixture evenly into our 5 mason jars.
Then we placed them into a high-walled baking dish, filled it halfway up the jars with hot water, and baked the entire thing.
When they’d finished baking, I topped the ones for Gracen and I with stewed blueberries…
And the birthday boy’s with deliciously naughty Nutella. Of course the options are endless really… Fresh berries, shredded coconut, sliced bananas, or mini dark chocolate chips would all make yummy toppings too. 
