This afternoon as Gracen and I were working on our ribbon wand project, Miss G asked for a “biiiiiiiiiig” piece of painter’s tape. I obliged and asked her what she was going to do with it. Her response was, “Stick it on da floor”. Bright idea, my girl.
I’m not quite sure how it all happened, but before long, we were both sitting on the floor ripping off pieces of tape and creating this little indoor roadway.
As I snipped pieces of tape in half lengthwise and begun adding our lanes, Miss G gathered up her car and tractors.
She started driving her vehicles around on it as soon as she could and we even had a few “races” {and collisions}.
This is such a simple {and inexpensive idea}, yet it brings hours of fun and endless possibilities. Brad came home from work and immediately commented on our dead ends, so there may revamp in our near future.
Of course, when it’s not being used as a roadway for cars, it can aways be used as a roadway for people. ☺
♥
Making one of these sweet little ribbon wands for Miss G has long been on my project list, and since her last dance class took place today, it was the perfect motivation to not only make one for Grae, but to make one to gift to each of her little friends too. 
If you poke around the internet, you’ll find tons of different styles of ribbon wands and methods to make them, but when we stumbled upon these adhesive picture hanging strips (available at hardware stores), we came up with a way of our own. 
First off, we took wide satin ribbon and cut it into strips approximately 125 centimetres long, cutting one end straight across and one end at an angle. Then, using a lighter, we sealed off the cut edges.
Next, we took the adhesive backing off of the picture hangers and firmly attached them to the straight end of the ribbon. At this point I was going to sew the picture hanger onto the ribbon for added security, but the adhesive was so strong that it wasn’t necessary. 
With our ribbons ready, we moved onto the wand part of the project. Using painter’s tape, we taped off our 6 inch dowels about a third of the way up.
Then using crafter’s acrylic in colours that coordinated with our ribbons, we painted the bottom third of each dowel with two coats of paint.
When the paint was good a dry, we carefully removed the painter’s tape to reveal the handle part of our wands.
Next, we used a tack to poke holes in the top ends of the dowels. 
Then it was time for these guys – small eye hooks available at all hardware stores.
We screwed the eye hooks into the recently made holes by starting the process by hand and using pliers part way through. (One thing to be mindful of at this point is that if your eye hooks are on the larger side (like ours), you don’t want to force them down into the dowel too far. You’ll get a pretty good sense on when you should stop twisting, and please do so. Spoken from experience, if you force them down too much, the dowels will split open.)
Your wand should now look like this. 
Now the final step… We hooked the metal picture hanging hook onto the eye hooks and use pliers to squeeze the hook shut tightly.
And there you have it – a pretty little ribbon wand.
In order to transport them to dance class without a big tangly mess happening, we simply wrapped the ribbons around the wands, and secured them with a bit of polka dotted washi tape.
Gracen and I whipped up one of our all time favourite treats this afternoon. Sadly, I can take ZERO credit for the amazingness that is this dish… It’s something my friend Lara made all the time (she even has a special dish!) while we were living in Kuwait and it was just too amazing not to steal and call my own (sorry, Lara!) It is seriously the easiest, yummiest {and naughtiest} appetizer ever. Bring it to a party and you will instantly win everyone over – I promise. 
Here’s the lineup of ingredients… A wedge of brie, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes.
First, remove most of the rind off of the top of the wedge.
Cut the wedge into chunks in order to fit it snugly in the baking dish.
Next, round up between 2 and 4 garlic cloves, depending on how garlicky you want your dish to be.
Enlist your sous chef to peel them for you…
And chop them up into small pieces.
Sprinkle the garlic on top of the brie. Sneak a few pieces down along the sides too if you can.
Next chop up a few big pinches of sun-dried tomatoes.
Sprinkle them on top of the brie too.
Pop the cheese into the oven and watch it melt into a delicious bowl of cheesy goodness.
Remove from the oven when the cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown. Serve with crackers or fresh baguette rounds.
During nap time, I used different objects from around the house as tracers to cut the large sheets into an assortment of shapes. I placed the shapes, along with a spray bottle filled with water, on a tray next to our large front window, and left it there for my curious little monkey to discover upon her awakening.
Of course she beelined to the tray the moment she was up. I explained that we could use water to help the shapes stick to the window, and she was off. A little mist….
And stick a shape on top. 
Voila! Instant window art. Super fun and super easy.
It didn’t take her long to realize that looking through the shapes was pretty cool too… “Mama! Everything is all pink!”
Of course the previous method works well for seeing the outside world in pink, but this is much more effective for making your house turn pink.
The really cool thing about the fact that our shapes are primary colours is that they lend themselves to colour mixing very well. Grae was amazed at all of the colours she could make by simply overlapping two shapes.
And after experimenting with colour mixing, she tried sorting the pieces into groups based on shapes and colours.
And soon after that, the pieces started becoming pictures of things. The triangles stacked on top of one another became her tree and the tower of large circles became her snowman (if you look closely, you’ll see she is in the process of adding buttons to her snowman’s belly).
I was raking leaves like a mad woman when I noticed that Grae had invented her own little game in the pile of leaves she was playing in. She played round after round as I sat back quietly chuckling to myself as I watched. First, she’d toss her little rake into the pile somewhere, then burry it with leaves and call out “Where’s Grae Grae’s rake? Hmmm… I don’t know!” while holding her hands out up to the sky wandering through the pile…
Then she’d sort through the leaves, eventually find it, and retrieve it.
Then proudly stand up and announce “There it is! There’s Grae Grae’s rake!!!” 
After 
This project is perfect for when you have some packaging styrofoam sitting around in your garage, but you can also find styrofoam {and floral foam} pieces at places like Urban Source, as well as at craft stores and dollar stores. (Perhaps knowing that the pieces can be used again and again will help you feel less guilty about purchasing styrofoam in the first place? I know…. It’s a stretch, but I’m trying.)
Of course, when you’re constructing, safety’s got to come first – so goggles were also included. ☺
Instead of giving instructions, I simply asked Gracen, “Do you want to build something?” After an enthusiastic “YES!”, she got to work. 
I was pretty amazed with how quickly she figured out that the sticks could be used to attach two styrofoam pieces to each other. She worked away on her masterpiece, concentrating first on the top portion, and later on the sides.
The only tricky part was the whole cutting thing… While I do let her cut things when we cook together, she hasn’t quite mastered the sawing method yet. Instead, she opts for pushing her knife straight through the objects, which may work well with bananas, but doesn’t work so well with styrofoam.
With cutting being a little too challenging, she moved onto enhancing her styrofoam disc instead of deconstructing it. I found it very interesting that she began using the rivets as enclosures for other materials.
After a good long hour of constructing, Grae decided it was time to tip her structure over on its side to do some more ‘work’ there.
Here’s what her structures looked like after nearly and hour and 20 minutes of play. Pretty cool, right? 
Today we popped in and after very patiently waiting for me to browse the selection of new items, Gracen retrieved a brown paper bag and began filling it with treasures of all sorts. With a tiny bit of help from Mama {who had specific projects in mind}, the bag was brimming with crafting goodies in no time.
In the end, this is what we came home with in Gracen’s $6 bag… Everything from gift wrap to acetate sheets to brown boxes to medicine bottles and puzzle pieces…
Another week, another 
Breakfast // Organic multigrain o’s with sliced almonds and frozen blueberries (a Gracen favourite).
Breakfast // Wholewheat banana blueberry muffin. Kiwi slices.
Breakfast // Avocado omega seed toast. Granny smith apples with all-natural peanut butter.
Breakfast // 
Breakfast // 
Breakfast // Plain organic yogurt with sliced almonds and pomegranate seeds.
Lunch // Mexican couscous with black beans, veggies, and fresh avocado. Shredded chicken breast.
Lunch // Homemade chicken veggie soup. Broiled parmesan multigrain toast.
Lunch // Cheese ravioli with basil, sun-dried tomatoes, and feta. Roasted carrots with fresh dill.
Lunch // 
Lunch // Chicken wild rice soup.
Dinner // Roasted garlic broccoli. Cheese-filled veggie tortellini with chicken tomato basil sauce.
Dinner // Spinach ricotta veggie lasagna.
Dinner // Chicken, tofu, and veggie stir-fry with fresh asian noodles.
Dinner // Roasted herbed chicken. Potato crisps. Roasted butternut squash and carrots. Stir-fried garlic asian melon.
Dinner // Butter chicken on brown rice, black barley, and daikon radish seeds. Garlic naan. Steamed broccoli.
Dinner // Roasted herbed chicken. Brown rice medley. Snap peas. Steamed beets.
Dessert // 
We had plans to attend a morning story time today, but when we woke up to no rain, I knew we had to make the most of it and get outside. Grae agreed without hesitation and immediately suggested going to the beach. In particular, the beach with the “biiiiiiig ladder and biiiiiig slide”. 
This heart ornament also started as a flattened ball, and then I used a cookie cutter to push just part of the way through to the dough to make the heart shape.
Congratulations, Caro! I’ll be sending you an email shortly with all of the details. To everyone else, thank you so much for entering! I truly wish I could give each of you the gift of a photo shoot with Bethany because I sincerely think she is that good. But because I can’t, please stay tuned to my