Whether it’s been a long day, Miss G is amped up and bedtime is nearing, or I’m in need of a quick and easy “special bath“, this is a go to I count on regularly. It’s incredibly simple and fills the entire bathroom with the warm, tranquil combination of lavender and rosemary – perfect for calming our little lady before tucking her in at night.
Here’s what I use to put it together… Organic lavender essential oil, fresh rosemary, lavender flowers from the garden (or other dainty purple flowers if you’ve already depleted your lavender supply like I have) and a couple of drops of purple gel food colouring (yes, the not good for you conventional kind… if you know of an all-natural food colouring that works well, please let me know – I’m desperate to find one!)
While the warm water runs into the tub, I add 3 or 4 drops of the lavender essential oil and 2 drops of the purple food colouring to the stream. When the tub is nice and full, I break up the rosemary sprigs and sprinkle both them and the flowers on the surface. Miss G loves this bath and inevitably, I end up with a bouquet or two in the process.
And cleanup is just as easy. After removing my lovely-smelling babe from the tub, I quickly skim a strainer along the surface of the water to remove the plant pieces before draining the water. Done!
Then all that’s left is to read some bedtime stories and snuggle my little sleepyhead into bed for the night.
To see our equally calming lavender rosemary bath fizzies, click here.
♥
For extra fun, like us on Facebook here and find us on Instagram here.
This was an on the fly idea that came about tonight during dinner. G was wearing her bathing suit (as you do when you’re 2 and a 1/2 and hanging out at home) and asked for a ‘special, special, soooooo special bath’ tonight. No go-to ideas came to mind, but my little doodle eating dinner in a ruffled polka dot bathing suit gave me one! … A pool party bath!
I filled the tub up nice and full and added a few drops of aqua gel food colouring to give it a pool feel, then collected a few pool/summer things – beach balls, a watering can, a pail and shovel, some water wings, and a water bottle. For extra fun, I loaded our little bubble machine up with solution and placed it so that the bubbles would flow down into the tub from up above. Gracen grabbed her sun glasses and her pool towel, and we were good to go.
Such a simple idea, but Grae just thought it was the best thing ever. Things did get a little wild when she began trying to pop every single bubble before they hit the water, but it was all good fun. Part way through, we took out our window crayons and added a ‘party wall’, which was just as much fun to splash off as it was to draw on. ☺
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. 
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.
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. ☺
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. 
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!
While we’ve done plenty of 
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!
This afternoon while walking along the river, Gracen noticed a man sitting down on the rocks fishing and was fascinated. The questions started rolling in and once we’d lost sight of him, all she wanted to know was when we’d see him again. Luckily, on our way back we found him just where we’d left him. Phew. 
Grae and I rounded up a few things… Some plasticky sheets purchased on our last trip to Urban Source, a hole punch, and a handful of paperclips.
I cut out the fish shapes, and Grae helped punch holes and feed the paper clips through.
Next, Grae chose some baker’s twine from my collection. We tied one end to her beloved stick, and used a dab of hot glue to attach the other end to a round magnet (though if you had a u-shaped magnet, you could just tie it on).
Next, we got out a big bowl, filled it with water, added a drop of blue food colouring just for fun. Gently, we set the fish on the surface of the water.
Then it was time to fish!
Gracen held her rod steady, gently lowered into the bowl overtop of the fish of her choosing, and proudly lifted up fish after fish. 
She was pretty pleased with herself.
And after a whole lot of fishing, some messy water play was inevitable. ☺
In honour of Earth Day, Miss G and I took to the streets of our neighbourhood for a little spring-themed natured hunt today. It was the perfect way to spend our afternoon…soaking in some sunshine, taking in the fresh air, and observing the nature around us a little more closely than we usually do. 
Beforehand, while Grae was napping, I gathered up a few things… A muffin tin to serve as a collection receptacle, a print out of nature item tags sized to fit in the bottoms of muffin cups, some scissors, and some tape.
In order to create my tags (which were printed on paper from our recycling bin…hence the holes), I simply created 12 circles sized to fit in our muffin tin (4.5 centimetres in diameter for ours), found some clipart via Google Images, and added some text. 
Then I printed them off, cut them out, and stuck them into the bottoms of the muffin tin cups with small pieces of rolled tape.
When Gracen woke up, she was eager to get outside and get searching. We quickly went over the items we’d be on the lookout for and headed out. First stop? The backyard to see if there were seeds underneath our plum tree. Sure enough, there were!
Dandelions and grass were easily collected in our yard, and then it was off down the street to one of the few trees that still has blossoms on it.
After each new find, Grae would take inventory, decide on a couple of new things to focus on, and head in a particular direction.
This time she decided we’d better head back to the backyard to collect some flower buds, moss, and soil from the garden – success!
One of our last stops was to collect a few clovers from a little patch growing through some brickwork in the front of the house.
At this point, we had done pretty well, but as hard as we’d looked, we hadn’t yet found a mushroom or a feather.
We decided we’d take a little break in order to some sidewalk chalk art, and Gracen would ask Papa to take her out again once he returned from work for the evening. Low and behold, they returned with the entire tray full!
Gracen really enjoyed this activity and we’ll definitely be using the muffin tin method in games and hunts in the future. It gave a clear visual of what was needed and what had been found, our items stayed in place and were organized, and Grae really liked everything having its own spot and filling up the entire tray. 
Sometimes, or better yet, many times, it’s the simple things. This afternoon, my freshly napped bubba woke up to discover a new package by our door. She excitedly asked to open it, not caring about which actual item may be inside, but rather which packing material was surrounding the item (both bubble wrap and packing peanuts are huge in our house). To her satisfaction, she found a fresh new sheet of bubble wrap inside, just waiting to be enjoyed.
After a good long time poking at it with her little fingers, I asked, “Are there any other ways we could pop the bubbles?” This is what she came up with…
First came stomping on it with her feet, then she moved to digging her elbows into it and stabbing it with a wooden block…
Next she tried rolling beads on it (which actually worked fabulously when a good amount of pressure was applied) and twisting it forcefully.
Lastly was placing a borrowed book (sorry library!) on top of the bubble wrap and standing on it. The good news is that this didn’t work very well at all, so it was short-lived. 
Many days, Miss G wakes up from her nap (though it escaped us 
While a basic rectangular table with four corner legs would have probably lent itself more graciously to the project, our centre stand table provided an unexpected perk – two separate rooms. As soon as I mentioned this to Grae, she immediately deemed one of them a reading room and the other a music room. 
Setting up our fort couldn’t have been easier. We simply moved the chairs into the kitchen, threw a king-sized sheet on top, and moved in a few pillows and blankets to give it a cozy feel. In the reading room, we added a couple stacks of small books, and in the music room, we added a xylophone, a 
After our 
Once we cut it in half, she told me that it was ‘veeeeeeery’ seedy, that the seeds could be eaten just like those of the kiwi, and that it felt wet. 
We peeled the skin off and Miss G got straight to the taste test portion of her investigation. The conclusion? It tasted like strawberries (though I think she often uses “strawberries” because she associates them with tasting and smelling good…she also tells me that her toes smell like strawberries!)
It’s amazing how quickly kids pick things up, isn’t it? We’ve only done this once before and she is already using her sense of sight, smell, taste, and touch to make conclusions about a new fruit. I love this little weekly tradition we have going on and I’m excited to see what she chooses next week.
This may very well be the easiest activity to throw together ever, but Gracen thoroughly enjoyed it. All you need is a couple of paper plates (ours are made of styrofoam, which I absolutely despise, but they, along with many other party supplies, were in the cupboard when we moved into this house, so I don’t feel quite as badly about using them), 2 large popsicle sticks, some masking tape, and a balloon. To create simple racquets, all you have to do is tape popsicle stick handles onto the bottom sides of the plates… Then you’re ready to play! Partner pass, keep it up, and distance contests are all fun.
This is a perfect activity for a rainy day and great for helping your toddler burn off some energy if getting outside isn’t an option. The other perk is that it is relatively quiet (especially when played independently), so it could make a good quiet activity for an older sibling whose little brother or sister is napping.