While we should have probably had these done last weekend and in the mail days ago, Miss G and I just put together these little gifts for the grandmas today. (Sorry Grandmas! Here’s a sneak peek of what’s coming very soon.)
‘I love you because…’ flowers are an old favourite of mine. I think I done a version of this project every year that I’ve taught and I absolutely adore hearing about why my munchkins love their moms (or fathers/caretakers/aunts/grandmas/etc.) – the answers are often heartwarming and hilarious all at once.
To get started, Gracen and I filed through my scrapbook paper stash and selected some paper colours for both of her grandmas. We talked about the parts of a flower, and as she described them, I cut them out. 6 petals, a ‘middle’, a stem, 2 leaves, and a background later, Miss G was ready to start assembling her first flower.
When I asked her if she knew what to do, she said she didn’t, but she got started independently anyways. She wanted to start with the yellow circle, and the only thing I helped her with was positioning it in a spot that would allow for enough room for both the petals and the stem.
She squeezed a dollop of glue on the back of each petal, then carefully tucked them underneath the centre piece, making sure that none overlapped too much.
When she was done with the petals, she glued on the stem and leaves.
Here’s her finished flower. Adorable, right?!
Once the flower had had a moment to dry, we sat down together and used the hand over hand technique to print ‘I love Grandma Sue because…’ in the middle of the flower. Then we talked about the reasons why she loved her Grandmas and added one idea to each petal. She was happy to help me print the first couple, but asked me to write down the ideas on my own after that, which I was totally fine with. This project is all about the ideas! I wrote down her phrases just as she’d said them, even when she told me that she loved Grandma Sue because of her nice feet and belly – hah! ☺
I think the grandmas are going to love these, and it will definitely be interesting to see how her reasons change over the years. Now to get them in the mail, ASAP.
♥
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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. 
I swear, I’m not a hoarder. In fact, with something like 49 moves under my belt in my 31 years, it’s quite the opposite. I’d much rather toss/recycle/give something away than have to lug it to a new location. Buuuuuuut, the other day after juicing a bunch of citrus fruit, I couldn’t help but think that there might be something we could do will all of the empty rinds (please tell me some of you do this too). Not knowing what it was at the moment, I tossed them all into a container in the fridge and decided I’d figure it out later. Sure enough, a couple of days later as I was grabbing something from the fridge, I remembered the 
First, we gathered a few things from around the house… The rinds, some baker’s twine (
After threading our needle and tying a knot at the end, we pushed our embroidery needle through one side of our citrus cup, straight through the other side. I thought we may need the tack to start our holes, but we totally didn’t (though you might if you had a particularly tough rind). I did the poking, and Miss G did the pulling through part.
With the twine pulled all the way through, we pulled up the centre to create a long loop for hanging.
Next, we did a quarter turn and fed the needle straight through the rind again, this time perpendicular to the first set of holes.
Then we pulled the second centre string up to meet the first and tied a knot on the outside of the citrus cup in order to secure everything.
While she helped me ‘sew’ the first couple of rinds, Gracen discovered that she could make some pretty interesting creations with the extra citrus cups and pushpins, so that’s what she did.
This little lemon went from having ‘pokey hair’ to being an octopus, to being a porcupine, and many other things along the way.
When our citrus rind cups were complete, we focused on the food portion of the process. 
All we did was take some bird seed (we used a wild bird variety), and mixed in a tablespoon of all-natural peanut butter for every half cup of seed in order to give it some ‘stick’.
Then Grae carefully filled the cups with the sticky seed mixture one scoop at a time.
We used 1 1/2 cups of seed with 3 tablespoons of peanut butter and it filled 2 grapefruit cups and 2 lemon cups until heaping.
With that, it was off to hang the new feeders in the backyard. 
Gracen was very specific and knew she wanted one in our apple-pear tree, one in our fig tree, and one in our plum tree… And the other one got hung in our rose bush. 
While we made 
Here’s what we used for the project… Eggshells (washed well), craft glue, googly eyes, quick sprouting seeds of some sort (we went with radishes), a couple of Sharpies, and some soil.
Gracen started off by gluing a pair of googly eyes to each eggshell using craft glue and a Q-tip.
After letting the eyes dry a little bit, she used Sharpies to add on little button noses and pink smiles.
Then we carefully set all of the little egg heads into an empty carton, making sure to be mindful of the still slightly wet eyes.
Using a small spoon, Miss G then filled each of the egg heads with potting soil.
Next up was the addition of seeds. While you should probably only plant a couple of seeds in the space an eggshell provides, one or two sprouts wouldn’t make for a very good head of hair. With that in mind, Gracen sprinkled them generously. 
Then she covered them with another sprinkling of soil and patted the surfaces down with her finger tips.
One of our last steps was finding them a good, safe spot with lots of sunlight, so on a crate in front of our living room window it was. Grae gave them a good misting, and we hoped for the best. (When having kids water seeds, I always opt for using a spray bottle. It’s fun, it’s great for motor skill development, and it’s nearly impossible to overwater.)
Counting the afternoon we planted as day one, here’s what we had on days 3 and 4. Not bad, right?
And here’s after a couple more days…
By day 7 (today), here’s what we have. Little egg heads with wild green hair. Before long, it’ll be time for a 
Last spring, I bought a multi-pack of wooden spoons in order to make a bird feeder similar to 
To get us started, I put out some coloured Sharpies, some felt strips, ribbon pieces, pieces of yarn, googly eyes, sequins, buttons, gems, some glitter glue, and some craft glue.
We started off by attaching some googly eyes to the back of our spoons with craft glue, and then I encouraged Gracen to add the other details as she pleased.
Here’s her first puppet person.
After creating a few girls, it was time to create a boy. She asked me to cut out some ‘Papa hair’, a moustache, and tie for him, and then put him together, adding buttons down his front because ‘that’s how Papa’s shirts are for work’.
Here’s our completed wooden spoon puppet people family… From left to right, Daddy, Dah-fat, Fadeen, and my personal favourite, Fafee Cacus. (Oh, the names things are given right now…)
Later on, once dry, Gracen disappeared into her room with the puppets and I found her acting out a playground scene and making the mommy and daddy puppets kiss. ☺
Seeing 
Here’s our line up of ingredients… Baking soda, cornstarch, coconut oil, citric acid, water in a spray bottle, epsom salts (we’d previously dyed ours pink just for fun), fresh rosemary from the garden, lavender essential oil, and purple food colouring. While we had most everything already on hand, we picked up the lavender essential oil at a local variety store that specializes in natural products and the citric acid from a very cool little Main Street shop called 
Making these was pretty simple, so as usual, my little helper did most of the work. First off, we measured out all of the dry ingredients, added them to a large mixing bowl, and dropped in a generous amount of essential oil before Gracen whisked everything together thoroughly.
Next, we focused on the wet ingredients. In a spray bottle that allows a very fine mist, we shook up some water, some liquid coconut oil (we just ran the jar under warm water for a minute to liquify it, but you could just as easily melt it in the microwave), and several drops of food colouring.
For the next step, you need to have some patience… Basically, the goal is to add the water and oil mixture into the dry mixture very slowly in order to avoid causing a fizzy reaction. If you get a little bit impatient (like we did the first time around), you’ll have all kinds of fizzy bubbles in your bowl, but your finished bath bombs won’t fizz all that much once in the tub (though they’ll still soften the water and smell fantastic). In order to do this, you want to mist some water/oil onto the dry ingredients, whisk it well, add a little more, whisk it well, and so on and so on. What’s fantastic about having a helper is that one of you can basically stir while the other sprays. 
As you go, you’ll notice that your mixture will eventually start to clump while mixing and look less like a floury powder. When you can grab a handful, squeeze it, and have it hold it’s shape, you’ll want to stop adding water.
We could have stopped where we were in order to make straight up lavender bath fizzies, but ripped up a bunch of fresh rosemary and added it into the mix instead.
Next we scooped the mixture into the 
This is the next test of patience when it comes to this project… At the two hour mark, I couldn’t help myself and attempted pushing out a couple of our little bath bombs. Though they sort of held their shape, it was a crumbly mess and I totalled a couple in the process.
At the 3 hour mark, they came out much more cleanly and easily, so I’d definitely recommend waiting. Once out of the moulds, we let them dry on the counter over night.
The next day, we carefully placed them in a vintage mason jar tied with some pretty bakers twine. 
And that was that. Simple and pretty. 
When I heard about this technique from a fellow Vancouver mama, I almost didn’t believe it was possible. But after doing a little bit of online research, it seemed many people had had great success with it (some inspiration 
The first part of the project involved thrifting some 100% silk ties. Luckily, the task was an easy one… After scanning the rack at a local thrift store, we had over 30 different options to choose from. 
These are the ties we ended up choosing… A black one covered with strawberries, green leaves, and mustard flowers, an intricate paisley{ish}-patterned blue one, and a bold raspberry-coloured polka dotted one. Each had a tag clearly stating that they were made of 100% silk and they were all between $4.99 and $6.99 (though I think they would have been less expensive from a smaller, less popular thrift store).
Before actually dyeing the eggs, the ties needed to be deconstructed first. Using some small scissors, I snipped apart the thread at the back, removed the tags, and removed the innards (saving them for later), and ended up with some nice, big pieces of silk.
With the help of my little lady, I carefully wrapped a small piece of the silk around a raw egg (printed side touching the egg) as tightly and neatly as I could. Next time we attempt these, we’ll definitely do two things differently. First off, we’ll wet the silk in order to have it cling to the egg during the wrapping process, and secondly, we’ll use smaller pieces of silk in order to avoid all of the extra bulkiness and folding we had this time around.
Next, we took the tie innards and wrapped the silk-covered eggs like you would a mummy and secured everything with a generous amount of jute.
While Grae happily helped out for the first couple of silk-wrapped eggs, I must admit, it’s really not the most toddler-friendly process… Decorating eggs with good ol’ fashioned wax crayons was much more Miss G’s style. ☺
With all of the silk-wrapped eggs done, we popped them into a crockpot filled with cool water and about 1/2 a cup of white vinegar, turned it on high, and put the cover on. You could easily do this part of the process on the stove if you prefer, but the key is using a pot that is non-metallic.
As we waited for the water to heat up, we dip dyed Miss G’s wax crayon decorated eggs… Pretty colours, hey?
Once the water reached a good rolling boil (it takes quite a while in a crock pot), we turned the heat down to low and kept it gently boiling while covered for 4 long hours. Then we turned off the heat, and left the pot covered for another 4 hours (talk about patience!)
After nearly 9 hours of waiting, I slowly began unwrapping the layers to discover that the technique had in fact worked (quite well might I add!)
The white wrinkly sort of spots you can see are where the silk wasn’t laying perfectly flat against the egg, but I think it adds a little bit of character. ☺
What I love is how apparent the tiny details are… Even the silk’s texture and the teeny paisley patterns are visible.
Silk dyed eggs will definitely be anEaster tradition in our house from now on. The preparation, anticipation, and surprise are too much fun not to make it one. Now to begin my collection of beautiful silk ties…
I set up this little creative table for Miss G this morning and she was so over the top excited about it that she could barely contain herself.
It was very simple to set up, but still took too long for Miss G’s likes. All I had to do is cut out a few large egg shapes out of construction paper…
Then cut smaller ones inside, leaving an outline a couple of centimetres thick.
Next I stuck the egg outlines onto some clear contact paper, and trimmed off the excess.
I quickly filled up some little containers with our 
She got started immediately, diving into the pastel ribbons first.
And the messy stuff afterwards. ☺
She immediately completed two of the eggs, and left the third one to a complete a little later. As of now, Miss G’s eggs remain as they were when she finished decorating them, but we may cover her designs with a second sheet of contact paper in order to make them a little easier to store.
Back when we were living in Kuwait, I remember desperately longing for rain. The kind that lasts days and days and lends itself to cozy hoodies, movie afternoons, and pots of soup simmering on the stove. Well, I’m happy to say, I think I’ve officially had my fix. It’s been raining for several days in a row now, and though lazy afternoons on the couch watching documentaries and romantic comedies don’t exactly fit well with our current life, we’ve enjoyed the rain nonetheless. 
The project started off as a 
Grae decorated her coffee filters independently for a while, and then asked me to join her to finish them off. 
Afterwards, Miss G used an easy-to-squeeze spray bottle to soak the filters pretty thoroughly.
While waiting for them to dry, we began to work on our butterfly bodies. Using Sharpies, we drew little faces on the tops of the bamboo pins.
Here they are when done.
Next, Grae chose some pipe cleaners from our stash, we cut them in half, and bent them into little antennae shapes.
When we got back to our filters, they weren’t quite dry yet, so we took a blowdryer to them. 10 seconds each was all they needed.
To assemble the butterflies, we simply pinched them across the middle (Miss G did this job) and fanned the wings out nicely (my job).
Then Grae carefully selected a clothespin body and a set of sparkly antennae and we clipped everything together.
Here are are the two butterflies Miss G declared her favourites.
At the last minute, we decided to add magnets to the backs of the clothespins with hot glue (I also popped a little squeeze of glue into the tops of the clothespins too, just to hold everything together more permanently).
And here’s my proud little girl with her finished project.
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This creative table set up had a good long run in our house… It’s been worked on day in and out for over a week now, and I’m sure Gracen would still be adding to it if there was any sticky space left on the contact paper. 
When it began, it looked like this… A piece of clear contact paper, sticky side up, tacked down to one of our vintage apple crates (it could just as easily be taped down to a table top), and a few little jars of decorating goodies, as Miss G calls them.
Included were sequins, confetti, tissue squares, and a container of glitter.
Although I often set up Gracen’s creative tables while she’s sleeping, this time around she helped me set up, selecting the glitter (of course) and the sequins to be part of it.
When we’d finished gather our materials, she began creating without direction or instruction… Carefully adding each item, one at a time, and pressing them down onto the sticky paper.
The lovely thing about contact paper is that because everything sticks to it, projects (even when they include a full bottle of glitter) never get wildly messy.
Grae revisited it daily, adding a little bit each time, until today when we decided it was time to switch things up a little.
Now we could have easily called it quits at this point, because art like this is definitely about the process and not the finished product, but Grae had announced early on that she would be hanging her finished piece on her bedroom door. In order to preserve it a little better, we took out our contact paper once again and cut a piece the same size as the original one.
I then peeled the backing off of just the top edge of the new sheet, carefully lined it up with the art piece, and pressed the two sheets, sticky sides together, down. Afterwards, I pulled the remaining backing off in order to cover the entire piece.
Here’s what it looked like with everything sealed in. We could have left it as is, but Gracen chose to cut it into two hearts rather than keep it as one large rectangle.
Here’s the finished product. She very proudly hung it on her 
We arrived to find everything set up for us and ready to go. Miss G was given a large paint smock, and together we painted all of the pieces according to Grae’s colour selections. While the paint dried, Gracen got washed up and played with the felt boards in the little nook, and then we drew the faces on with pencil and markers afterwards. 
The project was difficult enough to absolutely require our involvement, but easy enough to allow Gracen to participate in the process fully. In the end, we left for home with a very happy bubba and our new nesting dolls in a box.
And judging by its popularity already, I just know that this colourful wooden family is going to quickly become a favourite.