Every year as a child, my brother and I would spend a week or two at my Baba’s (which means grandmother in Ukranian) house a few hours from home. My Baba, who is probably one of the most talented, creative, do-it-all women I know, always made sure we had adventures to go on, activities to do, and projects on the go. One of the things we’d always do was paint rocks. It’s such a simple idea, but it was something I truly looked forward to each year.
So today, I got out a couple painting projects of my own and set Grae up with a little rock painting station.
First we gathered our materials… A few big rocks we found around the yard (washed and dried), some acrylic paint (kids’ washable paint works too but the designs disappear with rain), a few paint brushes, and an old towel.
Gracen thought it was pretty special that she had her very own painting station just like Mama. She’d paint a rock, then move it to the edge of the towel to dry, and then paint another. And when the tops were dry, she flipped them over and painted the bottoms.
Fresh out of rocks but still wanting to paint, I gave her a cement block we had lying around.
And after it was painted in pastels, it was time for a strawberry creamsicle break. The verdict? She loved them so much that she asked for another. My first instinct was to say, “Let’s have something different to eat now”, but then I reminded myself that all they are is plain organic yogurt and strawberries pureed. So two popsicles it was.
These are our little artist’s finished pieces.
After they were completely dry, we found special little places around the yard to tuck them in. With these little surprises hiding around the yard, maybe weeding won’t be so daunting…
♥
All you need is some plain dinnerware, a Sharpie or two, and in our case, some tape, and a pair of scissors.
Because we chose to decorate bowls, I wanted to tape off the inside of the bowl, where the food goes. Some may say that the Sharpie is sealed in by the end of the process, but something just doesn’t seem right about putting Grae’s food on top of permanent marker. Plus, I think having just the rim decorated looks cute. Painter’s tape would have been the obvious choice here, but since I didn’t have any lying around, we made do with packaging tape and it worked just fine.
Grae got started drawing right away. I explained that we weren’t drawing in the middle of the bowl and that we were just decorating around the edge, and that’s exactly what she did (therefore the tape was pretty much unnecessary, but hey, you never know). 
When I asked Gracen what I should draw on my dish, her immediate response was, “Apple!” I ran with that idea, and since she’s been so interested in colours for the past couple of months, I got started on a little colours of the rainbow theme of sorts.
Gracen drew and drew and drew and never did I have to encourage her to keep going, choose a new colour, or fill in a blank space. She was having so much fun and was so thrilled about the fact that she was using Mama’s ‘special’ markers that she had more than enough motivation for over an hour’s worth of drawing.
Of course, in that hour, she stopped to come over and admire my dish several times. She’d look with big eyes, then nod her head with a slow, enthusiastic “Yaaaaaaa…” and a sweet little smile on her face, in obvious approval. Then she’d go on to point out the colours and pictures she saw {and shared those she wanted to see in the very near future – my apple, tree, birdie, and banana were all ideas she offered}.
The finishing touch was to happily sprinkle her entire rim with dots of different colours. She’d stop a moment, glance at it sideways, then pick up another Sharpie and add more. This continued again and again until one time she took that same sideways glance, then very nonchalantly announced “All done”. And that was that.
Before we could get it in the house to cure in the oven, she wanted to put her new dish to use, so she carefully browsed through the garden for a handful of ripe strawberries and a sprig of mint.
With her snack gone in less than a minute (yes, she shoved that entire thing of mint in her mouth and chowed down on it like the 
One final touch to add – our names, the year, and for Grae, her bright green signature.
And then into the oven they went. In attempt to “bake the marker on better”, I amped up the heat to 400 and left the dishes in for 45 minutes, despite the general recommendation of baking them at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. Bad idea. Although Miss G’s came out fine, my lighter colours really, really faded, some to the point of becoming nearly invisible. Learn from my mistake. The good news is that there’s an easy fix for mistakes such as mine. Just simply redraw your design and then pop it back in the oven for another 30 minutes at 300. 
We let our bowls cool, gave them a good {hand} wash, and used them for dinner. I did try washing them (okay, maybe I even scrubbed a little bit), and so far, so good. The designs still look exactly as they did, and I’m hoping they stay that way for a while at least.
With an hour or so to spare this morning and a little drizzle falling from the sky, we decided it was a good time to bring out the supplies. We set up shop out on Grandma Sue’s patio and let the kiddos dive in.
Grae was an old pro. She very seriously collected paint on her brush and stroked it onto her house, trying to fill in all of the spaces.
Korbin had a plan. Each side would be a separate colour. And when he had finished that task, he brushed some white over top to “make it look cooler”.
Miss Kins had never painted before, and although she dived in eagerly, she wasn’t thrilled about getting paint on herself. She painted a little bit of the roof, and then called it quits.
Chay didn’t join us immediately, but once he saw what was going on, he was up at the table in no time and was all about painting the inside of his house.
We chose to use pipe cleaners this time around as this was Grae’s first real time stringing ‘beads’. Of course, any sort of string will do (wrapping one end with tape makes it easier), but I find that the rigidity of pipe cleaners makes it a lot easier, especially for munchkins who are just learning.
For the first couple of noodles, I held the pipe cleaner for Grae while she did the stringing and sliding.
We ended up making all kinds of pretties – bracelets, crowns, and necklaces, and Gracen very happily modelled them all.
About time for a hairdo of some sort, I’d say. So while Gracen napped, I set up a little play invitation for her. I gathered up some hair goodies, a couple of elastics, and an old hairbrush and set them all out on her table along with her grasshead.
She wasted no time getting started. She climbed up on the chair, and got busy trying to put the clips in. It wasn’t easy, but with a little bit of help, she put every single clip in the grasshead’s hair.
That is, until she decided she’d wear it instead!
Afterwards, I helped her make little grass pigtails. She thought it was completely hilarious and kept stroking her own pigtails and then pointing to those belonging to the grasshead.
Gracen didn’t hesitate to get started. The second I gave her the okay, she got busy dunking her paintbrush and creating her sidewalk masterpiece.
We started out by using straws. (Have I mentioned that this girl has a thing for straws? Naturally, it was her first choice.) I plopped a few little drops of paint on the paper and demonstrated moving the paint by blowing through the straw. You should have seen her gorgeous little eyes light up! Although she was able to do it, I would definitely try to have a much longer, larger straw next time as it took a lot of effort and aim to really be effective. (Do they still have those giant Slurpee straws at 7-11? Because if so, they would be perfect!) 
Next, we tried sponges. This one was especially fun because she ‘jumped’ her duck and rabbit-shaped sponges from one paint splot to the next, leaving a rainbow-coloured trail behind them.
With just a couple of instructions, Grae figured out just what to do. She gently tilted the pan back and forth, running the ball through the paint splots. The result was really cool – little multicoloured tracks all over the page.
Haha! I know that this would be some parents’ worst nightmare, but I’m a fan of getting messy once and a while. Plus, what are you going to do? Let all that leftover paint go to waste?! With the go ahead from Mama, Gracen cautiously tipped the tray of paint over onto the brown packaging paper we were using to protect the table. 
And here are the finished masterpieces:
First, Grae helped me gather our ingredients – all-purpose flour, salt, cocoa, cream of tartar, oil, and boiling water (which is safely stored on a counter on the opposite side of the kitchen).
We decided to use our mixer this time around, but you could just as easily use a bowl, wooden spoon, and some elbow grease instead. Start off by adding your flour to the bowl.
Then dump in the salt. Close your eyes while doing so for an added challenge.
Next up -the magic ingredient… Cocoa!
Then add a little bit of cream of tartar….
And mix it all together.
When your dry ingredients are fully blended, add some oil.
Then mix again.
Now for the ‘mommy only’ job… Slowly pour your boiling water into the mixture.
Then mix until everything is well blended and the dough begins to come together.
At this point, the dough might appear to be a little goopy, but resist the urge to add flour just yet. Stop your machine and scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl, making sure to incorporate any loose flour.
Now give it one more quick mix.
Dump the dough out onto the counter and pat everything together into a nice ball.
Voila! You’re ready to have some fun!
Mmmmmm… Smells so good too!
For some added fun, we took out a box of chocolates we’ve had around since Christmas, dumped the contents, and made some yummy play dough chocolates of our own.
We took them out to the solarium this morning so that Gracen could take a better look…
‘Mama’ has a few hairs growing from the top of her head (and a few growing out from behind her eyes too – oops!)
Poor ‘Papa’ only has one single tiny hair growing atop his head…
And ‘Bubba’ has little hairs growing all around her head and all over her face too!
Of course, Gracen didn’t mind in the least. She was just as pleased with styrofoam craft eggs as she would have been with the real thing.
Instead of my usual wax resist dyed eggs, this year I opted to try something different {and slightly risqué when your partner in crime is an enthusiastic one year old}… Glittered eggs! Grae was up for the challenge and applied glue to the eggs like an old pro.
Shaking on the glitter was fun, but at least half of it got on the blanket and Grae rather than the egg… Not to mention that it took f.o.r.e.v.e.r.
So we opted to try out a different method! We started by dumping out our glittered into bowls…
Then plopped the gluey eggs into the glitter bath and gently rolled them around. This was definitely the way to go. Quick and efficient. Just the way I like things.
The eggs definitely didn’t turn out perfectly and we had a bit of a glittery, gluey disaster on our hands afterwards, but it was fun.
Pretty!