I’m not going to lie… We’ve been here in Kuwait for less than two weeks and I’m already going a little crazy. The trouble is, as of now, we don’t have a vehicle. Not because we don’t want one – we’ll be purchasing something as soon as possible – but because we need things like bank accounts and civil identifications before buying, and those things take time to acquire {lots and lots of time}. In a place like Vancouver, you can easily do without. Public transit is easy, as is walking or biking. Sidewalks are plentiful and things like parks and community centres and playgrounds and coffee shops are most often a short distance away. Here, not so much. It’s amazing how much you miss having sidewalks when they’re no longer around… In all fairness, we do have a Starbucks and a small playground within walking distance, but with the current state of our budding neighbourhood, they’re a {very hot} 30 minute walk through deep sand, trash, and construction sites away. Taxiing would be our other option. They’re inexpensive and plentiful, but in a country that doesn’t really do car seats, me lugging our 26 pound seat downstairs, installing it while attempting to supervise Miss G nearby, then lugging it around at our destination isn’t really feasible. And so, we stay at the apartments, making the most of our days inside or down in the courtyard and common play areas for now. It’s a great practice in patience for an always-on-the-go gal like me and it’s definitely pushing me to be creative in coming up with fun and engaging activities using minimal supplies.
Today as we rooted through a box of craft supplies we brought from Canada, Gracen enthusiastically retrieved a 6-pack of glitter pouches and asked if we could use them to make something. Though I’m normally up for a mess in the name of good fun, I didn’t particularly feel like having an apartment full of glitter today (the fact that we don’t yet own a dustpan may have something to do with it), so I quickly thought of something we could do with it outdoors – add it to our go-to homemade sidewalk chalk paint! The recipe is one of our very favourites because of its simplicity and the fact that you really only need two kitchen ingredients and some water to make it, and adding glitter could only make it better, right?
When I saw 
Well luckily for me, not only did I remember to pick up cornstarch during our next grocery shop, but I also ran into these 
Next up, I used the popsicle sticks to scoop a small amount of gel food colouring into each popsicle mould, and Miss G selected a 
With our food colouring and powdered scent ready, we filled each popsicle mould about 2/3rds full of our cornstarch/water combo and Gracen stirred them well.
Then we topped them up with a little bit more cornstarch/water and Grae gently stirred them a little more.
At that point, all that was left to do was put our plastic handles in and freeze the chalk pops overnight.
The next day, they looked like this. The colours were vibrant, the texture was smooth and creamy, and they smelled absolutely delicious.
The blue one smelled like cotton candy, the green one was mint chocolate, the red was strawberry shortcake, and the orange was orange creme… YUM. The only potentially bad news is that because they do look so real and smell so wonderfully, some munchkins may be tempted to try eating them (yuck!) That being said, because they’re made strictly of kitchen ingredients, they are technically safe to consume. So though they may taste chalky and gross, they certainly wouldn’t harm a curious little monkey who snuck a lick.
With our fun new chalk pops in hand, we headed into the backyard to test them out. The verdict? They’re really awesome!
When they’re melting and drippy, they go on much like their liquid counterpart does, only via a wand of sorts instead of a paintbrush. When they’re not melting, they go on much like regular sidewalk chalk does – dry and colourful with a little bit of pressure. When dry, the colours are super vibrant and to me, they look very much like they’ve been made with regular sidewalk chalk. 
By the time our chalk pops had melted, our cement pad was fully covered in bright swirls, drawings, drips, and letters. And the great news is that it all washed away really easily without any fuss – much easier than our sidewalk chalk paint normally does for some reason.
While living in a city that gets as much rain as Vancouver does can be a little deflating some days, I know that we’ll miss it dearly once we’re back in the sandy desert. So instead of letting the past week of rain keep us indoors today, we decided to get out and enjoy it. After a morning walk and a long play at the park before lunch, we decided to head back outside this afternoon. We brought along with us a baking sheet, some liquid food colouring (the neon kind), and some white construction paper to do an easy and fun art activity… Rain splatter painting!
To get started, Gracen laid a piece of construction paper down on the baking sheet and fully enjoyed dropping splots of food colouring all over it.
Once she had the food colouring exactly how she wanted it, we simply let the rain do its job. At this point, it was raining quite hard, so the splatter effect happened quickly. Grae loved watching the colours pop up off the page and land back down on the page in little dots. At some point during the process, she’d say “This one is done!” and we’d pop it inside the house to dry and grab another sheet of paper to splatter.
The end result is beautiful, splotchy, watercolour-esque paintings, just like this one. Fun, right?
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While we’ve done plenty of 
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. 
Though it feels like we’ve had a good, long winter vacation already (because we have), we’re lucky enough to have one more week to spend in the Okanagan before Bradley’s return to work. And while we’ve been doing more than our fair share of relaxing (and indulging – oy!), we’ve also been trying to make the most of our time with the snow, because before you know it, we’ll be back to our city of rain, rain, rain. 
Today we tried something new – snow spray painting!
In order to make the paint, all I did was pick up a couple of cheap spray bottles (I made sure to give the triggers a little squeeze in store first – some are little hand-friendly, and others are not) and filled them with some cold water and food colouring.
Then we headed outside {in pajamas} to decorate the freshly fallen snow.
We played with the nozzle on our spray bottles to get the flow just how Miss G liked it – in a steady stream in order to achieve maximum distance. ☺
Her goal? Covering as much of the snow in snow spray paint as possible.
“A new spot now!”
Though using a fine mist is a little trickier (because you need to be quite close to the snow for it to show up well), it makes pretty cool results…. Pink snow anyone?
Of course when you’ve painted your little heart out and you’re ready for a break, you can always topple over in a snowbank and have a rest. ☺
I’m happy to say, our experiment was a success. Not only do we have trees sprinkled with pretty bird feeders (thus some very happy birds), but Gracen was able to do almost all of the steps on her own at our butcher block and there was no stove required.
Here’s what we used for the project… Bird seed, gelatine, boiling water, straws cut into 2 inch pieces, some baker’s twine, and some cookie cutters and pancake moulds.
We started off by emptying two packets (not boxes – the above photo is misleading) of plain gelatine into a very large mixing bowl.
Then I carefully poured in a little bit of boiling water (this is one of the only jobs I did for the project).
Gracen then stirred the mixture very gently until all of the gelatine was dissolved.
Next, we measured out our bird seed. We used a “wild bird” variety, but I think pretty much any type would work as long as the seeds and bits are not too big – I think a finer blend works best in this case.
Then Grae poured the bird seed into our gelatine/water mixture.
We stirred it for a few minutes, making sure that all of the seeds were evenly coated and that there was no longer excess water at the bottom of the bowl.
Next, we covered a tray in parchment paper and laid out our cookie cutters and moulds.
Using a teaspoon, Grae filled each cookie cutter with seed, one by one.
You want to make sure that they’re a little bit overfull, so be generous with the seed. (This recipe made these five feeders, plus a large bird seed “cupcake” too).
Because the mixture gets really sticky, we covered the cookie cutters with a layer of parchment and Grae pressed the seeds down into the moulds.
You want to make sure the seeds are packed very tightly – it’s part of what makes the feeders stay together well.
Next, we took our straws and carefully inserted them into the cookie cutters, making sure to not place them too close to the edges. Once the straws were in the seed, we pressed the seeds down around them to make sure everything stayed tight.
Next, we popped the entire tray into the fridge and let them set for a couple of hours before taking them out and letting them dry out on the counter. We left them for most of the evening, and before I went to bed for the night, I flipped them over so that the bottoms could dry out too. (It’s a bit awkward to flip them with the straw sticking out the way it is, but you could trim the straw if you liked.)
The next morning, we gently popped the shapes out of their moulds.
Then we plucked out the straws and made sure that the holes were clear all the way through.
For the last step, we took some baker’s twine (ribbon or jute would be perfect too), put it through the holes, and knotted the tops. Voila! Pretty little feeders for the hungry birds in our yard.
First of all, we retrieved a few buckets of ocean water and created a little plot of firm, mouldable sand. You could easily do this project near the shoreline where you normally find perfect sandcastle sand, but since the tide was high and the shoreline was littered with seaweed and shells, we opted for this method instead. (You can also do this project at home by mixing play sand water in a baking pan or shallow dish of some sort.)
Next, using the bottoms of our sand buckets and a plastic cup, we made several wells in the sand approximately 1 to 2 inches deep. (You can also use drift wood, feet, hands, and beach toys to make wells of different shapes and sizes.)
Then, using shells we collected around the beach, as well as a few glass stones we brought from home, we created designs and patterns in the bottoms of the wells. One thing we did learn about this is that in order to show up well in the finished product, the decorations need to be pushed down quite firmly into the sand – otherwise they just get completely buried in plaster. (At this stage, you can also use your finger or a stick to draw designs in the wells. Just remember that if you choose to write something, you need to write it backwards so that it faces the correct way on the cast.) 
Next, using a container from home, a couple of cups of plaster of paris powder (readily available at art supply and hardware stores), some ocean water, and a piece of drift wood, we mixed up our plaster according to the directions on the box (2 parts powder, 1 part water).
Then we filled our wells almost to the top. At this point, we experimented with adding a couple of straws to two of the wells in order to have a hanging hole at the end. Turns out, it worked great. The only thing we’ll do differently next time is add the straws before the plaster (much easier when you can see the stones and shells, rather than digging around trying to avoid them ☺).
Easiest step? Playing and eating snacks while waiting for the plaster to set. 
After about 30 minutes, I gently poked the plaster to find out that they were dry and hard, so I gently scooped up one of the casts, along with some of the sand below it. Sure enough, it was fully solid. Grae helped me scoop up all of the casts and place them gently in a bucket.
Next, we took the casts down to the ocean for a quick bath to remove the excess sand.
Here’s what we ended up with.
These two are Grae’s favourites… The octopus was made with the bottom of one of her 
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.
