Simple Bathtub Paint!

One of my kids' favorite activities is bath time!!  They could seriously spend hours in there if I'd let
them.  Today I decided to give them a little treat and let them paint in the tub.  This paint was seriously so easy to make.  All I used was: a muffin tin, shaving cream, and food coloring.

I decided to use all 12 circles which ended up being WAY too much paint.  They painted for what felt like forever, and there was still stuff left over!

Of course they couldn't both look at the camera together!!  Note how clean the before pictures are.  ;-)

Hard at work.

After about 10 minutes I had to take Zach out of the tub because he kept trying to put the paint in his mouth.  Since this is made with shaving cream, it is definitely NOT eating friendly.  I have seen a few edible bath paint recipes floating around, so we will probably give one of those a shot later on.

 

By the time she was finished, our bath was SUPER colorful.  The colors looked so pretty mixed all together.

 

 



The water was a mess by the time she was finished so I dumped it out and put in fresh water so she could take an actual bath.  Clean up was relatively easy but there are still hints of color on the sides of the tub and in the grout.  I'll go back later with a magic eraser and do some touch ups but overall, it was not too bad.  Samantha had such a fun time and says she would love to do it again!

Two Ingredient PlayDough!

The east coast has been "slammed" with snow this past week.  Seriously, there is like an inch in our front yard and school has been cancelled every day this week!!  We have been going stir crazy so today we decided to try out the two ingredient playdough recipe.  I'm beginning to think I should change this blog to all of my internet finding/pinterest fails because something as simple as 2 ingredient playdough was a mess for me, haha.

Here are the ingredients we started with.  I bought this stuff months ago meaning to try it and then we never did.  Then I saw the playdough making its rounds on all my friends blogs which reminded me that I had the stuff, so today was the day.  All you need is conditioner and corn starch.

The recipe is simple:

• 1 part conditioner
• 2 parts cornstarch

 

That's it!!  Depending on the type of conditioner you use, you may need to adjust the amounts of each ingredient, but this is a good starting point.

 



 

It took a while for me to find a good consistency.  What I found worked for me was to add too much conditioner so that it was extra gooey and then slowly add the corn starch until it got to the desired thickness.

I then made a second batch which was so much easier since I already knew how to make it to my liking.

Word of advice...don't give this dough to your 13 month old because he will probably try to eat it!!  He was very angry with me when I took it away!

 

 

This dough smells amazing, just from the conditioner, no additional scents added.   A lot of the blogs I've seen added food coloring as well, but I searched high and low and couldn't find any and had no motivation to go to the store.  Samantha had nothing against the plain dough and played with it for a long time!  We stored it in a plastic bag in the refrigerator so we'll see how long it keeps.  This dough was a huge hit and I can see it being a regular here.



Sensory Bin - Take 6: The Ocean Bin

The past two weeks we have been the proud owners of this awesome ocean themed sensory bin!!  (Also - if you've been following along, you might have noticed that I missed Take 5.  I do have pictures for that bin, they just got lost in the holiday shuffle and I need to track them down.)  Back to this weeks bin though!  OCEAN!

This bin was full of sea life!  Dolphins, whales, sharks, starfish, etc.  Tons of seashells which Samantha loved and a bucket and shovel.

 

There was also a fantastic book about many of the under the sea animals.

 

Samantha loved digging out all of the sea animals and putting them in the bucket.  I encouraged her to find the animals she discovered in the book of sea creatures and match them up.

 

Zachary just enjoyed playing with all the animals and then, unfortunately, throwing the shredded paper EVERYWHERE!!  For my two little boogers, this bin definitely requires a lot of constant clean up!

Apparently whales can fly and say "vroom" too!!  Did you know that?!

 

We have had so much fun with this bin and I know we will get lots more play time out of it before we must pass it on to its new home.







Score 1 for Mommy...I think....

One thing I dislike about short style hair cuts is how dang often you have to cut them.  Paying $20+tip every six weeks to go to the barber is just crazy.  (Or maybe Cartoon Cuts is just expensive and regular barbers are cheaper?  I don't know!)  Anyways, I'd noticed the past few days that Zach's hair was starting to get out of control.  He'd have some serious bed head going on he was just starting to look silly.

Look at all that extra hair!  Especially the sides...ahhh that silly side hair was sticking out ALL the time and driving me crazy.  So I woke up this morning and decided that I was going to give Zach a haircut myself.  Now I've cut Chris's hair in the past so I'm not a complete newbie, but I've never cut a child's hair before so I was just a little bit nervous.  Thankfully Zach was fantastic and just sat there perfectly while I cut his hair.  When he was finished I gave him a bath to wash off all the excess hair and then reassessed my job.

Not terrible!  As the day went on though, I was noticing more and more straggly long hairs.  I decided that I was going to make a second attempt and back to the chair we went.

 

 

Much better!!  He looks SO cute, and I think I did a pretty decent job for a first attempt.  Hopefully I'll get better with practice and he won't have to spend so much time under the buzzers.  Thankfully though, he was a fan and didn't give me trouble so I'm not too worried!  Now, Samantha and I are placing bets as to whether or not Daddy will notice his new 'do once he gets home.  ;-)

The time we tried to cook...

I will come right out and admit that cooking is not my forte.  I'm not even a little bit good at it.  Seriously, something as simple as mac and cheese gets screwed up by me.  I've come to accept this fact but I still try my hand at things sometimes just because they look good.  Anyways, we've been spoiled the last few weeks with Chris being off for Christmas/New Years and then travelling to Connecticut and have my mother/father-in-law do all the cooking.  It's been wonderful.  Well today was Chris's first day back to work in a good while and I've gotta say, I missed the nice breakfasts.  Soooo I decided to try my hand at waffles.

I went online and picked the first waffle recipe that popped up.  It happened to be from Allrecipes.  It had just 8 ingredients and didn't seem too hard to follow so I figured I couldn't mess it up.  Samantha loves baking so she was super excited to help.  This was also the first time we got to wear our aprons that we got for Christmas from Our Lil Bowtique.

Samantha was super into mixing all the ingredients (and licking the whisk as much as she could, eww)!!

 

After we were done whisking, it was time to pour in the waffle iron and that's when things went south.  Samantha and Zach's waffles actually turned out pretty decent.  Then I went to make mine and half the counter ended up covered in batter because I apparently filled the iron too full so it all just exploded out the sides.  Nice!!  Eventually though I did get my waffles made.

 

Now here's the part you've all been waiting for.  Samantha and Zach would hardly touch them!!  Ugh!  I'm going to go ahead and blame it on the fact that we didn't have any syrup so they were a little bland...yeah, I'll keep telling myself that.

Venture into watercolors

Before we left for Connecticut I decided to let Samantha try out the new watercolors she got for Christmas.  This was a huge treat as we have never painted at our house before.  Oh the horror!!  We always paint when we are at our friend C's house and every time we are there she begs to paint so I knew this was a must for Christmas.

I am a huge fan of Melissa & Doug so I picked out a few painting products from them to try out.

I read a lot of reviews online about the smocks being awkward and bulky but I didn't find that to be the case.  It looked SO cute on Samantha and she actually kept it on the whole time.  She is currently in a phase of wanting to be naked all the time so this was huge!  The smock was a little long, so Zach probably won't be ready to use it for some time, but I may throw it on him once just for a photo!  Now one neat thing advertised on the package is that you can personalize the smock.  However, I have NO idea how to do it!!  That white square on the front is where they say to do it, however, the white is on the front of the pocket so it's not like I can make a cute name tag to slip inside.  Am I supposed to paint on it?  What do I do to make this cute?!

We then got to work on our paintings.  I loved the choices of colors but honestly, I felt like they didn't transfer to the paper very well.  While wet the colors looked pretty dull, though after they dried they did lighten up a bit.  I was hoping for more "pop" while we were painting though.  What are your favorite brands of watercolors?

Here are our finished products!  Mine was a nice flower scene and then Samantha added some random colors on the bottom.  Thanks Sam!!

This is a portrait of Snow White!  Crazy how accurate it is, right?!

We had so much fun painting and I can't wait to do it again!!

Happy Birthday Daddy!!

Daddy turned 32 yesterday!!  Unfortunately, my camera just came in the mail today so I didn't get to take any "nice" pictures of the "party" but I did take a few cell phone shots.  It was a nice day of relaxing, shopping, and cake eating.

Samantha insisted on getting daddy a princess cake, which unfortunately (or fortunately for daddy!), the store didn't have.  They did however have a little 6 pack of princess cupcakes so she was super excited for those!

And now as I put these up, I realize I didn't get a picture of daddy!  Whoops!!!  Happy Birthday Daddy, WE LOVE YOU!

It's 2014!!

Happy New Year!  We rang in 2014 with my in-laws in Connecticut.  We have been here since Monday and depending on how the weather is, we should be heading home tomorrow.  It's been a nice trip but they have a wood stove here which is causing me some massive headaches so I've spent a lot of the time sleeping or laying down.  :-(  On New Years Eve we went out to Hubbard Park and checked out their lights which were nice.  (But nothing on Bull Run Park back in Virginia!!)  Afterwards we went to this awesome house in Southington called Lights on Lovely.  I've always loved the youtube videos of lights set to music so to actually see one in person was pretty neat!  This house had 45,000 lights!  It was so awesome.  When we first arrived I pulled Samantha out of her carseat and she freaked out.  She was signing "all done" and saying "I don't like it" over and over.  However by the time we went through 2-3 shows she was asking for more and she actually cried when we left.  We will definitely have to come back next year.  If you are in Connecticut, this house is a must see!!  We got home and my head was pounding which was making me super nauseous so I ended up turning in for the night around 9:00.  Whoops!!

Yesterday we had our family Christmas which was really nice.  Unfortunately only 5 of the 7 siblings were here, but it was still very enjoyable.  All of us got some amazing gifts and I can't wait to put everything to use once we return home.  Tonight was a visit with Chris' grandma and now we are all hunkered down for the storm.  I can't wait to wake up in the morning and hopefully see the yard buried in snow.  We brought snowsuits for both of the kids and grandma has sleds so it would be great to get some snow plan in before we have to head home.

 

Zach has spent most of his time here playing hide and seek behind the tv stand!

He was NOT a fan of his new winter jacket from grandma!

Samantha with Auntie Margaret

They LOVE their new chairs handmade by Uncle Brian!  Zach has been sitting in his non-stop.  The kid is obsessed with chairs!  These are beautiful.

Eileen modeling her awesome boston terrier footies along with Sparky!

Bella loved her new Belle doll.  Samantha was not enthused that it wasn't at our house anymore and broke out into tears the second Bella opened it.

Sam and Zach with great grandma!

All in all this has been a great trip and a wonderful start to 2014!!  I hope you all had a wonderful New Year as well.