Rainy Day Fun!

What are two girls supposed to do on a gloomy, rainy, yucky day besides hang out in their pajamas all day? Make play dough!!! Cupcake has never played with play dough and I've never made it, so I was worried that this would be a fail, but alas it was a success!!! We found an easy recipe for homemade dough and we were on a mission! I was a bit nervous because they recipe called for Cream of Tartar and I thought I had some in the pantry, but I wasn't positive. Luckily after digging to the bottom of my spice jars I found it!! So here's what we did:

In a saucepan we combined 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, 1/4 salt, 2 tsp cream of tartar and 1 tbsp of vegetable oil. We added a squirt of gel food coloring and mixed. Cupcake had fun mixing (though she kept trying to take the spoon out of the pan and eat it or hit me with it or put it in the flour jar). I then headed over to the stove and warmed it on medium, stirring constantly. Eventually it thickened up until it stuck to my spoon. I then kneaded it for a bit and let it cool. And moved on to the next color! It was THAT easy!!! I had purchased these little plastic containers from the dollar store (6 for $1) specifically for this purpose and they work great!

 

At first she was  quite confused as to what to do with the dough, but with a little demonstration from momma she was ready to dive in!  I have some not often used cookie cutters that I dug out of the basement and some plastic utensils so she had something to cut the dough with.  I'm going to have to find her a mini rolling pin for future play.  And there will be lots more play with this stuff!  It was super easy to make and she had a blast.  She's not that great with the knife (she's only 20 months!!!), but she figured the cookie cutters out real quick!

You could also add glitter into the mix if you want sparkly dough or you could use Kool-Aid for the color and it would likely be scented.  I didn't want to make it smell good, though, as I didn't want to encourage her to eat it (although the lack of good smell didn't stop her from trying!).  So, I declare this adventure a success (minus the part where Oscar snatched some off the table and ate it!) and we will definitely have more play dough fun soon.

Naptime Project

It all started with this.  I found this desk cheap on Craigslist. It's old. It's wood. It needed some love. I needed a new desk for my new office.  So Cupcake and I went on an adventure, hoped we wouldn't get kidnapped and picked it up.  It had a little bit of water damage on it (look at the bottom left), but I thought I could handle it.  So it came home with us.

It sat in the garage for a few weeks, causing me to have to park in the driveway (and scrape ice off my car when I left the house in the morning) and I worked on it while Cupcake napped.  I started out with some eco-friendly paint stripper that didn't smell.  It also didn't work well.  Or really at all.  I was scraping, scraping, scraping and the paint was just sticking, sticking, sticking.  I took the orbital sander to it, but that just made a huge mess (and who knows how old that paint is, lead maybe?).  It was off to the home improvement store for me to get some real paint stripper.  What a difference the stinky stuff made!  That paint was just falling off the desk!!!  I should have used it sooner.  It would've gotten my car back in the garage one, even two weeks sooner maybe! 

4 layers of paint later, the desk was stripped! There were a few spots where I had to smooth out where there was water damage.  And then it was time to remove the gold paint off the drawer pulls.  I decided to keep the existing pulls because they were kind of funky, they were silver underneath and I didn't want to fill and redrill holes in all the drawers.  These pulls require two holes that are close together. Definitely not a standard size.  I soaked those bad boys in the stripper, but they also seemed to have 4 layers of paint on them.  It was a mess!  I scrubbed and soaked and scrubbed and soaked and unfortunately when I got down to the metal I just couldn't get it shined up.  Blah!

So the desk was stripped, patched, sanded, and cleaned and brought inside to paint!  I couldn't handle freezing my butt off in the garage (December in Ohio, not the best time for a furniture stripping project) while working on it............and I didn't want to have to deal with a freezing cold car anymore (I'm spoiled).  Here is the finished product!


Excuse the mess!  I was excited to move in right away.  I painted it black in eggshell finish.  I think used a overhead projector to project the swirl image onto the desk.  I outlined it with pencil and then painted the design with black, satin paint. I also painted the top of the desk with the satin paint.

I didn't plan on having such shiny drawer pulls, but they needed paint. There was no way around it.  They got a coat of primer, followed by a coat of metallic spray paint (because that is what I had on hand).

I had originally intended this desk to be a sewing desk and a friend is supposed to give me a desk to use as my office desk, but I need the office desk more so this will do for now.  If I get another desk this one will be headed to the sewing room.

Now I just need to finish working on my chair........................

Stir Crazy

 Ah, winter. The time in which you see all 4 seasons in a days time. You're afraid to leave the house for fear of a sudden blizzard. The kids go stir crazy.  It's happening here.  So, we try to get out of the house on occasion.  The other day it was 60-ish degrees so we took a walk to the park.  We go to tumbling class once a week. We go to story time at the library. We even went for a hike one morning.

At home we throw all the cushions of the couch and use it as a trampoline. We hide under tables. We play peekaboo in the corner cabinet.  We color. We read. We put stickers all over everything.  And to kill two birds with one stone Cupcake chases Oscar around the house with her cart and then everyone is tuckered out.

I'm ready for warm weather and days at the park.

A Gift

This is a different kind of post today.  I want to share a project I did as a gift.  Some good friends of ours have a 2 month old little boy and I wanted to make a special Christmas present for him.  Although I had never embroidered before I decided to take on a project embroidering felt and create a name book for him.  This is what I came up with.

I think mom and dad really liked it.  I hope little Parker will one day, too.

I don't know if anyone actually reads this blog, but if you do would you like to see more craft or house projects I have going on?

First Snow

We've already had a little snow touch down this winter and I couldn't resist bundling Cupcake up to play!

Yeah, I was that mom that dragged my child out into the not even half an inch of snow as soon as she was done eating breakfast so I could take pictures of her in the first snow of the year.  All her friends are jealous.  :)

At first we had the "mom, my hat is too big" drama.  Then it was the "I fell down" drama.  Then we moved on to the "I have this fun new mittens" excitement, followed by the "I'm over this" expression.



It's a good thing we went out when we did.  As we played the sun was making it's way up.  It wasn't long before there was no snow left.  I think all those slacker moms missed out on a great opportunity here!  They were all bundled up, slowly enjoying their breakfast and now they have no snow pictures to show for it!

It hasn't really snowed since.

I guess I can't gloat too much as I know that here in a month or so we'll see snow for more than just an hour.  We'll probably be living with it for days or even weeks.  Ask me if I'm still excited about it then.

Rollie Pollie

Doesn't every 1.5 year old need a ball chair that is almost as tall as they are and weighs half as much as they do?  Yeah, I thought so, too.  I found this pattern for a Rollie Pollie chair and knew I had to make one for Little H.  She loves chairs. She loves to sit on random objects. She loves balls.  I love this chartreuse fabric and needed a reason to buy some!  The pattern was pretty easy to piece together. The directions were clear.  And the chair came together pretty quickly!  The only real obstacle along the way was having enough filling.  I used the two bags of fiberfill I had on hand and realized that it was going to take A LOT more.  Off the fabric store I went.  I came home with a 5 lb. box of fiberfill, stuffed it, and realized I was going to need even more fiberfill!  After another trip to the store to purchase another 5 lb. box I had enough! (I didn't use all of the second box.)  

She doesn't quite LOVE the chair, yet, but I think that's just because she has a heck of a time trying to get on it without falling.  It's just a wee bit big, yet.  I guess maybe I should have made the small size......

Halloween Recap

Cupcake had a very exciting Halloween this year.  She had two Halloween parties and she got to go trick or treating for the first time.  The first Halloween party was at her house with a close group of friends.  They were all so cute in their costumes and they had a great time coloring Halloween themed coloring pages.

The second party was with the whole group of my mom's group.  It was a big one!  The food was great, the dessert was sweet, and there were fun things for the kids to do, like face painting, picking a pumpkin at the patch and decorating it with stickers.  We had a great time and of course her favorite was the slide at the park.

We went to a few houses to trick or treat and shy little Dorothy was very good about saying thank you, but trick or treat is a bit advanced for her vocabulary.  Next year!  She was afraid of some of the costumes, particularly the neighbor who was a werewolf.  Oscar did stay out long.  He was too barky.  He wasn't a fan of his scarecrow costume, either.  I think this might be the last year he gets a new costume.  I'm running out of dog patterns and it's quite difficult to modify patterns to fit the weird shape of a dachshund.  He may just be a hot dog every year for the rest of his life!

Dorothy loved the Reese's Pieces we let her eat and has been begging for more candy since.  We have created a monster!  So the little bit of candy we had left had to be put in another room so I didn't have to hear the whining and begging for more candy!