Day 110: Mt. Dew Camp Lantern

So, who saw the picture go around Facebook a few months ago about making a glow lantern out of 1/4 bottle of Mt. Dew, a "tiny" bit of baking soda, and 3 cap fulls of peroxide?  Well, I just HAD to try it, i mean, come on, if it worked, it would be awesome, would never drink Mt. Dew again, but could be a lot of fun!  And if it didn't work, well, we had a failed science experiment.

Mike and the girls made Mt. Dew glow lanterns today for craft time after we got home from Lodi.  Well, guess what, it failed, and Snopes.com busted it too. They did not glow at ALL.  But, Mike was not to be deterred.  He was going to make those lanterns "glow" one way or another.  First, they put flashing LED lights in the bottles and ran up to our closet in our room to see them "flash" and "glow."  Then they came back down and found glow sticks that the girls got for Christmas and decided to break them and stick them in the lanterns.  Personally, I thought that they should have broken them open and poured the contents into the soda bottles, but mike thought that they would be too diluted.  But, they glowed, see?

After the kids went to bed, we decided to mix the blue and red glow sticks and see what happened if we added it to water.  So, we broke them (and in the process discovered that the thing you break to get glowsticks to glow is actually glass!) and poured the glow stuff into a bottle of water, shook it up, and ran up the steps.  We had the PRETTIEST purple glowing water for about 2 minutes until it totally died and no longer glowed.  But, I will still take a moment to say: I was right and you were wrong :-p

Day 87: Egg Dying gone wrong...

We tried a new dye technique with eggs last night.  I am sorry I didn't post last night, but as I got ready to start, Penny woke up crying for a nightmare, and I went upstairs to quiet her down.  I took her out of her room, laid down with her in bed, and I fell asleep about 30 seconds later! haha.  Oh well, I know I needed the sleep!

I saw the "shaving cream egg dying" trick on Facebook, so I thought I would give it a try... honestly, it didn't work well at all.  But, I will get to that in a moment.

First, you need el cheapo shaving cream, you know that $1 beard buster stuff?  Yeah, that.  You need some neon food coloring, a tooth pick, cookie sheets, and some eggs.

Well, first, you spread shaving cream all over the cookie sheet, then drop drops of foo

d coloring around the tray.  Use the toothpick to "swirl" the food coloring into the shaving cream.  Once it has a marbley, swirly look, roll the eggs into the food coloring and let them sit overnight. When you wipe them off, they are supposed to be marbled.

Well, problem 1, I didn't use gloves, I was dyed from wrist to finger tip, and still am.  Now, I used brown eggs, I didn't expect them to get as dark as I would normally expect white eggs to turn, but, this morning, as i was wiping the eggs down, they started sweating as they got warm and sweat the marbling straight off.  that is to say the ones that got "marbled" in the first place.  Most of them just looked like brown eggs.  Overall, I would say craft flop.  Won't be trying this technique again!

The girls however, had a BLAST playing in a second tray of shaving cream.  I must be a mean mommy because I had never let them play with shaving cream before, they had it EVERYWHERE, but boy did they have fun :)  Penny tried helping with the eggs, but she lost interest quickly.  I think some of these may just be a hair out of their age range and I don't realize it when I plan things.

But, I look like a dye factory exploded on my hands :/

Day 15- disappointed, off base maybe?

So, i see these really cute wreaths around the web and at craft shows that are tied all around with scraps of fabric (http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/2408399).  I thought, "ok, I can modify this so that they aren't so huge, and much more reasonable for Iris and Penny to do."  So, i got out pipe cleaner and their halloween costumes (that they refused to wear) and started cutting scraps of material.  I made little pipe cleaner hoops, and handed them the scraps of fabric and showed them how it worked.  Iris did precisely THREE knots and said "i'm done! I don't want to do anymore." and she stopped.  Penny did more, she needed more help, but she got about 1/3 of the way around before saying "done!" and getting up.
Now, I know that Iris AND Penny are able to tie knots, because they are constantly tying things around themselves, scarves, ribbons, etc. and telling me that they have "bows" on them.  So, I KNOW that that isn't above their skill set.  But lately, I've been hitting duds, and I can't figure out why.  They are so excited to do craft, until I get everything out and start it.  If i just give them scraps of paper, glue sticks, and paint, they would sit there for hours, but how many times can I do that for a year????  Now I am stuck, how do i keep the kids interested in this for the next year?  I still have 350 days to go!
Honestly, I don't think it is even worth my time to post the pictures of today's craft :(  Maybe if i can talk them into finishing them tomorrow I will post pictures.  Or, if tomorrow's craft is better, I will upload pictures of today's.  Wish me luck.

On a positive note, I am happy to say that I officially have a craft ROOM.  I spent a good portion of today putting crafting supplies into the room, and it looks SOOO nice!  Yay for getting the house ready to sell :-p haha

Day 5-Splat

It was bound to happen, I knew the day would come.  My only hope was, it wouldn't day be on the fifth day of this year long quest... We had a dud.  A big, slimy, sticky, purple, dud.  My aunt, uncle, and cousin were due in around noon, so after hurrying up and cleaning the house, I decided to get our "art" out of the way today.  I wanted to do something that didn't involve sitting around the table (the owl project yesterday has me tired of sitting in my seat at the table).  So, I started searching, and I found this really neat "slime" idea.  http://www.ourbestbites.com/2010/09/kids-in-the-kitchen-slime/
Huh, Slime, new, different, get the kids involved, let them mix, pour, and create, and it is something I can pull out on quiet days.  Or so I thought.  I got my water, I emptied our glue bottle- we had EXACTLY 1/2 cup left- I went downstairs and pulled the Borax out of the laundry room.  I was SET.  So, I measured everything out, called the kids in, and we started adding.  I was encouraged, it looked like the pictures.  The girls wanted purple, so I set to work making purple with blue and red food coloring.  Heck, it even turned PURPLE!  This was looking good!

And then, we got to the "You might think you messed up because it's so loose.  Just keep smooshing!" step. Oh, what a mess!  We smooshed, and we smooshed, we stirred, kneaded, smooshed some more.  And eventually, when I finally thought my arm would fall off from smooshing so much, it formed a ball!  Ahh, sweet relief!  Great, we have our "art" done, now we can play with it for awhile.  I put the ball back in the bowl for about 5 seconds, turn around to get a paper towel, look back, and it is liquid once again!  UGH!  So, by this point, my family is here.  My cousin starting trying to help me "doctor" this substance that is looking more and more like the You Can't Do That On Television slime by the minute, just purple.  No matter what we do, it is just liquid as soon as you stop kneading it.  So, I am left with a bag full of purple slime that will likely never see the light of day, a bowl that may be permanently crusted with a glue, borax, purple food color mix, and purple... all... over... the.... kitchen.  If I thought that mixing this stuff was hard, yeah, the scrubbing of the kitchen that came after was FAR worse.

Chalk one up to learning, I will NEVER make "slime" again.  But, the kids had a BLAST squishing it between their fingers, and getting to help make it, so I guess, all in all, it wasn't a total failure...   But, I think you can understand why I am NOT posting the recipe here....