Days 119/120

The days are getting longer and nicer, I can see that blogging is quickly taking a backseat to everything else we are doing... like repairing/replacing our lawn mower.  (know anyone with a good lawn mower for under $100, let us know!!)

Day 119:

Yesterday, I finished up the fish crafts with the girls.  Each time I give them free reign to design as they see fit, it makes me wonder more and more when they will "get" where pieces belong... like a mouth, fin, and tail fin should not all be in the center of a fish... but hey, they enjoy it, so really, in the end, that is all that counts.

The Fish:

Day 120:

Remember a few weeks ago, when we decided to plant some seeds and see if they grew?  Well, have they ever grown!  Today, I finally decided that the time had come to transplant two of our squash seedlings into their permanent homes... very large planters next to the deck..

Mike helped the girls pour the dirt, and he allowed them to break the clumps of dirt up, and then helped them plant the squash seedlings.  After they were planted, the girls and I watered them and with a hope and a prayer, they will be just as happy in their new, larger, homes and grow just as well, if not better, than they did before!  Hopefully in about 2.5 months, we will have some summer squash... now lets hope it doesn't decide to freeze one night, because those pots are not coming in the house!

(sorry for the low picture quality.. cell phone camera + night= bad pictures)

Day 101: Poured Paint Pots

I was trying to figure out something to do with the 100th craft yesterday, and stumbled upon a blog that described this drip paint technique.  I thought it would be kind of cool and something the girls would be able to do.

The basic premise of this idea is to flip a clay pot upside down, cover the drainage hole with tape and literally pour paint on the top.  Just enough so that it starts to pour down the sides.  Then you just take the next color and pour it on top.  We tried to be sparing with the paint, but Iris' motto was apparently the more the merrier.... you can currently see 2.5 of the six layers of paint she poured on her pot because she went so heavy.

Penny really took to this craft technique though. I think that it was a good balance of paint bottles and her personal strength.  She can only squeeze so hard for so long, and it seemed like that amount of time was the perfect amount of paint to make it pour and drip over the sides properly.

We only had 2 clay pots, so I had no intentions of actually doing this craft, but then I thought that the kids may need an example, so I grabbed a Solo cup and showed this kids.  Solo cups don't have any porous surface to keep the paint on them, so the paint has, over the course of the evening, dripped down and is mainly pooled on the paper plate below it :-p

Day 99: Garden Start-Up

Today's blog will be quick.  We didn't necessarily do a "Craft" today, but more of a learning activity to follow us through the next few weeks/months, if it succeeds :-p  We planted seeds in little cups outside.  While we were at Home Depot on Saturday, I let the girls pick out seed packets of things they want to grow over the spring/summer.  I was hoping that they would choose things like a pack of tomatoes, maybe a pepper plant, some herbs, maybe even some peas or green beans.  Basically, I wanted things that we could easily plant in a planter and not in a huge garden.  Well, leave it to Iris and Penny, they chose lettuce, broccoli, yellow squash, and corn... yes, corn.  We are attempting to grow corn, in a POT on the back porch.. yup this a recipe for disaster.

The girls got to dig shovels full of dirt from a bag and put the dirt in their cups, then they got to put seeds in each cup.  We planted a lot of lettuce, i hope that the lettuce takes off.  But other than that... who knows how this is experiment will turn out, it could be a total disaster, hopefully it will be worth our time in a few months.  Wish us luck! :-p