Oliver's "crayon injector": What to do with broken crayons

The other day, the kids and I were sitting at the table, coloring together. Actually, Buttercup and I were coloring together . . . Oliver had already gotten tired of it, and he was sitting at the end of the table, putting his connecting blocks together.

He was very quiet.

Too quiet.

Then -- "Hey, Mom! I made a crayon injector, wanna see?"

I looked over at him to find this:














My ever-creative son figured out that he could poke crayons through the holes in the blocks! I thought it was pretty cool. :-)

But then I also saw this:














I guess some of the crayons didn't fit as easily as he would have liked. Or maybe he just had fun breaking crayons. Sigh.

Well, that just gave us an extra fun project to work on! We took all of the paper off of the crayons (I did most of that job, some of them were pretty difficult to de-paper), then sorted them into a muffin tin.




























I baked them at 350 degrees for about 4 minutes, or until they were all melted (watch them closely, wax melts FAST!). When they were done, we had these beautiful, swirly crayons that can write in 3 colors at one time!










































My only complaint is that I should have used the mini muffin tin instead -- the crayons we made are too thin and brittle. But that just means that we have another project to do down the road. :-)

Beary cute animal masks

Making a paper plate animal mask is a cute craft idea for those summer afternoons when it's almost too hot to play outside in the pool.

Step 1: help your kids decide which animal mask they'd like to make, and let them paint one paper plate. We did our painting the day before, just to make sure that the paint was totally dry when it was time to decorate.














Step 2: cut eye holes and draw the mouth and nose.
Step 3: cut out and staple ears to the top.
Step 4: make a small hole (I used a single hole punch) in the bottom of the plate and slide a stick through (I used wood skewers with the pointy end cut off). Tape and/or glue the stick to the underside.

Voila! A purr-fectly cute mask!

Scenes from our weekend

We had another fun weekend. I ran a 5k with my bum toe (more on that below) Saturday morning, then later on I took the kiddos to a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. Hello headache! Oy. Two hours in that place with 4 kids' birthday parties going on = WAY too much for me. I thought my head would explode! The kids had fun though!















































On Saturday afternoon, the kids and I started a paper plate mask project. Buttercup had fun sorting the jars of paint, while Oliver painted his paper plate.














This gives new meaning to "finger" painting.

He just likes to get dirty and messy! The funny thing was, he was narrating while he was smearing it on his hands-- almost like he was doing an instructional video. I put an end to the fun when he said, "And now you put your hands on your head . . . " and Buttercup mimicked him and had a head full of grayish purple paint.



Here's my sad toe. I ran it into a cabinet on Friday morning, and it looks better now, but I ended up hurting it worse when my foot slipped in the creek this morning. Oh well!

Playing in the creek again

It rained a lot (for here!) last week, so we have been taking advantage of the sunny weather this week and have been spending a lot of time outside. We've walked down to the creek 3 times this week, and we'll probably head back again before the week is through. It's such a nice, relaxing way to spend time outside in the summer!

"Twins" at the playground

The other day, Oliver and Buttercup wore matching outfits at Oliver's request -- yellow t-shirts and blue jean shorts. We spent the morning at the playground, and it was definitely easier to keep track of both of them since they were wearing the same colors. Not to mention the cuteness factor!












































































And . . . what's a boy to do when he wears his Crocs to the playground, but keeps getting mulch between his toes? Poor Oliver, the only socks I had with me were a pair of Buttercup's that are even too small for her. The heel of the sock was about halfway between his toes and heel, and the cuff was obviously too tight, but he didn't complain once! Silly kiddo!

Paper plate crafts

I found a really neat paper plate-craft book at the library last week, and the kids and I have been having fun making and decorating the crafts. So far we've made a shark, spider, crab, sting ray, and a snake. Here are some pictures of Oliver and Buttercup working hard on their projects!

Pineapple Project, part 4

It's been a month or so since I last wrote about the pineapple top that we're hoping to plant! To tell you the truth, I kind of forgot about it. I see it every day, but since it doesn't talk, whine, cry, or meow, it's easy to overlook. :-)

So here it is! There's new growth at the top, and the roots are nice and long, so it's definitely ready to be planted. Hopefully we'll get around to doing that this weekend!