end of summer

This week is the last week before I go back to work.  It's also the last summer vacation week (ever) that will be just M and I, as the countdown to Baby G is at about 7 1/2 weeks.  We've had a fun summer and I haven't had a chance to blog all the fun things we've done.  I thought I'd use this entry to add some activities that haven't made the blog yet.  Even though I've made my best effort to make lots of beach, park, and outdoor activities happen, the bottom line is that we've had lots of indoor fun this summer thanks to this pregnancy.  Putting it in writing now so I don't forget in the (long-shot) chance of #3 coming along: a June baby pregnancy is much more weather-friendly than an October baby pregnancy.  Bring on the fall!

Cardboard caves-
M loves tunnels.  Driving through one is especially exciting but since we don't have a whole lot of tunnels around here, he likes making them for his cars, trucks, and trains.  This idea came from M's dad, who saw it on PBSkids.org.  We simply cut a few tunnels out and added some decor.  I could have spent $100 on a Thomas set but I didn't.

Five Little Firefighters book-

This one admittedly took much more effort on my part than M's.  However, I love how much this child loves books and I love how excited he still gets to read his book so we made a second handprint book about firefighters, another of M's favorite topics.  Another thing I love about these books is that they're made up of handprints that won't be that little for long :)

The Five Little Firefighters poem and book idea came from this great website.  The poem is as follows:

Five little firefighters sleeping in a row.

Ring goes the bell, down the pole they go.

They jump on the engine and put out the fire.

Now they're back home, safe but tired.

We love rhyming poems/stories because after two or three readings M gets really good at finishing the rhymes.  He loves "reading" himself.  Here's our version:

Baby G's lamp - 

I posted about the various DIY projects we did for G's room.  At the time, I mentioned needing an idea for a lamp.  I really love the Pinterest-inspired lamp I made for M's room and wanted something just as cute.  This is another Pinterest-inspired lamp shade idea from a Disney-sponsored website.  

G's room theme is moons and stars in yellow and light purple with a bit of gray.  I traced stars on contact paper and then stuck them to a white lamp shade.  Then I used cosmetic sponges to sponge the paint around the stars.  The paint was watered down to help it absorb better to the lamp shade.  After it dried, the contact paper was taken off.

In addition to DIY pieces for the nursery, I did a lot of Etsy shopping.  As soon as we found out G was a girl, one of the first items I ordered was a letter G for her bedroom door from the Etsy shop, Posh Dots.  When M was born I ordered an M for his door to match the teddy bear theme of his nursery.  Even though his room has since transformed into a sports-theme, his teddy bear M still hangs on his door and will until he makes me take it down.  Here are the M and G, both custom orders, both done exactly how I had hoped:

farm crayon party favors

M turned two this week and we celebrated with a farm-themed party.  I shared a lot of our party decorations from M's first birthday party but I didn't do too many decorations this year.  I did want to share our favor.  We gave M's little friends farm-shaped crayons.  I've seen these done on both Pinterest and Facebook in a variety of shapes and they were pretty easy to make.

I started by ordering the farm-shaped candy mold that included figures of a cow, sheep, horse, and tractor.  I found ours on ebay for under $2.  M had a wide variety of broken crayons so we collected all of them up, took off the wrappers, and broke them into smaller pieces.  I used a sharp knife to cut them small, which isn't completely necessary, but they melt faster.

M liked helping by filling the candy mold with the pieces.  He was more involved than I expected him to be, which was nice.  We filled each mold then baked them at 200 degrees for about 15-20 minutes each.  I'm guessing on the time because I really just kept an eye on them until they were completely melted.  Our candy mold was made of thin plastic (on the cheap side) and it warped after 3 or 4 batches so I would probably turn the oven down to 150 next time if I was using a similar mold.  I have seen some nicer ones that can probably stand the higher heat though.

When they were melted we stuck the whole tray (on a cookie sheet for easier moving) into the fridge to cool.  After about 10 minutes they popped right out of the mold.  The tractors were a little tricky because they had a thin middle section and kept breaking.  We had to overload them with crayon pieces to get them to work.

We got small cellophane favor bags, put a few in each, and attached a "made by M" tag.  M got a set of extras (and rejects) that seem to have held up pretty well.  I've found that he hasn't broken any by coloring with them but some haven't stood up to him throwing or dropping them.  We have a few headless cows around the house.  

I really liked this idea.  I found through searching that candy molds come in a wide variety of shapes (who knew?) so you could potentially make these for almost any occasion.  

footprint step stool

This post is a little different from our normal posts because M had little to do with this project.  I wanted to share it though because I think it came out really cute and it was easy to do.  Like a lot of other things, I found the idea on Pinterest.  I was searching for ideas for painting a step stool to put in M's bathroom.  M's bathroom has a monkey theme so originally I was looking for a monkey themed step stool but ended up deciding my freehand monkey painting skills were not quite up to par for that kind of project.  That led me to this idea:

It may not fit the monkey theme but it does match the colors in his bathroom.  Here is how I did it...

I started with an old step stool that has been around at my grandmother's house for a long time.  It was dark blue when we started.  Here is the before picture...

First step was painting it white.  I did two coats of white since it had started pretty dark and I didn't want the dark blue to show through the light blue I was planning to paint it.

The nice thing was that I did the whole project on our deck.  After each coat I let it sit in the sun, which allowed it to dry really quickly.  I was able to space the coats of white out during M's two naps yesterday.  Then later on at night I added the first coat of blue.  I did the second coat of blue this morning.

After lunch we added M's footprints and his name and the year.  I love how it came out and it looks great in his monkey bathroom.  It will end up being perfect for reaching the sink.

felt board fun

This is a felt board I've been working on for a few weeks.

They sell them at places like Lakeshore Learning for around $50.  I made this one for under $5.  I took a piece of cardboard and glued large sheets of black wool felt to each side.  The wool felt allows the regular felt to stick to it easily.  Then I bought a package of mixed color felt and cut out a few play sets for M.  Making Learning Fun has templates for the Brown Bear, Brown Bear pieces.  I also tried a set of A Very Hungry Caterpillar pieces (because circular fruit is super easy to make).  M loves books and will go get them and bring to me to read.  He typically chooses the same three books so this gives us another way to read.

My intention for this was to have it to hang in our play area in the basement of the new house.  I figured we'd probably use it more in the years to come than now but M does like when I take it out to play with.  M's favorite use of this board right now is for me to put all the pieces on and for him to pull them off one by one.  He also likes to carry the pieces around (we've already lost white dog).  When we use it to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear I'll put each animal on as we read and then tell him to take it off before we put the next animal on.  He seems to be interested in pulling them off and seeing what comes next.  When I make another set of pieces I'll probably use tacky glue.  I used Elmer's for these and we're losing pieces off some.  

Why we love our felt board:

Baby: He loves books and Brown Bear is definitely his favorite.  I think he enjoys having the tactile pieces of the animals from the book.  As I said, he loves pulling them off.

Mommy: Makes reading Brown Bear for the thousandth time a little more interactive and fun!  I also love that we'll be able to use this for more than pulling pieces off as he grows up.  They're great for retelling and creating stories.

M's age when we played: 11 months, 2 weeks

diy drum set

Yesterday we had fun making our own drum set.  M loves music and making noise so he had a lot of fun with this activity and is still enjoying it this morning.  I took four cylindrical containers that have plastic tops.  The ones I used were breadcrumbs, an empty Crisco container, two different size Gerber snack containers.  I placed them together and then taped around them to keep them together.  I also taped around the top of the breadcrumbs container because it still had breadcrumbs in it and I could definitely see where that would lead.

Once they were together we got two wooden spoons and started playing.  One thing that would be neat to set up an older child to find out would be that the breadcrumbs container had a different sound because it was full.  You could even then empty it to test it.  M didn't really care, he was too busy....

This morning M got the drums on his own and started playing.  He tipped the whole thing over and started playing on the bottoms of the containers (3 out 4 are metal).  That was louder than the tops and he loved it.  He seemed surprised when he first figured it out, which was neat to see.

Why we loved the DIY Drum Set....

Baby: it made noise and he got to hit things with sticks

Mommy:  music appreciation :) I think this would be a good activity to do again when M is 3 or 4 when we can make the set together and then try different things to make different sounds.

M's age when we played: 11 months, 1 week