The Royal Fever

My four year old has the Royal Fever!  I was super excited to watch the wedding of William and Catherine today.  Why?  Because it is the only thing happy going on in this world!

My four year old joined in on the excitement! 

She had been wanting one of the girls Easter dresses at Target.  I was not going to pay full price for one as I knew she just wanted it for play.  I told her that I would get her one after Easter.  One word: Clearance!  Yesterday, I was roaming around Target and found her the perfect little dress to play in.  She likes the big “poufy” kind.  This one looks like a little flower girl dress!  She was very excited yesterday when she saw the dress and had it on immediately. 

Well, this morning we sat down to watch the wedding.  (Of course, she had her new dress on.)  Josie was very intrigued by Princess Catherine.  She loved her dress, loved the veil, and pretty much just loved everything about it. 

After a while, she came into the room with a Barbie.  The Barbie was in a pretty gown and a veil.  So she was obviously mimicking Princess Catherine.  A little while later she turns to me and says, “Mom, I want a veil.  Can you sew me up one?”  I responded with a yes, we can figure something out.  I didn’t know how I was going to make one, but knew I had better figure it out!

Here is what I came up with today.  One yard of tulle, one head band, 1/2 yard of a row of embellishments, and some tiny jewels.  I think I spent less than $5 to make her veil. 

Here is the final product!

She had to have the part of the veil that comes over the face like Princess Catherine’s.  How cute is this!  She loves it.  She had a hard time being patient for me to get all the little jewels hot glued on to the tulle, but in the end, I think it was worth the wait!

It’s so fun to do these cute little things.  She was grinning from ear to ear when I had it all done.  I’m sure she’s going to wake up in the morning and that will be the first thing she puts on!  How she needs a bouquet of flowers!  Then it will be complete!

Such fun for a dress loving girl!  I’m glad I was crafty enough to come up with something!

Easter Fun

We got in the Easter spirit this week and did some crafty things.  Just some simple crafts to make these dreary, cold spring days fly by!  Really, it just needs to warm up!  The sun needs to shine.  And we need to be out enjoying the awesome weather.  But I guess we will be patient and wait for mother nature to decide when that will be!

I set up Josie with a little painting project.  I gave her some different colors of paint, some Easter shaped cookie cutters, and some paint brushes.  Very simple, but a good amount of time was spent on her work of art!

I had bought some card stock egg shapes at Michaels.  I then covered them with different colors of paper.  After school, the kids got busy and decorated the eggs.  I even did a couple too!  We used, Easter stickers, egg confetti, gems, and puffy paint.  Puffy paint seemed to be the hit.  They don’t quite have it mastered on how much to use, but it will come eventually!  After they dried, I hung them up on the cupboards in the kitchen. 

I have never decorated eggs before.  I have never boiled eggs before.  Of course, I had to look that up, plus ask a friend how she did hers!  We set up to do the eggs and it turned out more fun than I thought.  The kids really liked this and I guess we will have to do it next year!  It was easy and simple.  And now we have a cute little centerpiece on the table to look at!  Nice work kids! (Yes, Josie is busting a move in the first picture!  We like listening to music in our house.  She must have liked the song!)

New Wheels For The Little Man!

I think every time I blink or turn around and focus on something else, Jayden grows up on me!  We have known that he was in need of a bigger bike, but I don’t think either of us realized it until today.  We were outside enjoying the weather.  Jayden was riding his bike around.  I got to looking at him and had to laugh.  The poor kid was just too long legged for his bike!  He loves to ride his bike.  But now it was time to find him something a bit bigger! 

I had to look back at the past years of him on his bikes.  I found a couple pictures to share.

Here he is on his 12 inch bike.  Probably between three or four years old.

Focused and ready to go!

Here he is on this 16 inch bike.  He had learned to ride without training wheels this day!  I can remember how super excited he was!  And this is the bike that he just graduated from today!

And now a 20 inch!  The guy at the bike shop kind of laughed at us when we told him he was still on a 16 inch.  So, I guess it was time to move him up!  We found an awesome deal on a GOOD brand bike at a local bike shop. It is used, but Kevin was excited about it.  We had stumbled upon something good for once!  And to Jayden, it’s a new bike!  Love it.

The best part….we were explaining to him how this was a good deal and that a new one is between 200-300 bucks.  And how cheap we got it was a very good price.  He responds with, “just like on American Pickers!”  And we all laugh.  American Pickers is one of Jayden’s favorite shows!

He was in a hurry to get it home and test it out.  He just loves it and couldn’t be more happy.  I love this kid so much.  He has a heart of gold and the littlest things just make him light up!  Glad we could make his day!  Now he has a new bike to grow in to!

Can We Grow a Garden?

For about the last 3 years or so, we have talked about making a garden.  I have no green thumb so it doesn’t sound like much fun to me!  But, I also think it is something the kids need to learn about.  Where our food comes from.  How plants grow.  The work it takes to make these things happen. This weekend, we bought one of those starter greenhouse kits.  The kids picked out vegetables and flowers. 

I decided that this can be a project for their dad and them.  I do so much with them that I wanted Kevin to have a little fun too!  It’s kind of fun to be a bystander!

First they put the soil in each slot.

Then they got busy filling the holes with the different seeds.  Kevin made a map so we know what is in each hole!  Good thinking!

All done and ready to see what grows!

Now our goal is, by the time that they outgrow this greenhouse, we will have an idea of where were are going to transfer them too!  I am sure Kevin can handle it real well!  Here’s to happy gardening!

Digging Up Bones

I decided to take the sensory table outside and start doing the messy things I have swarming in my head!  Our front porch is nice and shady, just the perfect spot. 

I decided to put together a “bone” digging table.  I bought some dog biscuits that are bone shaped.  Then I bought some potting soil that is chemical free!  I had to let the potting soil dry for about 24 hours. 

Once it dried the kids got busy!  The idea behind it is to dig up the bones and then put together an animal skeleton.  Could also do dinosaurs!  The kids got busy digging!

They had a great time digging with their tools and finding the bones!  Here are a couple of their skeletons!

Josie’s Skeleton!  I think this one was a cat

And this is Jayden’s monkey!

This was a fun idea!  I found the dog biscuit part on line, but then came up with what to cover it with.  I’m sure it’s not going to take Jayden long to figure out that he can “farm” the dirt, too!  Once they are done with this activity, I will use the soil to plant some flowers in their flower pots from the last post!

Spring Flowers

Today we did a very fun and EASY craft!  I bought a couple flower pots at Michaels.  They are super cheap.  I want to say they were under 2 bucks a piece!  I let the kids paint them and make them their own. 

I had bought a pack of white flower cut outs.  Wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with them, but I knew I wanted to do something with flowers for spring!  So the kids each decorated six flowers.  They used: gems, foam flower stickers, sequins, tissue paper, stickers, etc.  It was great.  Each flower had it’s own uniqueness. 

I had a bunch of dowels in my stash of stuff.  I painted them green and those became the stems.  We had to wait for everything to dry!

I ran to Dollar Tree and got those foam things you can put in the bottom of a vase/flower pot to hold the flowers in place.  I also picked up some green Easter grass to fill in the flower pot.  I taped each dowel to a flower and filled their flower pot with 5 flowers each. 

HAPPY SPRING!

When we are done admiring them on the inside, I’m going to have the kids plant some flowers and will watch them grow outside!  Double use for their flower pots!

What I love about my kids is their thoughtfulness for others.  Each of them asked if they could take one of their flowers to their teachers tomorrow.  Of course, I said yes!  On the back of the flower I put: “Thanks for helping me grow.”  I really wanted to hang on to these until the end of the school year and they could give them to their teachers, but nope, wasn’t going to happen!  I love my kids!