Summer 2012 Bucket List

I stumbled across this post on Pinterest and thought having a summer bucket list broken down by amount of time needed would be great.  That way when we do have a free day, morning or after I can just go down our list and see what fits.  I have a ton of things pinned on Pinterest but I tried to choose the ones where I already have the materials at home so setting up wouldn’t be too hard.

So here is what is on our bucket list so far:

Full Day Activities

• Make and fly kites
• Go to the zoo
• Go to Chabot Space & Science Center
• Go to Lawrence Hall of Science
• Go to the beach (Half Moon Bay maybe?)
• Go to Gilroy Gardens

Half Day Activities

• Host a summer book exchange party
• Go to the park
• Go to the aquatic center
• Cherry picking

Two Hour or Less Activities

• Dig up “dinosaurs”
• Go on a nature scavenger hunt
• Outdoor water lab play
• Experiment activity: Ever flowing goo
• Art activity: packing peanuts sculpture
• TinkerLab: Pull out a tinker lab kit and build something out of recyclable materials.
• Drive through the “mountains” (one of my daughter’s favorite activities)
• Take the easel outside and paint
• Ride bikes around the neighborhood
• Go for a walk
• Have a dance party

Friday Finds 12/2/11

Some of you may know I have a serious Pinterest addiction.  There are a ton of things I want to try but between work, the two kids, the two blogs, etc there just isn’t enough time.  So I just wanted to show case some of the great things I’ve stumbled upon and hope to try one day.  Let me know if you have tried them out yourself and what you thought.

Snow Playdoh

Homemade Glitter

Glitter Playdoh

Starry Night Glitter Jar

Busy Wallet-fill with items for kids-what a good idea!

Use old dresser as a dress up storage

Busy board for the little ones

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Can you believe Christmas stuff has been in the stores since before Halloween?  Well, I finally decided why not just jump straight into it since money is tight and I wanted to give the kids something new to do.  I pulled out some left over boxes and Christmas wrapping paper I had bought on clearance last year and decided to try my hand at making a cardboard house.

While I was working on this the kids had a blast with some of the packing materials from the paper shredder box my parents had bought.  My daughter made these “bumper cars” for herself and her brother and even utilized some Halloween masks a friend had given us.

I covered up the boxes with some wrapping paper to give it a festive look.  Made some window frames, some Christmas presents and snowmen.

Finally the kids dove in and had a blast.

DIY Hair Clips

I finally got off my butt and decided to try making some hair clips for my daughter after the kids were in bed.  It went surprisingly well.  Not perfect but not as bad as I was expecting.  I had picked up some fall ribbon from the dollar spot at Target and found this post on Pinterest on how to curl fabric ribbon.  It actually worked!  All you had to do was wrap the ribbon around wooden dowels and secure the ribbon with wooden clothes pins, preheat your oven to 275 degrees,lay ribbon wrapped dowels on a foil lined baking sheet and bake ribbon for 25 minutes.  Remove from oven and cool completely.

I cut them in half and layered them on top of each other and used a couple stitches to hold them together.

The center looked a little bare so I used this ribbon tying technique found on Pinterest that uses a fork (strange I know but it worked too) to make a bow.  I had to modify it slightly to make the bow larger so it didn’t turn out quite as nice as when you tighten the bow on the fork but not as bad as my usually ribbon tying attempts.  Then I hot glued it to a hair clip I picked up using some UP rewards from Rite Aid that were expiring today.

and voila…Not perfect but I thought it was kind of cute for my first attempt.  I trimmed some of the ribbon edges and am going to have my daughter try it on tomorrow before I make the other side.

World’s Best Bubble Recipe

I hope my daughter isn’t the only one who never fails to accidentally tip over a bottle of brand new bubbles and next thing you know half the bottle is gone.  She was going through her bubbles like crazy and then it only got worse when we bought her a lawn mower toy that blew bubbles.  That thing went through a bottle of bubbles in two days.  It doesn’t help that if you tip it backwards the bubble liquid leaks out.  My 1 yr old kept trying to use it as a walker so we lost a lot of bubbles that way too.

When my son’s first birthday rolled around I decided to make my own bubble containers for the kids to use at the party and I found this great recipe on Pinterest, of course, and it was amazing.  It works so much better than the store bought bubbles, takes like 5 minutes to make and we had all the ingredients already.

1 1/2 quarts of water

1/2 cup light corn syrup

1 cup liquid dish soap

Mix water and corn syrup until completely blended. Slowly stir in soap. Will last several weeks in an airtight container.

My daughter drinks those Nesquik chocolate milk single serving size bottles sometimes so I saved a couple, removed the wrappers and poured the bubble solution into those containers.  We had some left over wands from other bubble containers that I saved so she just uses those.  I love it.  It makes me not cringe as badly when she spills it and if we run out I can whip up another batch instead of trying to figure out a time to make it to a store to buy more.

DIY Stamps

My daughter has been begging for stamps but they are so expensive and her tastes are always changing I hate the idea of spending so much money on stamps she might not use for long.  Then I found this idea on Pinterest for making your own stamps using foam stickers.  Duh!  Genius idea.  So when my daughter passed out after a long morning at the carnival I used some of the foam stickers that I picked up on clearance awhile back and some of these awesome blocks that a friend made for her and voila, DIY stamps.

Can you believe in the entire container of stickers there wasn’t a single “2″?  No wonder it was on clearance   After she started using them I had a palm to forehead moment.  Can you guess what stupid mistake I made?  The letters have to be put backwards on the block in order to appear correctly when you stamp them!  Ugh.  I peeled them off and glued them back on and then they worked fine.  My daughter was so sweet and told me “That’s ok mommy, I like them backwards.”

I also used some bottle caps from our recycling bin to put some smaller oval, star, etc stickers on so she could add some designs to her letters and numbers.  We tried both paint and stamp pads and the stamp pads worked much better.  She had a tendency to push too hard in the paint and then got a blob on the paper.

Still she had a ton of fun and I was able to make these with things we already had around the house.