My new refrigerator magnet!

Did you know jello jigglers also double as refrigerator magnets! This was Jamie’s doing. I wish she coudn’t open the fridge! I’ve written about Jamie and the fridge before but she also is into the freezer looking for “pops” all the time now. I tried putting the lock thats on the door in this picture up but all it took was one yank and one of us broke it.

Unplugged Project: Smurf Garden

I almost forgot to post today for the Unplugged Project and when I saw her post I decided to copy her fairy garden idea a bit instead of just writing about our garden. My boys are not really the fairy type but they have recently been watching the Smurfs so I got out my old Smurf figures and we made a Smurf garden. When I was a kid my friend and I used to play outside with our Smurfs and make things out of twigs and rocks for them. Today we planted some mint I was rooting, the grass head Ben had grown at school and some tiny daisy plants I was planning on potting. The boys were busy on the porch for a long time and made pebble paths and then got a planter of marigolds to expand into. Our regular garden isn’t so exciting (not yet anyway since we have nothing to pick from it this early). We planted some sunflowers, squash, cilantro, gourds, carrots, radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes. I don’t know if we will get all those things though, things seem to be growing slowly but hopefully I am wrong. Its a weedy garden this summer, I didn’t add all of my leaf mulch since I started so many seeds and that let the weeds sprout too (I think next summer I’ll do things differently). I’ll post more once we start picking. Below the boys are protecting the garden from Henrietta (she likes to dig in it for bugs but she digs up plants too).

Bristle Blocks & Star Wars Guys and Babies & Shoe Cars

The boys play so nicely together (about 1/2 the time anyway) and they even include Jamie when she isn’t messing their stuff up! I love how we’ve been rotating toys all the time because they will entertain themselves for such a long time when we get out something that has been away. The bristle blocks actually come out fairly regularly, but even having them put away for a few days renews their interest. Here the bristle blocks have been turned into race cars for the Star Wars guys.

I think they have been inspired by the Mario Kart Wii game that they play with John most nights before bed! Here they have Jamie’s dolls and a gorilla racing in shoe cars!

Star Wars Stuffed Animals

Ethan and Ben are on such a Star Wars kick. Here is Ethan’s latest creation, his stuffed animals dressed as all the Star Wars characters.

Darth Vader is my favorite. He’s wearing the lacrosse pads with the red tea cup helmet and red spoon lightsaber. The other critters wearing cups are all Stormtroopers. Luke is the cat with the green lightsaber. Chewie is the monkey with the rubber band across his chest. The fox is Obi Wan and the cat is Princess Leiah.

Unplugged Project: Wood (birdhouse making)

This week The Unplugged Project is Wood and it was the perfect time for John to build some bird houses with the boys (I tried to convince him to build me a chicken coop for the chicks I’m ordering tomorrow but I have a feeling he’ll get moving on that once the birds are living in our house). He got a good birdhouse book, Birdhouses You Can Build In A Day, with plans to make a bunch of different types and this weekend they started off with Chickadee houses. Each boy made his own and they are up on the trees waiting for inhabitants. John used wood that was from an old storage shelf in our basement and he has enough left for a lot more houses. I can’t claim any involvement, I slept through the entire project (more on that another day)!
John’s Comments - I use an old pine shelf that was roughly 12″ x 48″. I figured out the best way to cut the wood and managed to get enough pieces for both bird houses out of the 1 shelf with very little scrap leftover. I decided to use my new cordless circular saw to get some experience with it (worked well!) but it would have been much easier with a table saw. I used my miter saw to cut my 4″ strips to the right length. Holes were done with a bench drill press (just so the boys could help). The instructions were to use a nail gun, but instead I predrilled holes and used galvanized nails. In the end I basically made the pieces just like a Lowes or Home Depot project, but with better wood and some glue thrown in to hold everything together. I have enough wood leftover from those old shelves for easily another dozen bird houses. Next project I plan on drilling my pilot holes a little larger to make it easier for the boys to hammer the nails in.
If you want to try a birdhouse yourself, look for 4″ wide pine or cedar at Lowes. All the pieces in this project were 4″ wide and cut to length. I used power equipment, but it could easily be cut with a hand saw. If Lowes doesn’t have wood the right width, get a larger piece and ask them to cut it for you - it’s free!

Lego Junkyard Wars

A couple weeks ago I mentioned how I had rediscovered Junkyard Wars and started watching it with the boys. This weekend while I was doing something for work on my laptop the boys were getting a little bored so I started issuing Junkyard Wars challenges for them to build with their legos and then bring to show me. They had a lot of fun with this new game and I loved seeing their creations.

Unplugged Project: Alphabet

This is our first time joining in with Unplug Your Kids’ Unplugged Project (and I’m a day late but a power outage messed us up yesterday). Her theme this week was alphabet so we made some Jello Jigglers using letter cutters, they came out a little rough looking but the kids really liked them (and the bowl of scraps that resulted). I got out letter stamps, various other stamps and paint and Ethan and Jamie made pictures with those. Jamie’s work is what you see in the pictures. We have been on a letter kick around here for at least a month now and here is a page in our letter book we have been making. We made it by gluing pictures and letters from magazines and by using stickers.

PS: My kids rarely wear shirts anymore!

Snow in the Tub reminder!

Yesterday I read someone’s blog post about taking her son outside to paint the snow and I got nostalgic about the times my boys painted and played in snow in our bathtub. We did it last winter and this winter too but winter can feel so long and the last time we did this in December seems like ages ago. I hope we get another big snow soon so we can fill the tub with snow and toys! If you have little kids and live where it snows you really should try this.

Prairie Dog Home/Blanket Fort

Our boys are very creative players and yesterday morning (and much of the day) they were prairie dogs.

They started making their home by pushing the chairs into position and getting pillows and blankets on their own but I did help by attaching the big sheet with clothes pins and grippy clips. Using the pop up tent and tunnel made it pretty elaborate.

They made sure there were lots of holes to pop out of and they took turns being the lookout prairie dog. Ben got very into jumping on the coffee table making the alert sound. Luckily Reuben was a fellow prairie dog and not an intruder because he got good at finding his was in.

Junkyard Wars

Years ago I became hooked on a show out of the UK called Junkyard Wars. Two teams would be challenged to build something in 10 hours using parts from the shows junkyard. I loved watching the teams struggle to find the right parts and hobble together some amazing machines in such a short amount of time.

The other day I was looking for new science shows to record for us to watch with the kids when I saw a repeat of Junkyard Wars on and decided to record it. As we watched it I realized why I liked the show so much. Ethan started running back and forth across the room grabbing different items…a pillow, a box, and Tigger rocker…and told us he was building his race car. That was when I realized that Junkyard Wars taps into that lego building part of our brains. I got out the bristle blocks for the boys and they went to work building all kids of planes and cars. I’m going to record a few more episodes and we will try building our own creations while the contestants on the show build theirs.

Ethan’s 6 wheel race car.

Ben’s rocket car.