Geometric Shapes & Pinwheels

Flower Circle Card

Banner Blast Celebrate Card

Banner Blast Buggin' Out Card

Banner Blast "Hi" Card

Storytime Squares Quilt

I made this little gem in one evening after procrastinating for months on making a quilt for the final cousin to be welcomed into the family. 
The pattern is based off the quilt described at this link: http://www.made-by-rae.com/2010/12/finito-storytime-squares-quilt-in-far-far-away-ii/

Welcome to this beautiful world baby Arne.

Birthday Wishes Card

Multi-Colored Flowers Card

Baby Advice Cards

Look Who's Turning...

Get Whale Soon Card

Thank You Scrap Card

Birthday Animals Card

We may not be tadpoles anymore, but at least we haven't croaked card

Beach Theme DIY Card

Teacher Valentine Gift

We always make certain to say "Thank You" to our kids' teachers.  Teachers devote a ton of extra time to their jobs - A TON (I know from first hand experience).  Maybe because I am a teacher myself, but more because I am a person who believes strongly in good manners, we try really hard to let the teachers who touch the lives of our children know that we are aware of the devotion they are showing and the sacrifices they make to ensure the success of their students.

As we were making cards for his classmates, my kindergartner asked what we would do for his teacher this year (apparently our lessons are working) and we found an idea similar to this one online.  What's in our "pink" themed gift:

• ceramic coffee mug
• pink washi tape
• pink pen
• pink highlighter
• pink gum
• pink Tic Tacs
• pink heart push pins
• pink lip balm
• pink nail polish

Kid Valentine Cards

It's been a while since I've blogged about anything besides teaching (because teaching takes over my life when I'm doing it), but these cards were so cute that I couldn't resist putting them up here.  They were so much fun to make with my little five-year-old boy and he enjoyed playing with the leftover bugs.  I just found a Mason jar outline using a Google search, and then typed the lettering myself on top of the image using text boxes in Word.  

Here is the Outline that I liked

I found the bugs at JoAnns and my five-year-old helped to adhere them with dimensionals.  We are always looking for alternatives to candy for holiday events and this was a great one.

Geocache Awesome

This summer the boys and I started a whole new hobby: geocaching.  Basically, geocaching is looking for treasure using a GPS.  Now that phones are so smart, the geocaching app can be downloaded to your phone and the GPS on your phone can be used to help you locate geocaches.  This hobby is perfect for my kids, because we love to be outside, we love all things pirate - including treasure and it is just challenging enough if we pick the right caches.  I set a goal for myself to create a geocache every time that we found 25 caches ourselves - you gotta share the love, right?

This geocache is our very first and it had to be good.  First, I had my husband built a "birdhouse" - it has a lid with a clasp that can be opened and eye screws (or whatever those things are called so that it can essentially be operated on a pulley system.  I even had him place a little perch on the house and the boys came up with the idea of affixing (we used superglue) the small dragon rather than a bird.  We made the house using scrap wood around our house and my husband even went so far as to spray paint it for us.

Our cache box was super unique, so it seemed like the "prizes" should be too.  Most caches are pretty simple and the prizes are pretty generic.  I wanted to make this box about something bigger than silly trinkets, so I came up with the idea to hide Random Acts of Kindness inside of eggs (it is a birdhouse) that people could take and complete.  I also left some blank sheets of paper so that rather than leaving swag, people could replace the eggs with their own ideas for ways to treat others/the environment/animals/etc. kindly.  I created this explanation for the "prizes" in our box.

I wanted the R.A.K. to be really good.  At first I tried to just come up with my own ideas, but then I found this after searching online for a while: http://www.randomactsofkindness.org/kindness-ideas.  I printed out some of my favorites and tried to make certain there were ones that would apply to all different age groups.  We folded them up and placed them inside some old Easter eggs.

I wanted to do something a tad different and in keeping with the cache theme for the First to Find prize - for you "muggles" - or non-cachers - this is a prize for whoever finds your cache first after it has been listed.  We got a gift card and encouraged the finder (in the spirit of RAK) to pass it forward.

 We placed all of our supplies - eggs, log, extra sheets of paper, pen, etc. -  in an airtight plastic container.

 I made and laminated a sign explaining to people to lower down the birdhouse and look inside once they reached the cache coordinates.

 Here are some pictures of what our cache looks like hiding in the woods.  The boys and I had a lot of fun finding the perfect spot for this and so far it has received a lot of geocaching love from everyone who has found it.

Do you want to find this cache?  If you are new to geocaching, check out www.geocaching.com to sign up and start playing.  This cache is called Welcome to the Jungle and here is the geocaching number: GC59YDP.

Preserving Rhubarb

Perhaps you took my advice in my previous post and grew rhubarb.  You used it in every way that you could think of and maybe took some of my suggestions from this post:
http://roselynrobison.blogspot.com/2014/06/5-reasons-to-grow-10-ways-to-use-rhubarb.html
It took a few years but now your plants are huge and producing more than you can use in the season.  You could always give the extra away, but if you want to preserve this small slice of summer, that is another very easy option.

 First harvest your rhubarb, the proper way to do this is to pull up and out until the stock is removed.  Rinse the stalks and chop them into 1-1.5" pieces.

 Blanch (that means submerge them in boiling water) for 1.5 minutes.

 Put this in ice water and let it cool, then strain it to remove some excess water.

Place it in a freezer bag and remove as much excess air as possible.  Make certain to label and date your bag and place it in the deep freezer.  This does wonders for the soul in mid-winter when you are dying for a little sunshine and taste of summer.

Letter Party: Celebrating Success in Learning

Two summers ago my son was learning his letters.  We worked every day on identification of both lower and uppercase letters, the sounds that each letter made and writing each letter.  To motivate him I made a poster to chart our progress and promised him a letter party if he could complete the entire poster.  When I made the promise, I had no idea what a letter party was, but as the time drew near for the celebration, an idea began to develop:

Here is the chart that I made.  I pinned it to the wall and each time he had "mastered" one aspect of letter learning her earned a star or got to cross out the letter.  The bottom reads "Letter Party" - to keep him motivated.

 First, we decorated.  I used my Cricut to cut letter shapes - which were hung from the ceiling and we pulled out the letter mat that someone gave us for beneath the kid's table.  Someone had given my husband a framed reading poster as a gag gift, and we changed out our normal art for this.

 On the kid's table we had playdough and all of the letter cut-outs from a letter set.

 The adult table had a "runner" of letter cards we had been using to learn our letters.

 For food I made the letters "T", "O" and "I" from carrots and toothpicks.

 I cut cantaloupe for the letter "C".

 I made macaroni and cheese with vegetable alphabet noodles mixed in.

 We even let Thayer invite some friends.

 Everyone had a party hat: just a band of paper with the first letter of their name on it.

 In preparation for the party, Thayer and Gavin (his guest) wrote out the names of all of the guests on the paper we had down as tablecloths.  The left side is Gavin's writing and the right side is Thayer.

Even desert had a letter theme - we had cookies and ice cream with Organic Letter of the Day cookies.

I saved all of my supplies for when the next one does this.  The next summer we learned to read...