The Year of Color {Yellow} Edition

This month's Year of Color snuck right up on me. I kept telling myself I had all the time in the world to come up with some really fabulous yellow stuff, and then boom, it was yesterday.

So, instead of spreading out our fun like we've been doing the past few months, the kids and I did all the yellow things in one afternoon. I thought it might be kind of stressful, but it turns out we all had a lot of fun, learned some new stuff, and not once did I hear the whiny, "I'm boooooooored," or the high pitched screech that can only be made by a 21-month old when she's not getting her way.

I really wanted to find a yellow wall, but that just didn't happen. I settled with the three of us in yellow threads instead. It also needs to be noted that Julia was in a particularly good mood and gave me some good stuff for our pics.

Read

I wanted to find a book dedicated to yellow. But, total procrastination left me with no such luck. However, the kids library is chuck full of books with yellow covers. So, I set the kids to work, and had them pull every single yellow covered book they could find. We spent a good portion of our afternoon snuggled up on Marcus' bed reading some favorites that have been somewhat forgotten.

The particular book we're reading in these photos is Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Seuss, and Marcus absolutely LOVES it. He loves trying to identify all the "wacky" things on each page.

Bake

To keep our afternoon moving along smoothly, I figured a boxed cake mix and some sprinkles would be easy enough. I wasn't wrong. Marcus helped me add all. the. sprinkles. to make a batch of Funfetti Gooey Bars.

With kids you cannot go wrong with sprinkles and white chocolate chips. Full confession: these are a bit too sweet for my liking, but these two had exactly zero issues consuming every last morsel of their bars.

Experiment

If I had to guess, this was Marcus' favorite activity of the afternoon. I can't say I blame him, as I was pretty amazed by it as well. 

We made our own "quicksand" with a super easy recipe of two parts baking soda (I used a half cup) to one part water (a quarter cup), and I tossed in a few drops of yellow food coloring so it would coincide with our theme. We mixed up the concoction until it felt like a solid in our hands, but when left in the mixing bowl it looked like a liquid. We added the quicksand to a cylinder tube we have from another experiment kit, and then went about the house looking for objects we wanted to sink in the quick sand. 

We were pretty optimistic about the number of things we were going to sink. In total we collected 10 items, but ended up only sinking four. Such is life with little kids. 

Our submerged items ended up being a kids spoon, a green crayon, a domino, and a C battery. Before dropping them individually in the quick sand we guessed which items we thought would sink the fastest. Marcus chose the spoon and I selected the C battery. 

Quicksand Reference

It took the spoon 1:13 to sink, the green crayon 1:40 to sink, the domino 1:02, and the battery only :47. 

To date, I think this may be our favorite experiment, and I wouldn't be surprised if this one happens again in the future. 

Craft

Lastly, our craft. I really wanted Julia in on this because the baking and experiment portions are just a little too much for her yet. This one, however, she could totally do, and she actually wanted to do it after seeing Marcus have a go at it first. 

Bee Handprint inspiration

Little bumblebee handprints! A few swipes of yellow and black washable paint along the palms and fingers (exclude the thumbs), a quick dot with a permenant marker for the eye, and few yellow wings snipped out of construction paper, and the kiddos had the cutest little craft done in under five minutes. BAM! That's my kind of craft.

That wraps up May! Don't forget to drop your link if you're joining us this month for all the yellow things!

Next month (6/16) is PURPLE!

An InLinkz Link-up

The Year of Color {Green} Edition

First and foremost, Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

With this month's Year of Color prompt being green a few ideas immediately came to mind. Naturally, St. Patrick's Day was our primary focus.

Let's start with the monthly mom and kids pic.

I've been sporting this t-shirt for the last three or four St. Patrick's Day and it never gets old. There's nothing better than showing a little Iowa love whenever we can! Bonus points for actually being Catholic and part Irish to really the holiday a boost.

Moving along to the more hands-on portion of our green prompt.

Read

While we don't have any St. Patrick's Day books in our collection, we DO have Green Eggs and Ham! Per our usual routine while Julia naps, we pulled this book off the shelf and got cozy. 

Since reading this for the prompt Marcus has requested to hear Green Eggs and Ham several times. 

Bake

This may be the easiest "baking" I've ever done. I mean, does a two "ingredient" recipe that calls for microwaving even count as baking?? But, Marcus helped with a majority of it, and he loved the snack as the outcome, so I'm calling it baking.

Shamrock Pretzels

Small pretzels

1 bag of white candy melts 

10-15 drops of green food coloring

Sprinkles - optional (but necessary)

Parchment paper

Melt candy melts according to package instructions, add green food coloring.

Dip pretzel into green candy melt.

Lay pretzel on parchment paper, repeat three more times, and arrange pretzels so they resemble shamrocks. 

Add sprinkles before candy coating dries.

Right on cue, Julia woke from her nap juuuuuuust in time to eat a shamrock pretzel of her own.

Experiment

When in doubt, grab baking soda and vinegar. Explosions are a sure fire way to keep a kid excited and entertained. With this experiment we simply added blue food coloring to baking soda, yellow food coloring to vinegar, grabbed a bottle with a skinny neck, and went to town.

We talked about how the vinegar reacts with the baking soda to make it explode. We also talked about how when the blue and yellow colors were mixed the explosion was green. You know, simple science stuff.

When the explosion first happened Marcus was a little unsure about the whole thing. But as the fizzing and erupting continued he thought it was really cool.

Marcus has asked no less than 347 times to do this experiment again. And, who am I to say no?

Green Explosion

1/4 cup baking soda

5-10 drops blue food coloring

1/2 cup vinegar 

10-15 drops yellow food coloring

Mix baking soda and blue food coloring together, stir until blue is fully incorporated.

Combing vinegar and yellow food coloring, mix so yellow is fully incorporated.

Add baking soda to a bottle with a funneled top (this makes the explosion more dramatic).

Pour vinegar into bottle.

Watch the reaction create and explosion.

Since the Green Explosion lasted about 10 seconds, I figured we would try our hand at an experiment that took a few days. 

We simply put vinegar on pennies and waited to see what happened. 

After about four days we saw that our pennies were no longer shiny and copper colored. Rather, they had turned green where the vinegar had settled.

Green Pennies

A few pennies

Vinegar

Paper towel

Place pennies on a paper towel.

Pour vinegar on the pennies and saturate the paper towel. 

Allow pennies to set for several hours/days. 

The longer the pennies set in vinegar the more green they become.

Note: We had to add more vinegar to the pennies and paper towel on the second day.

Each morning of this experiment we would check on our pennies to see if any more green had formed. It was kind of fun to have that to look forward to before we headed into our morning routines. 

Twenty-four hours with vinegar on the pennies.

Four days with vinegar on the pennies.
The color changed from green to more of a turquoise, but that's still considered part of the green family, right?

For this one, we talked about the reaction of the vinegar and copper, and how that made the pennies change colors.

Craft

This is literally the easiest craft we've ever done. Marshmallows, green paint, and some paper. 

Marshmallow Shamrock Stamps

A handful of marshmallows

Green paint

Paper

Paint brush

Dip marshmallows in green paint and stamp to create a shamrock leaf.

Use paint brush to add a stem. 

The end.

Poof. Shamrocks that were turned into snail mail for the grandparents! 

This craft took about 5 minutes, and that was just enough time to hold Marcus' attention before he asked me if he could eat the marshmallows rather than paint with them.

That's a wrap on March's green prompt! 

Did you sprinkle this month with green? If so, be sure to link up with the Year of Color below!

Next month's colors are PASTELS!

For those who like to plan well in advance:
May's prompt is YELLOW
June's color is PURPLE

An InLinkz Link-up

The Year of Color {Pink} Edition

February is filled with all things love, and hearts, and red, and PINK! So, this month's Year of Color was devoted to pink!

I knew instantly where I wanted to head to snap a few photos with my babes this month. It wasn't even a question, I had to get to this spot.

If you saw the Wall Crawl - LA Love post a couple days ago I hinted at this wall, but I wanted to wait to share it today.
After Scott so kindly snapped a few pics of the kids and me I was able to convince him to jump in some shots as well. After seeing Scott with the kids, I think he should make cameos more often!
Marcus asked to try his hand at taking photos, so I passed the camera over and he started snapping away.  Marcus took the last picture of Scott, Julia, and me. Minus Scott's impeccable ability to spice up a photo, Marcus did a pretty good job!
The infamous pink Pall Smith wall can be found at 8221 Melrose Avenue.

After the pink photo op I did a little digging to read, bake, experiment, and craft with pink as our primary influence.

READ

Thanks to Julia's growing library, we had Pinkalicious on hand. I was initially worried Marcus would find the story "too girly," but he thoroughly enjoyed reading all about pink cupcakes.

BAKE

When I stumbled upon strawberry chocolate chip cookies I knew we had a winner. Not only was the recipe so easy Marcus could help whip them up, they were also mighty tasty. I had two little ones who couldn't have agreed more.

Recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction

Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 box strawberry cake mix

1 tsp baking powder

2 large eggs

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 and 1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper.

In large bowl, mix together cake mix and baking powder. Set aside. In a smaller bowl, whisk eggs, oil and vanilla by hand. Add egg mixture to cake mixture and stir to form dough. Stir vigorously until all of the pockets of dry cake mix are gone. Gently mix in chocolate chips.

Drop rounded balls of dough (about 2 Tbsp) onto prepared baking sheet. Make sure balls of dough are taller than they are wide.

Bake for 10 minutes. Do not let the cookies get brown. Allow to cool on baking sheet for 3 minutes - they will be very soft at first. As they cool, tops may settle down. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.  

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EXPERIMENT

Pink flubber! Remember that gak, flubber stuff that was cool circa 1990? It was right there along side the silly putty and what not. Well, we attempted a super easy recipe and made our own.

Marcus helped with about 80% of the creation of the flubber. Julia tried several times to eat the flubber, and failed miserably with each attempt. The entertainment of the flubber lasted about as long as it took to make the stuff, but it was fun to see it all come together and try make bodily noises with it in a shot glass (just a heads up, we were not able to successfully make one single fart noise).
Flubber
1/2 cup white glue
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup hot water
1/2 tsp Borax
Food coloring (we used 6 drops of red)
Mix 1/2 cup glue and 1/4 cup cornstarch in a glass bowl. Add food coloring and mix again.
In a separate bowl, mix 1/4 cup hot water and 1/2 tsp Borax until it is dissolved. 
Add it to the glue mixture and stir again.
Get your hands in there to mix and work the flubber until it is no longer sticky.

CRAFT

This one was super simple, fast and easy, as any paint craft should be when it involves an 18-month old.

I know you wipe some away, but these prints were made to stay.
So keep them forever, a treasure they will be.
A special, "I love you."
For you, from me.

I had Marcus use a lighter pink to create the large heart with his hand prints. Once that was dried I wrangled Julia up and used a darker pink to create the smudgy mess in the middle using her hand prints. Once everything was dry I added the little saying to the bottom of the prints and mailed them off to the grandparents for Valentine's Day! Nothing too fancy, but full of sentiment and love.

Phew! That wraps up February's PINK prompt! If you've joined in the fun this month be sure to drop your link below so we can see how pink has inspired you.

Next month the color prompt is GREEN. We'll be linking up on Friday, March 17 - St. Patrick's Day!

An InLinkz Link-up

Flubber source: Paper Tape & Pins
Strawberry Chocolate Chip Cookie source: Sally's Baking Addiction

3 Easy Handprint Valentine Crafts

I've come to terms with the fact that Marcus isn't real big into crafting. It's just not his thing, and that's ok. But, that's not to say I don't want some of those cute crafts I see floating all over social media to happen in our home, too.

So, for Valentine's Day I decided Marcus, Julia and I would whip up three handprint/footprint crafts that would require very little time from either child, but would still fulfill my desire to have said items don our home and make for some cute Valentine's to send to the grandparents.

May it also be noted I did these pretty much all at the same time. We were able to knock out hand and foot prints rather quickly, and the kiddos were able to move on to their next desired activity.

Hand & Footprint Valentine Bouquet

What You'll Need
Paper or cardstock
Paint colors of your choice - I'd recommend three different colors for the flower
Paint brush
Marker
Two little hands and two little feet

How It Comes Together
This is pretty self-explanatory.
I first painted did Marcus' hands and made the flowers, and let those dry. Pro tip - I have zero patience for paint drying, so I threw the paper in the microwave for about a minute. Bam! Dried paint.
After the flowers were dry I quickly painted Julia's feet and pressed them down onto the paper to create leaves. Again, threw the paper in the microwave for speedy dry time.
After the leaves and flowers were properly dry I added a few stems to finish off the bouquet.
I then added a the little saying about "hand" picked bouquet with a marker.

This one will be dropped in the mail and sent off to the grandmas and grandpas.
Total craft time: approximately 10 minutes

Little Love Bug

What You'll Need
Paper or card stock for background as well as wings
Paint
Paint Brush
Glue
Marker
One little hand

How It Comes Together
This one was a Marcus-only effort.
We started with painting Marcus hand and adding the print to the card stock. Then I threw the paper in the microwave to dry.
Meanwhile, I quickly cut out two hearts that would eventually form the bug wings.
After the paint was dry Marcus helped me apply glue to the hearts, and then he helped place the hearts onto the bug's body.
With a marker I added the bug's eyes, nose, and mouth.
At the bottom I wrote the little "Love Bug" phrase.

Again, we'll be sending these to the grandmas and grandpas for a little Valentine's Day love.
Total craft time: approximately 10 minutes

LOVE Canvas

Please note the little smudge spot between the "V" and "E". That's courtesy of Julia's drool. I wanted to fix it, but thought better, this perfectly reflects what stage the kids are in their little lives.

What You'll Need
Canvas large enough for your child(ren)s hand and foot prints - this one is an 11x11
Paint color for canvas background and paint color for letters
One little hand and one little foot

How It Comes Together
Lightly apply a base color all over the canvas.
Allow canvas to dry. This I allowed to happen organically, as I was a little worried what might happen if I threw the canvas into the microwave.
After canvas is totally dry apply paint to one hand and place where you would like the "O" to be. Do the same for the feet, and where you would like the "V" to be.
After the "O" and "V" have dried complete the canvas with the "L" and "E".

This one is going to be Scott's Valentine's gift from the kids - even though Scott did help me get Julia's wiggly little feet onto the canvas. So, not so much of a surprise for him. But, it will be fun for Marcus to give his dad a gift, so all isn't lost.

And there you have it, three crafts that took about 15 minutes of participation from my kids - just enough time! - and little keepsakes that have met all my mom-crafting dreams.
Total craft time: approximately 4 hours (including dry time for paint)

There you have it. Three quick and easy Valentine crafts that even the most unenthused crafter can do to appease the momma desire to have a little hand or footprint creation.