Halloween Greeting 2017

The kids worked hard on their costumes this year!  Blossom made a peacock costume and Reed was Agent Pleakley as part of a Lilo & Stitch group costume.
Here's my creative kids:

Here's Reed's whole crew before they headed out:

Pretend Trees and Real Cake!

If I had it my way, we'd totally ignore the Christmas holiday season.  My kids are mostly fine with that, but do like to have *something* to decorate the house and of course like receiving a few thoughtful gifts!  Each year, the tree is a creative problem-solving task.
This year, I found a bunch of felt at the thrift store and the kids got to work!

I cut out a large tree shape and taped it to the wall.  The kids worked probably a solid hour on making ornaments.

Reed made a sweet Pokemon ball:

ZB cut a few large shapes and then cut up little scraps.  Now, these ornaments can be mixed & matched on different days, since nothing is fastened together, besides the magic of felt stickiness.

And in the last couple days since we've made this - ZB has woken up first thing in the morning to re-arrange ornaments or make new ones (or change old ones).

Earlier this week, Reed found a Southern Living 1986 Cookbook at the Goodwill.  He LOVES it! He's been busy making shopping lists, and cooking up a storm.  Today, he made mini pound cakes.  Fortunately, ZB informed us that it's Dolly's birthday today, so the cake would be in honor of her :)  It was delicious!

Rainbow Cape!

We had such a sweet (but too short!) visit with Sissa and Big Pa this weekend.  ZB was just tickled to get to reconnect with her grandparents.  And it starts a month of seeing all the grandparents, actually!  Sissa and ZB got to play dress-up, put on a puppet show and even do each other's hair.

The following day, ZB reminded me I had never made her the rainbow cape she had requested probably a month ago.  Such a slacker am I :)

ZB helped me choose and iron the fabrics.  I cut pieces while she drew shapes on scraps and cut those out.

I told her I would sew it after she went to bed.  She instructed me to wrap it in a piece of silk, tie it with a ribbon and put it in a gift bag, so there could be present-opening in the morning. ha!  This kid cracks me up!

 I think it turned out awfully cute, and ZB is pleased as well!

Homemade Halloween

Clay has decided he is too old for trick or treating.  He's 15, so it's not any great surprise :)  He did walk around to some friends houses who were having Halloween parties.  He and a few of his friends printed off pictures of a singer's face and used them as a mask and that was it for them!

Reed and Blossom, however, got fully in the spirit.  Reed worked for so long on his Link costume (from the Legend of Zelda).  He actually made a wooden shield by himself several months ago.  Then, he designed the costume and meticulously painted the shield just right!

Blossom wanted to be Tiger Lily from Peter Pan.  Every little part had to be just right.  She painted some boots just the right color, even!  The dress was pretty quick to sew and we had a fun time making our first yarn wig.

Reed went trick-or-treating with a group of homeschool boys.  ZB and I went with another group of friends who mostly have younger girls:

Blossom got about 20 pieces of candy and was delighted!  Hope everyone had a fun holiday!

Pre-Halloween

Halloween is in the air!  We are prepping for the Halloween Festival for the homeschool co-op (which I am helping to organize this year), making costumes and cramming in  few Autumn activities in any spare time!

Yesterday, I took Reed, Blossom and one of her friends to the corn maze.  They LOVED it!  For the first time, Blossom actually did the maze!
First, they practiced in the hay maze.

They entered the maze quite excited, though about 1/2 way through we had to take a little break!

After we found all the stations and hole-punched our map, Taran and Reed did the second, smaller maze.  Blossom was feeling about done with mazes until she found out that one maze was a story maze!  The stations told parts of a story, she loved that!

Next, we checked out the hill slides.  Blossom had forgotten that she came here 2 years ago and did the slides all by herself.  Here's her friend going down the slide, and Blossom sitting reluctantly at the top:

After much coaxing, she finally went down, and had no interest in doing it again.  While the boys slid to their heart's delight, Blossom sat at the bottom making a pile of straw... which then became a pillow for her to rest on!

We all had some fun in the corn box before we had to pack up for the day!

We had other things to do with our day after all!  Like make Halloween costumes!  Reed has actually been working on his for quite some time.  Blossom changed her mind so much about what to wear, that I had to put off making hers until pretty close to the holiday.  She is going to be Tiger Lily from the Peter Pan movie.  The costume still needs some tweaking and final details, but here's what we made so  far:

To end on a totally random note, just for an excuse to include more photos of this sweet girl, these are from dinner last night.  She was cracking us up.  She finished most of her dinner and proceeded to take her fork directly to the saurkraut jar.

I was a little worried about the size of bites she was taking, but she just kept munching away!  The girl loves her kraut!

Awesome Dinosaur Pinata

Prepping for ZB's 4th birthday party was lots of fun!  She insisted that a pinata was essential for the party, and wanted it to be chicken shaped.  On the first day of construction, she changed her mind and wanted it to be a dinosaur.  She chose an apatosaur, and we started construction!

First the balloon and newspaper inner structure were built, then the first layer of goopy paper mache.  I know there are fancier ways to do this, but I stayed old school with newspaper and a basic flour/water glue.

After it dried overnight, ZB decided it needed "thorns" (spikes).  So these were added.  They are the dividers from egg carton.

One more layer was added that day, and left to dry.  When it was all dry the next day, we stuffed it full of treasures (kazoos, dark chocolate squares, gummy snacks, magnifying glasses, etc.)  Then time for the first layer of paint.  ZB decided it was to be purple.

Details were added:

On her birthday eve, when she was tucked in bed, B blew up all the balloons, and we set the finished dino in the balloon jungle as a fun wake-up surprise (she was quite delighted by the scene)!

Iron Reed

At Reed's one-week check-up for his wrist, they removed his cast, took an x-ray, and determined it still needed a cast (well, duh! It had only been a week).  This time he chose plain white.  He had a project in mind.

He wanted to recreate Iron Man ... well, Iron Man's arm to be exact.  I think we did a pretty good job.  Plus, he now has a laser on his palm, so he's a happy camper.

This was done with acrylic paint, a steady hand and a patient 11 year old.

Cloud Dough

We have been soaking up the warmth these last few days, as I know it will disappear tomorrow.  I learned about Cloud Dough on Pinterest and had to try it out.  It was so simple and I thought the kids might be into it for 15 minutes or so.  They loved it!  It occupied Blossom and her friend for a solid 30 minutes and they kept coming back to it for a couple hours.

It's soft and squishy, but not wet.  Also very messy - best for outside.  Bonus point for the 3 year olds to be able to make it themselves.

Cloud Dough is made with one 5lb bag of flour and one standard-size bottle of baby oil (I bought the Johnson & Johnson shea butter one and it smelled pretty non-offensive :)  Mix them together and you've got Cloud Dough!  We added powdered tempera paint for color (food coloring will not work here).  I'm glad to have this super quick recipe in my stash for a fun and easy activity!

A New House

A new house for ZB's dolls, that is.  I had seen some ideas for cardboard doll houses online and after seeing some that were extreme (sliding doors, wired lighting, spiral staircases, etc), I found a simple and sturdy version that suited me much better!  Here's the basic design I chose for ZB's first dollhouse:

After fitting the pieces together, I hot-glued a second level on with the scrap cardboard.  We had some friends over and all the kids happily joined in making this a special play spot!

The kids and I worked for nearly 2 hours adding ribbons, curtains, coloring, making furnture, slides and stairs. They deserved a popsicle break!  These are made with goat milk kefir, strawberries, bananas, grass-fed gelatin and cod liver oil.  Pretty much when all that nutritious stuff is blended with strawberries and frozen on a stick, it magically tastes delicious!

After their break, I got the toddlers back to work.  We went the garden and harvested peas.  I sure love snow peas, but if you're like me and neglect harvesting for several days, you end up with big fat peas.  Just the job for little hands.

After a while the little ones just wanted to eat and play instead of shell peas, and I had a hard time keeping any in the bowl to make lunch with!

After our friends went home, ZB finally got to settle down and help her tiny My Little Pony friends settle into their new house.

It was a good day with friends and making new toys always feels productive.  Looking forward to a relaxing weekend of camping!