Easter Bunny Handprint Cards

O, M, and I made Easter Bunny cards for their grandparents today. We had lots of fun, and the cards turned out really cute. I love handprint art, so we used their handprints to paint the bunnies. I let them each choose a color and a color of construction paper. Then I painted their palms, their pointer fingers, and their ring fingers. We pushed their palms onto the construction paper to make the bunnies.





After the paint dried, the girls glued on googly eyes and beads for a nose.








M drew her whiskers and mouths on her bunnies, and I drew the whiskers and mouths for O. This was fun and easy!








 

The Art Shelf...

seems to be in a constant state of disarray! We must do better!



I'm hoping this post will motivate me to get a little more organized :)

Making Easter Bunny Smores

After seeing this post, I decided that O and I would make these Easter Bunny Smores as a welcome gift for my sister and niece who are visiting us during their Spring Break. O loves candy (but doesn't get much of it), so she was THRILLED! First, we put in the m & m's (we typically avoid artificial dyes, but we make exceptions, especially for holidays). O reminded me so much of myself (and my mom and sister) when she picked up a broken m & m and said "Oh, I should eat this one since it's broken!" She also really enjoyed putting the peeps into the jar, and she made sure to lick her fingers after each one. I hope Mem and M don't mind a few O germs :) We poured 1 and a 1/4 cups of m & m's into the bottom of the jar, and then put 8 peeps on top of the m & m's.








 
Hammering the graham crackers was also lots of fun! The recipe calls for a sleeve of crushed graham crackers. After they were crushed, we put them in a baggie with a 1/3 cup of brown sugar.



Here is our finished jar of Easter Bunny Smores! O was SO proud and excited to present the jar to my sister and niece when they arrrived at our house on Tuesday afternoon.




The girls and I cooked the smores this morning, and they were yummy! Luckily, both girls fit in the Kitchen Helper, which makes cooking MUCH easier! They took turns pouring the m & m's into the bowl (I switched the mixture to a mason jar since it was bigger and looked nicer. However, I still couldn't fit the baggie of graham crackers and brown sugar into the jar).



They enjoyed pulling the bunny peeps into small pieces, but I had to watch them closely because they wanted to eat any peeps that were stuck to their fingers, and they ALL stuck to their fingers!



We added a 1/2 cup (1 stick) of melted butter and a tsp of vanilla to the mixture and stirred.



I pressed the mixture into a greased 9 inch baking dish and baked it at 350 for about 15 minutes. It came out crumbly, but delicious!!!

Her Obsession Continues...

O LOVES Obama! Her infatuation with him is hilarious :) It started when we watched the inaugeration. She knew it was a big deal since we NEVER turn the tv on during the day. Ever since then, she gets SO excited when she sees Obama on the news. She says "there's Obama. there's Obama!" Sometimes she waves at him and then sadly asks "why Obama not wave at me?" She obviously hasn't had too much experience with tv :) When we hear Elliott come home from work, she sometimes says "it might be Obama!" A few days ago, she continued to pretend he was Obama after he came in and called him "Obama" all night. It was hilarious! She insisted that Guh-guh help her spell Obama's name using the plush letters on Friday (while Ell and I were packing for our trip).

Shoes, Shoes, Shoes

Recently O has started purposely wearing her shoes on the wrong feet. She's says "it feels funny!" Ell was a little hesitant to let her walk around the hotel with her shoes on the wrong feet because he was afraid we'd look like neglectful parents :)

She also loves to wear "mismatched shoes." She thinks this is hilarious!

A Mini Vacation

We decided to take a mini vacation (using credit card points for 3 free hotel nights!) for my birthday weekend. The highlight of the trip was the indoor pool at the hotel! Every morning, O woke up saying "I'm ready to go to the pool!" It rained all day on Sunday, and we were glad since it gave us a good excuse to hang out at the hotel all day to swim and sleep. We took a 3 hour family nap, which was wonderful :) Elliott and I were glad for O to get more experience swimming since the lake will soon be warm enough for swimming.




On Monday we went to an art museum which had a children's section. I was glad to finally take O to an art museum, and we all really enjoyed ourselves. O and Ell are playing with the Kapla blocks. O enjoyed herself, but Ell REALLY enjoyed himself. I think he may get a set of Kapla blocks for his birthday!



Ell's masterpiece (with a little help from O and me).



My favorite part of the museum was this magnetic sculpture wall. O was very engaged in this activity. I'd love to somehow replicate this at our house :)

Salad Spinner Art

Hooray! We finally made salad spinner art! This activity has been on my to-do list since last summer, but I didn't have a salad spinner. Last week when we were at Guh-guh and Grandpa's house, we borrowed my sister's salad spinner for the activity.



O enjoyed the activity, but my almost 5 year old niece LOVED this activity! I think she would have continued making art for hours and hours if we hadn't had to stop for lunch.


 
We used food coloring since my sister plans to use her salad spinner for salad eventually. We learned that the food coloring spreads better if you use only one color at a time and quickly put the top on and spin it. Otherwise, the food coloring soaks into the paper too much and won't spread as you spin the salad spinner.

More on Teaching Spanish...

Thanks to everyone for your responses to my teaching Spanish post! Boca Beth sent us free materials to try and then review on the blog (we'll start with these materials on Tuesday). I am really excited about this since O and I have both enjoyed a Boca Beth song on youtube. I am also intrigued by the Little Pim series, and O and I have watched the videos on youtube. I am interested in Flip Flop Spanish and Teach Them Spanish. If anyone has used either of these books, I would love to hear what you think!

99 Cents Shipping at Let's Explore!

Just in case you don't know already, Let's Explore has 99 cents shipping until Monday. I am a sucker for shipping deals (and free shipping, of course), and I thought some of you might be, too :) I REALLY don't need to buy anything, but I may get a few art supplies for O for her birthday since I have trouble resisting a good shipping deal. I think these window crayons would be great for her since the majority of our house is made up of large glass doors. Also, O is getting an art tote for her birthday (that I bought from Let's Explore last summer along with the crayon rocks and bird rubbing plates. I tend to buy waayyyyyyyyyyy ahead of time!), so the crayons will go nicely with the tote. I'm also thinking of getting these crayons and this sticker scene. So...now I'm going to spend a little while trying to talk myself out of buying anything, but then I'll probably place my order tomorrow :) I'll justify it since it's my birthday, and it makes me happy to buy fun things for my little sweetie.