Kid Decorated Birthday Cakes

Our sweet baby girl is 3!!!  Time flies!  E's birthday party was lots of fun, and much more work than we anticipated (as usual!).  We started letting the girls decorate their own bday cakes when O(6) turned 3...this is always a HUGE hit with the girls.  They love the decorating process, and they are always so proud of their cakes.  I love to see them being so creative, and it takes the pressure of creating the "perfect" cake off of me (or my mom!).

E(3) was happy and proud to decorate her own "cake"...a fairy garden dirt cake (made with pudding and crushed oreos).

An action shot of the decorating process.


She received Playmobil fairies as one of her balloon countdown surprises, and we used them to decorate the cake...SO much fun!




Here is a link to E's cake from last year.  O's 4th bday cake was one of my favorites!  Here is a link to it.

My Apologies...

for the serious lack of updating to this blog lately!  I just can't seem to find the time or motivation to keep it up.  We've been super busy planning for and hosting E's 3rd bday party (which was this past Saturday), and since then we've been recovering and schooling.  Busy days!  I have lots of half written posts, and I'll try to finish one to post soon...  Also, I'm WAY behind on email, so please be patient!  Thanks!!!

American Girl Fun Packs

O(6) received a Kaya fun pack as her first monthly American Girl fun pack (this mama made "subscription" was one of her 6th birthday gifts).  In her first package, she received Kaya paper dolls (bought from ebay), a couple of Kaya stickers (from Michael's), and a Native American toob.

We have had fun reading about Kaya and pretending to be Kaya this month!  One day last week, we pretended to be Kaya and her family all day.  O(6) was Brown Deer, E(2) was Kaya (she always insists that she is Kaya), and I was Eetsa (the mom).  E called me "Pizza" all day, and it was incredibly cute.  O and I kept smiling at each other in that "isn't she cuuute?" kind of way :)

I braided both girls hair, and they wore their moccasins.



O wore her Native American dress (making a similar dress for E is on our to-do list!).  O gathered grass for making baskets and stew.


We planned to build a teepee, but the ground was saturated, so we decided that our treehouse made a good Native American home.   The girls gathered twigs for a pretend fire and leaves for a stew.  I "ground" the leaves and other stew ingredients.


Everybody wanted a turn grinding up the food.


Then the girls started making baskets.  They shredded bark that they gathered and gathered straw.




The girls are now obsessed with making baskets, and they are having SO much fun!






I changed my role from Eetsa to Kautsa (Kaya's grandmother) and read stories to them from a Kaya book while they worked.



We had an afternoon thunderstorm, so we went inside to play with O's Kaya paper dolls.  We all sat on the kitchen floor together and spent almost 2 hours cutting out the paper dolls and accessories while listening to 2 Kaya books via Tales 2 Go on the ipad.  O and I divided the cutting duties while E arranged the paper dolls and accessories.  Surprisingly, E seems to love the paper dolls even more than O does...Luckily, O has not hesitated to share with her!

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Glow Stick Ring Toss

We had SO much fun playing glow stick ring toss when we were vacationing at the beach.  We had glow stick night, and I handed out several packs of glow sticks to the girls.  They had glow stick bracelets, necklaces, and glasses...SO much fun!   To play ring toss, I stuck one of the glow sticks in between 2 boards in the deck, and then we threw (or tried to) the necklaces onto the stick.  This was even more fun than I anticipated!









O(6) was excited to make glow stick Olympic rings!


After we played ring toss, we took a glow stick walk on the beach to find ghost crabs!

The idea to play glow stick ring toss came from this blog via Pinterest.

Perfect Little Popsicles

The girls have really loved popsicles this summer, but I don't love all of the sugar and artificial colors in the store bought popsicles.  So, I was excited to find ring pop popsicle molds on Amazon!

The girls LOVE these popsicles, and I love them, too, since I make them with orange juice to make them a healthy treat!

These small popsicles are the perfect size for our girls, and they love to have them as after breakfast and lunch treats!

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Absorption Color Wheel

When I saw this super fun and simple science experiment via Pinterest, I thought it would be perfect for our upcoming beach vacation (gotta fit a little bit of school in each week :), and it was!  I decided to expand on it a little to make a color wheel.

To do this experiment, you need 6 clear glasses, water, 6 plain white paper towels, and food coloring (red, blue, and yellow).   We filled every other glass about 2/3 of the way full with water (a total of 3 glasses).  The girls took turns putting food coloring in each glass with water.  So, we had one glass with blue water, one glass with yellow water, and one glass with red water.


Between each of these glasses was an empty glass, and the 6 glasses formed a circle.  We rolled the paper towels and connected the glasses with the paper towels (this may not make sense, but it makes sense if you look at the picture).


Then we watched and waited.  After a few minutes, we could see the water beginning to slowly travel up the paper towels.  We kept watching...


We left and came back later to check on the progress.


We went into town for snow cones and to play at the playground and came back to find this!


The colors had traveled all the way up the paper towels and were beginning to mix!  We were all VERY excited!
When we woke up the next morning, this is what we saw.  The colors were mixing within the glasses, but they were very dark and the colors on the paper towels hadn't really mixed.


So, we kept watching, and by the end of the day we had this!



By the next morning, the paper towels had soaked up all the water and were beginning to dry out.


Throughout this process, we discussed the "why" of it...capillary action and the mixing of primary colors to form secondary colors.  We were very excited by how well this project turned out, and we saved our colorful and beautiful paper towels for a future art project.