Mission : Play With Your Food

Just a quick pop-by say-hi. I thought I’d share something I came up with to distract my adorable monster Olivia (who refers to herself as both Olivia AND Monster so you know its legit) yesterday. She is pretty obedient, but of the school of ‘mom didn’t specifically say Don’t Climb Up The Side Of The Six Story Building or at least not in the last ten minutes’ and treats creating chaos like it’s her job. Yesterday I had a moment of desperation brilliance and Mission: Distract Olivia aka Play With Your Food was born.

I quickly (and somewhat poorly) drew a house, car, and little playground for Olivia to play with Teddy Grahams on. This bought me a good 15-20 minutes, not counting the time spent adding a sandbox here and a pool there later to add more distraction. If you’re curious about the dots, I had started off with dots for her to place them and some candy gummies on, which was also successful but not half as time-buying as Teddy Graham Playground.

Good luck with distracting your own lovely little monsters, and let me know in the comments what you’ve come up with in moments of desperation brilliance!

Summertime, and the Living is Thrifty–fun&games

Sometimes the best kinds of thrifty fun can happen when you go with your impulses and use the most basic things you have available. Blanket forts, reading a favourite book with crazy voices, and simple sock puppets are all examples of simple, classic fun you can have with your kids. So put a no-TV-before-noon ban on this summer and cruelly force your kids to play like you did when you were a kid!!

Some more simple fun:

Small socks taped onto a headband.

Nicole declared that morning that she wanted to be a bunny. I was in the middle of folding laundry and possibly even had a baby sock in my hand right at that moment, so I thought, meh, why not?! If I had done it to show you a sweet, aesthetically pleasing project, I would have probably at least done matching socks. More likely there would have been felt, and glue, and a perfectly pretty project. This, however, was just good clean fun, 100% for Nicole’s benefit!  

She had a blast; other variations can be using long socks tucked into waistbands for tails, add extra arms to be a bug or spider with stuffed pantyhose (save your torn hose!) - pin the waist area to a shirt and then use yarn to connect the end of the pantyhose arms to your children’s wrists. They don’t care if it looks ghetto, it’s all about the fun!

Don’t have a pool? Pull out any bucket and fill it with water. No, your kids cannot swim in a bucket of water, but you’d be amazed how much they enjoy just having water play! Also, there’s nothing wrong with picking up the $12 pool from Toys R Us and tossing it in your backyard. I empty and refill mine almost every time we use it, since you put so little water in it its no big deal. Plus its clean water so I care not if they decide to drink half of it, or if they go straight from the pool to their beds.

Pool noodles + sprinkler. Most people have sprinklers, and you can pick up a pool noodle for about a dollar, maybe two dollars, depending where you go. Your kids can have an epic battle with the sprinkler; you would not believe how long they can keep themselves entertained this way. Bonus, if you’re cool with it and they’re between four and six (older can generally wield them well enough to sting), they can do epic battle with each other. It is pretty hard for one four year old to hurt another four year old with a pool noodle. Careful though, you know your kids best, and some of them can figure out pretty quickly how to get enough momentum to do some damage.

Kids love to be the epic hero in their own mind. Whether its a battle against the sprinkler or a rousing game of the-carpet-is-made-of-lava, they eat it up. If you feel really sneaky, you can incorporate this into cleanup – set a timer and tell them its a bomb, and the only way to diffuse it is to clean up all the toys in time. Then tear around the house crazily with them, shouting at them to hurry, quick, we’re running out of time! The most ridiculous things can become awesome in your kids eyes if you’re willing to jump in there yourself and act like a looney toon.

Take costumes outside. Obviously this only works on cooler days for some costumes. I am working on building up a dressup box; you can find costumes right after halloween on clearance, or you can often find a great deal at a garage sale. The above costume I bought for $2 at a garage sale. Acting like a wild beast of the forest takes on a whole new level when you’re actually outside. Dress like pirates and go to the park, the play structure is your ship and arrrr, matey, thar she blows! You don’t even need a dress up box for that one; cut up some playclothes to be more ragged, tie on a bandana, and whip up an eyepatch. Be adventurers and pitch a tent in your backyard (or if you don’t have a backyard, pitch a tent in the park! You might get some strange looks, but who cares? Just grin and explain the game and that you’re not moving in for an overnight stay ;) lol). If you do have a backyard, you can even sleep in the tent.

Later this month I’ll show you how to make a temporary tent out of four emptied & cleaned 4L milk jugs, some sheets, some twine, a bunch of clothespins, and either a laundry line or a tree branch. 

What’s your favourite simple kid-pleasing game? We are always up for more ideas around here! 

but of course

hehe, no housefire, but I wound up taking a trip to the local Children’s Museum with my SIL and wasn’t home for most of the day. If it’s any consolation, while you don’t have a tutorial, I don’t have any creamer for my coffee. Boo. D: But hey… STILL WORTH IT. Hours and hours of running and playing? YES PLEASE. Here’s some pictures for you, coincidentally all from my favourite area, the giant tree thingy. That’s the technical term.

Tree slide beaver dam, my SIL supervising climbing children on one side climbing up the other side to get in (2 of my nephews!) Nicole and I, all crawled up inside the dam. Hate me and my naturally sparse eyebrows. Anyone want to do a blog giveaway for eyebrows? I’m so there.Nicole crawling down hugging the fox

And just because I love it, here’s a picture from early in the morning when Nicole woke up and crawled into my lap. Now, don’t think I’m all dolled up early in the morning every day, I tried pincurls last night or I’d be all bedhead-fabulous. Anyways, the way she’s looking up at me, just, oh it slays me. She might sometimes think I’m a butt (her new favourite word, btw. I LOVE TWO-FOUR YEAR OLD BOYS. You say something about your kids’ buttcrack showing and everyone’s favourite word is buttcrack suddenly and your charming two year old is talking about butt this and butt that later that evening.) Wow you think maybe I was diagnosed correctly back in grade two with the whole ADHD thing? It’s just ADD now, be happy for me. Anyways, you know what I mean, mommies and daddies out there, right? That look? Gah. “Mommy you rock, you’re awesome, you fart glitter and moonbeams and you’re the prettiest mommy in the whole world and those jeans make your butt look good BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT BUTT”

Thankfully tomorrow Nicole will have forgotten the word butt. I hope. I’ve been ignoring instead of reacting and that’s the hope/plan.

The Finer Things In Life

When you say it like that, it sounds so nice. In reality, though, I’m talking about something slightly less pleasant – Nicole’s hair. Not that it’s not nice hair. It doesn’t bully other hair, or talk out of turn, or even give sass.  It does, however, fluff up with static like you wouldn’t believe. It also releases the most determined of curls within the hour. The other day I did a pretty half-pony and curled the rest of her head oh-so-nicely. So, an hour later when we went out, she had strange, dishevelled hair that barely hinted of curl. (see previous post to see the strange fluff that her curls ended up as… LOL) Lately I’ve been finding myself inspired by A Princess And Her Hair and Babes In Hairland … but then when it comes to actually doing the hairstyles, while Nicole does have some decent length, there is no real bulk to her hair. If I do two buns they are literally smaller than your average walnut, despite having hair that brushes her shoulder. This twisted ‘braid' headband, however, worked out just perfectly!It was a little tricky to do because I was working with tiny little chunks of hair, but for whatever reason she sat quite agreeably while I twisted from one ear across to the other and then down under the bulk of her hair (using the term bulk very loosely, here) to be secured with a little pony. The headband stayed in until around suppertime, and would have stayed longer except she kept showing people, and whenever she did she of course had to grab at it. It held her hair out of her face as well as an actual headband would have, too. (Well, better, because a headband would have been pulled out or fallen out pretty much immediatly) It probably took about five minutes tops to do the actual twist band after I’d combed out and parted her hair.

So, I totally recommend this for a quick and cute little ‘do if you have a fine-haired missy like mine! if your little bitty doesn’t have bangs you of course just do it in the front of the hair. I’m sure those sites probably explain somewhere how to do this twist, it’s very basic, but if anyone wants a quick little how-to video I’d be happy to oblige. This also works great for adults… if I feel annoyed with my bangs I do this twist ‘braid’ using my bangs and a bit of hair. Here, I’ll show instead of tell:

Okay, I lied, I don’t have a picture of what I’m talking about, but this is close. This is an actual french braid, turning into a braid. If I am twisting, once I get past my forehead I do an X with bobby pins and then let my hair fall over it.

(If you know how to french braid, you can twist. It’s basically using 2 strands of hair instead of three, and only grabbing hair from one side. So you grab hair from the front to add to strand 1, twist around strand 2, grab hair from the front to add to strand 2, twist around strand one, cont’d. Make sense?) 

If you’re interested in more tips on dealing with fine hair, let me know. Nicole got it from me, I’ve been dealing with it all my life, and I’ve gotten to a point where I’m dealing with static less than most of my friends right now. My hair is disgustingly healthy, too.

The Truest Note

Reading the blog Handmade Homeschool and delving into the backlog a bit, which I always do with blogs I'm enjoying, I came across this in the post Thoughts On A Day and I heard the angel chorus referred to in my brain.

Somewhere, somewhen, I came across an article that stated that the cruelest thing which mothers of young children do to each other is clean the house before a playdate. Anyone who’s dropped in on a friend to discover a house in a…ahem…state of flux and felt that sense of angel-chorus-singing-relief knows how true this can be.

Yes, sir, these words do strike a chord. But yes, sir, I clean my house before playdates. Ninetynine percent of the time - depends who is coming over. My bestest buds get to see the toys scattered all over my livingroom floor.

(a quick postscript : if y'all could comment on the composter from the previous post I'd be much obliged. I told my husband I posted his composter and he keeps asking me if anyone has commented on it and he's rather quite anxious. ;) If you're super nice, he'll get excited about it and get me to photo him doing more stuff around the house all tutorial-like; like, porches and playhouses. Which also means he'll put doing said things on the top of his priority list. WE ALL WIN. Get on it!)