Valentine's Day Craft

This morning I kept it simple because I had two extra kids joining us.  One little girl, D, hasn't really been to our house before so I wasn't sure how she'd do with crafts and didn't want to overwhelm her with a long drawn our activity.  She did great and really seemed to enjoy herself though!

Anyway, today we made heart valentines and decorations.  We talked about people we love and that was pretty much the extent of it.

Working on heart art

The finished projects

I hung Grace and Caleb's on the pantry door to decorate

Fun picture of Caleb, Grace and Livi I had to throw in

Lemons

On today's agenda for activity week we spent the morning talking about lemons.  The foundation for the day can be found here.  I think it was an extra fun time because I'm watching our friend Livi for a couple of days this week.  We started out by looking at lemons, cutting them in half, and even tasting them.  Here's a survey I took about how they tasted...

I was surprised the kids liked it so much

The next thing we did was sort of cook with lemons.  We made delicious fresh lemonade and lemon poppy seed muffins.  I went the super lazy way though and just got a box mix for the muffins.  That made it extra easy for the kids to help.  Everyone was a big fan of the food and drink!  The kids didn't even mind the pulp in the lemonade.

Mixing the batter

After tasting lemons and cooking with them we read some books from the library about lemons.  The one I liked the best is called "The Lemon Drop Jar" because its about how lemon drops can make long winter days brighter.

Fun lemon books

Finally after reading the books the kids painted with lemon drop paint and yellow finger paint using paint brushes.  The lemon drop paint consisted of lemon drops and a little warm water.  That paint was very pale so it didn't really make much of a mark but it smelled yummy:)

Livi painting

Grace painting

Beautiful artwork

The best part of the whole morning was while drinking her lemonade Livi looked at me and said, "We learned about lemons today....maybe next time we can learn about chocolate and have chocolate milk."

Chinese New Year

Activity Week Day #2: Since Sunday was Chinese New Year I decided to spend a morning doing activities focused around that event.  My sister-in-law is Chinese and in turn Grace and Caleb's cousins are half Chinese so I think it is especially important to learn about that country.  I also was able to spend six weeks in China during one of my college summers so I feel an affinity towards China.

Today we started off by reading several books about China, Chinese New Year, and other Chinese holidays.  Because I decided to do this at the last minute I got some of the "lame" books from the library but next year I'll try to go sooner so I can get some good books.  Either way the kids still seemed to enjoy looking at the books.  Then we watched a few videos online of lion dances and dragon dances.  Caleb especially loved those and at one point brought me my computer asking for more dragons.

The next thing we did was make a dragon craft that was in one of the books we got from the library.  They turned out super cool.  And then later after lunch Grace and I made spiral snakes since this is the year of the snake.  I think Grace was pretty confused by the animals assigned to each year and even more disappointed that the year she was born was the year of the ox (an animal she really knows nothing about).  She loved the snakes though:)

The other fun thing we did was order Chinese food for lunch.  That was a special treat for the kids and me!

We had a great morning celebrating, doing crafts, learning about another culture, and chowing on some delicious food.  Gung hay fat choy!

Making dragons

Grace and her dragon

Eating orange chicken, low mein and fried rice

Grace showing off her snake

Slithering snakes.  Guess which snake is mine and which is Grace's.

Personal Pizza Day

It's February and I'm starting to get the winter blues.  AKA I want to take daily walks and go to the park!  So, this morning I declared this week activity week.  I have some fun things planned and hopefully it gets us out of the winter rut.

I whipped up a new pizza crust and pizza sauce recipe this morning.  I think after a year of the same crust and sauce weekly I wanted to try something a little different and they both were yummy.  I wasn't sure how the pizza crust would be with all whole wheat flour so this time I did half white whole wheat and half white.  Next time I'm going to try more or all whole wheat and hopefully it will be just as good.

Anyway our friends came over to play and eat lunch with us today and the girls had a blast making personal pizzas for themselves, their brothers and their moms.  I started by showing them what the risen dough looked like and had them punch it down.  Then I divided it into sixths and they got to roll their own dough out.  Then they put sauce, (onions, peppers, mushrooms, olives - these ingredients only made it to the moms' pizzas), pepperoni and cheese on the pizza.

And then we all chowed down....

Silly Kids

Caleb loves to wear Grace's sunglasses.  We are going
to get him some of his own for his birthday!

I found Grace licking the syrup* bottle for a sugar fix?

*I love pure maple syrup and Matt loves the maple flavored thick liquid that Grace is licking off the bottle.  I try to only give the kids pure maple syrup and for a while Matt even gave into my desires and ate that for himself too.  But once he started buying "his" syrup again, Grace quickly realized how sweet and addictive it is and when she's left alone with it on the counter she licks it.

New Kitchen Sink

One of my house update dreams since we moved in was to replace the kitchen sink.  So, this past week we got to do it.  I am so in love with my new sink.  There were a few kinks to getting it installed (10 seemingly unnecessary hours of labor, parts not fitting, and finally 2 days later water gushing out of my cabinet because a drain pipe fell off).  So, we're talking to the installers and hoping to get compensated for our troubles and what appeared to be some incompetencies.  We didn't hire a professional to do as poorly as we could have done:) Needless to say, I still love my sink!

Old sink.  Stats: 6" deep, double basin, low faucet.

New sink.  Stats: 9" deep, single basin, very high faucet.

New sink also came with a couple of basins that can
be inserted if you desire a more traditional double basin.  

Oops, drainpipe fell off while I was doing dishes.
I took a picture before starting clean-up:)

Tablecloth Organization

My mother-in-law has a great way to store tablecloths so I copied her idea.  HANG THEM!  My tablecloths aren't wrinkled and they're easy to find now.  Here's a picture...

We have great closet space in our entry hall that is unused.  For the record I don't think it is unused because we have tons of storage (no attic and no basement) but because I am quick to purge and slow to keep things when I'm done using them.

By the way, does anyone need a steam mop?  I've moved on for various reasons.  Ours works well but I have too much to mop and the cord isn't long enough and if I added an extension cord I'd have too much cord.  I know it's a first world problem but I'm just letting you know the mop is yours if you comment to claim it.