Valentine's Day 2012

Happy Valentine's Day!

What a busy and lovely day.  I decided to use these heart boxes I bought at the local Arc Thrift store to create a Valentine's gift for the kids.

Painted the top with chalkboard paint.

Then painted the sides the kids favorite colors. Pink, of course, for Ari and green for Oli.

Trimmed the top box with a little ribbon. Then conditioned the chalkboard and wrote their names on them. 

Meanwhile, the "artist" was busy working on her own Valentine's present. Shhhh, this one is for daddy.

I filled the Valentine's Day boxes with Pez dispensers, Hershey Kisses, fish food and a craft for each kid.

Of course, Ari was stumped about the fish food, until I told her to look in her room.

  

Happy Valentine's Day Ari and Oli!

Ari named the fish, Honey.

Now on to dinner.

Heart shaped roasted potatoes with carrots.

Heart shaped cheeseburgers - Daddy's favorite.

Valentine's Dinner.

Now to top off the night with the best beer in town -Daddy's homebrew. Ahhhhh!

Arts and Crafts Week

It was a cold dreary week in Colorado last week. So, the kids and I decided to have an arts and crafts week. I forgot how fun it is to just play and make crafts all day long. Thank you cold weather. Below are the activities we did:

Activity #1:  
Homemade play dough. Recipe from Canida at instructables.com.  This recipe feels exactly like the real deal.

 Basic ingredient ratios:2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup salt
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon cream of tartar (optional for improved elasticity)

Food Coloring

Mix all of the ingredients together over low heat. Stir occasionally until dough thickens.
When the dough pulls away from the sides and clumps in the center, remove from heat and cool enough to handle.

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Remind anyone of making bread?

Flatten dough and add food coloring to the middle. Then fold over and over again until mixed well.

This was my kids favorite part.

 

 Final Product

Activity #2:

Science and Art Together at Last courtesy of http://www.momto2poshlildivas.com/2011/08/preschool-science-cool-ice-art-for.html.

We filled water balloons and placed them in the freezer overnight.

We took out the frozen balloons the next day. Ari was amazed that they were a block of ice now.

Ari and Oli sprinkled a ton of salt all over. They were in awe of all the crackling an popping the ice make from the salt addition.

Once the craters in the ice formed from the salt, they generously placed food coloring all over the ice block. 

Final Product -they were amazing to watch the next couple of hours as they melted.

Side note: Since they used so much salt they melted very quickly -next time less will be more.

 Activity #3:

Finger Painting and more.....with our good friends.

Two Peas in a Pod

Ari is finger painting while Sydney is using a toilet paper roll as a heart stamp (idea found on pinterest).

The adorable, Meredith, getting into the groove of things.

One of Ari's final products. This was all on her own.

Ari (below) and Oli's (above) hungry caterpillar finger painting courtesy of http://pinterest.com/mrsayala/.

Activity #4:
Jellyfish.  

After the kids finished painting, I felt bad having to throw their palates (paper plates) away since they still had plenty of left over color. So I spread the colors around the plate and let them dry. Once dried, I punched holes all along the outside and tied ribbon in each hole.

I hung the jellyfish from the ceiling.

Final Product

Our beautiful model, Ari.