Stolen creativity, part II

Remember how, 3 days ago, I mentioned I would "that day" get this posted? Well... I'm working on it! In order to fight off the boredom and frustration, we scheduled play-dates for Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week. Tuesday we went to the mall and played there, did some back-to-school shopping with 3 gift cards (woo-hoo! The BEST kind of shopping), and had a lot of fun. =) Two play-dates down, two to go! The kids are loving it and it's making this week go by very quickly!

Here are pictures from the other fun idea I got from www.littlebitfunky.blogspot.com. We did the prep-work in about 20 minutes on Friday.

First, gather up small not-valuable items from the playroom, garage, kitchen, and front yard. Put them together in a medium-to-large tupperware container.


Fill the container with water. The colored popsicle sticks 'bled' their color into the water which was a)unexpected, b)really cool, and c)extra messy and stains clothing, faces, fingers.... So keep that in mind if you duplicate this fun idea!

Stick the containers in freezer for about 24 hours. It took somewhere between 20-24 hours for these to fully freeze, but they were huge containers:


The next day/week/etc... is when it's really fun!

set up blanket/table/towels outside, fill squirt bottles with warm water, hand kids a medium-sized screwdriver (that scared me a little, but I couldn't find anything else to work, either. My girls were actually very careful and only had one minor stabbing-her-own-hand incident), and let them squirt to melt the ice and chip away to go TREASURE HUNTING!

The whole plan was to do this on a HOT STEAMY SUMMER DAY...that way the sun HELPS the melting-process... do you see any signs of hot/steamy/summer? nope. It was 68 degrees and raining! But, we'd gotten them so excited about it that I couldn't just say "nope, let's wait a few days...". epic meltdowns would've ensued.. it started raining harder, so we had to move into the garage:

We pulled it all out into the driveway at 11am on Saturday and Elise worked on hers for almost 90 minutes!!!!!!!! Seriously! Even though it was COLD, she was soaking wet, and it was, at times, very frustrating work. Ainsley stuck with it for almost 45 minutes. That's pretty good for a 2 year old. Mitchell just wanted to crawl over to them and steal their treasures...


But, it was a blast overall. The girls had fun, Mitchell was manageable, only a few little trinkets were harmed (oh, devastating, I had to throw away 2 cheap necklaces and a spiderman ring?! Yay to purging junk!!). Next time, I'll check the forecast a little more closely AND have more towels ready to soak up the mess...but if it's hot and muggy, the melting ice would be more fun anyway!

Isn's summer over, yet?

We've officially hit the "it's-been-a-long-but-great-summer-and-now-school-needs-to-start.Now.Right-now" time around this house. Elise is super antsy and a little 'needy' for attention (which really is unlike her...), I've run out of ideas of fun things to do, the weather is so SWELTERING HOT that we can barely play outside, I (Erica) hurt my back somehow in the last month and am having trouble doing ANYTHING normal without some pretty frustrating pain, etc...you see what I'm dealing with... and, we never took a vacation this summer. At all. We ran out of time, money, energy, ideas, and it wasn't a big deal, until now. When I really wish we could've had a break from normal life. sigh... next year we will!
Anyway, last week I got super-motivated to find new/fun/exciting things to do for a couple days to stave off the boredom and whatnot in the house. And it worked! The new activities took part of three mornings and the girls had a BLAST. So did Mitchell, actually. He participated on one of the three... I stole all the ideas from a 'mommy blog' I follow of a friend of a friend (you can find her at 'littlebitfunky.com'- it's a great blog), so I want to give her credit even though I don't know her personally. Here are a few pictures from Friday morning:

All you need is about 2 packages of pudding and a dollup of whip cream. outside, of course, hose ready for the 'cleanup', playclothes on everyone...




This was before Ainsley started eating..she really enjoyed the mess. YAY!
It was probably 30 minutes of pure joy...and some sugar intake. =) Even Mitchell got some pudding and they all had fun.


Then we hosed them all off.

Since we were already outside and messy, we unloaded a can of Barbasol shaving cream ($1 at Kroger) on the same table, gave STERN instructions NOT to eat this one, and started all over again!

It added another 30 minutes of fun and...just like that...a whole morning was done!

Another round of hosing everyone off, of course

I'll try to put up the pics of Saturday's playtime/craftiness up later today!

Craigslist joy...

Once again, we scored a GREAT deal on a Craigslist item... Elise's 'rest time' in her room everyday (1:30-4...and, yes, I am THANKFUL EVERY DAY that she still does this!) has been focused lately on two things: coloring and watching for deer. This same deer (I'm pretty sure it's always the same one.) is in our next door neighbors' backyard at least once a day. Elise LOVES to watch him and calls out every few minutes what he's doing:
"Mommy, the deer is resting now under the big tree. Mommy, the deer is eating more apples from the ground. THE DEER IS POOPING, NOW!!! " you get the idea... thank goodness for the baby monitor we still keep in her room or I'd be running upstairs every five minutes to chat about the deer...ANYWAY, she also loves to color, usually while on the floor with books, colored pencils, etc...scattered everywhere. But lately she's been exhausting herself to stand up, run to the window yelling "deer check", yell progress back to me, flop back on the ground, find her place in her coloring again. Repeat for 2 hours. I started thinking she could use a little desk up there so she could sit while coloring or reading quietly, glance out window toward deer-land, and then keep going. pretty original idea, eh? Adam took it the next step and thought of the idea for an old (antique-ish) school desk. So, CRAIGSLIST HERE WE COME! No need to buy something new, 'recycle' something, make it our own, save money, yay for everyone. Local CL-ers had 3 desks listed the next day and Adam came home Wednesday with this little number. $30. Elise is SMITTEN over it (after a thorough cleaning/disinfecting, of course...). She's been in it for hours already.

The best part? We were upstairs this morning and I handed her a piece of trash to throw away in the bathroom. She got all excited, said, "Wait, Mommy! There's a TRASHCAN inside my new desk!" and went running for it. Turns out, she'd been playing around and figured out she could shove trash up the desk support hole inside the bottom storage compartment.

Laughing out loud, I explained that it wasn't a trashcan, but just part of the desk. I reached in to pull out the two SMALL pieces of paper she'd just shoved up there and pulled out about 15 pieces of trash!!! HILARIOUS. It was NOT stuff she'd thrown in there already,btw. Most notable item?
The Sweepstakes offer on the backside of it said, "all entries must be received by October 31, 1988. Yep, a 22 year old (at least) candy wrapper. =) I guess all kids think somewhat the same!

disclaimer: In the first picture, you can see her room is a DISASTER! It NEVER looks like this. We were all FOUR playing in there while I was cleaning out her closet, so it got temporarily super cluttered. It was cleaned up just moments later...I just needed to say that.

Big morning for us...

Ainsley has been asking for MONTHS when she could wear her hair in a ponytail. My answer is usually something like, "When you grow some hair...". She's 2 1/2 this week and has never had a haircut...I'm thinking she'll be about 4 when that's finally necessary.
So, this morning, I finagled her three long strands of hair up with a ponytail holder...and she was BEAMING with joy. =) It.was.adorable. She then said, "SEE, Mommy. I TAN have pone-tee-tail, too. Just wike Ee-see". Got that? 'Can have ponytail, just like Elise.'.
Elise's hair is finally long enough that I can put it into braids, which she loves, too. She just keeps rubbing them all day to make sure they're ok. it's fun.
After everyone's hair was properly done this morning, Ainsley told me to take a picture of her new pretty ponytail. How could i resist?

quick updates again...

We finished the kitchen re-do and it's amazing. It makes this house feel like HOME, which is great since we'll be here for about 20 years...or more...yay! Here are some quick shots:

BEFORE:


DURING:


AFTER:



Two weeks and not a ton of $$ and we're very happy. Plus, I'm always amazed at my husband. He's talented, thorough, detailed, etc... and it's FUN (despite being exhausting, stressful, etc...) to work on projects together!


We had WONDERFUL houseguests this past weekend. My brother Kelly and his girlfriend Melanie visited from DC...the kids LOVED having them here and it was quality time with my brother and a great girl. The weather was pretty miserable the whole time (as in raining, cold enough to need long-sleeved shirts...grrr.), but we did a mini-celebration for K's upcoming birthday, walked around the farmer's market downtown Saturday morning, played on Uncle Kelly's skateboard in the rain, etc...good time for sure.


Elise made a bday sign for uncle kelly...it rocked.

Melanie with Ainsley... it was just starting to rain...

Guess who thought she was SO COOL with a skateboard tucked under her arm?


It was absolutely POURING, so Uncle K scooped up Ainsley and headed back to our house from the cul-de-sac...
Playing in the fort/hideout later, Elise surprised Melanie and jumped on her...nice.

busy week...

We're in full swing of summer around here and I'm WAY tired but I'll throw a few pictures up and then go to bed! These were late last week, so I'm not too behind...we did a pretty significant kitchen re-do this weekend (more on that later), but we LOVE the new look. We've also done LOTS of sprinkler/pool days, Elise had VBS at our church last week and she had a blast. It wore her out (yay!) and she learned a lot, so that's great.


I got a haircut, which was WAY overdue, and that was fun... yay for a little pampering and 10 minutes extra under the hair dryer with a People magazine. (shhh! don't tell Adam!)

This is a deer in our backyard. We see him/her there (or in the next door neighbor's yard) all the time and the stinker eats our wild blackberries...grrr...but the girls LOVE it, so I can't complain too much.

Ainsley playing in the kitchen...so I guess she's about 8 gallons or so...

baby steps...

Ok, he's not actually TAKING STEPS, but little man Mitchell is getting closer to walking. (Which, like everyone said we would, I AM DREADING!!!) With Elise, we COULDN'T WAIT for her to walk. It was fun, such a milestone, a great achievement, etc... but with #3, all I'm thinking is, "I can barely keep up with him as it is...he's going to get into EVERYTHING that the girls put on tables to keep away from him...he's my last little baby, I want him to stay small and crawl forever...". You get the idea. But, he's progressing and I guess I'm ok with that. He's so adorable that I can't help but cheer him on. =)