Week 30 - All a Flutter

Our themed weeks are still going along strong around these parts. Grace's latest selection was butterflies. Here's some things we did and saw.......


.....Witnessed a "butterfly" resting on one of our sunflowers.


.....Made a bouquet of tissue paper flowers.


.....Watched a caterpillar munch away on our carrot leaves. With a bit of research we discovered that it will soon turn into a Black Swallowtail - how exciting.


.....Made wildflower cups to toss over the bridges in our neighborhood (a project from Volume 1 of Alphabet Glue)


.....Lastly, we planted a small butterfly garden.

Ah yes, things were certainly a flutter around here!

Week 29 - She Lost a Tooth

Over a month ago Grace discovered that she had a loose tooth - her first one! She had been waiting quite awhile for this to happen, as many of her classmates already had their fair share of loose teeth and to top it off, many of them had lost a few.

In preparation for the day that the tooth actually came out, we made a tooth fairy pillow together. It was a snap to make. Grace selected the fabric from our scrap bins, drew a tooth template (which was later cut out of felt and embroidered with eyes and a smile), I stitched a few seams, Grace stuffed it "full to the brim" and viola the pillow was ready.


Now fast forward several weeks and visualize Grace walking around with a tooth dangling by a thread - oh yes, Dean and I predicted this would happen. It dangled for days despite eating, brushing , flossing and the like........ until Friday night. That's when, while flossing her teeth, it literally popped right out of her mouth and landed on the floor in front of her. A bit of drama ensued (due to the sight of blood) but then all was well.



Now she can join the ranks of her semi-toothless classmates!

Week 28 - Our Friday

I spent the bulk of my day at the sewing machine, attempting to piece my largest project yet - a queen sized quilt for our bed. I have a deadline you see..... and it's this coming Tuesday. That's when I've scheduled time on my quilt shop's long-arm machine, a necessity for a quilt of this size, as it would be nearly impossible for me to feed all of that fabric through my personal machine.

I usually have a "helper" (nope, it's not Grace) when it comes to quilting and this project was no exception. No sooner did I have the blocks arranged, when Sophie came along tossing her bee around, finally deciding that a nice stretch would feel quite comfortable atop the squares. Thankfully, I'm prepared for these sorts of things and had the blocks numbered, so no harm done.



And where was Grace during this sewing frenzy of mine? Well, she was happy as could be spending her day at camp with the horses.

After dropping her off, I stayed around awhile to watch her interact with one of the ranch's miniature ponies. After a bit of a rocky start (the horse decided to pull a sit-down, as seen in the picture below), she got the horse not only to cooperate but to jump over a gate too!



Quilts and horses equaled a fun filled Friday indeed!

Week 27 - Tomatoes

A week or so ago, the bulk of our homegrown Roma tomatoes were ready to be picked. Grace eagerly headed outside with a berry basket that she had squirreled away (oh how this child loves to keep things that I see as material destined for the recycling bin or garbage can) and picked away - an entire basket full!

After peeling and chopping the said tomatoes, I added a diced sweet onion, fresh basil (both from our garden), a couple cloves of garlic, salt and olive oil. Viola, we had sauce for spaghetti.




Thankfully, we've had one success out of this little garden of ours. We'll certainly take what we can get!

Week 26 - Red, White and Blue

Just dropping in to wish you a happy Fourth of July!

Week 25 - Trees, Trees, Trees

During our week learning about trees Grace and I were highly focused on watching a mockingbird build a nest in one the small oak trees in our backyard. One afternoon (thanks to cloud cover) we had a picnic lunch outside and enjoyed watching the busy bird build away. It was really quite fascinating I tell you.

There is one slight concern however in regards to this bird taking up house in our tree - mockingbirds have an aggressive side. We surely don't want our sweet and unsuspecting Sophie to be on a lizard hunt (don't worry she never catches any) one day and come up missing a patch of fur. Needless to say, this will be one situation that we'll being monitoring closely.





While reading the mountain of library books about trees this week, we came across a proverb that was quite fitting.......

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps
the singing bird will come.
~Chinese Proverb

We encourage you to step outdoors and enjoy the trees that surround you - you never know what you'll find!

Week 24 - All About Candy

We're quite excited that our summer routine has started around here. To keep things entertaining and not so humdrum (such as.... Me: what do you feel like doing today? Grace: I don't know!), we're giving our weeks some focus by choosing topics. There will be a new topic each week to keep the energy lively and fun. And there's no need to worry, there will be plenty of time for relaxing, swimming, meeting Daddy for lunch and the like.

So what do we plan to do with these themed weeks you ask. For now we plan on... visiting the library to obtain books on the given topic, reading all the said books, writing a story, getting messy with art and craft projects, completing a "large" puzzle and taking a field trip.

For this week Grace selected candy as the theme - which I believe has something to do with her LOVE of chocolate and fascination over the story, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" by Roald Dahl. So in addition to reading over twenty picture books, we made a variety of candy (peanut butter cups, chocolate dipped oreos, "twix" bars, saltwater taffy - which was unsuccessful, and lastly, rock candy), measured and weighed candy, completed a 350 piece chocolate themed puzzle, wrote a story titled "Candy Land of Candy", went on a search for the new Wonka bars and finally, visited a newly opened candy shop in town - talk about a kid in a candy store, wow!






Well, enough about candy. Next week we're off to focus on a topic a bit less sugar laden....trees!