Month: September 2017

Rainy Day Window Painting

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Rainy Window (5)

If you’re having a gray and rainy Labor Day weekend like we are, turn any frowns upside down with the slightly-taboo feel of this project… indoor painting on the windows!

Grown-ups, don’t cringe; I promise the paint is going to wash off your windows really easily. The secret? Dish soap!

In the cubes of an ice cube tray, mix equal parts dish detergent and washable paint for each color. Provide your child with q-tips as the paint brushes.

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Travis couldn’t believe I was letting him use the window as his canvas. He jumped right in drawing “clouds” and squiggles.

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His expression here pretty much says it all!

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The beautiful, slightly shiny colors were the perfect antidote to the gray day outside our windows.

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Travis may or may not have discovered it was equally as fun to rub a paint-smeared q-tip over his bare legs. I may or may not have been feeling so lenient of this cozy Snday afternoon that I let him paint away and followed up with a bath…

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Ready for the best #momhack of all about this game? Clean-up is half the fun! After Travis was paint-free, I set him loose with a spritz bottle on the window.

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The glass was sparkly and shiny and paint-free in no time.

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Creamy Red Lentil Soup

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Creamy Red Lentil Soup

This recipe is an easy way to use up leftovers if you have an abundance of cooked rice and/or lentils on hand, in the category of what I call #veganproblems.

Ingredients:

  • 1 and 1/2 cups cooked red lentils
  • 1 cup cooked jasmine rice
  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 1 small garlic clove
  • 1 and 1/2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons fresh-squeezed lemon juice
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
  1. Combine all of the ingredients in a blender; process until smooth. Serve!

Stomp with Dino Feet

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Stomp Dino (6)

What’s more fun for a preschool tot than stomping around the house? Stomping around with dinosaur feet of course! Get out some sillies with this cute idea from High Five magazine.

To start, adults will need to trace a dinosaur foot shape on a large piece of craft foam. I really have no idea what a dinosaur footprint looks like, but a three-toed creature seemed to fit the bill!

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Cut an X into the foam with scissors near the ankle of each foot – this is how your child will wear the dino feet.

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Travis loves practicing with kid-safe scissors, so although cutting the dino foot was beyond his skill, he helped me snip out a few triangles that we would need later on. “Dinosaurs need lots of triangles!” he told me very seriously.

First though, we had to paint our dino feet! Travis smeared on some pink, and I added a few orange dots for contrast.

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Let the paint dry, then add the final adornment with the smaller pieces of foam you cut out.

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And now it’s time to stomp!

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Rainbow Hunt

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Rainbow Hunt (10)

The next time you’re at a paint store, stock up on paint chip samples (free) in every color of the rainbow. Then you can turn your next walk in a garden into a magical rainbow hunt!

Rainbow Hunt (1)

If you don’t have a garden of your own, find the nearest botanical garden or arboretum and enjoy this game on a summer’s afternoon.

Most paint samples come in strips of 4 or 5, so I cut them into individual squares and then placed all our “rainbow chips” in a bucket.

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There are two ways to play and we tried both. First, Travis selected a paint chip at random and we hunted until we found just the right shade…

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Aha!

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Or, we spotted a flower that we liked and then found the paint chip that was nearest in color in our bucket.

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Travis loved crossing every color of the rainbow off the list!

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This game was a fantastic prompt for stopping to appreciate a garden on another level…

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for paying attention to flowers we otherwise might have missed….

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and for enjoying all the scents and textures around us.

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Another great hit from Barefoot Books Kids’ Garden cards.

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