Snow day activity #389 (at least it feels like it has been snowy for that long)

When the backyard looks like this (and has for 2.5 months)....

you look to the wonderful world of the internet for inspiration.  You must check out the brilliant simplicity of Made by Joel (here is the link to his original cereal box doll house creation).  I love his stuff so so much.

Anyway, I was flicking through his site one day about two months ago with Lord A on my knee and, last week, with no prompting from me, Lord A made this from memory.  I helped with the furniture (the little table and chairs in the bottom left) but he directed.  and added slides.  every little cereal box doll house has to have at least two slides apparently....  the Lego people are loving it.  (also a good illustration of how you just never know what is going to stick in their heads!)  (see the food on the table? one pistachio...Lego people love them apparently)

Recipe folder

There is a lot of organising going on around my house at the moment.  How cliched of me for January right?  I guess it is a cliche for a reason.  I actually love organising and find it fun and relaxing.  Not that I live in organised bliss unfortunately.  I have another 3 people (and a dog) who bring their own challenges to my utopian view of a clutter free, organised and peaceful home.  Oh yeah, and my family history of keeping just about everything because 'it might be useful'.  Thankfully this last tendency is nearly cured.  Three international moves in 4 years will do that to you!

One of the things I have reorganised is my collection of printed, clipped and handwritten recipes.  I have tried different methods for sorting all of these before (including folders with categories etc.) but seeing one of my best friend's recipe 'bible' folders with everything in plastic sleeves but with no apparent system for categorising was a revelation.  I love her recipe folder.  It is massive and is full of the sort of love that only a well loved collection of recipes that really feeds a family comes to have.  The kind with food splotches on pieces of paper and little handwritten notes by her whether it is saying how much she loved the recipe or how she adapted it.  So, in the spirit of copying being the finest form of flattery I decided to make my own and combine all my different folders into one (exhibit A above).

I find that, after a while, I know exactly where to flick to get which recipe so the lack of categories is not missed at all.  Now I can enjoy my printed out recipes next to the handwritten ones my Mum or sisters have given me and they nestle alongside favourite ones cut out of magazines.  I love it!

Of course, I had to pretty up the folder.  I bought a new folder (by some miracle I didn't have one the right size on hand) and a bunch of plastic sleeves.

I then cut out a piece of scrapbook paper the right size to fit in the spine and printed out a label to stick on top (see first picture at the top of this post).  I am enjoying it already...

Medicine (wo)man

Here is what I have been doing over the last two weeks.  Lord A has been sick with a cold and then Strep, Sporty Girl had the cold and then my better half came down with a cold as well (we are seeing if the Strep is taking hold on him yet..sigh).  With so many people sick and everyone taking different medicines at different times, I came up with this little system to keep me sane.  Inspired by hospital charts, I made my own little chart that I thought you might find useful too.  Just as a side note, something else that keeps me sane is grabbing a little basket and making sure everything I need to tend the ill is in there - medications, medicine cups/syringes/spoons, lozenges, Vicks vaporub, thermometer, hand sanitiser etc.  I keep it on the kitchen counter until no longer needed.  It also helps if my hubby and I are taking shifts through the night - we don't have to wake up the other to find out which child had which medicine at what time.  Works for me!

I am having trouble with Scribd for my document sharing so I am going to trial sharing this with Google Docs in the meantime.  Let me know if you have any problems and I will send you the original Word document.

Medication Tracker

Joy to the World.....

Geo board and popcorn experiments

I will be doing lots of kid stuff this week with both children home for school holidays.  We spent all morning making and playing with a geoboard (I got the idea from these wonderful people).  I have been meaning to do this for awhile so we went and dug an old piece of chipboard out of the crawlspace (we have access from the basement) to use.  I divided the board up into three spaces with a Sharpie and then the kids drew their own dot patterns while I did a grid in the middle.  I didn't have enough nails so not all the dots got covered.  I have to say, don't use chipboard for this!  It was too hard for the kids to do any of the hammering and that was going to be part of the activity.  I would look for some old pine next time so the kids could hammer as well.  The kids really had a ball playing with this for ages.

The other thing we did this morning was popcorn experiments.  I figured that if the popcorn pops in a paper bag why wouldn't it pop in a covered bowl?  Well, I will have to look into the science behind it now as it didn't pop very well at all.  Then we tried a covered plate.  Then a plate with no cover.  You can see our dismal results.  I did get more popped corn than this photo shows but the kids had already retrieved most of it.  They really enjoyed watching it pop and ping all over the microwave though!  I haven't given up on my experimenting in this arena though.  Can oven bags go in the microwave?  I will have to check...

Berry lovely

Take some dead branches (I have been saving them from our autumn pruning)....

Grab a bowlful of mini pom poms and willing children....

Use tacky glue to stick them on said dead branches and voila!  I really like how these turned out.   They look super cute in person and will be decorating a table somewhere for me for awhile.  I kind of wanted just red, orange and yellow pom poms for a more authentic berry look (but really how authentic are pom poms going to look??) but Michael's didn't have them.  So I bought fall themed ones and added red and white ones to it.  They still look cute.

Although, I have to say, the kids tired of it pretty quickly and I was left to do a lot on my own (not that I mind) while they made Christmas cards instead.  I think scrunched up bits of tissue paper might have been easier for them to handle and they might have stuck with it longer.

Basket case

Remember those little baskets I found at the thrift store for mere cents?  Well, I finally found time to bestow some mod podge love on them and have turned them into stationery organising central.  I just stuck strips of scrapbooking paper around the rim and am now using the one on the right as my Christmas card organising centre (in there I have cards, stickers, mailing labels, stamps, a pen, sticky tape, scissors and also some writing paper that I needed a place for).  The left one is holding all my leftover note cards and envelopes.  I need to start writing letters again!  Maybe I will search for ideas of how to use up copious numbers of envelopes instead....

Carrots on the windowsill

Have you ever done this with your kids?  My Mum used to do this for me and my siblings when we were young and we loved it.  I just remembered it the other day when I was cutting the tops off carrots whilst making dinner. All you do is take the top, put it in a little bowl (or on a saucer or whatever) with some cotton wool and keep the cotton wool moist.  It doesn't take long for the carrot to sprout.  Every morning at breakfast my two ask to check on its progress.  Cheap, easy fun.