Eclipse of the Sun

Back on May 20, 2012 was celestial event not to be missed. An eclipse of the sun. It was a Sunday evening so after church and just before it was going to start we made our pinhole box to be able to see it. We went on a treasure hunt to find all the supplies and luckily we did have everything we needed. Maleah and Whitley both help cut, paste and put everything together.

Here is Whitley with her play scissors.

To make it a little more exciting I did more than one hole and made it in the shape of a heart as you can see. This is only half way through.

Maleah using the second smaller box. She would look and run so quickly it was hard to get a good picture of her.

Mom and the girls. It was so fun to try and see throughout the whole eclipse.

Ready set look and see the eclipse and the girls with there boxes.

I was so cool to experience and it was so cool to see how dark it got at the peak of the eclipse.  

Disney Autograph Book After

Since I am still very new at this blog and what to add plenty of content.  All are new to here but many are ones I have done over the last year or so.  They are still very current.

Last summer our big trip was to Disneyland.  I knew my little 3 year old princess would love to see all the princesses and characters.  We were also on a very tight budget, like packing meals and limiting to only one bought toy at the very end.  I even brought dollar store glow sticks for the fireworks and World of color shows for the kids to play with.  So back to planning, I did a search for Autograph books and they were $15 plus.  I got my creative hat on and went searching my local craft stores and found a blank notebook for $1.50 and spent a couple more dollars on stickers and paper.  We got the supplies home, covered the cover and inside with scrapbook paper and decorated with things we already had.  I also used a sheet protector cut down and hot glues around the cover to protect it.

Before: Autograph Book to take

Maleah even put the Princess stickers on the pages.  Good note if you have your name and address and it is lost at Disneyland and turned in.  They will mail it back to you.  

 Then our trip to Disneyland was a great trip.  We meet and got every single princess while we were there.  A good note if you are planning the next step make sure they don't sign the front and back of the same page, you open up to the blank page for them.  Each on their own page.  Maleah just loved getting the Autographs more than the rides.

Once home we needed a way to put the photo's and autographs together so she could remember and look at them.  The notebook above had to many extra pages and Maleah just wanted to color on all the pages.  Also the pages wouldn't hold up with the weight of a photo on them.  Next step was to make her own Photo/Autograph Book.

After: Keepsake Autograph Book with Pictures

 I carefully cut out the pages from the notebook.  Printed out the pictures from each Princess and character.  Added a $1 photo album and a cute cover with scrapbook paper.  There you have it.

This Autograph book was inexpensive, nice and so very loved.  She loves looking through it and telling me every one's names and seeing herself with them.  The album has taken it's share of love and still looks good.  Hope on your next trip you might try and preserve the memories in a special way for them too.

Build a Sand Castle at Home

I started off this summer with many high hopes and a long list on a Summer To-DO list.  Well the last week of May I broke my arm and many thing had to be put on hold.  Everything is fine now but we got a slow start on checking things off.  One I knew I wanted to do was BUILD A SAND CASTLE.  Well we hadn't gone to the beach yet or one with sand to play in so I had been thinking of a way around it.  We don't live close to a beach.

I finally had a light bulb moment when my girls and many neighbor girls were bored, hot and really wanting something to do.  Make your own beach! How you say?  I took our trap laid it in the garage, added a bag of play sand, water and all the sand toys.  It was so great.  They kids loved the wet sand and being in the shade.  I even got in there and help build a couple of sand castles but they got smashed before I could grab the camera.  Oh well it was the joy of having the kids busy and playing.  It was really good learning too about packing the sand in containers and making sure it is not to wet or to dry to mold.  In the end we had 8-10 kids all playing for about an hour.

So next time you really want to have a day at the beach playing in the sand but stuck at home do what we did and make your own. 

Homemade Ice Cream

On Sunday it was National Ice Cream Day. Well we didn't have enough ice cream in the freezer but I had seen how to make your own ice cream with out the fancy ice cream machine from 2 Little Hooligans. I even had all the stuff to make it without having to go shopping, hooray!  Her directions are really great so I won't go the recipe but it was easy.

We gathered the girls and the necessary things.  We didn't have the large Ziploc baggies so we used an old canister and #10 can.  We had to have enough right, double the pleasure double the fun.

 Once we got all the cream, sugar and vanilla in the baggies.  My sweet 4 year old Miss M took my directions very well.  I had the ice and salt in the #10 can and told her to put it in the can.  Well she opened the baggie of mix and started to pour it into the can with the ice.  It was a little bit of a mess.  We just mixed up a new bag and got new ice and salt and did the directions the second time.  It is funnier looking back now at her putting it in than when we were making it.

Next we rolled and rolled.  Ours took closer to 8-10 minutes each not quite the 5 minutes.

 Gloves on in the middle of summer

 The finally treat- ICE CREAM!!

It was so fun and yet another thing off of our summer bucket list down.

Hope you try Homemade Ice Cream in a Can or Bag, either way it is good!