Laundry

     Sarah has come home three times since starting college this fall. Every time she returns home, this is what I'm greeted with- a happy daughter holding a MASSIVE bag of laundry! Since washing and drying costs $3 per load, I appreciate her wanting to save her money for other more important things like $200 text books.

     

     There was about 5 weeks between her last two visits. Somehow, she was able to save all the laundry between and not do a single load. I'm not sure whether to applaud or cringe at that fact. Only 3 weeks until I see this lovely image again!

Q-Tip painting

     I can tell that doing art and crafts activities is a success because one day last week when Finn arrived for the day, he told me that he wanted to do some painting. I didn't have anything specific planned, so I thought about what might I do that could be fun for the boys? I decided that it might be fun for them to paint with Q-tips!

     Perfect size for toddler hands, easy clean up, and it could provide for a different painting effect vs. brushes. Another benefit for using the Q-tips- I just placed the caps of the paints out for the boys to dip. Figured there would be less waste/spills and they could dip to their hearts content!

 Double dipping 2 Q-Tips

 Serious artist face

 Having a cheesy good time painting!

 Happy to paint!

Finished results- JT on the left favored green and dots and Finn enjoyed brown and purple and was more swirly with his artwork.

Turkey Hands

     For the major holiday's, I try to find an artwork/craft that all of the little one's I care for can complete for their family. As a Mom, I love being able to look back at some of the girls early creations and see how little they once were :)

     For this craft, it's one that has been around for a while, but it's oh so cute! Turkey Hands! Simple and adorable. No step by step photos for this post, just the finished results. One can imagine how painting a 2 Nine month old's hands doesn't lend itself for a camera opportunity! JT and Finn did wonderful in helping hold their hands and fingers open wide when I applied the colors, so theirs was a bit easier. All I did was apply brown to the palm and thumb and blue, red, yellow, and orange to the remaining 4 fingers for feathers. After the paint dried, I used a marker to add, eyes, gobblers, beaks, and feet.

 My four little Turkey creations. Big boys on top, the babies on bottom.

Close up of JT to show how cute this turned out.

Gobble Gobble!

Turkey feathers

     As Thanksgiving approached, a turkey craft was in order. This craft will be one we can repeat each year and adapt as JT gets older.

 I first traced each boy's hand, going a bit larger to allow for a larger turkey.

 I also pre-cut small and larger feathers.* As skills improve, JT will be able to cut things out himself in the years to come and another idea is to write down what your child is thankful for on each feather.

 Then all that is needed is some glue or paste!

 and a little "pat-pat" as we call it here :)

 The boys had a great time placing their feathers where they liked (I explained not on the thumb since that would be the turkey's face).

 Even though it was a fun craft, it was also a time to reinforce color recognition with the boys. I would ask which color feather they would like next or have them name the color feather they selected. Fun and learning- double bonus!

 JT's turkey

 Finn's turkey

As the glue dried, I added a little beak, gobbler, feet, and eyes. 

Adorable!

Caching up-Leaf Prints

     As Sarah pointed out during her visit home over Thanksgiving, I am seriously slacking on my blog posts. Just getting caught up in life I guess, sorry :) I'm planning on trying my best to get caught up this week, maybe even doing some double posts in a day. Here we go!

 In becoming in touch with my inner craftiness, I have tried to come up with some artwork or crafts to do with the boys. On this day, the boys made leaf prints. It was a windy, warm day- perfect for leaf collecting!

 Off they ran searching for leaves to place in their bags.

 They had more fun running around with each other though :)

 At last, leaves were collected and brought inside.

 Holding up some of their leaves they would be painting with.

 For this craft, I painted the back side of the leaf and then the boys placed the leaf on the paper and "pat-patted" their leaf.

 The result- beautiful leaf print!

 Finn doing his pat-patting

 Finished product for JT

 Finn's piece of art

Very fun fall art project

Fighting Irish

     As I sit here enjoying the company of my family and watching Notre Dame football, I thought this would be the perfect blog post.

 The benefit of working in the Chicago area for the past 3 weeks... finding ND gear easily. John was happy to  bring this home. Close up view.

 Playing on the floor on his tummy.

Adorable footie PJ's for our youngest Irish Fan!

Painting in the bathtub

     JT continues to benefit from my use of Pinterest. This week, I made some bath paints for him to play with. Very simple- use some cheap foam shaving cream and add a few drops of food coloring.

  I mixed it in our muffin tin as you can see, but I think next time I will use several small plastic containers, the muffin tin didn't fit very well on the side of the tub.

 Thanks to Picnik, I'm able to post tub photos of JT playing with his paints :)

 Painting the side of the tub green

 When he's concentrating, his little tongue always pops out.

 Painting his foam letters.

 Painting his arm.

 Having a splish splashing time playing!

 Getting into it now- orange and yellow being used.

 I decided to paint a green beard on JT for some fun. I think he tasted a bit of the shaving cream- yuck!

Lots of fun and I'm sure we will do it again soon!

Park Time

     It was a beautiful warm fall weekend and it was a perfect day to take JT to the park. He got some "Momma Time" as his sisters were at a girls retreat with the church and John was enjoying the day golfing with a friend.

 Swings! JT is starting to look quite big in these baby swings, but so nice not to have to worry about falling off the seat.

 My favorite shot of the day- Absolutely adorable!

 JT loved the slides the most and was very sad when it was time to go home. "One more slide" he kept pleading...

 My fearless wonder wanted to play on everything. Climbing the curved ladder.

 The front of the play structure was shaped like a ship. JT declared it was a Pirate Ship since he likes watching the Disney Jr show, Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

 He would keep saying, "Pirate(pie-it) Ship, Arrrrr"

 Green Dinosaur to climb up 

and promptly get off :)

     We had a blast playing at the park. I hope we will still have a few more warm weekends of park friendly weather before the cold weather ushers in. JT sure enjoys playing outside!