red, yellow & blue.......

i don't know about where you live, but we haven't been so lucky when it's come to heat waves lately. our humidity levels & "feels like" temps have been so high that over the last two weeks, we have rarely left the comfort of our air conditioned home-unless of course, it's to go to the pool. that being said, we've been doing a lot of indoor activities with our babyeel and this last weekend, we made play dough! 


i still have my big book of early childhood activities from college & has it ever come in handy! from years & years of lesson planning to now with my own little nugget, it's inspired many ideas/activities! along with covering things like, gross/fine motor, art, language, science & math activities, it also has a little recipe section in it. we decided to go with the basic play dough recipe, which is as follows:

5 C flour

2 C salt

4 T cooking oil

add water to right consistency (about 1 1/2 C for me)

i mixed the first three ingredients & then slowly started to add water. i soon discovered that it was much easier to take off my wedding ring and mix everything by hand-it was somewhat meditative too. 

just keep slowly mixing in water until you get the right consistency. if you've ever played with real play doh, you'll know what you're looking for, although this dough comes out a little more like the pizza dough kids get at pizza places while they wait for their food than store bought play doh. it should look something like this:

if you want to make colored play dough, you've got a few options. first, if you have food coloring or tempera paint in powered form, feel free to toss it in with your dry ingredients. if not, you can use liquid food coloring. i decided to make 4 colors (all i had), so i separated my big lump of dough into 4 equal parts & i dropped in a few drops of natural food coloring (no red dye #5 for my little guy). knead and if you must, add more color until you get your desired shade of play dough. they all came out good, except yellow. it was kind of weak!

while H is a typical toddler boy in many ways, he also stands alone when it comes to getting easily grossed out. like when it came to helping me mix the dough for one! he refused to touch it and it took about an hour or so after it was made for him to consider holding it in the ziplock bag i put it in and about another hour after that before he was ready to touch & play with the actual dough. papaeel & i had to do some pretty good convincing before he'd give it a whirl and while he's more apt to play with it now, he still kinda cringes when feeling it between his fingers. 

summertime clothes.........

my goodness! it's been awhile, hasn't it? i've almost forgotten how to blog! we've been busy bees and believe it or not, i (mamaeel) have actually gone back to work on a little more than part time basis. not to the office, but to my first love....co-op records! it was my dream job as a teenager (what child of the 90's didn't dream of working in a record store?) & it came to fruition on july 15th 1999. that was my first day and what a surreal day that was. well, now here we are 12 years later & i'm back. a little older, wiser and the only mother amongst the other record slingers. we have fun, and most days i can't believe that i get paid to do what i do! and best of all, business casual doesn't apply! 
so, besides being a mama & wife, slinging records & crafting every chance i get, we've been busy hitting up water parks, hiking on days that aren't too hot, going to story hour @ the local library, spending time with family & friends, and taking in live music! this weekend we had the pleasure of going to pitchfork music festival in chicago. this was H's 2nd year and he was definitely more active this time around! i think he literally said, "hi" to every person there and better yet, he thoroughly enjoyed shaking his little tush to the live music! while we tried to express the magnitude of what he was witnessing, "son, that is thurston moore!" he wasn't impressed & only cared that the man on stage was providing us with a danceable tune. this child was full force all day & by the time animal collective played (they closed friday), H was so exhausted he was fast asleep about 2 songs in, which means he missed, "brother sport," his favorite animal collective song. we tried to wake him to no avail, so i had no choice but to dance enough for the 2 of us (literally-i was wearing H the entire time & my back is now in dire need of an adjustment!). haven't heard that song, or seen the video? well, here it is just for you! they've definitely embodied the spirit of paul simon in this song, so don't be surprised if you find yourself wiggling around a little bit.

since we were going to a music festival, i wanted to make H something special to wear to celebrate the occasion. last year he wore this adorable kung fu cotton shirt that belonged to my niece when she was a baby (she is now 22 & is getting married next month!) & while it was a little big at the time, sadly it doesn't fit too well anymore. didn't he look too cute, though? god, i love this picture!

i'd seen these adorable wings on pinterest months ago & wanted to make them & figured pitchfork was good enough of an occasion as any to wear them. you can find the tutorial i used for the wings here; http://llevoelinvierno.blogspot.com/2011/03/make-alitas.html
it's a pretty great blog! she gives measurements for the wings, but since her little one is older than mine, i just measured H's arms & back so his wings would be a good fit. i cut out the base of the wings from material that looked "pretty" from both sides. it's a woodland themed tapestry we've had that has been used for everything from making a slipcover for H's glider that we picked up at a garage sale before he was born, to a floor pillow i made for H, to a wall hanging, to this and there is still some left!

i used everything from scrap material to dad's old shirts for the "feathers." i really like how the different prints & colors came together! 

it was mildly tricky to get the right placement of the first feather onto the wing backing, but once i got my rhythm, it was smooth sailing. 

before i knew it, i had a set of matching wings! i used my rotary cutter to trim up the edges & then i took some ribbon and made neck ties & two little arm straps.

wah-lah! a complete pair of one of a kind wings! it took a little convincing before H would let me tie them on & keep them that way. 

here he is at pitchfork wearing his wings, enjoying the sand in between his toes. what a little hippie!