Wyatt's third birthday party

Today was Wyatt's third birthday party, and we celebrated!  Most of the party I planned through pinterest ideas.  We did a spring theme, with sprouting cupcakes, fruit skewers in a flower pot, deviled chick eggs and cake batter truffles.  We made our own ice cream in a bag, and the kids rode bikes and played in water while the adults chatted.  Here are some pics:

Wyatt's sprouting cupcakes.

Snack table; cupcakes with sprouts, fruit skewers, deviled chick eggs and cake batter truffles in the back.

Emma had a good time.

Wyatt rode his new bike the whole party.

One more of Emma because she's adorable.  And stays still long enough to take pictures of, unlike Wyatt.

I'll add details of how I did each project later.  It was a lot of fun and a small but successful party!

Bouncy balls

I was so excited about this project, but ended up pretty disappointed.  I saw two different pins for how to make homemade bouncy balls:

Inspiration for bouncy balls 1
Inspiration for bouncy balls 2

I tried both of these methods, and still did not end up with a nice round bouncy ball to play with.  Here's some pictures from the first attempt:

Wyatt adds glue

Emma helps stir

Almost done

End result

I was far from impressed with the results, as it was basically just the same slime that we had made a few weeks ago.  The ball did not hold shape, and would melt into the table within a minute of being left alone.  Also, the balls didn't bounce!

But then I saw the second pin, with a slightly different way of making these balls.  With renewed hope, I tried several different attempts at mixing everything to make the balls correctly.

They're *kind of* balls.

 I did end up with two semi-ball shaped objects, but again, they did not bounce and they were imperfect balls.  When left alone, they would slowly become flat, and when I restructured them, they had wrinkles in them.  Still unimpressed.

The end result with containers of slime underneath, which were failed attempts at making other bouncy balls.

End result: not worth the time and energy attempting to make these.  Stick with slime.  It's just as fun and less difficult to make.

Color changing shakers

I've been doing all sorts of fun activities and crafts with the kids the past two weeks I've been on break from work, but have had so many visitors and been so busy I haven't posted about them!

Here's something that wasn't actually inspired by pinterest.  We saw these shakers at the children's museum and I loved them so much I had to make them.  It seemed easy enough...just colored oil and water in a spill proof container.

It was actually a lot harder to make them than I imagined, mainly because it's difficult to dye oil and creating the right colors that would blend appropriately took time.  I had a lot of trial and error, but ended up successful!

Wyatt approves!

Wyatt adds food coloring to the water.

If you're interested, comment and I will explain the whole process of making them.  But I'm going to try and make a large batch and put them up for sale on my etsy website if people are interested.  They're really cute and fun to play with!  

The yellow and red shaker is mixed to make orange, and the yellow and blue shaker has settled, but will make green with a good shake!

Loaded baked potato dip turned into twice baked potato recipe

This looked so delicious I started craving it after I saw the picture and had to make it immediately.

Inspiration for loaded baked potato dip

Ingredients:

• 8 ozs sour cream
• a lot of bacon
• 2 cups cheddar cheese
• some chopped scallions
• chips to dip

All you do is cook up the bacon, then mix all ingredients in a dish and let sit in the fridge for an hour or so.  First, there was no way I was letting this deliciousness sit in the fridge.  I started eating it as soon as I was done mixing it.

So both my husband and I immediately started chowing down, dipping potato chips non stop in this delicious concoction.  After we inhaled half the dip in a matter of minutes, I realized it would be quite easy to make this indulgence slightly healthier by making it into twice baked potatoes.  We happened to have baked potatoes already cooked, so I took two large potatoes out, gutted them, added the potato to the remainder of the dip, and put the entire mixture back into the empty potato skins.  I then re-baked the potatoes for about 30 minutes.  And, viola, dinner instead of snack.  Unfortunately, we ate those twice baked potatoes so fast I couldn't even take a picture.  They were that good.

Robot snacks

I thought this was a really cute, healthy, snack idea for the kids.

Inspiration for robot snacks

Materials:

• single serve applesauce
• juice boxes
• small single serve raisin containers
• individually packaged pretzel rods
• plastic spoons
• tape
• sharpie

I gathered all my materials and was excited to get started.  I decided against using pretzels for the arms, as it was we already had a package of pretzels and I didn't feel like wasting money on individually wrapped pretzels for arms.  I used the sharpie to make eyes on the upside down applesauce containers.  I set all the snacks on top of each other and they looked adorable.  But when I tried to attach the snacks together, I realized it was nearly impossible to actually get everything to stick together right.  I managed, but wasted a ton of tape, and tried other attachment methods to no avail.

Adorable, but not really worth the hassle and waste of materials.

The end project was cute, but I don't think I'll be doing this again.  It might be nice for my students at school, but for the kids at home, there was no reason to buy individually packaged snacks.  These robots aren't really transportable, so they just sat in my cupboard and my kids were not overly impressed with them.

End result: not worth the time, money, and effort.