Splatter Art Gift Bags

Melody had been planning her Arts and Crafts birthday party for awhile now. Besides “milestone” birthdays, we usually keep the girls’ parties lowkey with a few close friends, and celebrate through the month. Melody thought of some fun stuff to put in the favors bag, so I thought it would be neat to have a splatter art gift bag. Little did my non-creative self know that it is not as simple as it looks.

Inspired by the “paint splash” printable from this Colorful & Creative, Art-Inspired Birthday Party, we got right to work.

We got our supplies together…

…and got our paint shirts on.

The paint didn’t really splatter as much as we wanted it to. I totally forgot that it needed to be more runny. So for attempt #2, we had to mix the paint with a little water in an old ice cube tray. It worked!

Soo….we brought everything outside. The girls chose their brushes and colors, and splattered away!

I printed out the friends’ names in different colors on white cardstock and used some pop-up adhesive squares that were left over from an American Girl stationery set.

Garden 2013: Evergreen Nursery

I figure we should post about our garden before harvest time. We already picked some tomatoes!

Below are photos captioned and typed my Melody! 🙂

Evergreen Sign

Sister

There were so many flowers.

Me and my flower

Us and Emily’s flower

What a wonderful place

What a big cart we have!

Koi pond

Flowers all around me. There is a ton of flowers.

My sister is looking for the perfect flower.

Isn’t that a wonderful flower?

Note from Melody’s mom: Some of the flowers pictures are what we have growing in our yard, along with artichoke plant and tomato plants (One tomato plant was given to us by a lovely church friend who can grow anything!! She is also in an upcoming Dahlia show if anyone is interested. I can give you info.) We also have/had a chayote squash plant, but perhaps a neighborhood critter got to it. 😦 We’re still working on getting our green thumbs.

Anyone have any tips on turning our brown thumbs green? Please don’t say Miracle Gro. :p Have you taken a trip to the nursery? If so, what did you get there?

Summer Reading 2013: Barnes and Noble

And so it begins…

We enjoy our park playdates and mini-road trips and vacations and bike rides and Vacation Bible School during the summer months, but we’re also super chill and bookworm-ish (read: nerdy), so we enjoy all the different summer reading programs. If you do a search on our blog, I’m certain, more than a handful of posts will pop up. 😉

The first of the season to be checked off is the Barnes and Noble summer reading program. We went to B&N after going to the Half Price Book summer reading program kickoff storytime, since they are in the same area.

3 Simple Steps:
Step 1. Read 8 books and record them in the reading journal.
Step 2. Bring the completed Reading Journal to your local B&N store.
Step 3. Choose a FREE BOOK from their list.

Emily got My Little Pony: Meet the Ponies of Ponyville, which was super hard to find because there was only one there and someone had turned it around on the shelf so you couldn’t see the name on the book on the spine. Melody got Nancy Clancy Super Sleuth.

Are you or your kids participating in any summer reading programs this summer?

Gardening Workshop

Photos captioned by Melody

Note from Melody’s mom: A parent in our community decided to lead a workshop for the kids on gardening. I forgot what I was doing, but Norm took the girls, and I walked to meet them at the library afterwards. It’s a nice 15-20 minute walk there. The girls were planting their cantaloupe seeds when I got there.

She is talking about gardening.

Those are foods from her garden.

That is a garden. There are squares of different kinds of plants.

You have to separate the plants or else they will grow too close together.

Emily is doing her project. She is supposed to match the fruits and vegetables.

It looks like hard work. :p

I was supposed to draw a garden by stamping plants in each square.

We got to plant cantaloupe.

We are getting food that the lady grew in her garden.

Emily is coloring an Earth Day coloring page. I’m eating sweet potato, strawberries, melons, carrots, and lettuce.

We are trying out all the foods.

I got to pick a pencil after I colored the picture.

We all had matching pencils.

We learned how to plant the garden, and we went to plant our own garden afterwards at home.

To be continued….Emily will caption a post about our trip to Evergreen Nursery and how our garden is doing.

Melody-ism: Grandmother

^^ Unrelated, but related photo…this is us with my granny during Christmas.

Random comment from the 6yo last week:

“Mommy, aren’t you excited that you’re going to be a grandmother of my kids?”

Yes, I’m excited, but this is not happening for quite awhile!!! I mean, she was just born yesterday, right? Someone, help me stop time! My babies keep on growing up.

And also unrelated, but related….here’s a post about FOUR MOTHERS that I wrote back in 2010 about four mothers who inspire me. 🙂

– Joyce

Snapshots

The girls were working on a foam picture frame craft, while I was getting lunch ready in the kitchen. They were gluing stuff on, and I can’t even remember what was so funny, but they were saying something that made me laugh.

Melody: Mommy! Are you taking a picture of us?
Me: No. Why?
Melody: Because you’re always taking pictures of us.

And then, of course, I HAD to take a picture of them. :p

Melody-ism: Contest

Before going to bed last night, Melody said,

Mommy, if there was a mom contest, you would be the winner.

That girl….I love her.

Melody-ism: Famous

Melody telling Emily to caption some photos for the blog…

Emily, you will be famous if you write a blog post.

Friendship Bracelets

by Melody Moy

Note from Melody’s mom: I used to spend summers making friendship bracelets. While the thread is inexpensive, I can see why people can sell them for so much money. It takes a lot of time to make them, and your hand cramps up. :p I was so excited that Melody got a kit for her birthday. 🙂 If anyone is interested in buying some friendship bracelets, maybe she can start a business. 😉

I got a friendship bracelet kit for my birthday from my uncle.

This is me trying to make my first friendship bracelet.

My auntie and my mom was teaching me how to braid the threads together.

I was happy because I got it!

I was finishing my bracelet.

My bracelet’s finished! I gave it to my friend Elin for her birthday. She said, “Thank you,” and we took a picture together.

Melody-ism: Joke

M: What does a bear wear on his feet?
Me: I don’t know, what?
M: Nothing. He has bear feet. Get it? Bare feet?
Me: *LOL* Did you make that up yourself?
M: Yeah.

🙂