Flamingo Handprint Paintings & Making Crayons!

Flamingo Handprint Plaques

This cute handprint plaque of the kids was SO easy to make!

I bought the plaque at the dollar store for $2.00, I used white exterior paint for the base and used paint, roller & brush from an ongoing project.

After 2 base coats of the white dried I poured a small puddle of pink paint (Americana Petal Pink) that I had in my existing craft stash onto a paper plate and used a sponge brush that I had on hand. I applied the paint to each childs hand and I guided their hands onto the board.  It was difficult to do my 6 month olds hand, but we got it!

Once the pink dried I then used a permanent scrapbook marker (Toboy) to draw on the neck and a black sharpie to finish the beak, legs & wings.

Spray your finished work with a sealer (Krylon or similar).  Once the top coat dries, add plastic google eyes - I used Gorilla Glue to adhere them! VOILA! With materials on-hand, my only expense was $2 for the plaque.

You can get more ideas online for hand print animals:
http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/handprint.htm
http://funhandprintart.blogspot.com/

I think we may do Monkeys next!

Making Crayons!

 I spent about $4 at the dollar store and picked up 3 ice cube strays that make shapes (Orange slices, mini apples & grapes).  If you make crayons using the trays, you will NOT be able to use them in the future for food as the crayon wax sticks to the trays.

Have your kids peel the wrappers from old crayons and cut the crayons into smaller pieces.  

Put the small pieces of crayons into the ice cube trays. 

Place the ice cube trays onto an old cookie sheet and place in the front window or your vehicle! I am sure you could melt them in the microwave too, but we took advantage of the hot sun with our experiment - the boys loved waiting to see what would happen! We went for a swim while we awaited the melting process. After a few hours the melting was complete and the crayons had blended together.

 

We popped the crayons out of the ice cube trays

  And spent the remainder of the afternoon colouring! (Haha! The boys are still in their swim shorts!)

After a quick turnaround from the weekend, we packed up today and headed to Darien Lake.  We have never been, but we had heard many good things about it.

Almost everyone that I chatted with about DL have stayed in their trailers.  When we said we were staying at the hotel we were looked at like we were crazy! Here was my reasoning:

• The kids get a ton of outdoor exposure at our trailer
• I need a break too, and if we were to stay here in a trailer there would be beds to make, food to cook and dishes to clean - where is that fun for me?
• With a 5 month old, there would not be much space for her pack n play
• When we did the calculations it was cheaper to stay in the hotel than it was to stay in the trailers
• All of the executive RVs were booked, so we would have to bring all of our gear - pots, pans, dishes, bedding - again, I wanted time to relax and to not lug all of the gear!

I have to say that I was not expecting much from the Lodge at Darien Lake, but it has surpassed what I expected. The lodge itself is pretty bare-bones, there is a small food service window that offers pizzas, salads & subs and there is a swimming pool - thats about it! Our room was very clean and appeared to have been fairly recently updated. Our room also had a refridgerator which was a nice surprise as I did not expect to see one.

We brought our plug in cooler so it was nice to have the extra space, we bought milk, yogurt, drinks, and a few odds n ends that needed to be kept cool.  We brought our own kettle for tea, but there is a small coffee maker in the room. We also brought a toaster for breakfast in the morning, along with cereal.  All in all, not a bad set-up.  The room itself has 2 queen beds and a pull out sofa.  There is a dresser with a television on it. The closed-in washroom holds the toilet and shower/tub, while the sink is outside the bathroom (Nice for getting ready in the morning.) 

Again, the decor was fairly recently updated and the carpets were clean. The main corridor hallways even had a nice smell as you walked along them, something not normally noticed.  My only complaint with the room is that it would have been nice if there was some sort of a table or desk and there were no chairs of any sort.  All in all, so far, so good!

After we checked in and took a break from the driving and shopping, we went for a walk and ended up at the park.  The kids had fun on some of the rides and my youngest son is going to be a daredevil like me! FINALLY, a coast riding buddy! Now if only he would just grow taller!

Tomorrow is water park day, looking forward to it!   

Happy Canada Day & 4th of July all rolled into one!

What a crazy busy weekend, and oh so fun! Thursday was the last day of school for my oldest son, yeah, he moves on to grade 2 in the fall! We picked him up after school and headed to our trailer for the night. We had a nice relaxing evening and a wonderful campfire complete with S'mores!


Friday morning started with some Canada Day family festivities. My boys love Canada Day so I try to make a big deal of it (as we should!). I love the dollar store for just that reason, each of them received a canvass Canada Day bag with tons of goodies inside, including tattoos. After getting tatted up we played around the camp and the boys rode thier bikes, swam and played at the park.

My oldest came back to the site and asked if I would take his training wheels off - Okay, I figured he would be whining to have them put back on shortly after, but no, he proved me wrong! My husband told him he would help him as my son hopped on the bike and took off yelling "It's okay dad, I don't need any help!" And just like that he was gone, on his own and riding all weekend! what a 180 from the whining he had been doing a few weeks ago about not wanting to ride his bike.  As it turns out, he wanted them off because one of the young girls in the park no longer needed them so he had to compete with her - hey, it worked!

We headed home late that afternoon to catch the evening fireworks in our home town, wonderful night! The fireworks were fantastic and it was great to see friends and family.

Saturday morning we headed back to the trailer, a fine grilled pot-luck dinner with good friends and more fireworks! Sunday my oldest lost another tooth, at the hands of the same girl he was showing off for without his training wheels. My son (stupidly) had a toy in his mouth, she decided she wanted it and pulled on the toy, out came the toy and the tooth.  We spent the afternoon at Cobourg Beach with friends and we walked around their waterfront festival.

Sunday night we sat around the campfire and played with some experiements!

1) Diet Coke & mentos - yup, it fizzed, but we only bought the small bottles so we did not get the guyser effect - guess we will have to try it again!

2) Bottle Rocket - pour vinegar in a pop bottle (I used the same on from experiment #1), pour baking soda into a balloon. Place the balloon over the top of the bottle & secure, be careful to not left the soda fall into the bottle. Once in place, lift the balloon up to let the baking soda mix with the vinegar.  The ballon fills up with air as a result of the chemical reaction.

3) The timeless volcano experiment - Take a small cup, put in some baking soda, a bit of dish soap, red food colouring & add vinegar.  I didn't have the red food colouring on hand, but we tried it anyway and this turned out to be big fun for the boys!

Monday morning we headed down the road and fed the horses carrots before we headed for home and my youngest sons soccer game that not - what a busy weekend!

(Photos to follow)