Puffball Magnets

Made them :) Super easy, and very fun already according to Finn. It's pretty straightforward, but if you need a 'how to' ... here you go!

Colour PLAYHouse a success!

On Thursday, we had 3 families join Finn & I to play with & learn about colour. We did the colour wheel activity to learn out primary colours blend to create secondary colours and we reviewed the concept with the colour matching cards (links shared in last week's post). Here are some of our colour wheels drying in the window. After our indoor activities, we headed out to the park for some swinging, sliding & running around.

Home Improvements

Now that we've been in the new house for a whole year, we're starting to make some changes ... We painted the foyer & upper hall, they are no longer 'primer white'. Dave ran wiring through the attic to add a light fixture in the stairway, 3 new windows have been installed, and the foyer lights have been replaced (the old ones moved to the new stairway light & upper hall locations). The improvement with the greatest impact though, has to be the new front door. Gone is the bright red door that clashed with the brick & only had a teeny tiny way too high to be useful window. In it's place, that pretty blue door that actually lets light into the foyer and has a deadbolt that turns the correct way! Plus, it has fresh new trim around it, which was not finished when I got that photo (and we've taken all the labels off now too!). Today's project is the back door ...

Colour Day @ PLAYHouse

Some local & not quite local moms have gotten together to have organized play dates for our mostly preschool aged kiddos ... with a bit ohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giff a learning opportunity involved.

At the first event the last week of May, we had 28 people (10 moms, 14 kiddos ages 2-7 & 4 babies).

At my house this week, I'm hoping for a *slightly* smaller crowd & doing a colour theme.

Some resources I hope to use:

From Mama-Jenn this colour wheel activity

From 1plus1plus1equals1 these color-puzzles, as well as these.

From totallytots, this story & activity

And, if I can get the download to stop crashing ... the colour cards from homeschoolcreations.com

I'm going to have to see if I can edit all of them to say coloUr, instead of color though ... we are in Canada after all!

Campground Reveiw: Turkey Point

I've been camping at Turkey Point (Ontario) since I was 9 or 10 years old I think. We went every long weekend, every summer, for years. Eventually we all go older and stopped going regularly, but have recently been back a couple times. When I was a child, our family preferred site #47, which I still like, but now we tend to book sites nearer to sites with services as we camp next to my parents, and their trailer. I'll get to individual site reviews eventually, but wanted to comment on the campground as a whole ...and some of the changes over the past 20 years! A new section called 'Fin & Feather' is a nice addition and less busy feeling than the other sections are now. There is no water at this park -- not a big deal for me, but hard on my husband who likes to swim in the lake each morning while camping. The beach is a drive into town away, and not worth the effort just to go for a quick swim. This is a great park for young kids ... bikes are allowed on the trails, and the playground in Walkingstick Woods is big with lots of room to run & climb. Some of the equipment is updated, but a few oldies from my childhood are still lingering. There used to be great evening programs, and these seem to have been replaced with 'movie night'. Not my thing, when I'm camping, I don't really want to sit at a picnic table & watch Disney movies while getting eaten by mosquitos ... I miss Elaine (the park staff that led programs when I was young) and the great campfire/history/campy-filmstrip-programs that we attended in the evenings. Maybe I'm just getting old though, as the one Disney movie we attended did have quite a few families & kids there to watch! This campground does have showers, flush toilets & real sinks at the comfort stations, and also has outhouse style toilets placed around the park if you don't want to walk to the centrally located comfort stations. They've always been clean, though they look a bit tired & 'vintage'. The park staff are quick to act on noise/alcohol violations if you have problems with any of the other campers, and while I don't like to see people evicted, it's nice to know that camping doesn't have to mean putting up with noisy & rude neighbours. As a family, my husband, kids & I will probably prefer to head further away & get to lakes for both swimming & canoeing, but for beginning & end of season trips when the lakes are cold, Turkey Point is great. The park is a reasonable distance for my parents & sister as well, so it's a good place to meet for a trip with them. It's only 80 min or so from home, so the drive isn't bad -- for us, it's all back roads with no traffic.

Again with the blog re-start ...

Let's see if I can actually maintain any level of regular posting! I have great hopes for this blog this time. Look for some reviews of campsites & gear, as I use this blog to keep track of the info for myself mostly, but if it helps you out too, great :) I'll also be trying to share what Finn is doing once his preschool experience ends, and before he starts Kindergarten 18mths from now. We've joined a local play group with some planned activities through the year, and got our Safari Niagara passes, so we're looking forward to some fun over the summer & into the fall ... I'll also be trying to keep up with regular updates on new.baby.girl once she arrives towards the end of summer. :)

Fall Swapping Season

Several of the forums I participate on have swaps going on all the time. I may have shared here before about the 12 days of Christmas swap -- that one is lots of fun & I'm looking forward to signing up for it again later this year. Recently, I've participated in a 'Pampering Mom' swap, and my parcel arrived today: It's perfect for me. To fit the budget for the swap, I listed a few books I was missing in various series and said I'd be more than happy to have them in good used condition. What a pleasant surprise to get not one, but both of the books I needed to own the complete O'Malley's series! Along with a bookbag from a seller of great products on both Etsy & Hyenacart - Beneath The Rowan Tree / DaydreamBelievers. We love Lori's designs, and I'm happy to have this great tote for my library books. Things just kept getting better, as a pair of earrings I'd been wishing for were also in the package, along with some velour face wipes (like reuseable/washable cottonballs), and several sample/travel size soaps. I'm also expecting parcels in a couple other swaps -- one that supplies me with knitted goods & I pay the knitter in an equal amount of yarn!, and another that was a crazy mess of requests, offering & matches. I've sent off a baby carrier, and a couple sets of gift bags, and will be receiving many WAHM-made goods in exchange, but not from the same people. In sewing forum swaps, I will soon be sending off a batch of aprons, and a parcel of toddler clothing ... guess I should get back to the sewing room....

A challenge from a fellow seamstress

SewingMel over at SewingMamas has issued a challenge -- you can follow along at her blog here.

I'll be working thru the planning & execution of starting Finn's fall wardrobe. He's finally at the point where we have very few hand-me-downs in size 4, so it's time to seriously tackle getting the bulk of his wardrobe made.

Tonight I'll begin the planning stage -- taking everything out of the dresser & closet, seeing what fits & what Finn has for fall.

A perfect summer saturday

Yesterday, Dave took Finn adventuring while I worked on putting up a light fixture, shelves & thread rack in the sewing room.

After they returned, we all went back to the splash pad, had some icecream -- softserve is not a good choice when it's 33 degrees celcius out. (that's 91.4F)

We left the park and went to watch a ship come through this section of the Canal -- Finn loves to see the lift bridges go up, and the guys on the ship waved to him while we were watching.

Wordle again

Have you played on www.wordle.net lately? Go play, it's fun! I did a couple today ... http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2218733/cj http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/2218751/fdls

Did you know?

That somewhere in this region, someone thought it would be a good idea to send the street sweeper down my street at 11:20pm.

Now, at the old house, this wouldn't have bothered me one bit, the house was further back from the road. New house, closer to road, older windows. More noise coming in those windows. And now, at 11:25pm, it's coming back to do the other side. Fun times.

Good thing -- the street will be cleaner tomorrow. Maybe I stayed up too late ... if I was tucked in bed at the back of the house, I wouldn't have heard a thing.

Huh. Imagine that.

Montreal. Toronto. Hockey Players. Millionaire Golfers.

Click This.

No matter how it goes from here .... 24. 11. It's a good day today ... have to see if I have a Habs shirt that's not in the laundry already.

Moved In.

You'll forgive yet another long absence from my blog ... we've been moving.

One thing we're trying to do as we unpack is to put all our books in one room. At the old house we had books in every room on smaller shelves. Now, we think we'd like to have them all together.

However, we don't have bookcases yet -- I think they'll be here tomorrow. Until then, a friend unpacked the books for us, and they are piled in the den/TV room/library.

I must confess, most of these are mine. I read a lot though ... and many of these are full series of books. It's nice to go back and read a series from beginning to end, without having to wait for them all to appear at the local library.

dotCA off to a great start for 2010

Come shop! http://hyenacart.com/dotCA/

Great new talent ... all Canadian.

A conversation with a small boy.

(Earlier today, we came up with the idea of giving all my son's diapers to a baby for my son's birthday -- since he'll be 3 and a 'big boy'. He was totally on board, 3 hours ago.)

Just now, the little guy & I were chatting, and he asked me to retrieve an out of reach toy.

Me: I can get that if you tell me what you're going to with your diapers on your birthday.

Small boy: I can't tell you.

Me: Why can't you tell me?

Small boy: It's a surprise.

Right. I have a feeling the surprise is going to be that he's changed his mind.

Craft supplies & ideas

Now that we're in week two of providing home child care, my meager supply of craft items is quickly being used up.

I've got construction paper, tp & paper towel tubes, some empty kleenex boxes. I've got lots of little photos cut out from magazines, lots of scraps of fabric. There's also empty thread spools.

We've got crayons, glue, pencil crayons.

I've got a laminating machine to make things like these stained glass projects. But we need more ideas ... things that are fun, suited to a wide range of ages (1-4 year olds), and that don't use any expensive materials.

A year of Christmas ...

I know, I know, it just ended ...



If you aren't sick of Christmas yet, and you want to get your crafting finished before the 24th of December next year ... check out what we're working on at Sewing Mamas - A year of Christmas



Here's a preview of some great tutorials that have been gathered up to help us get a head start on Holiday Decorating for 2010 -- January's theme. Each month has a theme to focus the sewing efforts.



I can't wait to see how many of us can finish this!



STOCKINGS

1. Stockings with rick rack

2. Stockings from quilts,

3. Stocking tute

4. Rick rack flowers

5. Button wreaths

Dare I say I'll write more?

It seems to be a theme. I post for a few days/weeks, then turn into slacker blogger. But I genuinely intend to post more often! I have a few bloggy ideas in my mind. I hope to post more often going forward. I've been having a great time participating in a '12 days of Christmas' swap over at the Hyenacart.com forums. It's been so fun to open a gift each of the past ten days. I'm just waiting on the last two to arrive in the mail. Finn has been very excitedly opening his advent calendar each day since the first ... it's a winter forest scene from Playmobil. Each day offers an animal or tree or other forest prop, and I believe tomorrow's door will reveal a jolly elf dressed in red. The best part is -- I think I can stash this away for next year and get two years of use from it. Maybe I'll make a decision on a sewn one by Christmas 2011 ... I keep changing my plan, so I haven't started one yet. How are your Christmas preparations coming? We're nearly done -- two gifts left to wrap that Finn picked out this morning, one load of laundry to do so we all have clean clothes to wear to our many family events (Christmas Eve church, brunch on 25th, dinner on 25th, dinner on 26th), and Dave is picking up the last 4 items on the grocery list right now. It's only 2:45 on teh 23rd! I think tomorrow is going to be the first lazy 24th we've had in a few years. Hope to be back soon .... if not ...

Merry Christmas to All!

Not Go Sport!

Finn's been very interested in basketball lately, don't know why. On a recent trip to the local Once Upon A Child shop, he spotted this lovely little basketball net - more suited perhaps to the crawling ages.

The little net speaks, and at the end of it's program, says "Way to go, sport". Well, Finn just doesn't get it, and every time, tells it "No Go Sport!".

He's quite insistent that we need to take pictures of him playing basketball, so hopefully I'll have some of those to share soon.

Photos from two canoe trips

One sunny trip, one rainy trip.

There's a moose mama & baby in there somewhere, you'll have to watch them all. One trip was August 9th, and one was September 5th.

Our first trip we had a couple hours of rain, and generally damp camping. The second trip was hot and sunny, great summer weather on Labour Day Weekend. A friend came with us, and you can see her portaging the canoe on one of the short portages. Finn carried his own 5lb pack over a total of 31 portages over the 2 trips, the longest was 1275 meters.