Small Objects A-Z

I hope ya'll have had a great week! With Bubba slowly giving up his afternoon nap (grrrrr), I have been falling behind in writing. Plus I have been so exhausted lately, that when he does nap, I am laying down with him. It's just been one of those weeks.....

Since naps are coming to an end, I've tried to find things to entertain this little guy. I did a busy bag swap with a friend...but those activities don't seem to hold his attention for very long. 

So I put together a bag of small trinkets. 

Most of the items I found around the house, and I tried to find something to represent each letter of the alphabet. Why we have "junk" like this hanging around the house? I do not know; but it has certainly come in handy. 

Some letters have multiple objects, and I'm still trying to find things for O, Q, U, and V {but I can just add those later}.

He absolutely loves his bag of trinkets. I love that he will play with the things for hours...WITHOUT ME. 

When I am playing with him, I'll ask him to find me things that are all the same color. Or start with a certain letter, which is still a bit advanced for him, but he does surprisingly well for the most part.

It's fun to see how he plays with everything. 

He made a little sensory box with water beads, a few of the sea creatures, and a pirate {of course}. 

 He walked into my room the other day with the wand and tiara saying, "I'm a princess." 

Whoopsies....we've been watching too much Cinderella; and maybe I shouldn't have included those objects. 

He also tried to fly like a bird and flapped the feathers around like they were his wings. It was pretty hilarious...I wish I had video of it. 

I ♥Felt - Felt Eggs

I've wanted to make felt food to replace Bubba's plastic food in his kitchen/shopping cart for awhile now, but haven't had the time to do so.

The other day, while thinking of different uses for the box of plastic Easter eggs I bought, I had the brilliant idea to make felt eggs to go inside a few. And, really, eggs seemed like the easiest food to start off making.

I did a little google searching, and found a whole collection of tutorials for felt food on Apartment Therapy. Since I was starting with eggs, I used the tutorial from One Crafty Mumma as my guide.

I used the template provided for the egg yolk, but decided to create my own stencil for the whites.

As you can see, I didn't use a sewing machine like One Crafty Mumma. I'm not so good at sewing anything other than a straight line, so I thought it would be quicker and less frustrating to do it by hand. 

Sew one side of the yolk, stuff, then sew closed. 

Sew 2 egg white pieces together.

I did give this one a try on the machine, but liked the hand sewn look better. 

 Finished product {sorry for the dark picture, it was night time}.

It was so cute how excited he was to pop open the eggs. 

  

Pretending to eat his cooked egg.

make animated gifs like this at MakeAGif

(I can't figure out how to make this smaller, so if you know how, please fill me in)

Flipping eggs!

 I don't know where he has picked this up from {he's never seen me try to do that}, but I think it's so awesome that he did it...we'll see if he can flip real eggs one day {when he's older, of course}.

I also made the orange slices from One Crafty Mumma. I'll post those soon.

Happy Weekend!

Oh, and Happy Birthday to my amazing brother!!! Love you, Bear!

Shaving Cream Fun

We've been experimenting with different uses for shaving cream lately.

Shaving Cream Snow Art

Mix shaving cream with white glue.

Super fun! 

He started out with a paint brush, and ended up just using his hands and getting it all over the paper and his body.

I love the way it dries! The picture doesn't even do it justice. It dries puffy...Bubba loved touching it after the "snow" dried.

Shaving Cream Paint

Okay, so this seemed like a brilliant idea, until it stained the shower tile grout and caused Bubba to have a reaction {from the food coloring; we follow the Feingold program, and silly me forgot that he can't use products which will be absorbed through the skin that contain artificial coloring}.

But he sure did have a blast painting in the tub, and for the most part is washed away clean. I'm still working on a solution for the dyed grout though - I'm not to fond of red and blue spots in the guest shower.

*Update: While I try not to use a lot of chemicals to clean, I ended up using 409 and a toothbrush to scrub the grout clean, and all of the color came off!

Shaving Cream and {Packing} Peanuts

I saw this idea on Earth's Kids, and thought Bubba would really enjoy it.

We set up bowls filled with different combinations of materials {like the directions suggest}.

- Shaving cream/peanuts/cold water
- Shaving cream/peanuts/warm water
- Shaving cream/peanuts
- Shaving cream/water
- Peanuts/water

By that face, you would think that he loved this activity.

Alas, the enthusiasm was short lived. 

For a kid who normally doesn't mind getting his hands dirty, he sure did not like the way the shaving cream, peanuts, and water mixed together felt on his hands. 

You can find more shaving cream fun activities at ABC Home Preschool.

Toddler Tuesday

This is totally late due to our crazy valentine's celebrating today. We left the house at 9:15 AM and didn't return until almost 5 PM - just in time for dinner, bath and bed time. Needless to say, I didn't get a whole lot done at home. 

But here it is...a sampling of the fun things Bubba gets into each week, here at Country Farm Place.

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This guy is going to be a future baby wearer {he calls his elephant his baby}.

Bubba's new favorite activity is printing pictures on the little photo printer {thanks Mimi - I bet you didn't even know we still had this}.

I made Bubs his own personal magazine. Now, he doesn't have to destroy mine while he's "reading."

Having fun with water beads. 

{Side-note: I have found another good use for my old year books}

And, of course, the requisite self-portrait.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Toddler Tuesday

Bubba loves taking pictures. Often, I give him our old camera and let him snap away. This is the result of those times....

"Hi there."

"There my feet. Cars shoes...vroom vroom."

"Ice cream truck. Yummy."

"Ebby. Haha. Yea. Ebby =D"

"Das (That's) moon game and crown. No, my crown."

"Haha [covering mouth]. Das me! My bike. I race. I fall down."

He obviously didn't take this one, but I just had to throw it in the mix. Bubba participated in his first Strider race over the weekend. He had a ball...until the practice, when he fell coming down a very big hill. He refused to race the main event, but he did finish the track during the practice. We're giving it another shot in a couple weeks on a smaller track though.