Planting a Rainbow

We have pretty much finished up our March studies on Ireland, St Patrick's Day and rainbows. It's been a fun month with lots of fun activities.

One of my favorites was planting a rainbow with the girls. We went to Home Depot and Lowes and loaded up on a rainbow of flowers.

Adam built us a little flower box to put around the mailbox. I've wanted a flowery mailbox since we bought our house but when we moved here the mailbox was on the other side of the street. We just got permission this year to move it to our side. I'm ecstatic!  (It's the little things, y'all!)

I would tell you the names of all the flowers but I'm no botanical expert and my dearest Aubrey child confiscated all the picks from the containers which named the flowers and gave instructions on how to care for them.


"It was trash, Momma."

I do know that most of them are pansies and there are also a couple marigolds thrown into the mix (orange was a tough flower to find).

After we had planted our rainbow we needed to water it. The sun shining behind the shower made a lovely rainbow in the road.



A First for Me {BOY Birthday Party!}

Planning a party not centered around the colors pink and purple and without words like princess and pretty is a whole new world for me. I like it. A lot. I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do. I started with making the birthday shirt. You can see a tutorial here on how I made the shirt. After that part was finished I appliqued the 1 and his name. The birthday shirt is born....

From there the wheels started turning and everything began to fall into place. I found 1st birthday plates and napkins on clearance at Target in the same colors I had used on the shirt. Then I made the invitations. 

 I had planned to have a cookout and let the kids enjoy running around outside during the party. Last Monday the weather for Saturday looked like something like this - 68*, 15% chance of scattered showers. I started praying that God would change those chances. He did. He thinks he's funny. The chances were changed all right. From 15% scattered to 90% unscattered. So my plans changed (as they often do!) and I had a friend hook me up with a sweet deal from Papa Johns. All that to say, I started baking cakes at 9:00 Friday night since I suddenly needed the inside of my house to be much cleaner and party ready than I had prepared for. Behind much?? I knew I was going to do colorful dots all over the big cake. I thought that was what I was going to do for the smash cake. While I did the crumb coat an idea struck me. Make the smash cake look like the birthday shirt!   

I love the way the colors pop!

Speaking of pops. I made marshmallow pops for the first time. Despite being a bit time consuming they were very easy to make. And they are very yummy. More of those fun colors!

I bought the little buckets at Hobby Lobby. Orange and blue are my favorite boy colors. They're also Auburn's colors. War Eagle!

The birthday boy had lots of fun! He ate lots of pizza and fruit. And enjoyed all the attention.

He really enjoyed his cake! After picking at it for a while in true to him fashion he used it for a drum.

It was a really good day. I am so thankful that we have this sweet boy in our lives! And I'm thankful for friends who were able to celebrate his day with us. He was worn out by the end of the night.

I hope I get many more nights of snuggling like this. I know they won't last forever.





Science Sunday {Rainbow Plant Update}

We have rainbow plants! They haven't reached rainbow status just yet but they are sprouts none the less. This is day 21. We started seeing green about 12 days after we first planted the seeds.

They are getting pretty tall. I had to add a little water tonight as the soil was starting to dry out. I'm thinking about transplanting them to a little bigger pot but I don't want to disturb them either. 

Conflicted. Story of my life. =)

For more Science Sunday adventures visit:

Happy Birthday, Haden!

I've spent the last week and a half getting ready for this little man's big day. Give me a day to recoup and I'll be back Monday!

Happy St Patrick's Day

The girls started the morning off making leprechaun puppets.

Once you find a leprechaun he has to tell you where the pot of gold is!

You can find the clues I used here.

They found their pot of gold! 

The printable for the treasure bags can be found here.

We spent a good part of this beautiful afternoon looking for four leaf clovers!

I made corned beef for the first time today. I threw it in the crockpot this morning and it was ready and waiting on us when got home from ballet tonight. Everyone loved it! We also had garlic/parmesan mashed potatos, another first for me that everyone loved. Of course, the girls washed it all down with green kool-aid (leftovers from the kool dough project) and followed it with a key lime pie dessert. Yum!

Hope you all had a wonderful Saint Patirck's Day!

Today They Learned an Irish Jig!

We spent today at an Irish Festival! It was so neat to experience a lot of the things we've been learning about! I'll post more pictures soon but here is a short clip of the girls dancing today. So much fun!

Making an Irish Harp

We are loving our study of Ireland, St Patrick's Day and rainbows. There is so much fun stuff to do and everyday I'm more convinced that we need to live in Ireland. The fact that there are no snakes on the whole island is reason enough. Please, no need to tell me why we don't want to live in Ireland. I know it rains there somewhere around 200 days a year. But. There are no snakes.

We watched American Cultures for Children, Irish-American Heritage yesterday. And again today. It is such a neat video. We've been reading Count Your Way Through Ireland by James Haskins.and learning to count to 10 in Gaelic. The video also teaches it so we now have someone pronouncing the words for us! We'll have it down by the end of the month! The video covers a little bit of everything and even included a tutorial for making a harp.

Start with a box. On the video they used a pasta box (a large one like for jumbo shells, not spaghetti), we used ice cream cone boxes. Cereal boxes were also suggested. You can paint your box and then decorate it. We covered ours in wrapping paper and then the girls stamped it with paint and foam stamps. After your box is ready you will cut a rectangle on both sides like so

Then you will tape a pencil to one side of the box on the side of the window. Next you will stretch rubber bands around the box and over the windows according to width. Finish by taping the rubber bands down on both sides of both windows.

Play a Celtic tune!

One more thing. Aubrey wanted left over pancakes for dinner tonight (the colors became slightly distorted after going through the microwave). I happened to pick up some clouds at the store earlier today. How fun is this?



Taste the Rainbow

Meals Fit for a Leprechaun

Need something easy to feed your little leprechaun's in the wee hours of the morning?

Shamrock Toast

I believe it's pretty self explanatory but none the less:

Using a shamrock shaped cookie cutter cut the middle out of a slice of bread.

Place on a cookie sheet. Make sure you spray the cookie sheet!

Add a couple drops of green food coloring to an egg and scramble.

Pour the egg into the center of bread.

Bake at 350* until egg is set.

Don't throw out the middles of your bread, you can save those for lunch!

Shamrock Sandwiches

Enjoy!

How to Make Potato Candy

Start with a small potato. I used about 3/4 of the smallest one we had. Then cut it up into chunks.

Boil the potatoes for about 10 minutes

Drain and then mash until there are no lumps.



Then you are going to add powdered sugar and mix until a firm ball is formed.

The amount of powdered sugar needed depends on how much potato you used. I used about 3/4 of a 2 lb bag. You don't want it to be sticky.

Next you will roll it out to about 1/8 in thickness. I tried to keep it as rectangular as possible.

Then spread with peanut butter. I used about a 1/2 cup



Roll it up and refrigerate 4 hours or over night.

Slice and enjoy!

Keep candy stored in refrigerator.