Goodbye Summertime, You Will be Missed.

Whoa, where did summer go?  Even though it still feels a bit like summer here.  Kids are back in school, and life is slowing down.  And I am getting back into a normal routine.  I feel like the biggest slacker on the blog front.  It is one thing to have the posts and the pictures in mind, it is a wholly other thing to find a minute to sit at the computer and publish them.  We had such a fun summer.  And one of the most exciting months was July, where we went absolutely nowhere.  I enrolled the kids in a little imaginative movement class for one day a week, and a friend of mine and I swapped Tuesdays to present a craft class at our houses once a week.  We filled in the rest of the days with swimming, when it was warm, and activities when it was rainy (which wasn't too much. . .it was a pretty hot July!).  But the activities and crafts we did added so much to our daily routines that I wanted to share the ones we did.  Most of them we found on crafty little blogs, and the cost was minimal, but made for hours of fun!  They would be great to do for bday parties, rainy days, science projects, or just to add some flare to the week. 

Here are the links:

The Idea Room:  Bouncy Ball


The Idea Room: Marshmallow Guns

You Tube: Cute T shirt Cutting- (we used this one Here)

You Tube: Tie Dying Designs


Make Your own Bubbles


Family Fun: Sand Castles that Last

Here are some pictures of the fun:

The finished bouncy balls.  She noted this in her post, but they really aren't that bouncy.  She has another one that we didn't try that is suppose to be more bouncy ball-like.  We still had fun making them and letting them bobble across the kitchen floor for a few hours :). 

Mini Marshmallow Guns.  Not only were they fun to assemble, but my friend Kayla, who was in charge of this fun little activity, had targets to shoot at, and bottles to knock down.  She even painted them at the end.  My kids still sleep with theirs by their bed.

Make your own Bubbles.  This is really a trial and error process I found.  There are tons of recipes out there that are all basically the same ingredients but in looking at the comments on most it seemed like there was never 100% success rate for those using them.  We could only get a few of the really big bubbles to come off our homemade wands.  But the little bubbles worked great. 

Sand castles were so fun to play with and make but my advice: Use a pot you don't care about to cook it in , and the lastablilty was a bit questionable, because once they dry they begin to crumble, so if your little

ones want to touch it after it's dry, it really won't "last" too long!

I wish i had pictures of the tie dying.  But it was a bit much for me to get pictures while keeping my 2 year old from dying herself pink.  But maybe i can get my daughter to model her shirt for a picture later.  We cut our T's (for the girls) before dying them and they use them as cover ups for their suits, or layer them with a tank top.  They turned our adorable!

Not all of the projects had the outcome that we thought, but they were all worth it, and the kids loved them all, whether they flopped or not.  It's really all about doing something different and switching up a mundane routine. Anyone else do any fun summer projects with the kids?  I would love to hear about them! 

The next few weeks will be major baby prep!  This kiddo is due in 5 weeks!  We have some desks to assemble, rooms to rearrange and dressers to repaint and pass around to different kids, so look for some crunch time posts in the weeks to come :)