shaving cream art

I had seen all kinds of blog posts about how amazing shaving cream is. Here's just one example (though it does have a ton of ideas!). Joshua had even done some art with it at his school. I decided we should try it at home.

I read that adding glue to the shaving cream makes for a better consistency and it doesn't crack as much when it dries.  So we added some glue. I used neon food coloring and a muffin tin for mixing. We started thinking we would fingerpaint but that was super messy so we decided to use brushes. Joshua really enjoyed it and painted a whole bunch of pictures. (The horse and the flowers in the photos are my beautiful creations.)

gak

The next few posts will be old news; if you're my facebook friend, you've already seen the photos, but I thought I might as well document here too.

We made gak.

Gak is liquid starch and school glue.

The CVS near me didn't have liquid starch; all they had was spray starch, which I guess is liquid if you spray enough of it. We made due with the spray.  It might have turned out better with the real liquid stuff. I hate my CVS.

Anyway, we put some glue in a container and then sprayed it with some starch and stirred. Joshua decided he wanted it to be red, but we got pink instead.  Red never comes out as red. We continued to spray the glue and stir it up till it all stuck together at which point Joshua began his play.

It was actually pretty cool, though it didn't stick together the way I've seen some gaks. Maybe that's the difference between spray and liquid, who knows.

4th of July

So, this post is waaaaay overdue. But I thought, better late than never,  I guess.

So, for the 4th of July, we did some painting including making a flag of large craft sticks and cookie cutter star stamping.

We had friends over and did some safe and sane fireworks in the backyard, even though it was still light out.

And that's about it. A successful holiday!

A visit from Rebbie

Rebbie (my mom) came to visit on Monday, July 2. She got here in time for us to go to the grocery store for dinner items and then pick up Joshua from school. On Tuesday, we went to the park and later Rebbie and Joshua did an art project for the 4th of July.  Rebbie left Wednesday mid-morning.

It was a pretty low key visit, but I was glad to have her here because Brian was working 16+ hour days last week.

goop and gak

We recently tried out a couple of messy goos.

The first is goop or oobleck.  It's cornstarch and water in equal parts. It's super messy.

Then we tried gak. It's equal parts glue and starch. It's not quite as messy.

I'm thinking about making a slime for Joshua's birthday party.  I'm kind of leaning toward gak just because of the mess factor. Though, either one will require a drop cloth of some kind, so who knows. Any opinions for a group of 3 and 4 year olds?

6 months

Evan had his half birthday on June 30th. He had his 6-month well-baby check up on July 5th.  he weighed 17 lbs, 9 oz and was 26.5 inches long. (To compare, Joshua was 19 lbs, 6 oz and 27 inches long.)

My Evan, who has a full head of hair but no teeth, who likes to stand but hates tummy time, who is so vocal we have a hard time getting a word in, who stares intently at food but who, so far, has not really taken to any of the foods he's tried (which now include rice cereal, sweet potatoes, green beans, and apples).

It's just amazing how quickly things change.

eruption

Joshua and I made an eruption (sans volcano) out of baking soda and vinegar.  He was super excited about it!

I had never done this before so I think my proportions were off, but it was still cool.

What we did:
Emptied out a 20 ounce gatorade bottle. Filled it most of the way with hot water. Put in several teaspoons of baking soda. Poured in some vinegar and then watched it erupt.

Then we added more baking soda and more vinegar. And more baking soda and more vinegar. And more baking soda and more vinegar.

I bought two more boxes of baking soda the last time I went to the grocery store so we can do it again. And again. And again.