I'm back... for a few days

A walk through the woods in one of their state parks
Visiting the fossil gorge. years ago a flood uncovered this area full of fossils that you can walk through and explore.
We visited Kalona, home to a pig Amish population.

Kalan "shopping" at the Children's Museum.

We are back from Iowa City. We had a great time exploring the city. It was especially fun as the last time we were there K was only 1 week old. This time he actually got to participate and explore with us.

I've been working on lots of projects and will hopefully have them done and pictures up by the end of the week. Things are kind of crazy right now as we are in between travels and have lots of up coming birthdays. :)

Farmer's Market

If you ever have a chance to visit Detroit, I highly recommend Eastern Market on Saturdays. They have a huge market that sells fruit, veggies, meat, cheese, flowers, and plants. In winter they sell christmas trees and wreaths too. Their prices are amazing. You can also eat at the local restaurant venders. We had brie and strawberry crepes this week.

We stopped in this weekend to pick up some flowers, veggie plants, and lots of herbs.

Also just a heads up. I'll be away from the computer for a few days. See everyone one soon. :)

Nature center

We met up with some friends at one of our local nature centers. We are actually lucky enough to have 3 right near us. Unfortunately due to city budget cuts though, this nature center is in trouble. A lot of people have been signing petitions, donating money, and trying to visit more often.

We had a great time today running through the woods and trying to find woodpeckers. We visited this turtle in the pond and saw lots of frogs, snakes, and turtles in the center.

Playfood swap

I went to our local playfood swap this week. I traded the sushi I had made and here are the goodies we received. From the left we have blueberry pancakes with scrambled eggs and sausage, grapes, a carrot and potato and parsnip, a banana (that can be peeled!), and a bag of pasta (that can come out of the bag). What great stuff! I was so impressed by everyone's work.

Our next swap coming up is everything herbal. I'm the host this time and can't wait to see what everyone has made. I've also signed up for the next swap on bitofgoodness. The theme is "travel toys." Hopefully I'll have some pictures of my crafts up soon.

peanut butter pinecones

K and his dad made peanut butter pinecones today for the birds. A few days ago we found a jar of peannut butter that had gotten lost in the fridge and was way past its expiration date. So instead of throwing it away we made a treat for the birds.

While they were making the pinecones Casey asks K, "You seem to know what you are doing. Have you done this before?"

"yeah"

"With who?"

"mama"

I can't believe he remembers us doing that many months ago. Its amazing what those little people can retain. :)

Planting the Garden

We finally had nice enough weather to get our plants in the ground. We had to separate our veggies into two gardens. The front garden is small, but gets more light. So we have corn, cucumbers, zucchini, broccoli, tomatoes, and beans. The back is full of different greens and lettuce including kale, chard, and collard greens. We also planted lots of flowers in our side gardens and tons of herbs in pots near the house.

K loved helping out and even planted a flower himself. :)

Our Current Spring Nature Table

Pictures aren't too great. Sorry.

Leaf Rubbings

1st we collected leaves from the yard. then we taped them all over our art easel.
Next we pulled paper over the leaves. It took K a little while to get the hang of doing a leaf rubbing but he finally got it.
Here is our finished product. I'm thinking we might save the paper and use it as wrapping paper for the next birthday we attend.

Letting our spider go

I thought I had posted this a while ago, but I guess not. We are lovers of all animals, bugs, and plants here. When I find a spider in the house I usually ignore it (hey they eat the other bugs). However, once in a while one is just in the wrong place at the wrong time and needs to be let go. I found this one in my dirty laundry. K got a huge kick out of watching him in the jar and then letting him go outside. He talks about spiders all the time now and keeps running back to the spot we let him go to show people. Perhaps we'll have to go on a spider hunt in the house to find more.

Knitted Elephant

I knitted K this elephant over the last couple of weeks. I love the yarn and hope to have enough to make another animal. Perhaps a rino or a hippo. So here is K's reaction to receiving the elephant.

Looking at the tail he says, "whats this?"

me - "a tail."

Looking at the legs he says, "whats this?"

me - "legs"

K - "oh boy" (said in a oh crap type of tone).

Greenfield Village

Making a brass candle stick in the machine area
K talking to a sheep in the farm area
K running past all the old buildings
The candle stick I made. :)

This year for Christmas we received a membership to Henry Ford/Greenfield village. Greenfield Village just opened for the season and we have loved going. The village is set up like a huge old fashioned village with model T cars to ride, a steam engine train (that K loves to ride), an old working farm, a crafts area with people blowing glass, making pottery, weaving, printing, an old downtown, and hundreds of old homes to visit.

Kalan loves to visit the farm animals and ride the train. He talks about that train all the time. :)

Making beeswax lanterns

Fill a water balloon with water and dip it in melted beeswax. (melt your beeswax in a double boiler).
Dip the balloon several times making sure to flatten the bottom on the counter in-between dips.
We then painted the leaves with melted beeswax using a stick to put them on our lanterns. Then we dipped the lanterns two more times.

For mother's day C and I also made our mothers and grandmothers these lanterns. I found the idea on this website:

http://morningsunrae.blogspot.com/2009/11/beeswax-lantern-tutorial.html

It was a great tutorial and the only thing we changed was how to get the leaves on without using a glue gun or having the leaves stick together. We ended up using a stick to paint the leaves with melted beeswax to get them to stick. It worked pretty well.

Thanks Rae for posting such a great tutorial we had a great time making these and our mothers loved them. :)

Happy Mother's Day

My new mother gnome holding her baby in a sling
Kalan painting a sign for mother's day

We spent this mother's day with family at our house. I made mother's day gnomes for both my mother and Casey's mother. The mother's are holding babies in slings. I love the way they turned out and now perhaps I'll attempt to make a baby backpack for the gnomes. :)

I hope everyone had a pleasant mother's day. My heart goes out to those that were not able to spend this mother's day with their child or their mother due to loss.

Sushi!

I've joined another local swap. The theme is play food. I can't wait to see what everyone has made. So far I have made 6 sets of sushi (one for K). They are all avocado sushi as that is K's favorite. :)I'm hoping to make another set of food so I have 10 things to trade. Perhaps beets? Anyway now you can see why I haven't been posting any crafts for a while. This has been taking up most of my time. Hopefully I'll be done with my knitted elephant soon and I can post that too. I'm also working on mother's day gifts for my mothers and grandmothers.

Composter

My husband finished making us a composter last night. I'm really excited as lately I've just been dumping our scraps around in our gardens. We had a small compost bin last year full of worms but it became infested with maggots, spiders, and flies. It was not pretty. We decided to try something on a larger scale this year. Casey did a bunch of research online and came up with this design. As soon as he was finished we tossed in some dirt, leaves, veggie scraps and worms. :)

More May Day

I just realized I never posted our mayday celebration pictures. We were supposed to get together with a big group of friends to celebrate mayday on the 1st but we were rained out. We postponed the celebration for the 3rd and had a blast. Most of our kids are under 3 so we really had to help them with the pole (tree). We also made flower crowns and had a parade with singing, instruments, and paper butterflies. We ended the event with a large picnic. We all had a lot of fun and hope to celebrate more seasonal holidays together.

Day at the Park

I took K to a local playground today and had totally forgotten that this playground has a natural trail back in the corner. Well it only took K all of 5 mintues to discover it and leave the slides, swings, and sandbox behind to run through the woods. We found a couple of ducks and a wonderful stream to follow. I'm so happy that K is starting to love the woods as much as I do.

Making noodles

We spent the day making noodles and by "spent the day" I really mean spent the day. My mom brought over her electric noodle maker and I don't recommend it. It is so touchy. You have to have the perfect consistency or the noodles won't come out. We spent half the day adding flour then water then flour then water. I think next time I'll use a hand crank noodle maker or just do it totally by hand.

The noodles came out wonderful though! I had forgotten how good homemade noodles were. Even though it took us all day to do they were totally worth it. This time we made a whole wheat egg recipe. You can see K up there helping and skipping his nap as usual. :)