Taking the Kitchen Outside Part III

Another project that starts in the kitchen and ends in backyard fun. ICE CUBE BOATS!
It all started in the morning... First Daniel carefully filled the ice cube tray with a spouted measuring cup. I was impressed that there was no spillage. Meanwhile Jacob pinned clothespins to toothpicks. Then we carefully added a couple of drops of food colouring into each ice cube hole. We balanced the clothespins across the ice cube tray to keep the masts upright and then I put the whole thing in the freezer.
After lunch Jacob fell asleep so Daniel and I made sails for the boats. We anxiously waited for Jacob to awake. When he finally did, he taped all the sails on and then we went outside. We filled up this old plastic sandbox with water, popped the boats out, and here we go!

Jacob liked figuring out which ones actually floated upright.
Some didn't because our masts/sails weren't straight.

The liked having the hose left on because it created a current that went in a circle.
When the boats made it around, they got sunk by the cascading water.

Daniel enjoyed putting the sunken boats back in the tray and then eating them when I wasn't looking.

Taking the Kitchen Outside Part II

Now painting is always something fun in our house (okay, maybe not always) but I thought THIS was something we could do outside for sure! I have these old crummy baking pans that we use for paint and a whole container of random paintbrushes, two disgusting old t-shirts and a roll of paper. I grabbed some painter's tape and we were all set. Now turns out Daniel wasn't so into this, but maybe the paper was too high for him. Jacob would paint for a bit, then "wash" his brushes and take off his t-shirt and go play for a bit. Then he would come back to work some more on his masterpiece. He did paint the fence a bit, but it is metal so I figure it will come off in the rain.

Hard at work

Somehow I didn't get a picture of the finished painting! :(

Daniel's Painting

Taking the Kitchen Outside Part I

I know I've posted about volcanoes before. Truly, we go through so much vinegar and baking soda in this house... but then I read an article about trying different things mixed in with the baking soda. This mom tried bubble solution, dish soap, and even orange pop and chocolate milk. Well, I wanted to do volcanoes outside since it is finally nice, and I wanted to try this. We used 7-up instead of orange pop, we didn't have chocolate milk and I wasn't sure about doing that out in the sun.... though apparently the chocolate milk was really cool. Anyways... she had actual measurements so I had the boys do all the measuring in the kitchen then we put our cups on a tray and hauled them outside. We used 2 tbsp baking soda and 3/4 cup vinegar for each volcano.

Now, because the pop, bubbles, and dish soap do different things a smart mama would have labelled the cups with a dry erase marker so that for next time we can just play with the most epic volcano... but I didn't. So we will just have to try this again. 

Hey Mom! I've Got Dirt in my Hair!

Except he didn't actually say that. But I did watch Daniel dump a cupful of black dirt on his own head right before I was about to serve dinner. So instead of cleaning him up, we ate our chilli outside. Yum.

When The Weather is Nice...

We have had a beautiful winter so far this year. And when it is this nice, I just have to get the boys outside to enjoy it. I was inspired by some snow-play they did at playgroup. They had a big bucket of snow and spray bottles full of kool-aid. It was fun to "paint" the snow. Well, I had neither spray bottles nor kool-aid, but a couple of pop bottles with a hole punched in the lid and water mixed with a little acrylic paint worked pretty well for us. Though it didn't smell delicious like the kool-aid!

Please Be Seated

So two winters ago our church got new-used pews. Ours were somewhere less than 100 years old, and many were splitting and cracking. Well, we took one of those pews home... My plan was to put it at the kitchen table. These pews are nearly 12 feet long and it turns out it wouldn't fit in any room. It sat outside for a while and ended up in the basement as our recycling/sorting station. Last weekend we brought it outside again, and here is the transformation:

Deciding where to make the cut.

Jeff's Dad did all the hard work.

Jacob says "It's like a pew."

3 coats of Royal Indigo

I left the original wood on the back.