buckeye bucket list

in less than two weeks the henderson-jones clan will be arriving for a one week visit, and this time we'll be lucky enough to be hosting! there are so many things we'd like to do with these special relatives that we don't get to see nearly as often as we'd like, so inspired by missy, i thought sam and i should make a "buckeye bucket list" of things to do in our corner of ohio. this is what we've come up with thus far:

• lightsaber battles (i think sam intended this for oscar and himself, though others might be welcome to join in)
• go for a hike to the overlook and feed the birds (i'll have to go get some sunflower seeds for this)
• ride the train to tower city and see the christmas decorations (i hope they'll be up in time, as they usually are)
• make buckeyes (or find a place to buy them) to take back to mississippi
• go to the playground
• go to the indoor pool
• take lucy for a walk (at shaker lakes)
• play legos
• read something (preferably about star wars)
• share halloween candy (for dessert)
• have thanksgiving dinner
• have a fire in the fireplace, roast marshmallows, have s'mores

i'm sure we'll come up with more and there will be lots of things we won't end up having time for, but it's fun to think about enjoyable things to do (much more fun than the list of all that needs to get done before the visit. bathroom scrubbing anyone?)

image via pinterest

fall 2012

we've been pretty busy this fall, though if you asked me exactly what we've been up to it's hard to remember where the time has gone. i think a lot of it got swallowed up with costume making, but we've been to the farmers' market, down to columbus, to the swimming pool, and all around town (particularly to the playgrounds). i'm really wishing i'd have taken the time to photograph the trees while we've been out and about as they've been more bright and colorful than i remember in recent years, but these days just getting out the door is all my brain can handle. i'd say the peak of color was last weekend, and in the last couple of days the trees surrounding our yard have basically emptied themselves out. we have been out clearing the yard of leaves at least three times since last saturday. the pile of leaves on thursday was particularly epic (for a plot the size of ours, anyway), and sam had a blast jumping in, slogging through, and having me bury him underneath in that crunchy, colorful heap. lucy watched the proceedings with a mostly solemn expression, but it was a lovely 78 degree day with a light breeze, and we all enjoyed being out in the sun (we probably should have enjoyed it more considering that the weather mavens are predicting chilly and rainy for the next week or so—blarrgh).
i keep thinking about missy's bucket list and all the fun things she's been doing and wishing we were having that many adventures. oh well. i guess we've got a little fall left, so maybe we can cram a little more fun in before it's over. in any case, having missy and family up at the end of november will definitely be the highlight of the season (and maybe with them here we'll come up with some fun to cross off, right?)

bubble fun

we mixed up a batch of bubble soap the other night using this recipe. they actually work really well (though not as stellar as mr. bubble bubbles. how i miss mr. bubble!) maybe it's because i didn't use dawn. i'll have to make a note on my grocery list.

pudding painting

i remember hearing about this a million years ago, but thought it might be fun for sam to try today. he happened to talk daddy and me into buying some vanilla pudding at the grocery last saturday, so i mixed up a little bit with red, yellow, and blue food coloring and was going to let sam finger paint with it—plus, he'd get to lick his fingers and generally get all messy, fun right?

well, it turned out that sam was a little gun shy when it came to putting his fingers into the pudding paint—go figure! but he did use a spoon to blop it and stir it around and such. of course, his favorite part was the eating.

when he was done, we took the remainder of the pudding and i had him guess what color we'd make if we mixed the different colors—a tasty lesson in color theory.

a day out with thomas OR how to make your kid so tired he ends up face down in the gravel

to be honest, i never really thought much about these kiddie events, but we thought it would be a fun way to spend a morning with sam. so last friday mike took the day off, we packed up some provisions, and we set out to the "a day out with thomas" event at the cuyahoga valley scenic railroad.
despite the fact that sam's got trains at home he had a great time driving around on the train tables once he could finally find an abandoned engine (and this took a while, let me tell you. he was EXTREMELY patient, and i was mighty proud of my sam standing there watching carefully for his turn and not having a tantrum because there weren't any engines free for him to play with. sometimes it's just as well to have a somewhat reserved three year old.)
there was a forklift and a few other small vehicles that they were letting kids get into and pretend to drive (also a hit). and after we ate a bit of lunch (so glad we packed something healthy rather than relying on what i can only assume was highly overpriced junkfood), we finally boarded thomas for our ride.
the trains were nice (as in air conditioned and quiet), and the ride was just long enough so that sam saved his fidgety sillies for the last five minutes. i can only say that this part was definitely geared to the 2–6 year old thomas fanboys (sam knows about thomas and enjoys watching the show occasionally, but he's FAR from fanboy status.) still, he liked the ride and had a good time. 
afterward we walked around and saw the miniature train displays, rang a big train bell, perused the bouncy houses (sam refused to go in alone), and sam got his temporary tattoo. 
at this point we were all feeling a bit hot and tired, but sam was keen on revisiting the forklift and buggy, so we went back over and sam played around a while longer. we probably should've tried to make a graceful exit at this point, but instead we pushed our luck and sam ended up face down in the gravel with another bonk on the head (a small cut on his left eyebrow—that left side of his head really takes a beating) and a scraped up knee. he was clearly way past "done". we found the first aid tent where they cleaned and bandaged up our boy (and where i proceeded to get entirely too dizzy to stand), and then quickly made our way to one last stop at the porta-potties and then home.
sam was out like a light within minutes of getting back in the car, and he didn't protest leaving until he woke up at home a couple of hours later.

some more photos from the day:

though i'm not sure we'll do the thomas event again, we did have a good time. we'd actually like to try going on one of the non-thomas rides sometime in the near future.

making—freezer paper stencils

i've been dying to try freezer paper stencils for ages (i swear i've had this roll of freezer paper stacked away in my cupboard for more than two years), but i was recently trying to figure out ways to make sam's old white onesies seem a little bit more special (before they get handed down) and decided that this is the perfect opportunity to finally give this stencil thing a go.
i'm still not quite sure what i want to put on the onesies (can't do initials because she hasn't got a name yet, don't want to do hearts or flowers or other girlie stuff because that's just too, i don't know...the word boring comes to mind), so i thought i'd just experiment on my own t-shirts first (and even this was a stretch when it came down to it, hence the triangles).
i think the end result was okay. you can totally see places where i should've pressed harder with the iron when ironing on the stencil (or been more careful with the paint, or both), but now that i've done one, i'm totally hooked. i want to stencil everything!
i love this inspiration, and i pinned a tutorial here.
now what are you waiting for? i'm sure you've got an old, boring tee with a stain on it just waiting to be upgraded, don't you?

puzzled

our new puzzles have arrived and sam is busily at work building and dismantling them.
it's interesting to see him put them together. half the time he looks as though he's not even thinking about it, and other times he's clearly trying to work out where something belongs, or what orientation it needs to be in. i wasn't sure how he'd do with the 24 piece puzzles, but he breezed through them both pretty quickly.
he's definitely starting to remind me of his cousin tyler, who apparently used to sit with a couple of puzzles dumped in front of him, and would put together three or four at once. he's still one of the best puzzlers i know.
in any case, i'm going to encourage this willingness to puzzle away as best i can (and not just because it tends to be a wonderfully QUIET activity—no imaginary swords or bad guys involved)!

making—baby shower bingo

my sister-in-law got put in charge of planning the games for an upcoming baby shower she's helping to throw, and since she knows i kinda do this sort of thing for fun, she asked me to design some personalized bingo cards for the mom and dad-to-be. she told me the information on where they're registered and sent me this photo via cell phone as reference:

after three or so hours at the computer, i was able to come up with this:

i'm pretty happy with the results, and i hope that she will be too. not too bad for a sunday afternoon's worth of goofing off, huh?

twas the night before halloween...

our pumpkin is carved, our seeds are roasting, and sam's costume is complete (finished five whole days before halloween this year, thankyouverymuch). i even spent a little time making myself a fall mask out of leftover felt, though when sam asked what my costume was going to be i said i was going to wear his cape from last year and be super mommy. he had the good sense not to argue.

tomorrow he'll wake bright and early (or dark and early, as the case may be), and head off to daycare where he'll be participating in their halloween parade (a walk around the block in costume), and will be capping off his festivities by handing out candy and a little trick-or-treating with daddy.

i'll have photos of him in costume (assuming he actually wears the costume) tomorrow, so stay tuned for photos. so far sam has been less than keen on his special halloween outfit. the lesson he should take away from this is that when mom asks you what you want to be for halloween, come up with something other than "sam", or she will, and you may not like the result.

shaun the sheep

this morning, sam was very keen to watch the dvd of shaun the sheep that we (or more precisely, i) got from the library. so, later on when he wanted to investigate the cottonballs from the bathroom, i thought it would be more fun to make our own shaun.

i got out some construction paper and glue, and sam collected some of the cottonballs. a little less than 10 minutes later, sam was pleased to have his very own sheep. i think he was quite proud of his cottonball-gluing abilities, and i was quite proud of the fact that when i asked him to clean up the cottonballs, he not only put all the unusued ones back in the container, he even carried the container up to the bathroom and put it away.

i thought this might be a fun activity for other kids, so i made a pdf available for download here. enjoy!

(sam and shaun)

and for anyone who doesn't know about shaun the sheep, here's a little introductory video:

spring flowers

i also tried this tutorial for making cute fabric flowers (and bookmarked a couple more here and here for later).

i was thinking i might use these for a necklace too, but they'd be cute on hairclips or headbands (if you're into those kinds of things).

the art gallery

sam's started to make some really cute drawings (mostly garbage trucks and rocks), and i wanted a nice place to put them on display. so i went off to the dollar store (i love the dollar store!) and got a few of these white metal frames. they're super easy to open, so i can add drawings when sam makes something new.

i'm not precisely sure where i'll put them, but at least they won't be on the refrigerator (where they'd most likely be either knocked down or pulled off by the artist himself), which means i can (sort of) keep them for posterity without having them feel like clutter.

the artist at work

happy halloween

a quick shot of our pumpkin (carved by yours truly)

we had a good halloween weekend. we started of on friday with a trip to mike's office. every year they have a halloween party for all the employees and their families. this was the first time we've attended, and it was a lot of fun. sam was rather impressed and did a lot of commenting on the monkey (person in a gorilla costume) and the rabbit (person in a bugs bunny costume).

sam running around super fast in his "supersam" costume.

sam had a really good time with trick-or-treating this year, or at least much more so than last year. he seemed to enjoy running around being supersam, but was mostly interested in all the kids that were showing up at our doorstep and walking around the neighborhood in their fancy outfits.

as far as actual trick-or-treating was concerned, he walked himself to all the houses on our street (i guess that turned out to be about five—mike took him while i manned the door). he was pretty interested in his loot (when it was chocolate), and was pretty certain that his tootsie pop was "daddy's candy". in fact, he didn't really get many things he is allowed to eat, but we swapped some of his contraband for a small bag of m&ms and a roll of smarties that he ate with two-fisted gusto.

the details of sam's superhero costume—side and back view

in general, i was pretty proud of sam's costume. we had the long-john pants and sweatshirt which came as hand-me-downs ($0), i bought the red shorts on sale at target ($1) and two yards of red fabric ($4.50) from the fabric store, the felt was from my stash, and the biggest purchase was the pair of red converse one-star sneakers ($18) from target (which i had planned on buying anyway, because i just adored the pair his cousin oscar had).

we got several compliments on how cute the costume was, and i have to admit, sam makes a pretty adorable superhero (he's been practicing being super cute for quite a while now).

*spoiler alert* the caped cuteness

just had to post this photo of sam trying on his supersam cape. at first he liked it better when i wore it and ran around the house pretending i could fly, but as soon as he realized that super why and word girl both wear capes, he was a little more into it.

i've still got finishing touches to add to his costume tonight, but for the most part, it's done.

quilt update

here's a couple of photos of the quilt in progress. i've been spending most of my downtime on it (when i'm not doing freelance, or laundry, or playing with sam, or cooking, or cleaning, or whatever). i'm really enjoying it because i can work on it without really doing much thinking, but when i'm sitting and watching a buckeye game (or standing on the train on the way to work), i feel like i'm accomplishing something. very satisfying.

i'm a little over 20 blocks in, so i've still got about 50 to go. unfortunately, i think i'm going to have to put the quilt on a bit of a hiatus while there's a halloween costume to whip up. i still haven't nailed down exactly what i'm making for sam (he doesn't really get halloween enough to choose his own costume yet), but we're thinking superhero.

stay tuned!

a tuesday adventure

sam wearing his "junior firefighter" badge.

this morning, as we were walking past the firehouse on our way to the library (as we do most mornings when i'm home), the firefighters invited sammy in to look at the fire trucks!

actually, what happened was that we walked past (sam was walking, not riding in the stroller—he usually walks to the library, then rides home after playing on the playground), and i pointed out the trucks to him (at which point the firemen were already smiling and waving hi to sam—he is, afterall, irresistible), and after we'd walked past sam did a u-turn and went right back so he could look some more. that's when one of the firemen came out, took his hand, and led him in to get an up-close-and-personal view of the fire trucks.

we got to see the lights flashing and see all of the different compartments and equipment, and sam was even offered a chance to sit inside—at which point he got VERY shy and didn't actually climb in (i thought for sure he would). he also got a badge (see photo) and a couple of activity books to bring home! super cool!

more reunion photos, and more fun with my new toy

am enjoying playing with my new toy, so i thought i'd play around with some of the reunion photos i've been meaning to post.

fun finds

i know a few grown-ups who would have a lot of fun with a few rolls of this tape (yes, that includes me). i bet there are a few nephews that would too.

thought this was also cute, but i'm not sure it would be put to it's proper use that much.

(found via)

a few snaps from our weekend visit to columbus: 1) sam, mike, and new cousin/niece annie (she is so very tiny and cute!)

2) mike and sam at the polar bear exhibit at the columbus zoo 3) sam after his ice cream sandwich dessert

we had a nice visit, but it's always too short. luckily, we'll be seeing everyone again in a few weeks for the fourth of july holiday. hurrah!

camping!

we started off friday around 11am and headed out to four mile creek state park in new york. it was a nice drive (not too long) and aftera few pit stops, we arrived sometime after 4pm. unfortunately, we didn't think to make a reservation, so we were only able to get a campsite for the one night (instead of the two we had originally intended to stay), but we decided to at least get what we could. we were set up and ready to explore around 6, and after dinner, we got sam ready for bed and took a walk to check out the lake. after sam went to sleep (and he really was in no hurry to do so), mike and i sat around the campfire for a good long time just visiting and looking at the stars.
the next morning sam was up shortly after 7 (i think. i had headed over to the bathrooms before he woke up), and we took down the tent, ate a little breakfast, played on the playground (sam loves to swing), and headed out to niagara falls.
we had a great time walking around the falls. though sam wasn't exactly as impressed as he might have been, he seemed to enjoy walking around and riding in the stroller. he had a great time watching all the people, but he wasn't fond of the misty spray coming from the falls. at one point he conked out, but he woke up in time for some lunch and a good bit of the ride home. when we arrived, sam did a few "victory laps" and made sure the house was still in order. he seemed glad to be home.

i think the trip, overall, was a great success and am excited about trying again soon (though we have several other trips planned in the meantime!)