Decorating Boxes

 For a quick and simple project to keep the girls busy I bought some photo storage boxes when they were on sale at Michael's along with some scrapbook stickers and rhinestones.  I had some random stickers at home as well, so this made for a pretty inexpensive keepsake box for each of the girls.  My sister Amber came over the day we were decorating, so she got to help the girls with their project, and I think they all had fun doing it.

 It can be tough to get stickers to peel off the paper.

 Aunt Amber helping Claire choose the perfect sticker

 Claire took a less conventional angle when it came to decorating her box.

 Melanie was very focused and had a definite idea of where she wanted her stickers to go.

 So pleased with the finished products!

Thanks for helping us Aunt Amber!

Mail!

 As I mentioned in this post, our girls really enjoy coloring - a lot.  I stocked up on coloring books at the Dollar Tree at the beginning of the summer and Melanie and Claire went to town dowsing the pages in color.  Matt really encouraged their coloring by taking a few pictures to work and hanging them in his cubicle, then he sent them a picture message on his phone showing them their proudly displayed artwork.  One of his co-workers was even encouraging their coloring and requested some of their "work", so they got another picture message of their happy customer with his M & C originals.

Soon every picture they colored had a designated recipient, and as much as daddy, Grams, Gramps, Grandma and Grandpa like getting new pictures to display, their refrigerators and offices were getting pretty full.  Time for mom to improvise a new direction for all the artwork to go in.  Well, the girls really like going with me to pick up the mail from the mailbox and receiving their monthly magazine subscriptions and the occasional Thank You card (they cherish those cards beyond reason, carrying them around with them for weeks after getting them).  I figured why not expand their enjoyment of trips to the mailbox and have them mail something to someone else? 

With that thought in mind I had the girls choose and color pictures for their aunts and uncle so we could mail them some artwork of their own.  I figured everyone enjoys getting mail that isn't a bill, so hopefully the girls pictures would be a bright spot in someone else's day.  Melanie even decided on her own to send an extra picture for Aunt Katie to give to her boyfriend.  

The girls got to pick out blank cards from my stash-o-notecards, Melanie wrote a simple message in each of them and both girls "signed" their names (Claire scribbled) and we set off for the mailbox.

 So excited about mailing their letters!

About a week later, our girls had a delivery of their own waiting in our door bucket when we got home

Uncle John had "sent" them a Thank You note!

Even better, he sent fruit snacks!
(Thus the door bucket delivery.  It was too bulky to send through the regular mail and the contents likely would have melted)

"Dear Melaine and Claire,

Thank you for the beautiful drawings.  I love you too, and I thank Jesus every day for sending me such wonderful nieces.  Love, Uncle John

P.S.  Ask your mom when you can eat these gummy snacks!" 

(the last line was an especially nice touch in my opinion ;D )

This proved to be a very fun and simple activity for the girls and their aunts and uncle, one I'm sure we'll do again and again over the years.

Melanie's Dance Class

As I said earlier in the summer, Melanie got to take dance lessons for her birthday gift from Matt and me. For the final class the kids are allowed to invite family and friends to come watch to see what they've learned, so naturally Melanie wanted her grandparents there.

Grams, Gramps, Melanie, Grandma and Grandpa all ready for Melanie's end of the session dance performance

In the rush to get the whole family (as opposed to just me and Melanie) out the door on time for class I lost all hope of winning Mom of the Year by forgetting Melanie's bag with her tap and ballet shoes in it!

Matt went home for it and got back before the ballet part of the class, but Melanie had to do her tap routine in her rubber crocs :(  Talk about mother guilt! (even though Melanie really didn't seem to care at all, she was just thrilled to have all her family there)

To celebrate afterwards we all went out to Orange Leaf for frozen yogurt.  This was the first time we had taken the girls out for "ice cream" and they absolutely loved the experience of choosing their yogurt flavor and toppings.  It's a funky looking little shop, too, so it was quite the treat!

The chairs that spin around and go up and down were especially fun.

Claire made sure she scraped up every last bit of that delicious yogurt!

And finally, the cute baby picture to finish the post up :)

Melanie really enjoyed the dance classes, so she's taking them again.  The city parks and recreation activities are proving to be a nice, inexpensive way to let Melanie try new things before we decide to spend lots of money to let the girls try a new activity only to find they don't like it after a couple weeks.  Melanie is going to try out a soccer skills group in a few weeks to see what she thinks of that as well.  I highly recommend giving the parks and rec classes a try! 

Father's Day Cards

 For Father's Day the girls and I once again opted to go for the homemade route when it came to cards for the dads in our lives.

 The first original card was Melanie's "Tickle Monster" card for my dad.  

I thought it would be cute for Melanie to make the tickle monster (the girls' nickname for my dad) into a real image.  So I had Melanie tell me what shapes/colors she wanted the various parts of the monster to be, I would draw them and she would cut them out and assembled them (aside from the hands, those were a bit too detailed for her scissor skills)

The finished card

 The next cards revolved around the girls' first experience with watercolors.

I knew I wanted to go with a theme revolving around hands like we did for the Mother's Day cards this year.  I tried tracing their hands and telling the girls to paint them lots of colors, but Claire would become so focused on painting the hand that she would paint right through the paper.  So I scratched that approach and just had them paint the paper as they saw fit, and they had a blast!

 Amelia supervising the watercoloring

 

"You missed a spot."

 If it involves getting messy it will most likely make Claire happy!

 *Maybe if I try and look cute mom won't mind that I made a mess*

Thank goodness for washable paint!

 Once everything was dried I traced the girls' hands on their respective paintings several times and cut them out to use on the cards.

I also painted a page myself and had Matt help me trace Amelia's hand so she wouldn't be left out of the cards.

 Here are the cards I came up with

It was fun to hear what the girls came up with for their list of favorite things about their grandpas.  They tended to get repetitive with their lists, playing chase and tickling were big sticking points for the girls, so I had to remind them of things they have done with their grandpas and see what they said about those events.  Against my personal wishes/better judgement I was a good mommy and did write down what the girls said, even if it encourages something I'm not particularly fond of (i.e. my dad sneaking candy to the girls when he helps me load them in the van when we leave their house)

I'm planning to get a simple black frame for Matt's card so we'll have this record of the girls hand prints for years to come.

I still have a painting from each of the big girls and a few of Amelia's hand prints left over.  I think I'll also get frames for the girls paintings to hang in the playroom to add a bit of color (I've been thinking about giving them a wall and a couple frames for each of them to display their most recent masterpieces in to help keep my refrigerator from becoming so overrun with artwork).  I'm also planning on getting some of those laminating sheets to use on Amelia's hand prints and turn them into magnets for the refrigerator.  They're just too cute not to!

Melanie's First Dance Class

 For Melanie's 4th birthday we decided to let her take dance classes.  She loves to dance around the house, plus they don't take up any space and it's one less thing for me to pick up off the floor, so it was a win/win as far as I was concerned.  We opted to have her take them through the park board until she decides if she really likes them since it's quite a bit less expensive that way.  If she really enjoys it then we'll enroll her in some more classes elsewhere, but this is a good place to start.  Melanie had her first class last week, so I snapped a few pictures of the occasion.

 Excited for her first class!

The class is a combination of the basics of ballet and tap.   She seemed to do a really good job of paying attention to the instructor and following direction, and she's been twirling around the house ever since.  Even Claire has been pretending to be a ballerina since Melanie's first class :)  We just bought her tap shoes for class yesterday, so I'm sure she'll have lots of new performances for us in the near future.

Summer Reading Fun

The girls all ready to go read the books they picked out at the library!

If you haven't already, I highly recommend signing your kiddos up for the summer library program.  Our girls are very excited about it, and at the end of the summer they can turn in their reading lists for some prizes.  You can read a bit more about it here.

Play Dough Cookies

Melanie had a friend over for a playdate over spring break, and with Melanie's birthday coming up soon and since the need to send treats to school will accompany the occasion I took advantage of the opportunity to test out a recipe on the girls.

I mixed up the dough for these play dough cookies the night before so it would have time to chill.  I initially tried to have the girls roll the dough into ropes for the lollipop cookies pictured with the recipe.  While they could do it, they were having more fun just smashing the dough around so I got out my cookie cutters and let them smash it into the cutters to make their first initial and a couple different shapes of their choice.

(The M and butterfly were Melanie's, the J, giraffe, $ and 3 were Jillian's and the star was Claire's)

Once the cookies were shaped I let the girls pick out two types of sprinkles each to decorate their cookies with.

I especially like how Melanie is two-fisting the sprinkles.  That's my daughter!  We take our sugar decorations seriously ;)

 Getting a little crazy with the sprinkles

 I think I may have discovered how to decrease the inventory on my decorating sprinkles

The decorated cookies, ready to go in the oven

All done baking and ready to be eaten

I didn't want to spend the time making the lollipop cookies for the girls' after lunch snack so I just rolled the colors into a ball and smashed in onto the cookie sheet.  Much easier and faster to do, and still pretty neat to look at.

Pretty yummy!

*Parents be warned, the crumbs from these cookies would not be very friendly towards your carpet*

Overall I like the idea of these cookies, but you could really use any roll-out sugar cookie recipe for the dough for this concept, and I like the recipe I currently use better than this one flavor-wise.  Melanie is very excited about getting to take cookies like these for her birthday though, so I'd say the trial run was a good idea.  Definitely Melanie approved!