DIY Rainbow Lip Gloss

It's that time of year when I chase our kids around with chapstick, warning them to head off the inevitable chapped lips. And because they never listen, I find myself sneaking into their rooms at night and smearing A&D ointment anywhere on their face I can get it. To try and keep these charades to a minimum this year for at least one kid, I decided to help Cam make her own "lip gloss" after I spotted this tutorial on BuzzFeed.

Marbled Glitter Playdough

It's Cam's turn for spring break this week! And while I do love getting some one-on-one time with my best gal, after already having Kane's (and her premature first go at) spring break, I'm behind on work, life, etc. So obviously it's a perfect time for her to go through a phase requiring someone to do absolutely everything with her. Needless to say, I was on the lookout for an activity that would be a good balance of mom involvement and Cami-indpendent time.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! A holiday that celebrates feisty spirit and favorite color? We're IN! We've got a few things planned for today, but just in case you don't, here's a round-up of some of our favorite holiday-appropriate activities.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

Kane's "Everything is Awesome" Lego 6th Birthday Party!

I have a real love/hate relationship with legos. I love that they can inspire so much creative building, but I personally cannot stand putting together kits after they break apart time and time again. So I generally stick with the "free building" sets for our kids, but then you still have the super fun problem of stepping on those little suckers when they inevitably get scattered about the house, hiding in every nook and cranny just waiting for unsuspecting bare feet. Needless to say, when Kane said he wanted to have a lego birthday party, I knew it was not going to be at our house. And we've almost always held birthday parties at our house because we consider them a great occasion to get all of our family and friends together as well.

Holidaze: St. Patrick's Day Rainbow Fun

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! If you're anywhere in our area of the country, we understand if the snow has you confused. BUT it is indeed March and St. Paddy's Day! To celebrate, mom rounded up our favorite rainbow activities, all of which can be done indoors for those in the cold. AND stay tuned for a snow-related rainbow activity on our Facebook page later today!

- Rainbow Cupcakes
- Rainbow Popsicles
- Rainbow Roller Paintings
- Rainbow Scavenger Hunt
- Rainbow Shaving Cream Tub Paint

Rainbow Connection: Rainbow Roller Painting

We go through a ridiculous number of paper towels in our house -- it's not particularly environmentally friendly, so we generally try to save the rolls and at least do something creative with them.  We've spotted several cool paper towel painting projects recently (like this) and thought we'd try out a rainbow one for St. Patty's Day.  We just squirted drops of tempera paint onto a paper towel roll in a rainbow pattern and then rolled it out onto paper.  Mom, knowingly against her better judgment, let me do the squeezing.  But I surprised everyone and showed some restraint.  I did several prints with one roll and then started over.  And by my the third roll, I was over rainbows, but continued to roll the colors out in a pattern (instead of mixing them all together, which is what I usually do).  I also did one where I squeezed little bits of paint around on the page directly.  Cami rolled for a bit, but then wanted to mix all of the colors together.  And then she wanted to paint her face.  And then she was in the bath.  

I really liked doing this and think the rolls themselves turned out pretty cool looking.  We're trying to decide if we should turn the paintings into something else or leave them as is.  Maybe a rainbow garland?  We still have our heart one up!

The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me: Rainbow Popsicles

We had so much fun making green popsicles a few weeks back that mom got a little nutso with her Wilton's and decided to make rainbow popsicles.  Anticipating our lack of patience, mom mixed up the different flavors/colors during naptime and then I got to layer them in the molds.  Red was just some blended strawberries (no color added); orange was orange juice concentrate mixed with a little honey (and SERIOUSLY pumped up with some Wilton's -- it was a little too red, little too yellow, little too red, and on and on situation that led to a flourescent pumpkin-colored layer); yellow was colored vanilla yogurt; same with green; and blue was just blended blueberries.

These looked AWESOME and we ate them up.  Although I think mom was slightly worried about the impact of so much color on our intestines, but it didn't seem to be a problem.  The only problem was that mom decided to make (and let us eat) these the one week we were without a kitchen sink (we returned from our Shore trip to a broken faucet.  shocking).  It didn't make for a very pretty cleanup.

p.s. neither of us particularly liked the orange layer and it also did not freeze well which meant that the orange and red frequently stayed in the bottom of the mold.  why mom didn't anticipate that frozen orange juice concentrate, which is not frozen solid, would not, um, re-freeze more solidly, is beyond us.  if we did these again, i think we'd go back to using mango for the orange layer.