Mothers Day gift idea

I like to give the grandparents keepsakes for Mothers/Fathers Day from the kids.  I personally LOVE them, so this year I treated myself and made one for me as well.  I wanted to make something they could actually use and may be even be a positive effect on the environment.  We slowly switching over to canvas bags when we go grocery shopping so I thought this would be great to give as a gift.

I bought ours at Walmart, 3 bags for $6 which I'm sure aren't environmentally friendly made.  Amazon has some great ecobags:

They also have a pack of 5 100% cotton bags for $19.96 100% Cotton Canvas Grocery/Multipurpose Tote Bag 5 Pack, Shoulder Length Handles  which is great if your doing this with a playgroup like we did!  Since we were making 3 bags for just us, the Walmart 3 pack worked out fine.

We used regular fabric paint and fabric paint pens for this craft -  You can buy puffy paint if you'd like more dimension for almost the same cost.

The supplies you see here are: Wipes to get the paint of ASAP - it dried very quickly onto your hands so wash off quickly!  Fabric markers, Fabric paints, Paint brushes, T-shirt, and Canvas Bag

 I painted the kids hands with the fabric paint and arranged them like a garden on the bag.

I did the same with the t-shirt.  I lined the bags and t-shirts up in a sort of assembly line and kept refreshing the paint on their hands after each mark.

I was surprised my 1year old did as well as she did with putting down her hands 4 times!  It may have helped that she was working on a Ritz cracker but I still think she did great.  These were super easy to make and I've already used my mother's day gift twice!

Painting with Ice Popsicles to learn about colors

I've tried to make the kids homemade ice pops with the inexpensive holders to give them something healthier then imitation flavor and chemical dyes.  So far I haven't gotten the best results.  I'm hoping when it warms up this year I can try again and actually be successful!  But what to do with them now?

The girls are really enjoying learning the Spanish words for colors and are asking me how colors are made.  I took our food coloring and put 3 drops each in the Popsicle tray.  I filled them with water and froze them for about 2 hours. 

I cut our butcher paper down to fit into a brownie pan to keep the food dye off my table.  Both girls were given red, blue, yellow, and green Popsicles.  BeBe tried to eat hers immediately while GG watched and laughed at her.  After I cleaned up BeBe we began to make our art!

The next day they were asking to do it again!  So feeling brave I just put the paper down onto our table and let them go for it. 

Just as I thought, it went straight through to the table!  Simple Green got most of it up really well so it wasn't such a tragedy after all. 

Ladybug Planter

Spring has sprung here in Vegas and I'm ready to try to prove again that I wont kill every plant I've ever touched.  This year the girls are old enough to garden on their own so the plants have a much better chance of survival.  I packed up the twins and CeCe and headed off to our home away from home, Lowes. 

As we walked up and down the isles we searched for things we would want to grow and planters to plant them in.  We bought some cilantro, basil, and rosemary.  As for the planter, I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.  As I stood debating the shape of the planter to buy, GG sat down to get the sand she had brought with her out of her shoes.  Then it dawned on me, dump the sand box I can't stand and fill it with dirt!

Although the sandbox has a lid I would find the baby crawling into it to eat the tasty sand.  The girls had been tracking it in our house for over a year and I was over the need to have a sand box.  It was time to convert it to something more useful.

I dumped the sand out and found a colony of little bugs, ew.  Apparently it had been time to convert it for quiet some time!  My husband drilled some holes in the bottom to help with drainage.  Seeing their sandbox empty was an invitation to play!

 CeCe had so much fun hang'n out in the empty lady bug that we really considered leaving it that way!

 The girls loved that the cover could fit with them in it!

After the holes had been drilled we covered the bottom with rocks a bit larger then gravel then filled with soil.

The girls planted the cilantro, rosemary, and basil all by themselves. I'm excited to show them that we can pick the herbs and use them directly in our cooking.

All the girls chipped in to water the newly planted seeds.  I gave the twins water bottles in hopes they wouldn't drown the seedlings....they screwed off the tops and poured it in anyways!  I didn't even know they knew how to screw things off yet.  The small amount in the bottles was perfect for watering.

The best part of the garden being in the ladybug is Little Miss CeCe has forgotten she can lift up the lid which means now when she's outside we have no fear of her eating the dirt and pulling up the herbs.  I'm now addicted to find different things to use a planter.  If you have any great ideas please send them to me.  I'll happily link to your post!