Pine Cone Bird Feeders

SPRING is Here!  Time to feed the birds!  Gather up your kids and playgroup friend to make this super easy and very tasty bird treat!

Feed the Birds (tune of Row Row)

Feed, feed, feed the birds

In the wintertime

When the days are dark and cold

Food is hard to find

Feed, feed, feed the birds

Till the spring has come

Scatter birdseed on the snow

Feeding birds is fun.

Living in Las Vegas makes finding pine cones a little harder then when I lived in Seattle! All three girls and I set out to find some regardless. We found tons of neat nature things to put in the bottom of Little Misses stroller. By the time we got back to the house I had 12 pine cones, a small bucket full of dandelions, several rocks, and a couple cherry blossoms.

They were happy to take a nap after we got home so I set all the goodies out in our backyard in hopes in bugs would wonder out and off our nature findings. I don't want to trap some poor spider in his home with peanut butter!

Once the ladies all awoke from slumber we started our craft:

How to make a Pinecone Bird FeederHave all your supplies ready:

Pinecone

Birdseed *I bought ours at the Dollar Store

Yarn

Scissors

Creamy Peanut Butter

Shallow Bowl

Cookie Sheet

I set out a cookie sheet so both my girls could cover the pinecone with peanutbutter easily. We did this outside on the grass which would have made a mess without the cookie sheet.

Using your shallow bowl, fill with bird seeds. Let your child(ren) roll the pine cone in the seeds. GG thought she's lick some peanut butter of her fingers and was very upset with the amount of bird seeds now stuck in her teeth! It took a couple flushings before she was satisfied they were all gone.

*I used a fresh jar of peanutbutter only to realize half way through: Eew, they are dipping a spoon several times into a fresh jar of peanut butter and smearing it onto a dirty pinecone. Not the best plan. Next time I'll put some in a tupperware container for them!




Cut off some string, I made ours 2 feet long to give me plenty of string to tie. Wrap the string around the top of the pinecone, then to a tree branch. All done! This took us from start to finish 15 minutes.

Twins Dance Alice in Wonderland

Twins Dance Alice in Wonderland

OMGosh, this was the cutest ever! They attend Fairytales and Tutu's here in Vegas and they do this thing called storydance. It's just too cute. The kids have a theme'd ballet class, read a story, then dress up and practice some moves.

All the parents stay and watch through this huge viewing window, it's adorable! I think this is my favorite because both of the girls are actually looking at the camera. Rare.

A girlfriend of our bought her daughter (3.5yrs) the home Starfall subscription and has shared it with us....YAY!!!  After ditching the gym today to make holiday returns, making the Best Meatloaf EVER and putting the baby to bed....we got to try it out!

I brought out the magnets and spread them out on the floor and put on some ambient music on.  I started with Pixie.  We kicked off our Starfall experience with the reading portion.  She did awesome.  She sounded out each word then read the sentence as a whole at the end.  Princess started off her experience with a find the beginning sound game (which was too easy for her) then she read the same story Pixie did.

Princess tried to guess via the picture what the sentence said verses sound out each word.  I had to have her revisit the words she guessed.  Pixie was more interested in sounding out each letter.  The both did great! 

Tomorrow we're off to the Y so I can work out and the girls can play then hiking at Calico Basin.  I have a camera for Panda, she's been using/destroying my point and shoot, so she should be excited.  The girls have little binoculars and new Teva's (thanks to REI's rock'n clearance sale) so they're super hyped to hit the trails tomorrow!


*The meatloaf was so easy!  2lbs. of ground meat, some bbq sauce, some Worcestershire, 1 cup of stuffing, 1 egg, some garlic salt baked at 350 for an hour - the kids LOVED it and I actually ate it too (I H.A.T.E. meatloaf)!  To my amazement you CAN bake meatloaf without an entire bottle of ketchup and the kids will still eat it!