My Pyrography Chickadees were featured on Christy by Hand blog!!

i would really like to get into pyrography more!  ggrrr!

thanks, Christy, for featuring my birds along with other awesome pyrography goods from etsy!

Christy by Hand

Fun with Pretty Rocks

We went to the flea market on Sunday.  The only thing we bought were these beautiful crystals.  They were $2 for 2 scoops and I though Dot made a good choice for her one [inexpensive] item she could buy.  She was immediately intrigued by the large glass container full of these multi-colored bits.  She held the bag of them in her lap the whole ride home.

We didn't get around to playing with them until the next day but she has really enjoyed them!

Dot really liked to hear the sound they made when she poured them into this metal bowl.  We sorted them by color, talking about the different patterns, shades, shapes, textures.

We used these little plain wooden pill boxes I have all over the place to sort them and Dot's favorite part was pouring them out again into the metal bowl!

We also examined the sizes of the rocks.  We had some tiny tubes made for holding glitter which we filled with as many rocks as we could noting that some would only fit in at certain angles and some would get stuck.

We also did a little role-playing where I was the magic lizard from Alexander and the Wind-up Mouse and she had the task to find me a purple pebble.  There are only 4 or 5 amethyst stones in the whole lot so it was no easy task.  When she did find one I said, in my best magic lizard, "the moon is round, the pebble is found, what is your wish?"  And Dot said she wanted to become a lizard like me!  It was very sweet.  But now she wants me to talk lizard every time we play with these rocks...

I would really like to find a nice book with big pictures of rocks and minerals like these so we could find out what their names are and how they were made.

Mermania!!

Another rainy day so we looked to the blogs for some inspiration!  Thank-you Filthy Wizard for your incredible play-dough mermaid kingdom!  We were not nearly as ambitious but we made good use of those mermaid dolls I have been making!

Dot went from sitting in her chair to standing on her chair to sitting directly on the table top to play with our underwater mermaid castle.  The merfolk decided the roof was the best place for sleeping and all the maids climbed into the big shell for a nap.

Here is Dot sitting on the lap of a real mermaid ;)

rainy days

The rains are back!  After over a decade of drought I am so glad to see them. 

And, of coarse, it is great fun to play in the giant puddles!

Our 4th of July was a dud but I have never been a fan of fireworks, anyway.  We did play in the banyan trees downtown of a little while.  I tried to get Dot in the backyard to see what we could from there but she would have nothing to do with it.  Apparently the grass was too itchy.