Montessori Monday - Remaking The Play Kitchen

Obviously I'd love if our play kitchen weren't plastic but at the time one was given to my daughter none of the parties involved had considered or were aware of a wooden option.

I got rid of all of the plastic food, cups, plates, and silverware that had come with it. All of it was going into her mouth and she wanted to be able to eat and drink with her items.

I put a few prep bowls in one cupboard

and a scale in the other.

Gave new life to an espresso maker that was going unused.

Inside the oven is a knitted meat pie and next to the door is that heart-shaped oven mitt from a previous post.

Knitted foods can be found inside the refrigerator.

A "piping hot" cup of amigurumi hot cocoa is inside her little microwave.

Next to the entire kitchen are a couple of grocery bags for her to use.

All of these changes were able to be made without purchasing anything. These were all things that I had here in the house.

Montessori Monday

Montessori Monday

Getting Out Gorilla Glue

Yesterday I posted about using Gorilla Glue on a project whose details I have no yet revealed. If you read the post you should already be aware that my mind was partially elsewhere since I didn't notice the part where I needed to heat my homemade glue to finish making it *facepalm.*

If you've never used Gorilla Glue I should warn you - it's some serious stuff. It's super strong and it also puffs up when it's drying.

True to the days fashion of my mind being someplace else I began crafting away with this super strong adhesive while not wearing anything to protect my hands. What you may be thinking at this point is correct. When I finished I found I had a problem. My fingers were covered in a glue I had zero desire to have to go toe-to-toe with.

I began frantically washing my hands, you know, because freaking out always helps. I started by using some soap I had by the sink. It didn't help. I grabbed some nail polish remover that is somehow still in my home and was even in the kitchen right then and used that on my fingers. Still no go. Panic was setting it.

I hollered to my husband who was in the living room and told him that I'd glued my fingers. Once he finally stopped laughing I was able to get him to help. Eventually I directed him towards the internet to look for the solution that was eluding us.

Hot water or olive oil were what he came back with. I opted to use both. I had him sparingly pour some olive oil onto my hands which I then proceeded to thoroughly rub in and then rinse in water that I had as hot as I could stand. I did this a few times.

My fingers managed to eventually come away not coated in glue but I still had quite a bit on my fingertips, under my nails, and in the case of two of my fingers - all along my cuticles.

The next day I went back to work on my project. I let it sit in the kitchen drying while my husband vacuumed and I fed our son.

To cut to the chase - my daughter let herself into the kitchen and started playing with my project. When I went into the kitchen I saw the project had been a little messed up but thought it was just items sliding around in the glue and not staying put.

This was not the case. My little lamb told me that she was in there looking for her broom and that she wanted to sweep. I began to look for it but needed to use the restroom (moms of young children often find themselves needing to pee and unable to use the restroom for hours at a time) so I asked my husband to get her broom for her. Then I heard him ask her what was all over her face and hands.

Oh no. . .

I told him about how my project had been messed with and that I'd found her near it and that it could very well be Gorilla Glue.

It was.

My husband used a washcloth to wipe some of the glue off and then let her be.

Worried about toxins seeping in through her skin and just how generally uncomfortable this was going to be for her I revisited the olive oil solution.

She whined as I wiped the olive oil all over the places I knew the glue to be. When I had finished I had my husband go back over the spots for good measure and then rinse her face with warm water.

The glue was now gone.

And that, dear readers, is how you get out Gorilla Glue.

The Television Diet

I’ve gone on a television diet and I’m hoping that unlike the weight people often gain back after crash dieting that I manage to keep this weight off. We still watch tv but now we are watching much, much, much less.

The fact that I watched too much tv was far from news to me. I grew up with family members that leave tvs on all around their houses just as background noise. I’d gotten very used to that and even a bit comforted by it. Some nights I even chose to use the television to fall asleep – that’s how used to it I was.

Periodically commercials would invade my dreams and somehow I managed to ignore or not notice how unacceptable this really was.  A movie I like or an interesting show might wake me up, even energize me to the point where I watched longer than I should have before falling back asleep.

These are the actions and habits of someone who has "a television problem" and to make matters worse I was worried I was passing it on to our daughter. When previously I thought it was adorable to find my child under the age of one passed out in the floor from watching Sesame Street I was no longer able to see it that way. Only months ago I would joke about how she would wake up in the morning and immediately tell me she wanted to watch Elmo.

Pediatricians aren't the only people or source out there telling you to try to keep your childrens screen time under two hours a day. At first I tried my hardest to avoid letting her even see the tv, but eventually I caved and it became easy to just turn it on for her. Too easy. I told myself it was okay because I would only let her watch educational television.

I've got news for you - tv is tv no matter what's on it. It sounds obvious but it really isn't

Only somewhat recently did I come to truly understand what is meant by, "screen time." We're subjected to lots of screens - tvs, computers, cell phones, hand-held gaming systems, e-readers, etc. I'd managed to notice yet not notice just how many screens I was surrounded by.

Back in March some of you may remember my tweeting about how cutting off our cable seemed like bad timing during March Madness. The choice was one forced upon us. Cable is an expensive luxury we just wouldn't afford - but we still had Netflix. 

We had been using Netflix far more than the actual tv for so long I can't even try to guess just how long it had been and not being subjected to commercials seemed like a serious bonus.

A few weeks ago I walked away from the tv - almost entirely - allowing only about an hour of tv a day. During this hour it wasn't usually even me who was watching the tv - it was my daughter. She missed tv. In fact, she would walk up to the tv and turn it on, or grab a remote and turn one on, or; on occasion, she would even turn the XBox on by herself and hand me a controller.

I missed the tv as well. I was so used to it that I almost didn't even know what to do without it on in the background to catch my attention throughout the day.

Children adapt quickly and I'd say by the end of the week she began to ask less and less. She still asks and still sometimes turns on the tv but she will actually turn it down when offered during my decreasing moments of exasperated weakness and desire for a moment "alone."

The combination of less tv (leading to sensory overload) and the toy library has left me with a child that is a little easier to get to sleep, throwing less tantrums, and is now very obviously having more imaginative and creative play time.

As for myself, I'm feeling a lot less daily stress in general. Series of events that would have left me complaining about a terrible day now no longer seem like such a big deal. Whatever was going on was rough and unpleasant - but hey, that day wasn't bad at all!

Now I just need to work on decreasing my other forms of screen dependance and I'll really be on to something.

Farm Sensory Playscape

I don't own one of your typical water tables to create sensory playscapes for my daughter but I DO own (thanks to her godmother) a water park! (You'll see in a moment)

Having sat outside all winter it had gotten a bit dirty so the other day I had my husband pull it out (you never know, there could be spiders back there) and the two of us cleaned it up.

Filled with this wonderful idea of a miniature sensory world for my little lamb I headed off to the store where I bought bags of beans

and some pop corn kernels.

Knowing that this was going to end in a HUGE mess I set out the charm quilt her great-granny made for her and set out the now clean water park on top.

We also have a little portable farm box toy that was purchased for our newest addition so I made sure to include that was well.

I set up a nice farm scape of beans in the table

and then began adding animal toys.

Around this time my husband came out to peek at my progress.

Remembering the woodland theme of our sons nursery I grabbed a few more toys and set them out on the farm mat

and one off to the side.

I was ready for the morning!

Must Dash For Girls

After watching me work on her brothers Must Dash quilt I watched my little lamb spend the next few days running around holding my mustache template up to her face and talking about mustaches.

It seemed only fair to make her one too.

This pattern is too too much fun!

The Toy Library

For years I spent an average of three hours per day cleaning. That's just cleaning not my cooking as well. Recently (the last few years) I clean much more - the frequent minimum is four hours. I'm understandably exhausted from all of this cooking, cleaning, blogging, crafting, mommying, etc.

My he daughter had a play date last week which left me unimpressed with her behavior towards her toys. When she was still very young she had a completely reasonable amount of toys. I was able to set them up around a blanket she would play on for the day with no problem.

My father sweetly offered to make one for her in his at home wood shop but I knew he didn't currently have the time to take on such an endeavor and found myself accepting a plastic Fisher-Price toy box.

The toy situation is bordering on the absurd for me. Over the last year we have found my daughter climbing into her toy box and just about swimming in her toys!

What does any of this have to do with her play date the other week?

Despite what I feel was far, far more than the two girls would need to play with barely anything was played with.

I allowed the television to stay on during the entire visit, which the girls ignored until strangely deciding that the near ending of the movie Paranorman was fascinating (my daughter then asked to watch the movie again the next three days in a row.)

I felt that aside from the pitfall of the girls being aged 2 and 3 - both in the mind set of, "I-have-no-desire-to-share-anything-ever" that they were grossly overstimulated by a room overflowing with toys and a television that added to the goings on for hours.

Children that have way too many toys, it seems, have frequently been found to have feelings of entitlement that continue on throughout the rest of their lives.

First, I tried shuffling through her toys to find some that I could just get rid of. This was easier said than done. After two or three passes I had pulled out very little or what I considered, next to nothing.

If you're looking to get rid of any of your childrens toys - do it while they are asleep or someplace else, otherwise they see everything you're grabbing and suddenly want it.

Second, I looked through her toys to see what was "too much". Were any of these items so complete that there was no room for imagination left? Did I feel the kids would learn anything from owning these toys?

Third, I decided to start a toy library.

With the toy library toys your children have forgotten they even own are now more visible and may once again become items they enjoy playing with. Toys are not to be removed from your library unless they are exchanged for toys that are currently out and about in your home. I'm planning on seeing how this goes and probably making my first toy rotation in 1 - 3 months.

Also, by putting away as many toys as I could I hoped to decrease the amount of work I would have to put in several times a day putting away toys. No longer stepping on so many of them would be a welcome bonus.

I waited until my daughter was asleep and pulled out toy after toy. Some were no longer age appropriate - the baby toys went into a drawer in the nursery.

Some I no longer wanted in our home for one reason or another. I put them in a bag to deal with later.

There were toys I thought she was at a good age to play with now. Things that taught colors, numbers,  or shapes - anything that functioned as a puzzle of some sort; these are things that I left out for now.

I stuffed as many toys as I could into a foot locker that I would store in the floor of the closet in the nursery.

Once I had finished the living room toy area looked noticabley cleaner.

When I got my little lamb up from her nap I sat down and waited to see what, if any, her reaction would be to  this change.

Her first chosen stop was to the drawer in my night stand where I keep toys for her to play with in the bedroom. We hadn't seen her playing with those very much so that seemed like a good start. Over the last couple of days I have seen a definite increase in her focus with one toy for a longer period of time.

The other day she spent nearly the entire day playing mommy to a dolly I hadn't seen her touch in months.

The dolly took quite a few naps.

Pooped in her diaper and required immediate changing.

Relaxed in brothers swing.

Had tummy time with brother.

And my little sweetheart even decided what her dolly needed was some babywearing time.

Fully Quilted I-Spy Book

My I-Spy quilt craziness and obsession with quiet books has collided.

My husband and I had a double date approaching fast and I wanted something that might help keep my little girl appropriately occupied while we were out.

I have a couple other books partially put together that I'm hoping to have done very soon.

Make sure to leave a comment to let me know if you're interested in my posting a tutorial.

Cleaning Crayon Off of Your Walls

I knew it would happen sooner or later. What I really should have thought about was the fact that it would happen when I wasn't looking.

My little lamb drew on the wall.

Well, I thought it was just one wall

- it turns out that it was five different walls.

No longer having any magic erasers in my house and not wanting to because of the harmful chemicals they contain I chose to go the old fashioned rout first. Water and a rag.

I'm happy to tell you that Crayola's Jumbo Crayons

 seem to be washable. With minimal wiping of my walls the crayon came right up.

If you find yourself in this position. Please try simpler, more natural options before turning to chemicals.

The offending crayon was put into time out.

Pintesting In The Kitchen - Gummies

I felt like making a healthy snack food for my little lamb.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

Get all of your materials together.

Anticipating that my little lamb would be all about some fruit snacks, I decided to make a double batch.

Having read ahead I knew that I was going to need to put apple juice

into a bowl and set it aside. I went ahead and did that first.

Hoping my chosen small pot would be large enough I put a cup of my mixed fruit in

and then a half of a cup of water in. Turn on your stove top and cook until your fruit is nice and soft.

Once it was it was ready for a very, very quick trip through the blender.

I'd planned to use my immersion blender but for some unforeseen reason it stopped working.

Back into the pot

with a cup full of apple sauce.

Once that's all been heated you should turn your attention back to the apple juice you set out and put your gelatin packets on top.

I found that it made greater sense considering what the next step was to just do this in the container I would be refrigerating this all in.

Pour the hot mixture of applesauce and fruit over the gelatin and stir well making sure that the gelatin has completely dissolved.

Then place it in the refrigerator to congeal.

It says to wait around 3 hours. I waited then sliced a few pieces for each of us to try.

How was it? It wasn't as tart as I anticipated. The texture isn't quite like a gummy and isn't quite like jello. It's sweet but not too sweet. I feel it would make a totally acceptable snack food for your child.

Also, don't make a double batch - she's not THAT into it.