Painting sugar cookies

With eggs and food coloring.

I now have two sets of paintbrushes. One we use to paint crafts, the other we paint food.

I also have two cupcake pans. I may possibly need a third soon.

(we use them, a lot)

For cooking and painting.

One is permanently in the bathroom.

I went a little overboard and whisked up three eggs so we could use several different colors.

Next time I will know that very little of each color is needed. One egg may have been sufficient.

I might pick up some new cookie sheets along with another cupcake pan.

(Or maybe I could Google or Pinterest some homemade extraordinary way to clean them)

Oh, how the waiting is the hardest part!
But, oh so worth the wait.
They were delicious.

Mail!

Boy, oh boy, was Gavin tickled pink to get home from school and discover mail addressed to him.

A big package, no less.

 It was really big.


 "Mommy, Mommy, what is it?!"

 "I don't know sweet pea, keep opening...."

 (In an almost inaudible, yet excited high pitched whisper) 
"Mommy, it's a Cars book and a Mater pill-wo!!"

 "Cheese!"
 The Cars book came with sun-gasses.
 But we don't really understand the 3D concept yet.

We do understand things with lights that shine pictures on the wall.
It looked almost like a view-finder. Except you put these little discs into it, turn on the light, and it shines the pictures up on the wall.

Which is impossible to photograph.

Jazzy likes it too.
And so do the dogs!
The light show makes them absolutely bonkers.

Lately, it has become a bedtime ritual to look at pictures in his room --without the animals.

And Mater, well, he even replaced bear for a night!
(We accidentally forgot bear at Grandma and Grandpa's house and when I realized it, I panicked that I would be doing a late night drive to pick him up. Gavin didn't even notice)

I couldn't believe it either. Bear has been by Gavin's side since he created it for his 2nd birthday.
Now he has both in bed with him every night :)

A SUPER BIG Thank You to Aunt Jeanna, Uncle Steve, Kristie, Kylie, and Daniel for this wonderful surprise!

We LOVE it!

The letter F

F is for fishing.

Road Carrots

{Pulling out of daycare}

Gavin: (in an excited almost shrill scream) "Mommy! Mommy! Look at that truck! That truck is picking up all those carrots!"

Me: "Where? I don't see any trucks. Or carrots."

Gavin: "Right there, right there!" (pointing out the window at a utility truck)

Not just any utility truck, either.

A utility truck that was picking up orange cones off the road.

It also had two sets of orange cones on the front.

(I almost died laughing....inside)

Me: "What kind of carrots are those, Buddy?"

Gavin: "Those are road carrots."

Me: "Road carrots, huh. Do we eat road carrots?"

Gavin: "No, Mommy. Road carrots go on the road."

Duh. Silly me.

Lost socks make great snowmen

Here is an easy, no-sew snowman! I'm so excited to try it because I can put to *good* use the socks that have lost their match. All the other supplies I have on hand! These crafts are my FAVORITE! No sew and No purchase. Score.

As always, I gather all the supplies needed before even announcing it's "cut and glue" time to Gavin. His attention span at the age of three is right on par with a ten minute maximum. And that's if you keep the project rolling. For our snowman, I found one of Daddy's white tube socks that has been laying lonely on the basement table for months. (Because I actually thought the other one would eventually turn up), a solo mitten from last winter, rubberbands, stuffing, rice, buttons, and ribbon.

Drop a large handful of dry rice down into the sock. This is what will make the snowman stay standing.

 Stuff it full.

 Wrap a rubberband around "the neck" and another one to top off the head.
(I rolled the extra sock down into a "bun" and fit the mitten on over it.)

The mitten magically became his hat!
(or you could use a lonely infant sock)

Using glue (and a lot of it this time around), this old white tube sock became our fun snowman!

 Finally I tied a ribbon on for a scarf. Festive, no? It also covers up the rubberband.

From the mouth of Gavin:

"Ta-Daaaa!!"

The letter E

E is for elephant

Afterwards he ate an Enticing Elephant sandwich.

All sorts of wrong

Simple crayola finger bath paint I picked up at Meijer the other day went from some innocent finger painting...
 

to THIS!!

Aaaaack! I *accidentally* knocked the cup over into the tub so that we can only use yellow and/or blue after this crime spree bath.

The red is too much.
TOO. MUCH!

An addendum to our "snow spell"

Last night while getting ready for bed, I received a text message from Gavin's teacher:

"I forgot to tell you...Gavin saw it snowing and he lit up and ran over to tell me..."I made it snow!" Too cute! Your snow flakes worked. ;)"

This, my friends, keeps me motivated.

The little things.

Let it snow already

It's the third week in January and we still haven't gotten snow. Lots and lots of rain. But no snow.

So we are doing our version of a "snow spell." Using what else?? Paint!

And Barbasol. The beard buster.

First things first. We I cut out some snowflake shapes. (using white card-stock. Construction paper ripped) How many snowflakes should we paint to miraculously make it snow outside soon?

Gavin says six! (see his fingers up)

Filling this aluminum tin with shaving cream wasn't as easy as Gavin thought.

That button is pretty tough to hold down.

I didn't have any liquid water color paint, which is suggested, nor have I ever used it. The other suggestion is food coloring, which is a big no-no because it stains, so we used the always welcome crayola paints.

Rather than having a nice squirt bottle to squeeze colors out of we had to squeeze on a few blobs.

Then we swirled them around using the opposite end of a paintbrush.

Pushed the snowflakes down on top once we created a good swirl of colors.

Pulled them off and let sit for a few minutes. Then I used my impressive pancake flipper to scrape off the excess Barbasol and then left them in the window to dry for the evening.

Of course our "bring-on-the-snow-spell" wouldn't be complete without the most important snow day activity.

So we created a snowman with some white cardstock and scrap pieces of foam.

It's going to be colder out too, therefore we need to bust out some warm accessories.

In pink.

Finally we hung it in the window.
C'mon snow!!

 **this picture is THE VERY NEXT DAY!!**
With a forecast of 3-6 inches over the next couple days.
There's definitely some magic in our window =)