Homemade Bubble Wands

Here's a fun and easy activity I stumbled upon while wasting hours of my precious life on Pinterest. Really, Pinterest is like crack for me. I'm just going to scroll through and pin a few more ideas, and then a few more, and then before I know it I've forgotten how to blink and it's two days later. AAAHH! Anyway, we used some of my old beads and cheap wire to make our own fancy bubble wands yesterday afternoon. Why would you make your own bubble wand when bubbles always come with a free, fully-functional wand you might ask? Good question. I don't know, but these are cute and it kept my little cherubs busy for a little while.

I cut a wire for each wand and let the girls choose and string their beads on. Okay- I made Retta's for her, but she had fun playing with the finished product! Then, leaving some wire at the top, I twisted it into either a circle or heart shapes. They don't work quite as well as the plastic wand included in the bubble stuff, but they are capable of making bubbles. It seems like maybe a thicker wire would have worked better. At the very least, they make fun fairy wands too!

** Disclaimer: Sometimes these projects aren't all fun and games for us. The girls look happy-ish in these pictures, but make no mistake, they were actually grumpy as all get out. Retta dumped the bubble stuff out of the dish several times, Rowan cried because she got a fuzzy caterpillar on her foot while she was engrossed in bead sorting, and then Retta smashed the plate on a rock...anyway, there was broken glass and tears and my pants were covered in bubble solution, but I'm sure someone somewhere might have fun making these. Just keepin' it real here on Wonder Parenting...you know, it's not all unicorns and rainbows here :)

Superstar Breakfast

This is one of our favorite breakfasts lately, and with fall days ahead, we'll definitely be having this comfort food more often. We call this breakfast Toad-in-the-Hole, but I think it's known by many names. Today it was a superstar breakfast though, because we have a star cookie cutter, not a toad.

First, use 1 piece of bread per person. We used Ezekial Sesame sprouted bread. It is organic, flourless, low glycemic, and preservative-free, but does contain gluten for those of you who are gluten-free. 

Use the cookie cutter to cut out your desired shape in each piece of bread, and save the cut-out too. Heat up a pan on the stovetop and melt a little bit of butter. When the pan is hot, place as many pieces of the bread you can fit and let it toast for a minute or so. Scramble one egg per person in a bowl and sprinkle in some sea salt and pepper, and a little pour of milk (we use almond milk).

 Once the eggs are ready to go, use one hand to press the piece of bread down into the pan and the other to pour the egg mixture in the cut-out space. Pour the egg in until it is level with the top of the piece of bread. Let cook in the pan for a few more minutes until the bottom is cooked. Use a spatula to flip and cook the other side until the egg is cooked through and the bread is toasted.

Serve with the cut-out shape placed on top of the egg or on the side. Eggs packed with protein, and sprouted whole-grain bread- a healthy breakfast and the kids LOVE it!

Flower Queens

 We recently went to a birthday party where one of the guests brought the birthday girl a flower crown they'd made at home. I had forgotten about making those--a simple but fun summer activity. A good lazy, hang-out-in-the-shade-and-play-with-flowers activity. So we went home and made some of our own. Behold the flower queens!

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Garden Days

This year we seem to have a couple of avid mini-gardeners on our hands so we decided to step up our gardening game a bit from years past in hopes of cultivating a love of growing things. We've got a nice row of lettuce going, and last week we planted beets, beans, tomatoes, squash and pumpkins along with some herbs, sunflowers, and nastursiums. Retta planted my spinach seeds somewhere too, but time will tell where they ended up. She dumped out the bag of seeds while I had my back turned....and she's been digging in the dirt trying to copy what she sees us doing, but the problem is she's digging up our seeds we've already planted. So, it will be a bit of a miracle if anything actually grows in our garden, but we're trying! Now we just have to practice the garden's greatest lesson, patience, while we wait to see what grows.

Preparing the soil

The littlest "helper"...wearing Mommy's hat

Drawing some rainclouds in hopes of a good watering for the garden

Rowan's herb garden...I love that she wrote all the labels for our plants this year--so cute to see her 4-year old writing.

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Retta likes to sneak behind the trellis

Caught in the act

Miss Rumphius has been here

Tree Hugger

My daughter literally is a tree hugger, and I couldn't be prouder. She's recently taken a liking to the willow tree near our driveway- swinging from it's branches, sometimes using our mini-trampoline as a springboard onto the branch for her acrobatics. A couple of weeks ago, she randomly decided to show this tree her appreciation by making a sign all by herself that says, "I LOVE YOU TREE" and taping it to it's trunk. It reminded me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. My heart just about broke from the cuteness of it all. Yes, it's true, this level of innocence and love abounds here these days. I know it may not always be this way, but right now I just love that our kids have the capacity and desire to do these simple, beautiful acts of kindness on their own, whether it be giving me yet another bouquet of weeds and flowers, drawing us a love note at school, or making a card for a tree.

S'moregasbord!

One of the yummiest parts of our Memorial Day weekend was the S'mores Buffet that we had around the campfire up at my parents camp. I did some research before we left to get ideas for some new variations on the classic s'more. Our favorite? The lemon meringue pie s'more. Simple but genius and oh-so-delicious. Here are some other ones we tried, and some more that we will be trying next campfire!

The Lemon Meringue

• Lemon Meringe S'more: Lemon curd spread on graham crackers with a toasted marshmallow
• Banana- Nutella S'more: Nutella, banana slices, graham cracker and marshmallow
• Strawberry Cheesecake S'more: strawberry slices, thin layer of cream cheese, marshmallow, graham crackers
• Candy Bar S'more: a mini-candy bar, marshmallow, graham crackers
• Peanut Butter Banana S'more: peanut butter, bananas, chocolate, marshmallow, graham crackers
• Sweet Potato S'more: cooked mashed sweet potato spread on graham crackers, with marshmallow, cinnamon sprinkle...just like Thanksgiving! 
• Caramel Apple S'more: caramel sauce spread on graham crackers, apple slices, marshmallow

Does anyone have other variations they've tried and loved?