Unplugged Project : We return for Eggs!

It has been so SO SO long since we've done an unplugged project! I totally should have posted this last night, buuuut I was baking tasty treats for DH and "the guys". It was a wee bit hard to do this one, as my Soph is really really really allergic to eggs. I can't wait until she out grows it 'cause I really want to dye eggs with her. I have a fun way of taking silk scraps and tying them to the eggs and then boiling them and they look AWESOME... alas I digress. You may have read a while back about how we made an Easter basket for daddy and mailed it to him. I took that to be our Egg project, plastic counts right? Here's the re post of the pictures.

B totally had a blast trying to put the eggs together

She never did quite get it, but she had fun banging them together too

Soph put peep chicks in the eggs to send to daddy

And little army men, so very appropriate!

I stuffed the eggs with not so Soph friendly treats like M&Ms and cadbury eggs, good stuff like that. If putting eggs in the cookies and brownies I baked counts then yay for me! Now! On to a super awesome contest that Momma (and more) is hosting on her blog! It's a chance to win a free subscription to KIWI magazine, and even more importantly, shared ways to be a little more green. What's more unplugged than helping our planet one family at a time?! Go check it out and share your ways of being more user friendly to our planet... after all, we only have one.

Unplugged Project - The Box Edition

Well here they are! The much anticipated pictures of our Unplugged Project - The Box Edition.

But first a word from our sponsors me. I thought it would be nice to incorporate some books into our unplugged project - so while at the library on Thursday I picked up Not a Box by Antoinette Portis and The Birthday Box by Leslie Patricelli. We had read Not a Box before, but it's cute enough and Soph didn't object. Soph really enjoyed The Birthday Box as well, but I think that's because she desperately wants to be 4 and therefore is mildly obsessed with birthdays.

Now on to the pictures. I must state that the pictures didn't really turn out too well - but you'll get the general idea. Oh and Soph also made a Christmas Box with some snowmen (very cute), but it's not shown. She's "hiding" it in her room and I wasn't about to start looking for it.

Here she is, working diligently. I bet pealing stickers is a pretty good exercise in fine motor skills. Conveniently it's one of her very favorite things to do.

I let her use my "fancy" markers to decorate her box. She was quite pleased.

Here are my box lids. The flash made the Christmas one unhappy, but the shined out part is just a definition of Joy.

The side of my box and Soph's box. She didn't stop at the lid, not the sides. She went whole hog and decorated the inside as well. No wonder she was occupied for so long.More sides. Exciting right?! You guessed it! More sides. But that's the last batch, promise. For you math wiz's out there, you may notice I left a side off. I didn't like it - so the poor guy didn't make the cut.

Well, hopefully you guys weren't too disappointed. After such a huge build up you were probably expecting something quite spectacular. Let's be realistic here - my skills are a "work in progress". Perhaps if I actually continue with my new interest, I shall have something a bit better to show. Although, if that's the case I may have to start charging - 25 cents per view seems fair ;). Tune in next week for - Being Thankful. (with a special guest appearance by, Thanksgiving Box!)

Leaves, and Legos and Cookies oh my!

Yeah so, in all honesty - my new obsession really monopolized the majority of my weekend. I figured since weekends are the only time I'm not out numbered, I may as well take advantage of it. We did do some stuff though - I shall recap.

DH and Soph raked leaves today. They were really adorable, the picture is not so great. In my defense I took it from inside the house, from our bedroom window - so there was a screen and glass involved. Before they could finish and jump in them it started to pour - lame.We also baked sugar cookies. Since Soph's doing well with the wheat allergy and it seems to be leaving, we made real cookies (well, without eggs or dairy) - they were tasty and Soph loves to bake so it was a swell time. She wanted to make gingerbread girls. I tried to explain the concept of trying to get more than one cookie out of each roll - I failed. She's not to bad at rolling out dough - although she really must have missed the memo that states - "Summer is over. It is now fall and barely 45 degrees outside - bathing suits and dresses are no longer suitable." *sigh* at least we stayed indoors. This was our first attempt at our Unplugged Project. Filling a box with legos. (Fun I know) Interest - gone. Thus begins the creation of a sword. I do believe the soul reason for the creation of the sword was to attack me, luck me. For any of you curious folk out there, the box was 5 legos deep. I did go on to fill it - mostly because I was trying to hog the Legos. A smile and a pat on the back to anyone who knows how many legos fill that box. :) And so ends a wonderfully lazy weekend.

Unplugged Gone Wild

While trying to decide what we were going to do for our Unplugged Project : The Box edition, I was trying to think outside the box (pun intended). I thought it would be a good exercise in math and what not if we tried to see how many legos we could fit into a box. We guessed how many it would take and then started filling - let me tell you, the box wasn't very big, but man did it fit a lot of legos. Needless to say, about halfway through filling the box Soph was sick of the whole thing and as I continued to fill the box, she began snagging the legos as I would put them in so she could build a sword. So - then came my next idea. Well, why not decorate boxes. We went and acquired the goods (2 boxes from Michael's, one for her and one more me). I dragged out all of my craft supplies. You know, the ones that get put in hiding for fear that your 3 year old will ransack every last border/sticker/stamp pad/etc, and you will walk in a room one day to find that your couch is a distressed black beneath a mired of letters, flowers, and holiday paraphernalia.

With boxes in hand we dove into my supplies, and started digging out what we thought we thought would fit our themes. Mine, a "Thanksgiving Box"; Soph's, a sparkle pretty box. Well, she had a grand time. I let her use my special fancy markers, she was quite delicate. I started on my box - but being the perfectionist I am, nothing seemed quite right. Well - here is where the project went wild. Soph finished up her box after about an hour or so (Never has she been so involved in a project). But I wasn't done! I was determined to finish my box before night fall. Rather than neglect my children (tempting though it was), I put my project on hold.

Finally, DH arrived home. I fed them all, did the dishes, and then vanished into my room. Before I knew it, it was 5 hours later. I still wasn't finished - something just wasn't right. After much thought and a quick trip downstairs to make sure the family was faring well without me, I returned to my lair. My project was completed, and I was happily able to go to sleep.

By this point I know you're all dying to know what this box must look like- but I guess you'll just have to wait until Unplugged Monday to find out. ;)

Unplugged Project : Red

For some reason my blog went on strike and wouldn't let me post yesterday. So this is a day late. Sorry folks!

For our red Unplugged Project I had tons of ideas of things to do. Red collages, nature walks in search of red, scavenger hunts... the list could go on. Alas, Soph really wasn't into it. She loves to cut, so I thought she'd be up for cutting up old magazines - No, I ended up doing that myself. Then I thought perhaps she would want to glue them to paper because she loves making massive messes with glue... nope. The city tore up our sidewalks to fix the "walkways and driveways" so we had nowhere to walk to do our nature walk.

What we ended up with was a race through our house. The contenders, my mom and Soph. Little B and I were the refs. They had 2 minutes to find everything/anything red that they could on our 1st floor. They each made a pile of their findings. Well, the race ended, and I ascended up the stairs to change Little B - all the while hollering down the stairs not to clean up, and to count them, find the largest and smallest, and other assorted tasks that could stem from all the red objects that had been gathered. Well, when I returned - they had cleaned up. So sorry folks, no pictures. Hopefully the box adventures will go more smoothly - after all, what kid isn't always up for playing in/with/on/around boxes?

Unplugged Project : Haiku

Soph and I really had no clue what to do for our Unplugged activity. We tried to think of a fall related haiku, that did not happen. Then we made some food for Brenna together (OK, I made food for Brenna while she "taste tested" it and told me she was glad she wasn't a baby anymore - in reality she just really doesn't like broccoli, and I can't change that. I came up with a haiku about that, but it really was mostly blah. Then, DH and Soph found a ladybug crawling on our front porch railing. It was caught in a piece of Halloween fake spiderweb and couldn't really move because it's little legs were all tangled. Well, they sat and spent about 15 minutes freeing the little ladybug. Then Sophia went on to tell me how this little ladybug was her new best friend and they were going to be best friends always. Then she tried to kiss her new friend. Bad idea. Ladybug friend was almost a ladybug snack. After being nearly loved to death, the little ladybug flew to a nearby leaf for a snack of his (or her) own, and Sophia and I went to acquire a ladybug habitat from Lakeshore... Thus my inspiration for our haiku! I had her illustrate (with my help of course)-

Little Friends (by Me & Soph)

Little ladybug

My new best friend forever

Until you fly home

The process - The finished product -

Unplugged Project

This past weekend we partook in our first ever Unplugged Project! Pumpkin painting. Oh what a spectacular adventure it was. For those of you who may be unaware of the Unplugged Project, it is the brain child of Unplugged Mom, and it involves various activities that don't include anything electronic. Here are the pictures that resulted. Of course I made one too. More later - I must feed my youngest youth now. I just wanted to make sure I didn't forget to post ;)