Cherry blossom/Japanese culture festival

Our town really has some cool stuff to do for families. This last weekend was the Cherry Blossom festival, which is a gathering to celebrate Japanese culture while the cherry trees (which are gifts from the Japanese) are in bloom. Here are our pictures:

Clapping and excited by a cherry blossom tree that looked like a willow

Found a flower on the ground-- favorite toy for an entire 3.5 minutes

Trying to smell the fragrance garden like Mom and Dad

SO EXCITED!

Feeling the rock and the moss in the rock garden

Little baby, big pergola

Looking out over the pond in the Japanese garden

They have an Earth Day festival and Native American Pow-Wow coming up later this month :) I can't wait!

Sensory bags

So I came across this AWESOME blog, Growing a Jeweled Rose. Wow! What a great blog. I LOVED it-- so full of fun, interactive ideas :) I came to this one and just had to do it-- http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2012/07/fun-with-sensory-bags.html

So here are two of our sensory bags, the shimmery confetti one (lesson learned-- do NOT buy confetti with sharp corners-- it will tear holes in the bag every time; buy confetti with rounded edges) and the alphabet one. I put duct tape on the edges (like this: http://www.plainvanillamom.com/2012/04/sensory-bag-for-baby.html) so that it was pretty well-sealed. I did NOT want gooey stuff all over my carpet, mostly because I am far too lazy to clean it up. Aubree LOOOOOVED these. She'll bring them over to me and have me squish them around for her to look at the parts inside moving around, then imitate me and squish it herself. She really loves seeing the different letters in the alphabet soup one!

I may be doing the beach one tomorrow-- I have the shells, sand, gel, and food coloring, but I ran out of bags today doing rainbow rice (one of the next posts). If I end up motivated enough to go get gallon bags, I'll make it and post it. If not, meh. Another time.

Make your own snowglobe (bonus accidental bear mask)

So I came across this: http://pinterest.com/pin/333477547377463207/ and thought that it sounded like a fun, simple craft. And it was, for the most part.

Lesson one, don't cut the hole in the center too big. A sandwich bag is only so big. The extra plate randomly became a bear mask.

After that incident, it went pretty smoothly. Another point, though-- stick to the hole punches. Don't use too much glitter-- it coated the plastic, so that we couldn't really see her background stuff. Oh and side note, the yellow scribbled on "border" paper was a drawing that Aubree made for me. Thought that was a nice touch :) She got to help after all!

Quick, easy, and cute. Aubs loved shaking it and watching the punched holes fly around. Win!

Aubree meets the mountains

So again while we were visiting our family, we went up to the mountains and introduced Aubree to snow. We own an Ergo performance (which is freaking awesome), but I went one step further and got a babywearing jacket (http://www.suseskinder.com/deluxekindercoat.htm). This thing is AMAZING. Like, it legitimately made my life SO much easier in bad weather. Raining, snowing, whatever. This thing has attachable hoods, a detachable fleece liner (both in the jacket itself and separate detachable liners in the infant and parent's hoods), a zip-in insert to compensate for the baby so that you can take it OUT and wear it without looking like you're wearing you just lost a few hundred pounds. The entire jacket is just FABULOUS quality. I am just...I'm gushing, I know. But it's THAT GOOD.

Anyways, the snow pictures.

This is where my husband and I had our first kiss, where we officially started dating, and where he proposed. It's a special place for us (we're very outdoorsy and a bit hermit-y, so we liked that it was away from everything), so we wanted to share it with Aubs.

Aubs and I (in the amazing Kindercoat)

The three of inside during a snowstorm

Butterfly Pavilion escapades

So while we were out visiting family recently, we went to the Butterfly Pavilion and had SO much fun. Aubree LOOOOVED the butterfly room. There were thousands of live butterflies flying all over the place-- Aubs had never seen anything like it :)

Meeting Rosie the tarantula-- you had to be three to hold her, so Aubree just sat on my lap and desperately reached forward, trying to pet/grab Rosie. No fear for merrrbaby!

Fun informational sign

Aubree pointing to a butterfly that she wanted to go over and hug. We only had to remind her not to touch the butterflies, oh, you know...40 or 50 times. She's just so good at impulse control.

Next to an owl butterfly

On a mission in the play area with giant plastic insects

It was a great time! We'll have to go back whenever we're in town visiting.

Beans in the sensory bin

One of my daughter's favorite activities in her sensory bin is dry beans! We picked up a set of cheap cup-measure scoops, then we grab a plastic bowl out of the cupboard and let her go at it. It takes maybe 30 seconds to set up and a minute or two to clean up, depending on where all the beads get to. When she's in a particularly messy mood (aka I don't feel like vacuuming the carpet to pick up missed beans), I just put down a tarp. Much easier to pick up that way. I just heard about this one by word of mouth, so I don't have anyone to link for it.

Using her shovel to put the beans into the bowl

Swishing the beans around the bin

Lots of fun! I set this up a lot when I need to get a chore done, or get dinner going. It's great :)

Crafts are for the birds

Recently, we painted a birdhouse and cut up some multi-colored yarn and put it in a miniature birdcage (yarn idea found at http://www.fiberfarm.com/2011/03/the-first-day-of-spring?). Then we hung both outside on our porch.

The birds have been taking the yarn and a small finch has been hanging around the house, so I've deemed this one a success. It was definitely a lot of fun :) If you paint a birdhouse, make sure to finish it with an outdoor sealant spray so that it doesn't get ruined by rain. 

This one was short and quick, just to share some fun bright colors.

Homemade playdough

So! We made playdough from scratch using the instructions here: http://musingsfromasahm.com/2012/02/easy-homemade-playdough-recipe/

It turned out PERFECTLY! A trick for bright red dough-- use half red food coloring, half magenta. It came out a lot brighter. I've also heard of using red kool aid powder for both a brightness boost and a better smell. I kind of like the smell of playdough though-- but I'm a weirdo, so if you want to use kool aid, by all means, go for it.

I made six colors using gel food coloring. The red is quite a bit brighter than it is in this picture.

I put them each in their own Gladware container to keep them airtight. Perfect sizes!

Then we got clay hammers in the mail, so we let Aubs play with the playdough. Ignore the stuff in the background-- we were switching all of her baby stuff out and toddler stuff in, so there was a bunch of stuff waiting to get store in the garage.

Another hit :)

Aquarium visits

We are regular aquarium patrons :) Here are some pictures of us at our local aquarium:

Yes, they have a play area (with duplo blocks) at the aquarium. It also has an instruments section, a dramatic play section, etc. I know, it's awesome.

Then we visited family and went to the aquarium out there.

Looking up at the jungle ceiling

Watching the otters vie for our attention

Looking at the giant ugly fish next to us

But yeah, aquariums are one of our FAVORITE things to do. My daughter loves them and so do I :) Happy baby, happy mom.

Rainbow yogurt

For this, we took delicious vanilla yogurt, put it in 6 cupcake spots, then added a few drops of food coloring to each cupcake thing and mixed it. The result? Amazing tasty super fun time!!! Idea from http://www.playathomemomllc.com/ (they are AMAZING over there-- one of my favorite blogs of all time). Side note-- my daughter loves to pull books off of the shelf. She's getting better about putting them back up, but this was from back when she left them on the ground. What can I say, my kid loves books.

The set-up

Tasting the different colors

Playing with the yogurt

Orange-nosed girl

The aftermath

Aubs the Conqueror

Definitely one we'll repeat :)