Happy Independence Day!!

For the Fourth of July we often just have a few friends over for a small barbeque. We find many people have plans with family, etc., but with Hazel's age we find most of the local events are just too late for her schedule. This way we plan our barbeque around our schedule and invite our friends with young kids. I always have Hazel help me make decorations and then we have crafts and activities for the kids. I will share pictures of how everything came out later this week, but for now I thought I would share a round up of Patriotic Crafts, Foods, Activities that have been shared on Sharing Saturday the past few weeks.

1) Dramatic Fireworks Display from Mama's Little Muse

2) Patriotic Books and Bento Lunch by Keitha's Chaos

3) Red, White and Blue Snacks from Mama of Many Blessings

4) Fourth of July Tie Dye T-Shirt from School Time Snippets

5) Patriotic Candy Bark from The Iowa Farmer's Wife

6) Stars, Stripes, and Coffee Filters from Art Mama Says

7) Fourth of July Pudding Pops from We Made That

8) Fourth of July Shaker from We Made That

9) Independence Day Flag Manicure from Tessacotton

10) Patriotic Ice Cube Painting from Mama's Little Muse

11) Roarin' Rockets by Tippytoe Crafts

12) Patriotic Dresses and More on Frontier Dreams

13) Firecracker Pops from Pam's Party Planning and Practical Tips

14) Interchangeable Wreath from The Crafty Scientist

15) Patriotic Mason Jar from The NY Melrose Family

16) Patriotic Wreath made by me

Center) Our centerpiece complete with toilet paper roll rockets Hazel and I made.

We made many toilet paper roll and paper towel roll rockets to decorate for the party including ones with all the kids names on it. We discovered that the sparkly scrapbook paper does not glue or tape well!

We also made some shell sailboats. I got this idea from Family Fun. I used sticky foam and put scrapbook paper onto it for the sails and used toothpicks for the sticks and included a flag on each one since I had a bunch of flag toothpicks. Hazel loved doing this. She wanted to make ten boats but I had cut out enough for twelve so we went for it. She wants to play with them now.

In honor of our holiday, I pause from my celebration to say a prayer for all those who have fought for our freedom and all those still fighting and their wonderful families that sacrifice so much. I hope you will join me in the prayer!

Dear God, thank you for being with our brave men and women who have fought for our country and have provided us our freedom. And please be with all the men and women still fighting and protecting us. Also please be with their families as they sacrifice their time with their loved ones and protect them all. Thank you for letting me be a part of an amazing country and please help me to make it even better by following your ways. Amen.

Happy Family Times #15--A Trip to the Mall

Have you done something fun with your family this week? Kelly over at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I love to hear about them. Come share it below and read what we have done as well as get inspired by all the other ideas shared.

Hazel's new shoes

Well on Thursday, Hazel had a now unheard of three hour nap. Needless to say we knew she would not be going to bed on time. We thought it was the perfect time to head to the mall and get her feet measured at Stride Rite, have her pick out a set of Legos at the Lego Store (I tried to tell Steve to pick one out as well, but he showed control) and then we went to P.F. Chang's for dinner. Hazel was so excited that they had chopsticks with their place settings there. And of course she had to eat her entire meal with them. She loved it there. I of course did not bring my camera. I don't know what I was thinking. 

However I can share a few pictures of what we bought. Hazel picked out a new pair of shoes. They were on sale so they did not have all the sizes. She wanted the purple ones, but had to get the pink ones. The pink ones will match more of her clothes.

We also had let her pick out a set of Legos. Steve and I had visited the Lego Store awhile ago and had decided it was time to get her a regular set instead of the Duplo since she has mastered them and gotten bored. We let her pick out the set. I did influence her a bit and got her to get the starter kit that wasn't to build a themed thing. Needless to say the Legos have definitely given us more family time. She hasn't completely mastered some of the finer details with them and wants help.

Steve and I grew up loving Legos. In fact Steve still has his Lego castle from when he was young. We want to buy ones that will let her create whatever she wants like we had when we were young. Her kit did not have enough roof pieces and she could use more than one person as well. We will have to go back and supplement, and Steve is talking about picking out something for himself. 

Hazel loves the horse and the cart attachment. She however thinks the cart needs the windshield and steering wheel. Oh, well. She likes it. After playing with her Legos this weekend, we took a family nap. At one point all five of us (Steve, Hazel, me and the two cats) were laying on the couch. I did get a picture of Hazel with Fluffy. Hazel did get up and go get all the dolls and stuffed animals she could to join us as well. Steve moved to our bed first since he did not have much room. I moved Hazel to hers and went to Joann's to hit their One Day Sunday Sale and Fourth of July Sale. More to come on that another time.

Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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Ok, now for our PARTY!! Please share your FUN Family Times!!

Meerkats & Hullabalu!

Reminder Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please stop by and share your child-oriented craft or activity and check out the other wonderful ones already shared!

Source of Pictures: Hullabalu

So I awhile ago I received a wonderful e-mail offering to send me and Hazel a stuffed animal of our choice from the website Hullabalu. Hullabalu is an invitation only site for now that sells adorable, first rate stuffed animals. They will be having their hard launch later this summer, but also want to be able to do exclusives with their site. All I need to do for this adorable stuffed animal is blog about it. Since Hazel and I both LOVE stuffed animals, this seemed like a no brainer. So, I open my private invitation to view their site and it is wonderful. They had so many (26 right now) to choose from, I was glad I was not the one picking. As I flipped through the choices, I was pretty sure Hazel would pick the unicorn or dragon since she has been into them lately. Or maybe the pink hippo since she likes the pink hippo ride at the zoo, but she once again surprised me.

Source of Pictures: Hullabalu

So the next morning I showed the website to Hazel. Needless to say she loved it! Of course it starts with the fact that I allowed her to do something on the computer. We are trying to be media free with her. Then she gets to pick one of these adorable animals. You can actually name the animal when you purchase it or you can keep the adorable names they have already given them. (If you would like an invitation to Hullabalu, stay tuned. I have 25 to giveaway! Or you can go to their site and request one.) The choices change monthly, so you have to keep going back to see what they have. To my surprise, Hazel picked Meerkat Moe!

Now we have seen meerkats at our local zoo (see below), so we have seen them in real life. And I did comment on how cute he was when we were looking at them, but she decided she wanted this one. I went with it because I saw it as a great opportunity to learn more about meerkats.

Sorry for the picture quality, the meerkat was sitting in the only spot in the cage where the sun was shining and wouldn't move. Plus the cage was indoors. Ugh!!

Well, I have to say when the package came from Hullabalu, it was like Christmas or her birthday. It came in a beautiful blue box with Hullabalu written on it. Then inside Meerkat Moe was wrapped in tissue paper.

 She loved opening it and loved him right away. In fact there have been a few trips where Ducky has not come with us and Meerkat has. Yes, she named him Meerkat.

I have to say, I find him adorable and he is so soft and huggable. When she doesn't have him in her bed, I often cuddle with him in front of the television. Though she has been taking him with her to bed most nights. How could she not, he is just so sweet and soft!!

 Meerkat Moe is made by Wild Republic. Here is the tag that came on him.

He is definitely high quality and Hullabalu has hand chosen the companies and products they work with to be the highest quality. I have to say this has been a wonderful experience and I definitely will be going back to them if/when I want another animal.


Now, I know you are wondering what my experience with Hullabalu has to do with Multicultural Monday. Well as I mentioned above, I took the meerkat as a learning experience. Meerkats live in the Southern tip of Africa, so we are traveling back there. The first thing I find most interesting about meerkats is that they live in burrows with 20 to 50 family members!! They have also been seen hugging. It is strange to see a meerkat alone--in fact they tend to stay together. When gathering food they have a couple of them standing guard (on their hind legs using their tails to help balance) for predators. Oh, and their favorite food is scorpions!

I found some great sources for information on meerkats on-line. National Geographic being the first. National Geographic Kids also has a page on them including a printable card with a picture and information on the meerkat. We did print out the card and glued it onto an index card. I may put contact paper over both sides as well to keep it better. Another good source is Animal Fact Guide. I also found some coloring pages. Here is a good collection of them. Laughing Zebra has a great link of Meerkat Mania Week and it has information as well as some projects. From this link I took several of the projects and did them with Hazel as well as expanding one to make shadow puppets. I took this mural page and enlarged the two meerkats to 150%. Then cut them out of brown construction paper. I then drew on the lines and coloring that the page had. We glued them on to tongue depressors. Hazel loves them!! We also printed the other meerkat front and back. She colored it so you cannot see the picture very well. We cut it out and glued it on to a tongue depressor as well. 

 We have not cut out the pictures to make a mural with it yet, but Hazel did color them as you can see. I did the enlarging of the meerkats before she colored them.

We also found some great library books about meerkats including story books with meerkats in them. The first two are Meerkats by Katherine Walden and Meet the Meerkat by Darrin Lunde. Both of these provide factual information about the meerkat and where they live. Thus we learn about another part of the world--the desert!

Then two great story books. First Meerkat Mail by Emily Gravett. This book is about a meerkat who decides it is too hot in the desert and goes to visit his distance relatives. His family is very scared for him since the meerkat rule is to stick together. However he goes off and visits his various types of mongoose relatives (meerkats are a type of mongoose). He sends a postcard each day to his family to tell them where he is and what it is like. He discovers that the best place for him is with his family in the desert.


The second story book is Millicent and Meer by Richard Byrne. This is a great story about a young girl who is playing outside when a crate falls into her yard. She looks into the crate and sees a meerkat. The meerkat does not remember who he is or what he is, so she looks on the label and reads it (by sounding out the word) and decides he must be a cat named Meer. She has always wanted a cat so she keeps him. However her father gets quite upset with Meer's meerkat habits and kicks him out of the house. Well Meer meets a cat and the cat shows him how to be a cat and then they see a poster advertising meerkats at a show and realize that is what Meer is. They take the poster to Millicent and her father calls the owner of the safari show and he comes to pick up Meer, but Millicent does get her cat in the end. It has a very happy ending.


Ok, that is it for meerkats for now. However I still have 25 invitations to Hullabalu to give away. So if you are interested in being able to shop at this amazing site for wonderful stuffed animals, please do the rafflecopter thing.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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July's Author for Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!

Sharing Saturday is still open. Visit and share your child-oriented crafts and activities and get inspired by what others have shared!!

 

Since today is July 1st I just would like to remind you of the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids. Over 20 blogs are hosting this book club and our June author was Mo Willems. You can still share your Mo Willem themed crafts and activities. Or be inspired by some of the ones shared.

However July 16th we will be opening the July Link Party. The author for July is Don and Audrey Wood! So go pick your favorite Don and Audrey Wood books and be creative with your crafts and activities and come back on the 16th to link up!! I cannot wait to see what everyone comes up with!


If you like to plan ahead, August's author is Kevin Henkes!

Patriotic Wreaths and Candles

As you know we have been working on decorations for our Fourth of July Barbeque. I need to extend an apology to all my readers who are not Americans--I know this may be getting boring for you. I'm hoping you can take some of these ideas and use them for your own parties with changes. This week we took some empty jars and Mod Podged some tissue paper on them. 

Hazel did one with squares of red, white and blue tissue paper (I added some sparkly ribbons to the top and bottom), and I helped her with one to look like fireworks. My idea was to have many colors on the underneath layer, but she only wanted to use pink. We did not have a navy or black piece of large tissue paper so I cut a firework design out of purple and Mod Podged it over hers. Then I added some glitter glue after it all dried.

I made a navy one with a white star. I covered the jar in white and then combined the purple and turquoise to make a navyish color and cut out stars and Mod Podged them over. I outlined the star with glitter glue. Then I covered a jar with white and added stripes of red sparkly ribbon. This was actually my second attempt. My first attempt of the red and white striped (with a bit of blue starred scrapbook paper) did not turn out as planned. Then I thought of the ribbons.

My first attempt

Then I spent Friday afternoon working on a couple of wreaths. You may remember the spring wreath I made for us and the red, white and blue one I made for friends. I'm going to make some red, white and blue pinwheels tonight to change ours over. 

In addition to that, I made one starting with a straw wreath. I hot glued red, white and blue silk flowers to it. (I bought all of the flowers on sale/clearance or at The Dollar Tree). Then I added some ribbon going across the center and hung some sparkly stars in the center. This is on our front door now.

For the next wreath, I started with a flat wreath made of cardboard or that other type of board. I can't think of the name of it right now. I wrapped some patriotic ribbon around it. I bought two rolls of the ribbon on sale at Michaels this week. Each roll had three yards and I needed the second roll. Then I wrapped some metallic star garland around it. It filled it in nicely. Since we have four doors I can decorate (three off the patio and our front door) I may make another one as well. I still have another straw wreath to work with. I'm thinking of just wrapping the "Let Freedom Ring" ribbon around it and tying a bow.

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