Sensory Beads

I recently saw people using aqua beads for a fun sensory experience with their little ones so we just had to try them! I found some for a great price here http://www.etsy.com/shop/StephiiShop I just asked them to send mixed bag so we could have lots of colors! We have only used half what we were sent and we are still having lots of fun with them!

 

If you don't know what aqua beads are they come as little hard beads and you add water to them and they grow and grow and grow! You can see the before size and after above (we added more water and found that they actually get bigger than the one above)

 

They are non toxic (though I still don't let Colten eat them) they are squishy after they grow and can be broken. You can add them to your plants and they will continue to fill with water and then slowly release it and dry out until more water is added. 

We have had lots of fun with them transferring them from pans to cups.

Scooping them and using funnels

Here is what we got with half of what we got (after adding more water this container was full! And I have about 1 tablespoon or less of little beads to start with)

Both my 3 1/2 year old and 1 yr old loved these (again watch for eating but after a few times of telling him not to it wasn't a big deal)

This was not sponsored by anyone, we just had so much fun we had to share!

Happy 1st Birthday Colten!

We have made it one year!! Here are pictures from this last year.

After a quick birth we had a healthy darling baby boy

 

Look at all that hair

1 month old

2 months

3 months

4 months

6 months crawling!

Exploring real food!

8 months

Starting to play with big brother!

11 Months

1 year!!

His Favorites at 1

Food: Raviolis and Smoothie

Thing To Do: Look at books on the bean bag chair

TV Show: The Wiggles (he loves to dance to the music)

Person: Sammy

Loves to laugh with Sam especially at bed time

Mile Stones Hit:

Walking

Climbing everything!!

No more binki

Eating more big people food

Waving, high fives and hand shakes

First Pair of Longies

I made my first pair of longies, for those of you who don't know what longies are (I had no clue a month ago!) they are long pants made out of wool, that can be used for a diaper cover, at this point we are just going to use them for warm pants this winter for Colten, but I love how they turned out!

There was a little hole on the back so I added some contrasting wool and then added more of the same color, I think it looks like a little tale, Stephen said it looks like a bulls eye.

I couldn't get him to look at the camera for the life of me

With the help of dad her is a font view!

and the super cute back again, its big for two reasons, one I wanted it big so he could grow into it this winter, and two because he is wearing a disposable and his cloth diapers are more bulky so it will fill it out more!

For my first try I feel it was pretty successful,

here is the tutorial I used to make my longies

My Snap Pliers Have Arrived!

I really wanted to add plastic snaps to my diaper covers but could not afford a snap press, well another mom online told me about plastic snap pliers and I just had to buy some!

Here is my latest diaper, with the pliers I got a bunch of different colored snaps and I have been having a blast making more diapers for Colten.

The snaps in the middle are for making the diaper smaller, its a medium diaper but when you snap it down it becomes a small cover.

Colten seems to like his new diapers too!

Source

This is what my snap pliers look like, I got a package of 200 snap sets in different colors and a few other tools with my press for 39.99 at Assuntastore.com

Here is a diaper I already had made but had Velcro I removed the Velcro and added snaps

It looks a lot like the other one but if you look close you see red star snaps!

Family Friday: Toy Organization

We have been battling with the craziness that comes with children and toys, you all know what I mean. Piles and piles of toys, toddlers who don't want to pick up their mounds of toys, toys that just get pulled out not to be played with but just to be left on the floor, toys that never get played with, toys that are lost under the mounds of other toys...you get what I'm talking about right!

Well I started out getting rid of anything broken, and toys I noticed he would pull out and not play with.

This still left me with a lot! My next move was to delegate tubs to specific toys, and groups of things he plays with. We only allowed him to have two tubs out at a time, the only problem was if he had the car tub and the animal tub I would end up with two tubs half full of cars and animals.

This gave me my next idea...

I figured out what I wanted in each tub, and made a label for each tub, with picture (because Sam cant read yet) and the words to help him associate the picture with the words. I made two of each label one for the lid and one for the end of the tub. I laminated each card and used adhesive Velcro to attach the card to the tub.

So far it has really helped with toys being put away where they go. When Sam has to many toys out instead of overwhelming him with telling him to just clean up I give him one task like find all the cars and put them in the tub with the picture of a car.

I still have a long way to go with all the toys and he still has WAY more than he needs...so...

What are some things you have found successful with managing the battle with the toys, what has worked, what hasn't?

Here are the labels I made.

Toy Lables

Click here to see where I party

Crafty Thursday: Car Seat Recover

My sister gave me a car seat to use for our new baby, only problem it was VERY pink, so I decided to recover it!

First I ripped out the seams holing the different parts of the car seat together, the nice thing was the fabric and batting was surged together for each section making it easy to take apart.

While ripping it apart, I marked darts and other tricky parts with a black marker on the batting

Here is how the darts looked when the stitching is ripped out

next I pinned each piece of the car seat to the new fabric with the batting side up

You can surge the new fabric onto the old, but I just did a zigzag stitch along the original surging line. 

The slots where the straps come through are pretty much big button holes, my machine couldn't make one big enough so instead I did a zigzag stitch catching the original car seat fabric and used a seam ripper to open the slot.

Sewed each section together top first, then bottom, then together in the middle.

Finish off with some bias tape, add a cute baby....

And pink becomes cute green!