Make Grass Egg Heads and Grass Stocking Heads

This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have a black thumb.

This past year I've already killed four plants.  Sad, right?  Apparently plants come to our apartment healthy and alive, and leave in garbage bags.

That's why I had basically given up on the idea of having any plant life in our apartment.   But when I heard about Miracle-Gro's The Gro Project, I felt inspired to pick up my trowel and try again.



Here are my  two small planting projects:  Grass Egg Heads and Grass Stocking Heads (which remind me of Chia pets)

Materials:
- Miracle-Gro's Moisture Control Potting Mix
- Grass seeds
- Eggs
- Knife
- Safety Pin
- Googly eyes
- Permanent marker
- Glue
- Nude stockings
- Scissors
- Spoon
- Cup

Directions for making grass egg heads:
1.  Using a safety pin, I poked a couple of holes (spaced far apart) in the bottom of my egg head.  (I'm hoping these holes will allow excess water to drain out.)  Using a knife, I gently tapped the egg where I wanted it to crack open.  (This gave me a neater break.) Then, I poured out the egg's insides.

2.  I rinsed out the eggs and set them to dry.

3.  Once they dried, I glued on googly eyes and used permanent marker to draw a smile.  (Permanent markers won't wash away with water.)

4.  Chuck and I filled the egg heads with grass seeds and soil.  Then, we watered the eggs and set them out near a sunny window.


Directions for making grass stocking heads:
1.  I wrapped a stocking around a small cup to make it easier to fill.

2.  Chuck scooped a bunch of grass seeds into the stocking.  Then, we piled on the dirt.

3.  Once the stocking was stuffed to our liking, I tied it closed and trimmed the excess material.

4.  I glued on googly eyes and drew on a mouth using permanent marker.

5.  Chuck watered the grass stocking head and we also placed it on a sunny windowsill.

Cross your fingers for us, ok? The potting soil that we chose is supposed to protect our seeds from over watering and under watering.  I'm really hoping that we'll see lots of grass sprouting so we can give them hair cuts.  (Hrrm.. a mowhawk perhaps?)


**Update-  Guess what?  They grew!  We just spritzed the little egg heads and thoroughly soaked the stocking heads in water daily.  Here's what they looked like after 2 weeks.

If you're interested in turning your thumb a bit greener, you can check out Miracle-Gro's Pinterest page for more fun garden projects.

((Many thanks to Miracle-Gro for sponsoring this post.  It's my first sponsored post and I'm really thankful for this new opportunity.))

Painted Mosaic Styrofoam Tile Picture Frame

June is the month of Father's day and birthdays.  Chuck and I wanted to make gifts for hubby and my parents, so we made these mosaic picture frames out of painted Styrofoam plates and cardboard.

I'm so glad with how they turned out.  They're happy and colorful and made out of stuff that we had right at home.

Making a bouncy ball

Sometimes when Chuck naps (and the dishes are washed, and dinner is cooking on the stove), I get the urge to make stuff.  Yesterday I pulled out a whole bunch of strange ingredients and made this blue bouncy ball.

In case you didn't know, Chuck has now moved on from bubbles. Bubbles are  out.  Bouncy balls are in.  It's so cute, he sometimes even requests to sleep with a ball (or two) at night.  Hrmm.. I wonder what he dreams about.

To make this homemade bouncy ball, I simply combined glue, food coloring, Borax, corn starch, and warm water according to these directions.  Then, voila, a bouncy ball emerged within minutes.  (With my unkempt hair and nails, I felt very much like a mad-scientist while stirring the ingredients together... muah ha ha ha)

It wasn't quite as bouncy as the store bought ones and tended to lose its shape over time.  (But no problem, we just remolded it back into a sphere.)  Here's a video proving that it did indeed bounce:


P6125854.AVI from Pink Stripey Socks on Vimeo.


Chuck bounced it around for a couple minutes, until... uh-oh, he went all Hulk on it and tore the poor thing it two.


P6125863 from Pink Stripey Socks on Vimeo.

RIP bouncy ball.  (Have you tried making your own bouncy ball?  It seems like a fun activity for older kids to do.)

Make Sidewalk paint out of cornstarch and food coloring

Looking back through the archives, I noticed that Chuck and I have quite a history making homemade paint.  

• It all started back in January when we made our own cornstarch toddler paint.  
• Then, we tried our hand at marbling paper with shaving cream and paint.
• And most recently we made our very own homemade water color paints (and then actually used them to decorate a wedding card!)

Well, now I've got another homemade paint experience to add to the archives.  Yesterday we played in the park with several friends, so I brought some homemade sidewalk paint for the kids to try:

Want the exact recipe I used?  Errmm... let's just say that I took a pretty intuitive approach.  (There are lots of lovely tutorials out there sharing exact measurements and ingredients, so you can just google those.)   

I took the lazy way out and simply mixed cornstarch and water together until I had a whitish liquid that had "paint-like consistency." Then I added about 10 drops of food coloring to make each of my three colors.

The payoff for my relatively little amount of work was pretty awesome.  The kids had a blast painting the pavement.  (In all honsty, I was pretty surprised that the activity went as well as it did.)  The colors were quite bright when they first touched the pavement, but they became a pale pastel when the paint dried

Wet paint shown on left

.    

Pastel paint when dried

The little guys sat still for at least 5-10 minutes  and painted away. (Whoa!  That's like years in toddler time) There was some serious street artwork going on there. 

Oh yeah- if you try this activity out with your kids, try to keep their hands out of the paint.  It stains.  Somebody's hand got into the blue paint.... and well... let's just say that even after several washings, it's still slightly blue.  Eeek!  Smurf baby.

With all the lovely warm weather rolling in, I'm looking for some fun and cheap activities that are easy for toddlers to do. Got any ideas?  I'd love to hear them.

Colonial Williamsburg Part 2

Here are the last of our Colonial Williamsburg photos:

Poor Chuck went to prison

"But I'm innocent!"

What gorgeous dresses!

Can you believe that their shoemakers actually made these shoes?

Silversmith's tools

Female blacksmith (yay, girl power!) explaining how they make nails

Chuck wearing daddy's hat

Fife and drum parade

P6015552 from Pink Stripey Socks on Vimeo.