Theme Dates

As mentioned in the last post, we had a robot date for Valentine's day.

Here are some other theme dates we've had in the past:

A Roman Date

Movie: Ben Hur
Food: Drumsticks and fruit on a fancy platter
Set the mood- Sit on the floor on cushions, eat reclined, feed each other grapes, wear togas?

Chess Date

Movie- Watch Finding Bobby Fisher or the first Harry Potter movie with the Wizard chess scene
Food: Play Checkers with Oreos or ELFudge cookies (you get to eat what you conquer). Or have funny dares or questions underneath each piece, when you conquer you have to do the dare or answer the question.

Pirate Date

Movie- Pirates of the Carribean
Food- Carribean Jerk Chicken, Sweet potato carribean salad, rice and beans, pineapple or coconut anything

Fun Present- Download mid nineties computer game "Pirates Gold!" and pretend you're 10 again. (I did this for John b/c that was his favorite game from his youth. You have to download a
program to slow down your computer for it to work)

Set the mood- (We didn't do this, but I think it would be hilarious if your husband has a sense of humor) send him on a treasure hunt, then have the final destination be the bedroom (with an x on your backside- get it? X on your booty?. If that doesn't fly, there's always coconut bras.

Arts Date

Activity- Go to a museum of art. Draw pictures of each other. Or sculpt playdough of inside jokes.
Dessert- Carve ice cream sculpture and use candies for decoration (we did this on a date in college)

What about you? What's your favorite "just for fun" date?

Around the Daley House...

Snow! John spent a few nights this past week constructing a snow cave.

And for Valentine's Day we had a Robot Date.

We went out for Mediterranean food and then came back and watch this movie (with no kids):

And made some robots, using number 10 cans, soup cans, buttons, nuts and bolts, magnets and hot glue

Dessert was chocolate covered strawberries, a pineapple orange smoothie, and some chocolates.


Also, we recently found our girls sleeping like this at bedtime. They were reading stories there together and then fell asleep. They used to share a full sized bed but fought too much over the covers and personal space. Guess that's not an issue anymore! Sometimes you just need a warm body next to ya.

And for Valentine's day preschool I made some heart stamps. I glued a few layers of shaped foam to wooden blocks. The square blocks below are from craftparts.com and are pretty cheap. The word blocks are jenga blocks.

I would love to show you the preschool kids beautiful stamp drawings, but it didn't happen. I tried to use kool-aid watercolors, and they hated the texture and weren't into stamps at all. So we painted with normal brushes. I need to make prototypes of the project ahead of time so the kids see the end in sight and believe in my methods. Maybe next time.

The SPARKLY Dress Tutorial.

A good dress up is hard to find. Am I right Ladies?

(Insert picture of nasty dress up here-

oh wait, I refuse to take pictures of my kids in them!)

I have a whole list of things I hate in dress ups:

• Zippers. Buttons. Velcro. Good in some things, don't like them in dress ups.
  
• Nylon or Polyester stretchy fabric that gets snags and runs.


• Dresses that fall off the shoulders (Sleeping beauty ones!) and are too short (most halloween costumes show off the booty), or have no sleeves (cold!)


• Itchy fabrics or ones with no lining- with one kid with exzema and another that is tactile sensitive (as in, soooo senstive, she hated jeans until she was 4 because they had big seams, and won't wear socks with deocrations because they touch her other leg)

So in short, I like elastic, roomy dresses with good construction and linings. To buy- at least 30 dollars.

So I made some sparkly dresses last week. With elastic neck and waistband. With sleeves, and knee length, and extra fabric in the waist. For full spinning effects.

They look like this. I also took pictures the whole time. So if you go here to my picasaweb folder, you can see the tutorial by pictures, with explanations by captions. I have it sized to 5 T and is a little loose but would fit as small as a 2T. I have no idea what size to make it for smaller baby sizes. Sorry.

Here it is: Sparkly Dress Tutorial.

For one dress, you need about 2/3 of a yard of bodice fabric (my sparkly fabric shown here), and between 2/3 to 1 yard of skirt fabric. Can be the same fabric, or different. Whatever style you want. Also, one package of 1/4 inch elastic.

For this purple dress I used flannel backed silky fabric for the skirt- it is pretty awesome to sew with. So if you see that in the fabric store, it's worth the extra couple bucks.


A spinning shot

Have fun!



A back shot

W is for...Wax. Wiggles. And Wind.

W! We made wax hearts today. Which is a pretty popular craft these days, but for good reason. It's cheap, looks good, and is pretty simple. The tutorial is here on Martha Stewart, Crayon Hearts.

You unwrap your crayons, and sharpen them onto the wax paper.




Or use a microplane like Rachel is here.




Then you put the wax paper in between foil sheets (to protect your iron and ironing surface). Iron with low heat. It doesn't take much heat. I ironed on top of a stepping stool, hence the random dot grid from it's surface. Whoops.




Once the wax has hardened again, cut out into hearts, punch a hole and hang. Tada!





For the letter W we also...

1. Sang "I wiggle my fingers..." song from the LDS children's songbook
2. Pointed to things around the room that start with W.
3. Ate M&M cookies...which upside down are W's
4. Read a book about Wind and a book about Weather

Hooray for the letter W!

It's beginning to look a lot like Valentine's Day...

Some of the things we were up to on our Valentine's Decorating days last week...

A heart garland as shown on Martha Stewart, Valentine's Day Garland.

It includes a pdf pattern, the hearts are nesting so there's less waste. Sticking the bottom of the hearts back together works best with scotch tape over both pieces, then flipped to the wall so nobody sees.

Some hanging paper hearts, as seen on my girl Carrie's tutorial here, and the single strip hearts are made by curling the round part inside around a pencil, then stapling together on the inside. I stuck some extras over the front doorway and the office.

Gummy Hearts, as instructed here on Skip to my Lou, Gummy Candy
(We used heart ice cube molds from target. The gummy candy is ok, the cherry flavors definately have more flavor than the lime ones we made)

Heart Clips! As inspired by Dana at Made It.

For the Kitchen....I made a conversation heart garland. With the cricut. But of course.

Phrases I used: UR A star, Honey Bun, I love you, For Cute, Good Un (its an inside joke with John and I) X0X0, Cutie Pie, Baby Love, Little Hug, Little Kiss, Big Hug, Big Kiss (like from Nacho Libre)

As I was glueing the letters I thought of even better ones...like Babe-a-licious and Hot Stuff, Mama's Boy, Daddy's Girl, Kiss Me U Fool, and Wink Wink. Oh well, maybe next year.

I've seen all kinds of things Conversation heart themed this year...shirts, hair clips, cupcakes, clay necklaces, the list goes on...

Last but not least, I went nuts with the food dye and our Sunday breakfast. Neon Pancakes!

Pancakes just taste better in Technicolor.