Raising Butterflies 2012

We are a little over halfway through raising this year's butterfly family! 

When our butterfly larva arrived Mr. A was more than ready to keep a journal of their growth. However, he quickly figured out a photo journal was a far better way to "see" all their changes and gave up the written one. Go figure!! Anyway, here are a few pictures of their first week and a half with us. They have been living on Mr. A's desk up in his bedroom in order to keep them safe from our cats. That said, the lighting has not been ideal for taking pictures but you will get the idea.

I am also excited to share that Plain Vanilla Mom will be hosting our first annual Butterfly Family Linky Party on May 28th. That's Memorial Day for anyone keeping track! What a better way to kick off the summer than reading about the fun everyone has had raising and releasing butterflies over the spring.  If you are interested in participating please check back on the 28th and link up your posts about raising butterflies. We'd love to meet the other butterfly families of 2012. If you are not a blogger but are raising butterflies we'd love to hear from you on Facebook. You can find us here. If you are not raising butterflies not to worry. We want to hear from you too! Please feel free to link up any butterfly related posts that you have. Crafts, activities, party ideas etc. we want to see it all... Anything to do with butterflies :)

In the meantime,

Meet our butterfly family of 2012...

Day One - Our Caterpillars Arrive. They were so teeny tiny you could barely see them! They must have just hatched.

Day 2 - They seem to have doubled in size overnight.

Day 5 - Getting Bigger

Day 10 - The caterpillars are HUGE and spending more time at the top of their jars. They have eaten ALOT of food.

Day 11 - The excitement is beginning to build. We see our first caterpillars hanging from the lid making the "J" shape.

Day 11 cont'd - Around bedtime we spy our first chrysalids.

Day 13 - All our caterpillars have changed so now it's time to move them into their habitat.

Day 13 cont'd - Successfully moved into their pavilion

Now we wait! In the meantime you can check out our butterfly family from 2011 here, and be sure and check back on May 28th when you can meet this years butterfly family and see pictures of their release as well as meet many other butterfly familes and find all kinds of butterfly related activities and projects at our first annual Butterfly Linky Party!

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Sweet Sundays: Berry Crisp over Vanilla Ice Cream

At approximately 5:45pm [Saturday evening] the hubs reminded me that tomorrow is Sweet Sunday. Oops! Totally unprepared.  I have not baked a thing all week. I went for my go-to recipe. This is the recipe I reach for EVERY time we are having company for dinner. It's a simple dessert that always pleases and it's quick to put together. You can have it baking in the oven while everyone is eating and serve it warm for dessert. As long as you have frozen berries and vanilla ice cream on hand you are good to go. 99% of the time I use blueberries. Blackberries are also very good or even raspberries. You will have to forgive the pictures as I had about an hour to get dinner on the table, throw dessert in the oven, wait for it to be ready, and take some pictures of it all before I lost my light! Somehow I managed to pull it off. I don't know how food photographers do it. The ice cream was melting faster than I could shoot!  No complaints from the hubby tough, he got to eat the mess :)

Berry Crisp

2 c fresh or frozen berries 

2 TBSP sugar

1 tsp cornstarch

1 1/2 tsp water

1/2 tsp lemon juice

1/2 c quick cooking oats
1/4 c flour

1/4 c packed brown sugar

1/2  tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 c cold butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place berries in a greased 1qt baking dish. In a small bowl mix the sugar, cornstarch, water, and lemon juice until dissolved then pour over berries.

Then mix the oats, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon and cut in the butter until the mixture is coarse and crumbly. Sprinkle evenly over berries.

Bake 20-25min. If you are using frozen berries I find it's closer to 30-35min. It's done when the top is browned and the berries are juicing and bubbling up.

Spoon over vanilla ice cream while warm and enjoy!

This recipe serves about 4 as is. Its easy to double for a crowd.

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Colored Rice Bottle Art

At some point you will probably figure out that I just LOVE colored rice! I think I'm regressing because I never had colored rice as a child. (I know...so deprived right?) Anyhow, I am more than getting my fix of playing with it lately. We colored a fresh batch the other night and did a project that Mr. A has been wanting to do ever since the last time we made it.

You know how it's fun (and pretty) to layer sand in small cute shaped glass bottles? Well, 'A' wanted to try it with the rice. I picked up a few bottles from Michaels the other day, hauled out the rice and let the Mr go to town. He genuinely had so much fun!! In fact, his original plan was to fill up the bottles and then dump them out and play with the rice. Once he saw how pretty they looked he was hooked. There was no way he was dumping them out.

Its fairly self explanatory. We just made a paper funnel to make life easier. 

He had all kinds of fun layering, pouring, and designing his bottles. You can see he did some with the layered look and one that was all mixed up. The rice seemed to work just as well as the sand does for this type of thing.

Being seven, he had just as much fun coloring the rice as he did doing the actual project. I was asked last time how we colored our rice....There are a few different ways out there but what I like to do is put a few handfuls of rice in a ziplock bag. Add a couple of pumps of hand sanitizer and a couple of squirts of gel food coloring. Seal the bag and shake it up. Mr. A was dancing all around the kitchen shaking that rice! I wish I had gotten a picture of that! When it looks good we dump it out onto paper plates lined with paper towels to dry.

There's our rice drying!

This would be a great project for many different age groups. If you happen to have an older child it's a bonus because they can do the entire project from start to finish including making the colored rice. I have to say, I was really impressed with the way the bottles turned out. I think we will most certainly be making a trip to the craft store to get more bottles and do these again.

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Mother's Day Gifts: Bird Seed Feeders

For the last few years I have been making homemade gifts with Mr. A for the grandmothers for Mother's Day. I can't put my finger on it but there's just something about Mother's Day that begs for craftiness.  Maybe it's because Moms do so much for us that I kinda feel like for Mother's Day the least we can do is put an effort in and "do" something for them. The last couple of years we have gone to our local paint your own pottery place and created coffee mugs, gardening stakes, and the like. All well received by the way. Grandmas love anything their grandsons paint. This year we are changing it up a bit. With everything I've been pinning on Pinterest I figured I could probably find something among my boards. We decided on these. I've had the idea pinned for awhile and Mother's Day seemed like the perfect reason to make these bird seed feeders. We love to feed the birds at our house.  So do the Grandmoms. This couldn't be a more appropriate gift. There are a few different recipes out there . Here's how we made ours.

Bird Seed Feeders

2 pkgs unflavored gelatin

2/3 c water

2 c sunflower seeds

mix gelatin and water together in a pot and stirring constantly bring to a simmer over medium heat. Once it starts to simmer, remove it from the heat and stir in the bird seed. 

Let it cool just a bit while you set up a tray/cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or wax paper and spray your cookie cutters with cooking spray.

Spoon the birdseed mixture into the cookie cutters, all the way to the top,  and pack it very tightly (imagine packing brown sugar into a measuring cup). I can't stress this enough. It will not hold together if it's not packed tight enough. To make the holes for the string all you need to do is insert a straw, chop stick, pencil (you get the idea) and make the hole. If you have a straw you can cut it up, and just stick pieces of straw into the feeder where you want the hole to be. Leave them there until it's dried. I will do that next time. We tried making a hole in one and then moving onto the next and we kinda had to fiddle with it a bit to be sure the seed didn't fall back into the hole when we took it out. Either way works...just make a hole that stays a hole!

Mr A thought maybe he could sculpt something out of the birdseed. It was a great idea and he had fun trying for awhile,  but we found out it doesn't hold together unless it's packed really tight. Birdseed sculptures were a good try, but a miss.

Let them sit until they are completely dry. We left ours overnight just to be safe.  Then gently pop them out of the cookie cutters and tie some twine or yarn through the holes. 

We had to try hanging a couple on our crabapple tree just to see what they would look like.

Pretty!

I know apples for teachers is very cliche but doesn't this apple feeder just scream end of the year teachers gifts?


PS. I have noticed I am not the only one with birds on the brain right now.  A few of my blogging friends have been up to the same thing.  Juggling With Kids also made some Cookie Cutter Bird Feeders. Hers even got some visitors. I'm so jealous! I was very much looking forward to getting pictures of our fine feathered friends eating on these adorable feeders, but I'm pretty sure the ones we hung up got hauled off by the squirrels :(  You should check out Triple T Mum too! She did a cute version of these feeders with her toddlers with a different twist for molding them. You can read about it here.

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Our Top 10 Toys That Aren't Actually Toys

It's always fun to have new toys, but what's even more fun is something that will keep baby occupied and interested for a long time. I find over and over again that it's rarely the store bought toys that live up to those standards but more often than not it's the every day items we have lying around the house. C (who is turning 8 months this week) has really started to get more curious and purposeful in his playing. As with a lot of babies I'm sure, the things that seem to hold his attention really aren't toys at all.  So, mixing bowls and cardboard boxes aside,  I decided to compile a list for you of our current favorite non-toy "toys".  These are things that he finds interesting over and over again seemingly no matter how many times I give them to him. And when I do, they hold his attention for quite awhile. Sometimes I give him one item at a time, or sometimes I put things into different groups and give them to him that way. I always keep a very close eye on the babes when I give him anything that's not age appropriate. Remember you know your baby best, so if you are not comfortable with, or don't think they are ready for something...don't do it. 


Here we go...in no particular order...



1. Baby Wipes Cases (the larger flip top kind) - The munchkin man loves opening and closing these and flinging them around. I often will put some of his smaller toys in them for him to discover and take out. They make great building blocks for toddlers too if you have a bunch of them hanging around.


2. Small Plastic Drinking Cups - My 7 & 9 year olds love playing with plastic cups too (more the solo variety than the smaller sturdier ones I give C though). They will stack them, or build a drink stand in the house and sell water to us etc. The big kids even made "Cup City" one day  - which I sadly neglected to take a picture of.


3. Whisk - C loves to bang this around on various items as well as chew on the rubber handle. I think it's his number one choice for teething relief at the moment.


4. Paper Plates - He gets so fascinated waving a paper plate around.


5. Crocheted Yarn Scraps - I've recently attempted crochet (long story for another post) and I have lots of practice pieces lying around. He loves to play with these!


6. Plastic Measuring Spoons


7. Empty Coffee Creamer Bottles (or other empty plastic bottles) - He enjoys knocking them over more than blocks. I think he loves the sound they make when they fall onto the hardwood floor.  If you missed it, check out this post to see how we like to play with coffee creamer bottles in our house.


8. Travel Size Lotion and Shampoo Bottles - My oldest was completely entertained by a travel sized baby shampoo bottle for many months....he carried it everywhere. We have lots of pictures of him with the shampoo bottle lol! He just loved hanging on to it. They are great entertainment during diaper changes. The perfect size for little hands to manipulate.


9. Plastic Cookie Cutters


10. Collapsable Silicone Colander- The babes especially likes the long handled one because he can hold onto it that way and I don't worry too much about him playing with this because the whole thing is fairly flexible.



If you have any favorite non-toy toys,  please leave a comment! We'd love to hear about them! 

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Spring Break

Happy Monday! Today marks the start of Mr A's April vacation week. I know a lot of you had spring break last week, but where we live, this is the week for us.  We have a few things on the agenda and I can't wait to share all of our activities with you. Just for fun we made a list of everything we want to do over vacation...big and little. It will be a fun challenge for us to see if we can get through everything on our list. I will share it with you later. We have a few day trips planned, as well as some (what I hope will be) fun projects. We have at least a couple of tried-but-true science experiments that are oldies but goodies on there.  Somehow these seemed to have escaped us over the last 7 years so we are setting aside one day as science day! Our new butterfly family arrived a little over a week ago (in their caterpillar form) and we have been keeping a photo journal of their growth which I'm hoping to share with you at some point too. In the meantime.... If you've already had your spring break or even if you haven't, leave us a comment and share with us your favorite spring break activity. We'd love to hear from you!

Sweet Sundays: Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies

For those of you who say you can't bake (and I know you know who you are)....this one is for you! This could - not - be - easier. All you need is a brownie mix and a jar of peanut butter. I honestly don't remember where I learned this trick. I think it may have been my college roommate but I won't swear to it. Either way, I've been making these for years. I love them, hubby loves them, kids love them. You get the idea. All you need to do is make the brownie mix according to package directions. Any old brownie mix will do. I prefer Pilsbury Chocolate Fudge Brownies.  (and no...I'm not getting paid to say that). Once you have them mixed up, pour the batter into a greased pan. Then, grab a jar of peanut butter. Drop a few dollops of peanut butter straight from the jar right on top of the brownie batter you just poured in the pan.  You want it to look a little something like this...

Now, take a knife and drag it through the peanut butter dollops and swirl them around. Like this...

Don't worry if it doesn't all break up. Chunks of peanut butter mixed into fudgy chocolate brownies is REALLY good... I promise. That's it! That's all there is to it! Bake according to the package directions on your brownie mix. You now have perfect chocolate peanut butter swirl brownies.

Hungry yet?

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Coffee Creamer Bottle Bowling

I was cleaning in the playroom the other day and came across a bag full of coffee creamer bottles that we have had since 2007!! No joke...if you look at the expiration dates on them, they are in fact from 2007.
See...

They've survived two moves and nearly five years. Mr A was three years old back in 2007.  One day he asked me if he could have the empty coffee creamer bottles. Turns out he wanted to use them for bowling pins. The kid was OBSESSED with bowling. This wasn't even my great idea, it was his. What a genius! To this day he is still one creative kid.  They even look like bowling pins when you peel the labels off...white with red tops! We collected those creamer bottles for I don't know how long. The collection kept growing and the bowling alley would get bigger and bigger. He would spend hours playing with them. And I mean hours! Sometimes by himself and some days we would bowl together, or he would just want me to set up the pins for him in different (tricky) configurations. "Make it REALLY tricky this time" he would say. He played with that game and those bottles until he was at least five or six. And not just once in awhile either. It was a weekly event to get the coffee creamer bottles out (sometimes daily). They have had other uses too. For a spell he loved to fill them with his marble collection and they make for mean ring toss targets. They were fun for pouring water in the bathtub too.  In fact, they are slated to be put to good use later this summer at his carnival birthday party for a ball toss/knock the bottles over kind of game.  I'm so glad I never threw them out! They make me smile every time I look at them.  I had so much fun recreating our bowling alley for you :)

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Bubble Discovery Bowl

Something so simple turned into such a great activity for the babes I had to share it. The weather has turned a little warm here, and while the big kids are into their water balloons, I was trying to think up something equally fun and entertaining (and wet) for the babes. I haven't gotten around to getting a kiddie pool yet so the obvious choice was not an option. I had to get a little creative. Just as well. Good things sometimes happen when you are forced to work with what ya got ;)

I started out with a plain bowl of water filled with bubbles. Since the munchkin man loves his bubble baths so much I thought this might work. (I used the same bubbles I normally use in his tub so as not to irritate his skin).  He got bored of it pretty quickly though. I think largely because he couldn't actually get his entire self in the bowl. He sure had fun jumping around when I held him standing in it :) That was entertaining, but it was not freeing my hands up for tying water balloons!  So... I decided to throw in a couple of toys.  A little more fun, but again, bored fairly quickly. Eventually I decided I would just just throw in anything and everything I could find until the bowl was full of toys. Teething rings, bath toys, balls, plastic blocks, stacking cups, whatever I could find that the water wouldn't damage and would fit in the bowl went in! That worked!! He LOVED it! This, he found this VERY intriguing!

Wasting no time he plunged into the bowl, up to his elbows, to uncover the toys.  He would pull out a toy, play with it for a little bit and then dive back in for another. It ended up holding his interest for quite some time.  I'm talking 20 plus minutes (which is huge in our little baby world). Once he emptied the bowl I just filled it up with toys again. It was a little baby discovery bowl and he was lovin it :)

I love all the ideas for sensory bins I've been seeing but my little one is really still too young for a lot of things and everything goes in his mouth. This was our version of a sensory tub bowl for him I guess. Even though these were things he plays with every day, they were presented to him in a new way with a new element or two added in and it made for a whole new experience. One that he very much enjoyed I might add! If he can entertain himself for that length of time, in my book, that's a successful activity.

One last thought. If you do this...load the bowl up with bubbles! Originally I had (you could hardly see the toys),  but by the time I thought to grab the camera they had mostly disappeared.

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Sweet Sundays: Chocolate Mint Bundt Cake

I thought it might be fun since I like to bake to try and organize my baking into a series. We'll call it Sweet Sundays. (At least for now). My thoughts will be turning to gardening and planting soon so we'll see how the baking holds up... I certainly won't get back into my pre-baby shorts if I keep cooking like this! Anyhow, we'll give it a whirl and see how it goes. Do let me know if you like it or not.
  
I found this particular recipe back around St. Patrick's Day but to be honest I baked so much mint/chocolate food I was all minted out so I never made it. I stumbled across this pin on one of my boards the other day and haven't been able to get it out of my mind since. A serious craving had kicked in! I waited the appropriate amount of days hoping the craving would go away but it didn't, so I caved, and made this Chocolate Mint Bundt. It was actually very easy to make and it is VERY yummy. Don't let all the steps overwhelm you, they are all very simple and in the end it's not very time consuming.

Here's the link to the original recipe from Betty Crocker and below is my version of it. I kept most everything the same. but used my own frosting recipe.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and grease and flour (or coat well with cooking spray) a bundt pan.

Mint Cream Cheese Filling

6 oz cream cheese (softened)

1/4 c sugar

1 TBSP all purpose flour

1 egg

1/8 tsp peppermint extract

3 drops of green food coloring

Beat cream cheese with an electric mixer on high speed until smooth and fluffy (couple of minutes should do) Then beat in remaining ingredients until the mixture is satiny smooth (a couple more minutes)

Cake

1 box devils food cake mix

1/3 c all purpose flour

1 c water

1/2 c melted butter

2 eggs

In a large bowl mix cake mix, flour, water, melted butter and eggs. Couldn't be easier, just throw it all in the bowl at once. Mix on low until combined (about 30sec) and then continue to mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Pour into pan and then spoon the cream cheese filling over the batter. 

It should look a little something like this...

Bake at 325 degrees for 44-52 minutes (mine took 44). I always set my timer for the shortest amount of time to begin and increase only if necessary. Check it with a toothpick, if it comes out clean your done. Cool completely on a cooling rack before taking out of the pan. This should take at least an hour. Then you should have something that looks like this...

Mint Frosting & Chocolate Swirl
2 TBSP semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 TBSP shortening
Put those two ingredients in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds on half power and stir. Continue in 30 second increments on half power until your chocolate melts, always stirring in between. (took me just about three cycles). Set this aside. Then you will need:

2oz cream cheese softened (I just used what was left over from the 8oz block of cream cheese I used for the filling)

3-4 TBSP butter softened

1 1/2 - 2 c powdered sugar

1/4 tsp peppermint extract

milk for thinning

green food coloring (3-4 drops)

I'm sorry my frosting recipes are never an exact science. I always just tweak as I go along until I get what I'm looking for. Beat the cream cheese and the butter until smooth then add powdered sugar, peppermint extract, green food coloring and a little milk (2 tbsp maybe). Mix well. How thin you want the frosting is up to you. Just add more milk and continue to mix accordingly until you reach a consistency you like. If you get it too thin, add a little more powdered sugar. I wanted mine thin enough to make it look like I drizzled it but I didn't want it so thin it fell off the cake. (think thick milk shake consistency here).  Spoon over your cake. Drizzle the melted chocolate in a circle over the top of your cake and then use a toothpick or the tip of a knife to swirl it around into the mint frosting.

In the end you should have something that looks like this!

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This post was share on Nap Time Creations Tasty Tuesday Linky

Sensory Bag for Baby

Sometimes it's hard to come up with sensory play for babies, but I am so excited about this project!! I saw this post for sensory bags quite awhile ago and so wanted to do it. I just couldn't quite think of a way to modify for the babe. I was afraid as is, he would for sure be able to get the plastic bags open quickly. Then I saw this post from The Mommies Made Me Do It.  Hmmm....I had my answer...duct tape!

It couldn't be easier. All I used was a ziplock bag (I used a freezer bag thinking the material might be a little sturdier than a non-freezer plastic bag), some hair gel, duct tape, and a few things to put in the bag. I found these cute little frogs at the dollar spot at target. They were perfect! At first that's all I was going to put in it but I thought why stop there! I added a few buttons, some beads, silly bands, and a couple of flat marbles. You could use pretty much anything that won't poke a hole in the bag.

Fill the bag with hair gel. I happened to find cheap hair gel that was already colored,  had I not,  I would have just added food coloring to regular hair gel. Then, throw in some fun things for baby to look at and squish around in the gel.  Squeeze out as much air as you can when you seal the bag. I ran duct tape around all the edges to reinforce it. The duct tape added a little color and made it look kinda cool too (bonus) That's it! You are good to go!

I'm pretty proud of the frogs...don't they look like they are swimming in there?
We'll call it a frog pond sensory bag :)

At first Mr. C wasn't sure what to do with it. He would just look at it and smile. (at least he thought it was pretty).  Eventually he did get to squishing it around a bit.  He especially liked it when I held the bag up so the light would shine through. I'm thinking the next time I get it out I may tape it on our sliding glass doors so he can look at it and explore that way. Believe it or not, much to my surprise, he didn't try to put this one in his mouth.

This is by no means limited to the baby set. I think it would be well suited for a lot of ages. My older son was even intrigued with how I made it, what I put in it etc. If you have a large age gap between kids like we do, sometimes its fun to get the the older ones involved in making these types of things for the younger ones. It gives the older kids a project and everyone gets to participate. (I'm a big fan of older kids with projects).

I will definitely be repeating this one as the munchkin man gets older.  I'd also like to try making this in a smaller size. I think it would be easier for him to pick up and manipulate. With the hair gel in the gallon size bag it was a bit heavy for him so he was more limited to playing with it like a mat. For that reason I think it would have been great when he was younger and needed something to hold his interest during tummy time. Wish I had thought of it then, he hated tummy time.

If you do try this one, as with anything, make sure you supervise. Little fingernails and teeth could puncture the bag.

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Raising Butterflies

Happy Monday! With all the business of Easter behind us I thought I would share with you a spring memory from last year while I spend some time running around and getting my house (and thoughts) back in order.

Have you ever raised butterflies? This was an activity I always said we would do but just never got around to doing it until last summer. I wish we had started sooner!

Last year we kept the butterflies in "A"s bedroom (to protect them from our cats). It was such a special project for him. He got to check them every morning and say good night to them every night. It was extra special because the butterflies actually hatched on his birthday. I couldn't have done that if I tried! Truly a gift! How neat it must be to wake up on your 7th birthday and see your butterflies hatching? He couldn't stop talking about the butterflies having the same birthday as him. All summer long, every time we'd see a butterfly flying around he would wonder if it was one of "his" butterflies.

This will definately be an annual event for our family. In fact, we've just ordered our caterpillars for this year. In the meantime, since butterflies are on the brain, I thought I would share with you some pictures of our butterflies from last year and their release. I'm looking forward to documenting our butterfly family again this year too!

A couple of our butterflies were a little lazy so 'A' helped them along but putting them, where else, but on the butterfly bush. He got to watch them eat for awhile before they flew away.

Have a great start to a great week!