Easy Butterfly Craft #1

Since we have been talking about butterflies this week I thought we could have some fun with a butterfly craft. 🙂 This one is pretty simple to do but really small kids might need a little help getting things hooked together.

All you need for 1 butterfly is 3 pipe cleaners. Whatever color you like!

I chose 2 pink pipe cleaners for wings and a purple one for the body. Take the 2 pipe cleaners that will be the butterfly’s wings and make them into circles by wrapping the two ends together.

(Hmm! That almost looks like a grumpy face, doesn’t it?!) Now take your 3rd pipe cleaner and bend it in half. Twist the two pieces together by the bend until you have twisted it about 1/3 of the way up. This is the butterfly’s body.

Now take your 2 circles and kinda mush them together in the middle like this:

Holding the circles side by side, slip the body part up over both circles with one piece of the body pipe cleaner on either side of the wings. Like you are capturing the wings inside the body. Twist the 2 pieces together to make more butterfly body on the top and to hold the wings in place. Save some of the pipe cleaner ends for making the antennae.

Don’t worry if your butterfly looks rather out of shape because now you can move the wings around to look the way you want them to look. The final step is curling the ends of the antennae into little rolls.

And there you have your first butterfly! 🙂 But who can stop at only ONE butterfly?! Go ahead and make a bunch more! If you would like to hang your butterfly up, I would suggest tying a piece of thread to it and then your butterfly can fly in the breeze! I’d love to see all the butterflies you make! Have fun! 🙂

And She’s Off! Butterfly Release

I promised yesterday that today would be the BIG DAY!! It’s time for our Monarch Butterfly that we hatched in our home, to wander out into the big world on her own! It was actually a little bit anticlimactic after all of the excitement of waiting for her to emerge. Did you catch that little word “her”? Yep, it’s a female! (Males have 2 black spots on the top side of their wings that females don’t have.)

Male and Female Monarch Butterflies

So here is Beauty in one last picture inside her little house. (Yes, I might have named her! haha!)

I carefully opened her house, reached in and gently lifted her out and sat her among some Purple Coneflowers.

Beauty immediately opened her wings to the sun…flexed them a few times and she was off! I only had time to snap one picture of her before she flew straight up and over the top of our house and out into the big new world! Go, Beauty, go! We’re rooting for you! 🙂

Butterfly #2…called The Queen by her loyal human subjects…also took her maiden voyage this morning over in Indiana! She (yes, also a female!) spent a little more time hanging around on the Milkweed plant before venturing out on her own. Isn’t she beautiful?!

The third chrysalis I bought at the Pollinators Festival hasn’t hatched just yet. I’ll keep you updated on that one’s arrival and whether its a boy or a girl. Isn’t this interesting? We are all having so much fun with this project! You really should try it too if you get the chance! 🙂

Chrysalis Update!

Guess what?! Our Monarch’s metamorphosis is complete!! I’m so excited!! I’ve been trying to keep a close eye on our chrysalis, but our butterfly snuck out of the chrysalis when I wasn’t looking! Sneaky thing! It happened so fast! Let’s back up in our story just a little bit. Here’s how our Monarch was looking on Monday evening…

The chrysalis was a light green color and you could barely make out what looked like lines on wings when looking at the side of it. But things changed by Tuesday evening…

The chrysalis had become a very dark color…a dark green or almost black. That’s how it looked Wednesday morning when we got up. I was working in the kitchen…where the chrysalis has been “hanging out” in its little box sitting on the counter. I hadn’t looked at it for maybe half an hour and so I glanced over, expecting to not see much difference yet. SURPRISE!!!! The butterfly had already emerged!! I was completely shocked at how fast it changed!

You can see what is left of the chrysalis hanging beside the butterfly. Over the next little while, the butterfly’s wings seemed to stretch out flatter.

We gave a chrysalis to our daughter and her family and theirs also emerged today!

There is one more chrysalis that I bought at the Pollinators Festival and we gave that one to our son and daughter-in-law. As of this morning, theirs hadn’t turned the darker color yet. I’ll keep you posted on that one as I get news from them. For the rest of today, our butterfly will just be hanging out in his little home and tomorrow he will get to venture out into the big world! If you get a chance to raise a Monarch butterfly, DO IT!! I can’t tell you how much we are enjoying this! I’ll be back tomorrow to let you know how this butterfly’s release goes! 🙂

Pollinators Festival

I found the coolest festival not far from us on Saturday! It was called Pollinators Festival and it took place at Gorman Nature Center near Mansfield, Ohio. Our population of pollinators (butterflies, bees, etc) is dwindling and they need us to help provide the kind of environment they require to flourish. Fran LeMasters, The Butterfly Lady, was there with her live butterfly exhibit and it was so awesome to see! You could walk inside the enclosure and see butterflies up close and personal! And even offer them a drink of watermelon juice from the end of a Q-tip.

Here’s a bunch of butterflies hanging out up on the “ceiling”.

And here’s a beautiful large Swallowtail butterfly. (Sorry, but I forget which kind of swallowtail she said it is.)

There were Native Plants for sale…native to Ohio which are the plants our pollinators need. (I limited myself to buying only 8. Haha!) There are plants that are native to each state and you can find the information about your state online. Google is a great place to start looking.

It was a wonderful warm summer day and I enjoyed just walking around looking for pollinators among the flowers that are growing at the center. Can you spot the Tiger Swallowtail butterfly?

The highlight of the festival for me was buying a few Monarch Butterfly chrysalis so we can watch them hatch into a beautiful Monarch Butterflies one day soon!

I’m glad to say they came with instructions!

So the excitement is building! Today the chrysalis looks a little lighter shade of green in some places and I can begin to see the shape of a wing inside.

I will post the progression as the chrysalis changes and the butterfly emerges. If you get the chance to take your kids to a butterfly exhibit, DO IT! I saw a lot of excited kids AND adults enjoying themselves learning about the life cycle of butterflies. I will post more about the Monarch butterfly’s plight soon and will be asking for your help to save them!

Fruit Slush Snack for Hot Days

How’s your summer been? I can’t believe how fast summer is passing! We’re into August already?! What happened to June and July?? It’s been a warm summer here with lots of hot days when something cold to eat or drink feels amazing! So here’s another idea for you to try for a tasty way to cool down! This is my own concoction but it got mostly good reviews and nice compliments (“It’s so refreshing!”) when I took it to a potluck recently. Only 2 people thought it needed more sweetener so keep that in mind if you like things really sweet…you might want to add some sugar. 😉 So here’s how to make Fruit Slush!

This recipe will be using “guesstimates” of how much of each ingredient to add. (Yes, I forgot to write down the amounts I used. Oops! Sorry!) But you can use your own judgement and adjust to what your family likes best. I drained 2 cans of crushed pineapple in a drainer for a few minutes. Then I chopped the pineapple and a peeled banana up into a smoothie consistency in my Vitamix blender. I poured it into a bowl before adding the next ingredients.

I stirred in about 1/2 of a can of Sprite SLOWLY!! It will fizz up very easily!

Lastly, I added about half of the small bottle of orange juice to the mixture and stirred it together.

I poured the final mixture into my Tupperware mold to make it look nice and popped it into the freezer overnight.

I took it out of the mold and into a bowl at the potluck…turning it right side up…and sat that bowl into a really large bowl filled with ice cubes. It was served with an ice cream scoop into small plastic cups. You could mix and match fruit as you like it and its just so refreshing on a hot day! Hope you enjoy it! Let me know what fruit you make yours with and how it turns out! 🙂 Until next time… 🙂

Cool Treats for Hot Days!

Whew!  Have the hot days of summer been rather overwhelmimg for you?  Are the kids a little grumpy? (Ok, maybe even VERY grumpy!)  Are you looking for a way to cool everyone down?  Take a look at what we tried at our house that really helped!  This is so simple you’ll wonder why you haven’t already thought to do it.  Make ICE CUBES but not just out of water!

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Would you like to give your kids popsicles but the ones in the store are loaded with extra sugar and you’re trying to cut back?  Just use the juice you normally serve them.  Fill an ice cube tray or two with your favorite juice and freeze.  Could it be any simpler?!

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Here are some of the ones we made: 3 small4 small5 small

These are great to just suck on like a popsicle.  You could add in some sticks before you freeze them to make them easier to hang onto.  You can use these in a cup of juice and it won’t taste diluted like it can with ice cubes made with water. Mix and match flavors till you find a new favorite – like apple juice ice cubes and grape juice or pineapple juice ice cubes and orange juice. 🙂 Like to make smoothies or slushies?  Throw some of these ice cubes into the blender with whatever other ingredients tempt your munchkins’ taste buds, whiz it up together and slurp away!

My favorite thing that we froze into ice cubes turned out to be PUDDING!  YUMMY!  I used instant vanilla pudding for one batch and then instant chocolate pudding for another batch. They taste great!

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My hubby has even been helping me eat these! 😉

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As you can see from the pictures, I froze the juice or pudding in the ice cube trays and then dumped them out and stored them in freezer bags in the freezer.  Grab a few out of the bag whenever you need a cool drink or snack.  I’m planning to try a small glass of milk with chocolate pudding ice cubes to make a chocolate milkshake. 🙂

One more suggestion for ice cubes – this one is for the grownups that love iced coffee!  Brew some coffee and freeze it into ice cubes to add when making iced lattes or iced coffee drinks.  🙂  Again, you’ll get the coldness without diluting your drink!  Oooo, and what about taking coffee ice cubes and chocolate pudding ice cubes and some milk in a blender…?!  Or maybe try a Purple Cow shake with some vanilla ice cream, grape juice ice cubes and a bit of milk? The ideas and combinations are endless!  Try a few to cool off and let me know what your favorite combination is!  🙂

 

Daddies, kids & cookies

Daddies are the best, right? They are so much fun to play with, they teach you cool things, they make you feel safe…our list could go on and on with good things about daddies, couldn’t it? But there is something I need to warn you about. Something you need to watch out for. Are you ready for this?? Ok here it is…Daddies. Love. Cookies.

Did you know that?? Yes, they really do!! Daddies love cookies sooo much that they have been known to sneak cookies from other people!! Whaaaat, you say?! Yes…I know it’s hard to believe but, it’s true! I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes! 👀 So here’s what you have to do: if you have any cookies, keep a close watch on your daddy. Watch his nose. Does it start twitching like he is smelling something yummy? Does he casually say, “Mmm! What smells so good?” Does he sit down close to you and ask you “Whatcha got there, sweetie?” Then most importantly watch his hands!! He might slowly, slowly slide one hand closer and closer to your cookie until…POOF! Your cookie disappears and there is a mysterious smile on your daddy’s face. And the best clue of all can be found by looking at his mouth. Is he suddenly chewing but he doesn’t have any food in front of him? Quick, count your cookies and see if any are missing!! 😳

Another way daddies have been known to sneak cookies is when you have a bag with cookies in it and your name is written on the outside of the bag. Daddies can be sneaky about crossing off your name and writing their name on it! Yes! I’ve seen this with my own eyes too! I even have proof! Look at this picture and tell me what you see:

See? What did I tell you?! 😳 Wow! So what do you think we should do about this problem? It’s really hard to watch your daddy ALL the time! You know what? I think I have a great idea! Why don’t we just SHARE our cookies with our daddies? If we give him one or two cookies, then he might not want to sneak any more! Do you think that might work? That’s what I am going to try because we all know…Daddies. Love. Cookies! And we love daddies, don’t we? 😍🥰. The moral of the story is you can trust daddies with your life, but not with your cookies!