Happy Family Times #10--Going to a birthday party

What have you been up to with your family this week? Did you do something new and exciting? Go on a trip? Or just dance in your living room?  Please share below! Kelly over at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I are loving hearing about everyone's wonderful family time! We hope this link party will help inspire more quality time with your loved ones!

Today we attended a first birthday party. The parents of the child are Hazel's godparents. Now, I think I mentioned Hazel's fear of men. The only men she is not afraid of are Daddy and Pop. Even men we see every week who talk to her, she will play shy around but talk about them as soon as we walk away and for the rest of the week. One man she is really frightened by (and I don't know why) is her godfather. She did not want to go to the party since I told her he was definitely going to be at it when she asked if he would be there. We bribed her into going by saying we would go get ice cream afterwards if she went and behaved. She decided she wanted to go to Friendly's instead of the farm that makes their own ice cream from the cows you can see there which is only a 5-10 minute drive from our friends' house. Oh, well. Note: I did not mention to my friends that I would be blogging about their party so I am blocking out their daughter's face in all the pictures since I do not have permission to post it.

Since their daughter was born Memorial Day weekend, they had a red, white and blue party. This is the party I made all the star crayons for. She wanted 100 and I made 94 from all the crayons she gave me. I think she is going to have a lot more than she needed, but oh, well. She took them and put them in plastic bags. Hazel had a good time. She was a bit cuddly, but then she went off to play with the kids. One of the girls there is one day older than Hazel so they play at all the parties there.

Hazel pushing the birthday girl with some help from her uncle

They provided bubble stuff for the kids to play with. It was a big hit. There were snacks to begin with and then your typical Memorial Day barbeque: hot dogs and hamburgers, potato salad, pasta salad, etc. Then of course there were gifts to open and cake and cookies and pastries. The birthday girl had a wonderful time with her piece of cake--it ended up on the ground before she was through, but she had fun. I love the fistful in the bottom picture.

Our gift's wrapping fit the theme

Hazel ate the frosting and Daddy got the chocolate cake.

The Cake

My Cuddly Girl

After the party we headed to Friendly's and got Hazel her ice cream cone. I got a watermelon sherbert cooler--a flashback to my childhood. I use to love those in the summer. They are no longer on the menu, but still make them for me at least at our local one.

Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

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Ok, now for our PARTY!! Please share your FUN Family Times!!

Gardening Blog Hop

Patio garden with vegetable garden in background

We spent a good part of last weekend outside in our gardens. One of the major issues we have in our yard is that we do not have great sun in the back yard. My vegetable garden was slowly being shaded by the trees, so Steve dug me some more space in the other direction so we could plant all of our seedlings and seeds (which Hazel chose). This garden has been taken over by raspberries and oregano. I pulled most of the raspberries out because they need too much space for the room we have and I always am pulling out the oregano, but it keeps coming back. In fact it even managed to spread over to the patio garden! Not sure how that happened.

Steve extending my vegetable garden

While Steve dug my extension, Hazel and I tackled the weeds in the patio garden. We had really let them go and since they had flowers we left them there, but they were taking over so it was time. Hazel was a great helper. She brought over her little wagon and helped pull a few, but since I kept filling the wagon she kept taking it to empty it for me.

After having lunch outside, Steve went on to dig Hazel's sunflower garden. This garden will hopefully be a sunflower house this year for Hazel. Next year we may pick a different theme like a pizza garden. These ideas came from Sharon Lovejoy's Roots Shoots Buckets & Boots: Activities To Do in the Garden. For some of the other books we have been using as a reference check out this post.

Sunflower Garden

For now we left the center of our sunflower garden grass so it will be more comfortable as a sunflower house.







While Steve started on the sunflower garden, Hazel and I started planting our seedlings. (See Post 1, Post 2, and Post 3 for previous mention of these seedlings.) Hazel wanted to start with the patio garden, but grew bored and went off to play while I planted some of our marigold seedlings and seeds.

Patio Garden

Fairy in Our Patio Garden

Simba's Memorial

She got interested in our garden again when it was time to plant the pumpkins, watermelon and zucchini in our vegetable patch. We also planted some marigolds around the edge to keep the pests out. We are trying one of those Topsy Turvy things for a tomato plant since our tomatos have not done well in our garden. We put it over near the sunflower garden since it gets the most sun in our back yard.

Then we ended our day planting the sunflower seedlings and seeds around the giant circle that Daddy dug. You can see the picture above. What are you growing this year?

Now it is your turn to share with us! 

I have been invited to co-host a blog hop on gardening with

Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Kitchen Counter Chronicle

The Educators Spin On It  

Duck Duck Octopus

Living Montessori Now

At Home With Ali

Rainy Day Mum

Ready Set Read 2 Me

Playful Learners

Please visit my co-hosts and check out their wonderful garden posts as well!!

This is a blog hop. Please join us as we know Crafty Moms Always Share!!

Mulitcultural Monday:Skin Color Collage & Picture Books

I've been trying to find some good projects to share with you, but since I have a 3-year-old right now, I also want them to be something she can relate to. Thus I am sharing with you lots of picture books and such. I have lots of ideas of things to do with a group of older kids, but just one, not as much. The first book I want to talk about is a classic that we all know, Dr. Seuss's The Sneetches and Other Stories.

While reading this Saturday morning, Hazel and I took the time to talk about the pictures. Why do the plain belly sneetches look so sad? Do the star bellied ones? Why are the star bellied sneetches so mean to the plain bellied sneetches? These are a few of the questions we discussed and several of them were asked by Hazel. This is a wonderful story showing that looks do not matter. You can equate the stars to so many of the prejudices in our world--skin color, sexual orientation, disability, gender, age, etc. For those who do not know the story, the star bellied sneetches think they are the best sneetches and will not talk or associate with the plain bellied sneetches. Along comes a man with a machine to put stars on the plain bellied sneetches for a price. Then he has a machine to take the stars off the original star bellied sneetches for a more expensive price. They spend all of their money and day going in and out of the machines until no one can tell who is who. The man of course leaves with all of their money, but the sneetches realize that there is no difference between them.

The other stories in this book have similar themes or at least themes that teach lessons about differences, stubbornness, etc. The second story is The Zax. There are two zax in this story. One is a south going zax and the other a north going zax. The south going zax never go any direction besides south and the north only goes north. Well they bump into each other and neither is willing to step aside to let the other go, so the world grows around them and they miss out on their lives. Talk about a great story to talk about compromising and getting along. Hazel and I took the time to really discuss this and what was happening in it.

The next story, Too Many Daves, Hazel did not seem to like and asked me to stop reading in the middle of it. It is about a mother who named all of her twenty-three sons Dave. Needless to say it is about the confusion of having the same name.

The last story is a story I remember from my own childhood. I remember in kindergarten the class always wanted to listen to it during quiet time. (The teacher had it on an album.) It is What Was I Scared Of? It is a story of a creature (it is Dr. Seuss so I don't know what type of creature it is) that meets a pair of pale green pants with no one inside them one night. The creature then tells of a few more times where he runs into the pants at night. Needless to say the creature is scared of a pair of pants that can walk, ride a bike, etc. In the last instance of them meeting the creature screams for help but then notices the pants are crying and trembling with fear as well. He comforts the pants and then whenever they meet they say hi. Again, a great story for relating how people who are different do not  mean you have to be afraid. Something I need to work on with Hazel a bit more.

Now for a few more books and a project. You may remember a few weeks ago we explored the book The Color of Us by Karen Katz. We played with mixing paints to make the different shades of skin. This project goes right along  with it and could be used with The Color of Us as well as these books.

Shades of People by Shelley Rotner and Sheila M. Kelly is about the different shade of skin color. It has different pictures of all different shades and talks about skin like wrapping paper where you cannot tell what is inside a person.

The Skin You Live In by Michael Tyler is about how we all have skin and it is yours, but your skin does not make you who you are. You still dream, think, act like you not based on your skin color.

All Kinds of Children by Norma Simon is another book talking about the similarities and differences between children around the world. All children need food and live in houses and have belly buttons. The houses may be different, but everyone lives somewhere. It goes on like that. It is a nice story bringing that we are all people no matter what our differences are.





Now for our simple project. I gave Hazel a bunch of magazines, catalogs and newspaper ads and had her cut out pictures of people of different colors. I helped with some and had to do some trimming on a few. Then we pulled out one of her The Colors of Us paintings to make a collage. I wanted her to glue them over the paint colors we came up with but she did not want to ruin her painting so we glued them on the back.

This gave her great practice in cutting!! Plus recognizing the different shades of people. One of my goals has been to get her comfortable with seeing people of different colors. We tend to have a mostly white community around us, but I want to expose her to the differences so she can be comfortable with anyone.

Do you have any good multicultural/diversity books to share?

This is where I link up...