Butterfly Life Cycle

Hayden and JD are in Cloverbuds for 4-H. Some weeks they get to visit 4-H project groups to see which ones they might want to try when they "graduate". Some weeks they just get together and do a learning project.

This week they learned about the life cycle of a butterfly. They read The Very Hungry Caterpillar and watched a short video about monarch butterflies. When the group leader asked why the caterpillar was so hungry when he came out of the egg JD answered: "Because he's in a book called The Very Hungry Caterpillar!" He is so funny!

They also had a coloring page contest (JD won a prize for that!) and a fun activity where they wrapped a partner into a toilet paper chrysalis (JD's team won a prize for this too!).

After finishing the other fun activities, they made these cool projects to help them remember the butterfly's life cycle:

Craftastic!

Since it's coming into guest season, I've been working on a few things for the guest house. Most of these ideas are my own version of something I have seen on a blog (usually via Pinterest). If you want to see my guest house Pinterest board, click here.

I wanted to stencil the cardinal directions and elevation along with our latitude and longitude on the guest house walls, but decided to make this instead. The boards are from a pallet left here during pool construction. I just used an old transfer technique I learned in middle school art class to transfer the lettering onto the board and then filled it in with a black Sharpie. Twine holds in all together and acts a hanger. [The pool arrow sign below it was a project I made last year. And, yes, it really points to the pool.]

I finally printed out my "Guest House Rules" poster. I made the "rough draft" last year using the free online photo editor Pic Monkey. Unfortunately, I had the settings wrong to print a large size without cutting off some of the words so I had to re-do it. It didn't take too long since I had already worked out all the details. I sent it to Costco get a 16x20 print. One of these days I'm going to mount it on a board. I tried a frame and didn't like it.

While I was on Costco's photo site, I found a couple stock photos of beaches. You can print these stock photos out like your own for only $1.49, so I ordered two and stuck them in a couple dollar store frames to balance the wall.

We made scarecrows at our church family night a couple weeks ago and I grabbed a little bit of extra burlap to make this wreath. It was easy, but time consuming. I used a piece of foam pipe insulation as the form and then tied (I didn't count but it felt like a million) strips of burlap around the form. I think it came out pretty cute but the insulation isn't quite sturdy enough to hold the shape I wanted so I had to use tacks to keep it from being more of an oval.

The next two projects are more makeover than craft. I got both the "painting" and mirror from a friend who didn't want them anymore. I thought I'd give them a little makeover to match the coastal/beach theme I am going for out in the guest house.

The painting started out like this...

A few coats of white spray paint to the frame and some acrylic paint to "canvas" and I had this...

The mirror went from this (sorry for the bad photo - it's the only before I could find)...

I painted the frame and added a piece of scrapbook paper to the top.

When my parents were here last year we made a trip to IKEA. Among other things we found a set of these metal vases. I love them. They come in this color, cream, and an orangish red. If you want to look for them they are called Socker. I saw you could buy packages of sticks to put in vases, but I have a ton of branches in my back lot thanks to wind storms this summer. I cut a few and saved my money.

Last year, I used a few more sticks from the backyard and some twine to make this star.

This next little craft is still a work in progress. I just love colored bottles so I have collected a few to put above the cabinets in the guest house. Some were already colored and some I colored using various methods. The white one is just straight up paint - makes it look like milk glass. The more turquoise ones are Mod Podge and food coloring. The Mod Podge method worked better on the bottles with wider mouths, so this method would work great on Mason jars. Of course, these are NOT food safe or even water proof, just strictly for decoration. I still have a few more bottles to work on and a couple got messed up so I'm going to wash them and try again.

A few weeks ago the kids and I did some painting with water colors. I put my water color sunset in a dollar store frame (that I spray painted white) and hung it in the main bedroom of the guest house.

This cute little palm tree was an IKEA find. I thought it went well with my beachy theme. My mom bought the little basket when she was here last year and this little guy fit in it perfectly.

Sometime last year I got two ceramic sea shells (only one is pictured) from the dollar store. They were kind of ugly colors but I knew a little white spray paint could fix that.

In my internet wanderings I had seen this nautical pier post. I thought something like that might be a nice addition to the decorative ledge in the guest house living room, but I wasn't about to pay $80 plus $40 shipping.

I found this stump out in our wood pile. I bought some rope and ended up with this:

My cost... I'm guessing that piece of rope cost about $1 and about 2 minutes of my time. (I bought a 50 ft. rope for $8 and used about 1/8 of it.) 

This last project took two seconds! I put some sand in a Mason jar with a candle and tied on some twine. Cheap (free really) and cute!

I updated the guest house "tour" if you want to see these items in their new home. They look a lot better in person so why don't you come see us! 

A Trip to IKEA with Mom

When I was in Minneapolis visiting Roz we stopped at IKEA. I saw a few things I wanted to get but, of course, it would have been silly to buy something and take it home when I could just go to IKEA in Arizona. So a couple weeks after I got back Eli and I headed to IKEA.

Eli had been wanting to get an aloe vera plant. I had seen them at IKEA and asked him if he wanted to go along with me and get one. Not one to pass up an adventure (especially since I promised a snack from the restaurant) he gladly accepted my offer.

Our first stop was the cafeteria. We had already eaten lunch so we decided on dessert. Eli is my most adventurous eater and is never afraid to try new things so he got some lingon berry juice to wash it down. We got two different dessert items and split them in half so we could try some of each.

Despite my wandering and kind of long shopping list I think Eli had a good time. We sat on furniture and opened drawers, then we went downstairs and started our actual shopping. Our main purchase was a dresser for the guest house second bedroom, but we got lots of other small items including Eli's brand new aloe vera plant. We checked out and got in the car to return home. Eli insisted his plant didn't want to ride in the trunk so he kept it in the back seat with him.

A long time ago, I told the boys they should "talk" to plants since they use our carbon dioxide and we use their oxygen. Eli took that to heart and chatted with his plant the whole way home.

*Update* Eli has named his plant "Baby Junior".

Stanley Dickens Shown

Meet Stanley Dickens Shown. He is our scarecrow. We made him during family night at church. When I saw we were going to be making a scarecrow for an activity I assumed it would be a paper scarecrow or maybe foam. Jerry thought the same thing. Since he was en route home from Green Bay and not able to join us for family night, we were able to surprise him with the very 3-D Stanley when he got home.

Eli named him. He chose a very fine name, if I may say so myself.  Now, every time we back out of the driveway. Annabeth yells, "Bye Stanley!"

The Case of the Mysterious White Egg

As the old Sesame Street song goes… "one of these things is not like the other"…

All our chickens lay brown eggs. Today I got a white egg. Not a light brown egg. White. I searched all over the internet and couldn't find a good answer to the my question. Why would a brown-egg-laying chicken suddenly lay a white egg?

I have learned that eggs vary in shape and size a lot more than you'd guess if you only buy eggs from the store. Our eggs are different every day. Sometimes dark brown, sometimes almost peach, sometimes small, and sometimes freakishly huge - but never white until now!

I posted this picture on Facebook. It took me several minutes to realize the white egg wasn't the only strange thing in this photo. There are 7 eggs and I only have six chickens. I emptied the nesting boxes myself so I know it wasn't a leftover from yesterday. I think have have gotten an extra egg only once before. Now, I'm curious, did one chicken lay both a brown and white egg in one day?

I got several funny Facebook comments, but the funniest was from Uncle Ty:
"Fowl play expected"!

This is my least favorite type of mystery… the one I'll never know the answer to!

Update:
I continued to get one white egg a day for several days, so I am pretty sure it wasn't a secret visitor. Then I had one cream egg for a few days. I had a light brown egg for a few days after that and within a few weeks all eggs were back to their usual brown. So the mystery remains unsolved.