Painted popcorn!

I will confess, what follows here is a stolen idea--and aren't those the best kind?--taken from my new favorite obsession www.pinterest.com. If you've never checked out that website you simply must, especially if you love to collect recipes, ideas for home improvement projects, or crafts. It's basically like twitter except with graphics. Useful and fun!

So, I ran across a "pin" from one of my mom friends on there about painting popcorn (and marshmallows) using milk and food coloring (click here to see the original post). It sounded fun and I was hungry so it was a shoe-in for today's afternoon craft time with Gi while Noa was sleeping. I used sweetened condensed milk and neon food coloring gels for a home-made take on that tutti-frutti colored popcorn I loved so much as a kid at any amusement park.  Next time I may experiment with finding that tutti-frutti flavor by adding some fun extracts to the condensed milk. I'm thinking coconut and strawberry might just do the trick! Oh, and since I said that, why not make popcorn balls of this for trick-or-treaters this year! Yay! Now, I'm thinkin'--and see how it pays to steal an idea every once in awhile? ;)

Update: I couldn't wait to try the extract idea so after posting this I ran back to the kitchen and added orange extract to the orange coloring, raspberry to the purple and coconut to the green. In a word? AWESOME! So if you choose to try this at home, please I urge you, do not stop at painting your popcorn beautiful colors, add some flavorings and your kiddos will go gagga for it! Okay, you may also need to make a double batch so they have some leftover after you eat it all! Not that it happened like that at our house or anything.

Fall is almost here!

Since we have the first day of fall this week, Gi and I decided to do some art in honor of the changing seasons. The fact that I've had this eco-friendly paint stashed in my art cabinet for over a year without a worthy project to test it on, was just the inspiration I needed to break out of our morning routine and usher in some creativity.

Glob paint was sitting on a shelf in a local sustainability store and it called my name.  Now, I've tried making my own paint formulas with spices and veggies I've had on hand and they've done pretty well especially for finger paints when you know your little one's hands are going to go straight from paint cup to mouth. But, the copious amounts of spices and veggies needed to create the colors made it almost as expensive to produce my own as it would be to buy such natural-based paints. Glob isn't cheap but the great thing about it is that you mix the paints from dry powder so you can decide how much of each color you need at any one time. The result is a product that the kids can help make from scratch (measuring the water and dry pigment) and have lots left over for future projects.

Okay enough product advertising and on with the actual art! It was pretty easy, novice stuff this morning. I just cut a long strip of easel paper, drew the outline of a tree on it, cut up additional sheets to add to the width and drew branches. Then, we taped it to the wall and I continued cutting out leaf shapes until Gi got antsy and whined to start painting.  So, I now have quantified her attention span in terms of paper leaves: 12 to be exact. She got to paint her leaves with her new veggie colors (beet red was her favorite) and then Noa joined us and shocked us both by grabbing a paintbrush and doing the same! I thought for sure she would just do a little finger painting but I underestimated the power of big sister role modeling. Of course she would want to do it exactly the way Gi did!

Then, we had fun with the tape roller and Gi got to stick all her leaves on our fall tree! I can't wait to add more branches and leaves and watch the tree grow. I think I will leave the tree up on the wall and as we get farther into fall we'll have fun moving the leaves off the branches, letting them "fall" to the ground and eventually make a leaf pile at the base of the tree. When the branches are bare we'll get to talk about winter and that's the beauty of a home school lesson on the changing seasons, you start with a simple idea and can transform it, evolve it into an ongoing lesson theme! I can already imagine using this tree to talk about leaf structures, tree species etc. We're going to have so much fun this fall! 
So, how will you usher in the new season?

Noa is 11 months old!

I can hardly believe I am already putting together plans for Noa's 1st birthday! She is just growing up so fast. Tonight she finally let go of our hands and tried her best to walk between us and though she didn't quite take her first steps, I know the day will come soon enough and oh what an adventure life will be then!

She is already quite a spunky kid, spitting out new words almost every week and using her baby sign language quite proficiently now. She signs bird, hello, goodnight, fan, fish and all done. She tries very hard to keep up with her big sister and loves a good game of hide and seek and chase. She's also fascinated with trying to put her clothes on and washing her hands. If the water is running, she does everything herself, grabs the soap, lathers, rinses, tries to turn the water off and reaches for the towel! It's crazy.

Up next on Noa's plate is music class! We start tomorrow and I'm super excited to see her reaction. I know she will love the class because we spend so much of our days dancing and making music together. She loves all our shakers and drums and Gianna's little piano. And let's not forget how much she loves to shake her bum! Check out the video to see a great example of her latin blood shining through...(as well as Gi picking out presents for Santa to bring her, already!)

Noa dancing!