Spider Birthday!

Holden turned four! With torrential rain in the forecast my neighbor and I decided a craft was in order. Spider craft. Holdy loves spiders! I cut apart 4 egg cartons. Poked 8 holes around the lower edge of each egg cup with a skewer first and then enlarged with my meat thermometer (thank you thanksgiving turkey)

Out came the paint!

The kids held onto the egg carton bodies with clothespins to keep them clean....We ended up with nicely decorated totally useless clothespins!

Cut in half pipe cleaners!

Shoved thru the pre - made holes! A piece of thread to tie them up to tacks in the roof or onto lights......

Googly eyes.....and VOILA!! An easy peasy birthday craft. And the coup d'etat!???!!!!?????

I used my dehydrator to dry the spider bodies after they were painted.......which meant we could finish the craft with the kids fairly quickly!!! See being sustainable means there are other useful shortcuts.....

Add a spider birthday cake and we had a very happy little boy!

The best thing about birthday parties at my house? My friends. My friends stay and let me delegate. The parties always end up a group project with low stress and happy active kids. We had crafts in the kitchen, games and songs in the living room and grilled cheese in the dining room. It rocked.

I won't talk about the little boy who told me at bedtime, "And I want a pinata Mummy...." ARGH!! This was after a day spent getting Houdini and Co. penned, over and over. I was waiting for the kids to fall asleep, my friend's hubby to show up with a newly charged battery to try and keep the 200 pound pigs from head butting the birthday guests, and I had to bake and decorate the cake.....Now I had to zip out and buy and pinatta and stuffings.....Can you say bed at 1:30 am???? (Hubby is moose hunting!)

The only light at the end of the tunnel was in the morning when said excited four year old was bouncing on my head and I could groan, "Go stuff your pinata dear." It took almost an hour!

Neat Day

What a perfect day.....The boys LOVE Magic School Bus (they watch it and rewatch episodes each morning without fail), so I order the Chapter books thru Scholastic (and for the most part I hate Scholastic.......the rampant commericalism....I could go on for hours) and even though they are so OBVIOUSLY (to me) teaching, but the kids love the adventures, and they do pick up on the info imparted by the nutty Friz. So we read MSB "The giant germ" then look at Usborne's "the complete book of the microscope" full of awesome pics of germs and microbes and hair in knots and so on....and then tried to find our sea monkeys to grow (where the HECK did we put that kit???) Instead found a wooden map of the world with little flags to place in holes beside the right country that the kids have never seen - A attacked it with vigour....using another one of my books with country names and flags - so he had to find the country in the book, alphabetically, look what the flag looked like, then find it's flag out of the pile and put it in the right spot.....all from my kid who can't read.....let alone figure out "alphabetical order" Then we read more about Spiders - H loves them - Did you know there is a spider that lives underwater??? It makes a web, puts air bubbles in it and then uses that space to eat it's prey....All this was interspersed with Lionel Trains, walks outside with Daddy, piano practice, webkinz, treadmill running and various other random activities.....a perfect day, I wish each one could be like this......
Ok it wasn't totally perfect, H had a bad night and was INCREDIBLY screamy/weepy/waily all day....so hard to deal with and nothing that can be done.......