Photos
3 of us have also been doing a lot of baseball watching, while 1 does the playing. ⚾️🤍
Back to baseball for a couple months 😊⚾️🧢
Testing out his creation
A few thrift finds from this week:
A book ($1) titled, “Glorious Flowers,” that’s packed with beautiful art of various flowers…aiming to frame them
A set of measuring cups ($1) for a new project
A Boska cheese grater ($0.12)
A silver spoon ($0.12)
And a pretty little glass vase ($1)
Last Sunday in August 🩷🧡💛🩵💜
Went to our first (and last) Mississippi Braves game a couple of weeks ago. Scored a bunch of merch half off and these super great photos of some really cool people. ☺️
Driving over the Mighty Mississippi
We had a late morning appointment and an early-ish afternoon appointment today, so we stayed “in town,” got smoothies, and roamed the aisles of Walmart to fill the majority of the time in between. It was a fun change of pace.
Christmas in July Craft: Pipe Cleaner Snowflakes
We had a Christmas in July event with our homeschooling community a couple of weeks ago. I brought supplies to make pipe cleaner snowflakes. It was super easy to put together and relatively inexpensive. And it went a long way for a large group craft (we had close to 40 kids).
I got a pack of 200 white pipe cleaners. Kept to just one color to keep it simple. And picked out 6 bright, Summer-y colors of pony beads. I picked up those supplies at Hobby Lobby on a week when the beads were half off. But even when not on sale, I’ve found Hobby Lobby to be the most cost effective place for those particular items.
Creating the snowflakes is pretty easy, but younger children might need help combining three pipe cleaners to make the basic snowflake shape. I just twisted every other short stem tightly around the middle.
All these photos are from snowflakes we made at home before and after the event, so they are a few different sizes (and we used a few different beads than the original 6 colors). But for the group, I cut pipe cleaners in half (a small pair of beading wire cutters is super handy for that). That way only 5-7 beads was needed per stem. I saw multiple ways to finish these off on Pinterest and gave the kids the option to finish it however they wanted. A lot chose to use more beads and wrap the very end of the pipe cleaner around itself to keep the beads from falling off. In that case, the ends were just straight. Some, like myself and my children, chose to add one or two extra small pieces of pipe cleaner to the ends for more of a traditional snowflake vibe.
This was an easy and pretty quick craft. And it was fun to do with the “Christmas in July” theme to change it up. My kids and I have made 3 or 4 each, and I’m actually planning on us putting together several more and making them into a garland for real Christmas season!
PS - If you’re doing this at home or in a smaller group and would like a book to go along with it, I recommend Snowflake Bentley.
Spent the last few days with family out of town. Mostly at my dad’s. It was a really good time.
From Sunday 😎💖
Lego shopping yesterday. Buddy bought his little sister a Lego with his own money. Because he was proud of her for handling a hard week well. 💛
Drive home this afternoon
Thrift finds from last week in Natchitoches:
2 Magic Treehouse books to add to our library
3 tiny photo frames to make into ornaments
A Christmas train mug because I thought the kids would like it
A duck picture thing for the bird wall in our guest bathroom
A Study Bible in really great condition
Grocery shopping with my girl
One of my favorite pictures from June: Him reading Sydney and Taylor Explore the Whole Wide World (a cute and funny short chapter 3-book series about a skunk and a hedgehog) to her
A glimpse at a large portion of today’s entertainment for these two
Zinnias that need some pruning, but that are still providing lots of joy
Goggle pics (from Tuesday) are funny.
Favorite lemonade, for sure. Basil ginger. From a local favorite place to eat—Taco Sisters. The food is good too. 😊
