bracelets everywhere

Our daughter has recently joined the Rainbow Loom craze. It’s entirely possible that we’re the last family on the bandwagon.  I hadn’t even heard of this thing until a friend of my husband was over and showed me one that his daughter had made for him. Then, of course, afterwards I was noticing them absolutely everywhere. It was only a day or so later when my daughter arrived home with one that a friend had made for her.

Eventually, I was given the ‘homework assignment’ (by my seven-year-old) to ‘google’ Rainbow Loom so that I could teach her how to make a fishtail pattern bracelet. Thank goodness for YouTube!! I found a tutorial there and Ashley did a great job with her explanation.

We are now bracelet-making experts…

royalty

Time for another break from my typical rambling running related posts! Yup, no running talk in this one. My husband thinks that it’s all I ever talk about, but that’s totally not true. I won’t mention at all about how crummy my 9-mile run was yesterday OR the fact that I am frantically trying to recover from my leg tweak that occurred…not while running…but while rolling. (Foam Roller = 1/Susan = 0) {Seriously. Don’t ask.}

Nope. Instead I’ll talk about sugar and spice and everything…royalty.

My daughter went to a Princess Party over the weekend. The ‘boutique’ that hosted it was so very cute! The girls started by having their nails done, then were brought into a dressing room where they were allowed to pick one of the many available dresses and some matching accessories.

Once they were all dressed-up, they jumped on stage to perform a show for the parents. Singing, dancing, girly-squealing and mass chaos followed.

It was a fantastic time and it further encouraged our daughter’s belief that she IS in fact a princess and therefore should be showered with attention, accessories and cupcakes with heart-shaped sprinkles…at all times.

summer time capsule

On Monday, my daughter’s pick from the activity jar was a Summer Time Capsule.

It was a cute project and she enjoyed coming up with answers to the questions about herself…

…but my absolute favorite thing that morning was how we were able to get the baby involved too.  I wish I could’ve gotten pictures of them doing their first craft together, but with a seven month old covered in fingerpaint…my hands were a bit full!

We’ve already started gathering things that she wants to seal-up inside of the box…

Next week we’ll be at the shore and she’s planning to pick out two shells (one for herself and one for her sister) specifically for the time capsule.

On the site where I found the templates it suggested that you not open the time capsule for three years. Which to my six-year-old daughter would basically be the equivalent of telling her this thing will be sealed forever. So, I told her that we’ll close it up at the end of summer, she can re-open it next summer…add more things to it and then continue on each summer until she becomes ‘too cool’ for it. Until then it was a great activity and a lot of fun to come up with ideas for keepsakes to put inside!

the pink pirate

A few weeks ago, my daughter decided that she wanted a pirate-themed 6th birthday party. I absolutely love that she picked this theme! Not only was it so much fun to plan, but it was extremely easy to accommodate both the girls and the boys on our guest list.

I think we ended up having around 15 kids, it was total chaos and at one point I had no idea how many people were here because they were scattered all over. Some inside, some in the front yard, others out back.  I literally didn’t stop all day. Constantly moving and making sure that things were moving along. It was a huge effort, but it was absolutely worth it…

I’ve decided that dailymile really needs to add both ‘Birthday Parties’ and ‘Amusement Parks’ to their workout options. I am way more exhausted and sore today than I was after running 13.1 miles!?!!

photo walk

A few weeks ago, while I was perusing Pinterest, I came across a link for a Summer Activity Jar.  The idea is to fill the jar with fun things to do.  Each morning your child picks one piece of paper and whatever is written on it will be the activity of the day.  Holy Spontaneity! I loved this idea, so of course I stole it.

I decided to use popsicle/craft sticks instead. Most likely because for some strange reason we have a surplus of them in the house?! Oh, and I jazzed up the jar with some pinkness because my five year old’s happiness depends on being surrounded by PINK at all times.

Today she picked ‘Photo Walk’ and I was just as excited about the winning activity as she was.  Since before the baby arrived, I’ve been using my real camera far less than I used to.  In my defense, the arrival of my iphone earlier this year had a huge impact on it as well.  The quality cell camera on it and my love for Instagram definitely hasn’t sent me rushing back to lugging around my heavy dSLR. However, I have been missing the time I used to spend taking pics of randomness, playing around with various lenses and post-processing the best of the bunch in photoshop.

We headed out and surprisingly our photo walk lasted over two hours.  It was fantastic!  The weather was gorgeous and we took our time strolling around the neighborhood.  We always seem to be in a rush, so it was such a relaxing way to spend the afternoon.  We both took a million pictures (she was using an old point and shoot camera) and we definitely enjoyed exploring the woods together.

Update: I put some of my daughter’s photos from our walk into the below storyboard.  We have some of them printed out and they’re hanging in her room.  There were a ton to choose from, it was hard to narrow it down to just a few!!