Flowers, flowers, flowers!

Flowers all over the yard; growing on the trees, sprouting from the ground, and delivered to my house!

Playsilks

I have been wanting to dye playsilks myself for some time now, but it always seems so daunting. While looking around the internet I came across this blog: Childhood Magic , and she talked about dying playsilks. So, I thought... why not give it a go. I searched for a method that would be pretty easy for me, and found this method on-line.

First I soaked the silks in warm water with vinegar in it for a few minutes

Then I rung them out and fan folded them and tied them up with bits of wool yarn.

I placed the silk in a large ziplock freezer bag.

Then I sprinkled the unsweetened Kool-Aid drink mix on one side and then flipped the silk and sprinkled the other side with another flavor/color of Kool-Aid.

I smooshed the playsilk and Kool-Aid around in the bag for a minute or so.

Then zip the bag shut and put in the microwave for 1 minute on high. After a minute check and make sure everything is ok and microwave for another minute.

I hung the bag up too cool for a few hours and then took the silks out rinsed them out (not much Kool-Aid actually rinsed off at all). I untied them and let them hang to dry over night! Tada, beautiful silks!

I am going to try another Kool-Aid dying method with other, much larger silk. I will post about that soon.

Here are some links to dying with Kool-Aid:

Sara's Toy Box

The Artful Parent

On a hike

Took a day hike up Bradbury Mountain . Not a very long hike, but the "Summit trail" was like walking up a 1/2 mile worth of stairs! We took a much easier trail going down.

Arts and Crafts

The little boys have been very busy painting, gluing and building all sorts of things. Busy, busy, busy!

Rowan

A lovely weekend

What a great weekend. Saturday we went to the beach and played in the sand, the kids climbed rocks and played chase with the waves. Sunday we went over to the bike path and the boys rode their bikes. We played a bit of soccer and tossed the football about, then watched the Androscoggin river, roll along.

Compost and worms...

Our compost pile, is getting bigger and bigger. We added some good, wet, composting leaves last week and then Mike and the boys went worm hunting on Friday, so we could add them to the mix. Man, the worms here get big!

What we have been up to

Just a few pictures of what we have been up to... playing, crafting, eating, living.