Jello Shapes

We decided to make jello with an astronomy theme. We picked blue because it's a favorite flavor in this house which also worked out well for learning which color stars are the hottest. We had a few stars and a few planets. Zachary of course made Jupiter because it's his favorite and you can see him pointing to it below. They definitely go fast! Recipe below!

Jello Jigglers

• 9 oz of flavored Gellatin
• 4 packs of unflavored Knox Gellatin (or store brand)
• 4 oz of boiling water

1. Boil water
2. Stir in all packs of Gellatin
3. Refridgerate for 2 hours.

Sun Craft

We got this super fun and easy sun painting idea from a blog I just found the other day called Mrs Karens class.  She had some great ideas for a hands on astronomy lesson.  Her blog post on this craft can be found here.  Mrs Karens class.

Sun Painting:

1. Trace a circle onto white paper.
2. Cut out.
3. Put a blob of red, yellow, and orange paint on the circle (less red than yellow).
4. Put plastic wrap over the circle.  Taping plastic down temporarily is optional which can  
5. Smear paint together all over the circle!  
6. Let dry!
7. Glue to black piece of paper.
8. Add suns rays with small paintbrush or cue tips.

Adelyn's sun (I helped with the rays a tad. And the tracing...and the cutting)

Creative Letters for the Wall

My sister n law (ah so nice to say that officially!!) married to my only brother took the time and effort to make Adelyn this beautiful name decoration for her wall.  Adelyn has become a purple fanatic as you can see with the bed and outfit.  This was the perfect addition to our decorating her area of the room. 

The letters are wood and are painted with purple acrylic paint.  My brother drilled holes through the sides at the top of each one in order to string them all together for hanging. The ribbon has the wire edges which made it easy to shape the ends into the curls hanging down.  The flowers on the front are embellishments for scrapbooking.  The back of the flowers have a self sticking adhesive which makes it easy to peel off and stick onto the wood. 

To hang I put push pins in the wall and wrapped each side of the ribbon around them.  I also hammered tiny nails through the ribbon underneath the push pins and added more sticky adhesive under each letter. 

Thank you Kathryn!

An Organizational Investment

My two children share a room.  They are 3 years apart in age and the rooms are a very good size in our house fortunately.  About a year and 1/2 ago I listened to mothers in the Moms group I belong to at church say that they thought sharing a room helped their children become close.  Of course like every parent, I wanted my children to be great friends so when Adelyn turned 5 months she began sharing a room with Zachary. He was thrilled to have his new baby sleep in the same room (actually he wanted her to sleep in the bed with him). 

As time has gone on though, we have had to rearrange clothing and items in their room. We no longer needed to changing table (which had become another shelf) and the drawers of the dresser were overflowing. The closet is also a great size but did not have enough shelving to help our situation. This closet had clothes and items in baskets on the floor which often got mixed together or tossed about. 

Solution: a wonderful friend who showed me her Elfa drawers in her house from the container store(where she also works!). It was an investment but the space it saves, the ease of the kids reaching and organizing their own clothes, and the durability of these drawers to last for years to come, has made them well worth it.  These drawers are deep from front to back and up and down which gives plenty of space to hold all of their clothes not hanging as well as blankets.  Another perk is that they were very easy to put together.

They each have their own unit and we can rearrange the order of drawers from top to bottom.  It fits in their closet also.  Now that we have these I am able to removed the dresser from the room that was too small for the both of them and get some decorative wall shelves for their little picture frames, trophies and baptism memory items. 

Thank you to Becca who with her skills learned from working at the container store, continues to teach me about home organization all the time.