Friday, February 27, 2009

Butterfly Week

This week we were doing butterflies, since tomorrow we are going to Frederick Meijer Gardens to see the butterflies in the huge greenhouse area they have. It's a great time and we go every year. So, in the spirit of that, this week we focused on butterfly-sy things. 

First, it was a simple snack:
Butterfly snacks (with flowers)

Then we made shrinky things-like Shrinky-Dinks, but inspired by Poopscape Projects at www.poopscape.com, I used #6 plastic (the kind berries come in or, in my case, the top covers to Qdoba take out containers. If you look hard at the "A", you can see "#6"). We did color them with colored pencils, so after drawing the shapes with Sharpie, and cutting out the shapes, I scuffed the plastic up with sand paper. Then we colored away! Baked at 220* F for a while with not much action, so I bumped it up to 245* F. Worked great! Oh, the green underneath is a cheap-o silicon baking mat. Works great!
Pre-shrink
Look! They're shrinking!
All shrunk up!
That was a lot of fun. I loved Shrinky Dinks as a kid, still do! We turned ours into necklaces on fish line, so the butterflies just float there. So cool!

Then we made some stained glass butterflies with construction paper and tissue paper. These make even the grey sky look cheery! But it's great with the sun, naturally. 

[Hmm, insert photo here. I know I took one--where is it? I'm totally going to dust the camera for fingerprints....]

Finally, today, while we didn't make anything having to do with butterflies, we went outside and ran around, chased our shadows, and played "Follow the Leader" and yes, we pretended we were butterflies. :)

We did make these though:
Peanut butter cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies that are pretty darn yummy. www.recipezaar.com "Big Grandma's Best Peanut Butter Cookies". Bet you wish these were scratch-n-sniff. Or taste! Better yet!

Oh! And, that package from yesterday's post was not my super secret swap package, but rather one of the Stitch-It! Podcast Midwest Charity blankets! Phew! I was glad to figure that out and that I could open it. :)

2 comments:

  1. Your cookies look SO good!! :) Nom nom nom! :) We made a batch too and the girls LOVED them. They were just the ticket to bring a few smiles after Jack and Zombie had to leave this afternoon.

    I love your butterfly crafts, and the shrinky dinks! I've been keeping an eye out for #6 plastic, but find we usually wind up with #3. I need to find my "real" shrinky dink stuff since I've had the itch to work with it lately. You should try to make some rings! :D

    Have fun at the butterfly gardens!

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  2. Oh I know! The rings! I totally want to...

    I hope your girlies are doing ok without the dogs. It will be an adjustment, but it's so much less work.

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