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:

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!

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 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. :)