Link love: kid activities

Ahhh, summer. Our mornings are so much more relaxed these days, but there is also so much more time to fill!

Here are some sites to inspire:

photo by Kate from An Everyday Story for Playful Learning

I’ve linked to Playful Learning before, it’s a wonderful site full of authentic activities your children (and you!) will love to experience together. The page of Activities for Kids has all kinds of fun inspiration – from art activities to well being.

Did you press flowers as a kid? I did and loved finding forgotten flowers as I was reading the books I used to press months later. Here’s a little tutorial to walk you through the process.

photo by Skip to My Lou

Skip to My Lou is a fabulous resource of parenting activities – including tons of great gift ideas for teachers! I love this list of literature based activities, especially this lupine seed packet to partner with a reading of Miss Rumphius.

When the weather is beautiful, we like to move our everyday activities outdoors. The girls love to paint outside and the clean up couldn’t be easier. We love using natural materials for stamping or painting.

This just seems wrong, but the girls got sick this week. Ginger seems through the worst of it, but I’m still constantly worrying about Ruby’s cough. We use many of these home remedies for the girls to help them get through their funk. Fingers crossed they’ll be back to themselves quickly, especially because Grandma and Gramps are here!

Any fun activities or helpful sites you can share?

Link Love: Craft Supplies

I can’t seem to get enough knitting lately. This week Ruby went to her twin friends’ birthday party and wanted to sew them some stuffed animals, so she and I sewed a bit, and I loved how quickly that came together. I thought I’d share some sites I like for craft supplies and hope you will too!

Layer Cake Shop has everything for a cute kids party: pretty cupcake liners, fun ice cream spoons, and a favorite in our house: paper straws.

I’m always inspired flipping through a Paper Source catalog. They have gorgeous papers, stationery, and DIY ideas.

I love that Magpie Patterns has sourced beautiful patterns for knitting, sewing, and embroidery in one place. They sell Brooklyn Tweed, Oliver + S and more.

Fabricworm has tons of beautiful fabrics. Searching their site and visiting Bolt always make me want to learn to sew better.

Brooklyn General and Purl Soho have fabric, yarn, patterns, and all the tools you’ll need to craft. It’s a relief to be able to get everything in one package!

Any favorite sources to add to my list? I’m off to finish making a batch of soap…

Link Love: Things that make me happy

It is freezing, gray, and foggy here. The fog has blanketed the valley for close to a week now and is making things pretty dreary. I’m trying hard to find beauty in it, but it’s getting a little old. We’re still managing to play soccer in the backyard and notice the gorgeous frost-covered bare branches of the oak trees, but a little sunshine would help.

Anyway, I’ve rounded up a few things that make me happy with just one little click. What do you think?

I love Fleet Foxes and I love First Aid Kit. Combining the two? Yes, please. These girls are amazing.

 

This simple post captures a child’s joy and Mary Oliver‘s poetry, which always speaks to me.

10 Tips for a Mindful Home. Nothing groundbreaking. A list of reminders that I need to re-read once in awhile to create space in my life and live more mindfully.

photo borrowed from Pink of Perfection

I’m glad I came across The Charmed Life Challenge again. It is full of fun ways to bring joy into your life and others’.

Finally, listen to this interview from Fresh Air with Maurice Sendak (author of Where the Wild Things are among many other favorites). It is a tear-jerker, honest, and heart-felt. It makes me love him even more.

Sending you warm, sunny, happy thoughts. Leave your favorite pick-me-ups (online or off) in the comments! I’d love to add to my list.

Link love: food

I love comforting, soft chocolate chip cookies. I love crispy ripe apples. I love home-grown kale. I love baking for friends and family and I love that this time of year has so many excuses for good food.

I’ve rounded up a handful of my favorite websites; savory and sweet; healthy and indulgent. I’m inspired by these beautiful photos on our gray rainy winter days.

Honey and Jam‘s photographs are calming and gorgeous. These sweet potato biscuits look like they’ll melt in your mouth.

Joy the Baker is entertaining as it is delicious. She’s a girl after my own heart, she loves cookies and cake as much as she loves kale.

Vegetarians unite! 101 Cookbooks is your place for healthy eating. This dish looks just perfect to me (um, with some kale). Her kitchen is so white and clean and calm. I love it.

I just got a copy of the new Smitten Kitchen cookbook and am excited to cook from it this week. This simple dessert is just what January needs.

The Kitchn is a catch-all site for people who love to cook and with good design. They have posts about kitchen tools, renovating, and, of course, recipes.

What are your favorite foodie sites?

P.S. What’s up with all my kale references in this post? Guess I’m craving it…I think I’ll go cut some from the garden.

 

Photos all courtesy of the sites they’re linked to.

link love: family

Thanks so much for all the love and comments on my last post! You have no idea how helpful extra support is right now.

Ruby has been wanting more time on the computer these days and I think she’s old enough (5 yrs.) that she learn some basic computer skills. Lately she’s been enjoying Sesame Street and Sid the Science Kid.

Ruby loves to read as well so I’ve been looking up some of our favorite author websites that have “behind-the-scenes” information, games, the authors reading the books. It’s been fun for all of us to dig around. Here are some that we’ve been enjoying.

This is Ruby’s drawing that she sent to Mo Willems. It’s posted on his blog!

Mo Willems is our family’s favorite author lately. I wish I had known about Elephant and Piggie books when I was teaching. They are THE BEST books for beginning readers. Ginger (2 yrs. old) can already “read” several of them with us. He is the author of the famous Pigeon (Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus) and Knuffle Bunny books (the third in the trilogy made me tear up the first 20 times I read it) too. There’s a bunch of fun games on his site including these pigeon games.

Mem Fox has been one of my favorite authors since I saw her at an IRA conference as a beginning teacher. Both of my girls have loved listening to Time for Bed as babies, so she holds a special place in my heart. She has written a fabulous book for adults called Reading Magic that I highly recommend, and her website has great resources for parents and teachers too.

I happened upon Todd Parr’s book It’s Okay to Be Different when I was teaching kindergarten and immediately loved it. I’ve been a big fan ever since. In fact, we had several pages of his The Peace Book framed in Ruby’s room when she was a baby. We gave his The Grandma Book and The Grandpa Book to my parents right before we told them I was pregnant. He’s got some fun activities and snippets of his books on his site. The girls are loving his underwear app that we’ve recently downloaded too.

I had several more sites I wanted to share, but I don’t want to overwhelm! If you like these links let me know and I’ll write another post about other children’s author websites I enjoy. What are your kid-friendly computer games or websites you visit?