Gardening with Kids!

This week was full of outdoor activities...and then 105 degree heat!

Before it got hot..the kids made sidewalk paint and I put them to work painting the garden!  We used a recipe that I found online that was simply:

1 cup of cornstarch
1 cup of water
food coloring

Very easy and fun!  They mixed their paint in a mixing bowl, poured it in the muffin tin and then added the food coloring.  I gave them a purpose and said that they could paint anything in the garden!   They had a lot of fun mixing colors.  They even ran to Otto's house to get more corn starch and food coloring when they ran out!

Look at all of the pretty colors you can mix from just red, blue, yellow and green food coloring!

Artists in the garden

Painting the trellis!

This year may be one of my best gardens yet!  Although my broccoli turned out wimpy and not worth anything, I have the most variety of veggies ever!  This year I planted:

bibb lettuce (a bit strong in flavor)

brocolli (as you can see from the photo, I had enough for one bite!)

tomato plants (not yet ready)

sweet potatoes (don't know when they'll be ready)

habeneros  (looking a bit stunty)

fennel (isabella planted for the butterflies..it looks great!)

sunflowers (very pretty)

peas (it got too hot and only 1 came up)

and an unexpected Watermelon!   (I think somehow a seed got spat into one of my pots.  I transplanted it in the garden not knowing exactly what it was! It's beautiful)

So after all that..my garden doesn't sound too successful, but at least it looks pretty!

How fun is this watermelon!!  I can't wait till the kids get to eat it!

There's my broccoli bite!  You can also see my homemade bamboo stakes..using some of the jungle of bamboo from my backyard!

My painters at work!

Fairy House

Last week we saw a page in Ranger Rick magazine asking for kids to send in pictures of a fairy house that they made.  A few months ago, Bernheim forest had a fairy house day and we saw about 30 house that kids had built.  Isabella thought they were really cool.  So we decided to make one to send in a picture to Ranger Rick.  We went to George Rodgers Park and collect nature stuff.  Then the next day Isabella built one in the back yard.  We already got a response from Ranger Rick thanking us for our photo (and asking us to send it again since I didn't attach the file right the first time), so I think we have a good shot!

Here are the pics from the activity.

Starting out

The finished product!  Can you find the tree swing and the owl??

The photo we sent into Ranger Rick!

Also this week Dad brought over some antiques, passed down from my great grandpa.  The kids got to see how the old-timers used to grind corn to make chicken feed.

And here is just a cute picture of Vin working in the garden with his Daddy!