New Blog

You can find me at http://wildarmadillos.com these days. :)
Hope to see you there!

The Owl Who Wasn't

Goings-on in the backyard are a big deal around here, especially as a stay at home mom to a 4 year old who loves nature and animals. We'd been hearing this owl for about a month or so, and Lucy and I were always looking up into trees trying to find it. The thing was, it "hoo-hoo'd" at all times of the day, which seemed a little odd. One morning I happened to look out of the window and saw this huge bird sitting on top of the neighbor's tree and realized the hoo-hoo sound was coming from it! It was kind of far away so I thought it might be an owl, but I used the zoom on our camera and it had a small head and looked more like a pigeon. Lucy and I were a little disappointed (we wanted there to be an owl), but at least it was a BIG pigeon (about 12 inches from beak to tail) and not just a regular old boring one. :) I went on google searching for "pigeon that sounds like owl" or something, and found this blog entry that cleared it all up for me! That blog is great, by the way! So glad I found it. Anyways, now at least we know that we have a "band-tailed pigeon", and not an owl. It sits on the same branch a lot and whenever Lucy sees it she yells "there's the pigeon bird!" and runs to our bedroom window to get a better view.

Here's a photo of our new buddy:

So not an owl, but a good learning experience for my daughter and I!

A Little Girl and Her Tomatoes

Lucy, enjoying her first cherry tomato harvest of the season! She ended up eating over half of those after I took these. :)

Stinky

There's not many things sweeter than a bunch of flowers picked especially for you by a 4 year old named Lucy...especially when told "These flowers are pretty stinky but I thought you would like them anyway." Thanks sweetie!

Recycled Crayons

So I know everyone in the blog world has probably tried this by now, but I really was surprised at how easy it was to make these!

Lucy (my 4 year old daughter) had a bunch of broken crayons and ones she wouldn't use because the wrappers were missing, so I decided to make some recycled crayons out of them. It was a great project for her and I to do together and really didn't take very long!

First we sorted them out and took the wrappers off. Then we broke them into little pieces and put them into similar color families (so they wouldn't get all muddy) into a mini muffin tin.

Then we put the pan into the oven, which was preheated at 275 degrees. I didn't really time them - just checked on them every couple minutes. I'd guess it took between 15-20 minutes for them to melt completely.

Ta-da! Recycled crayons. I love how they're swirly looking. Lucy has been enjoying coloring with them. The penny pincher in me loves that in theory, you could melt these down when they get small, and so on, and so on.

A couple tips if you try this:

- If you are wanting to make a more swirly looking crayon with multiple colors, make sure the different colored crayon pieces are mixed evenly in the tins.

- I had a hard time getting these out of the tins after I took them out of the oven and they were cool, but I just popped them in the freezer for a few minutes and they came right out.

One of my most favorite things in the world.

I love taking a shower and then going outside to hang laundry to dry while my hair dries in the sun.

It's the little things that make life worth living!

Something about hanging laundry to dry in the morning makes the whole day feel right.