Life at a "Swell's" pace

Grow your own Dirt Baby

Dirty babies are such a great way to get kids in the habit of taking care of plants. And, with the summer weather, while the sun is out, it's the perfect time to teach little hands what it takes to keep a living plant alive.

Here's how it's done.

Materials you'll need:

• Knee-high stockings (Panty hose)
• Rye-grass seeds or other grass seeds
• Potting soil
• Wiggle eyes, pipe cleaners and/or felt
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun

Depending on how many you want to make, you will need stocking/panty hose to make each Dirty Baby.

Here's what to do:

Now this is the fun part, kids can get in there and get their hands dirty and make the Dirty Baby to however they want it to look. The grass can be the hair or a beard with the dirty baby upside-down.

Open the stocking and roll down the top to where the bottom is easy to access. Pour about 1-2 tablespoons of grass seeds into the stockings and then add about a cup of potting soil or more depending on the size you want to make your dirty baby. Make sure you place the seeds in first before the soil.

Shake the Dirt Baby so the soil stays at the bottom of the stocking and roll the hose back up. Grasp the panty hose and shake the soil to the very bottom to make a ball with the soil and the grass seed on the bottom. Make it as round as you want or even into the shape of a football for a funky head shape, if you like. Then tie a pretty tight knot into the hose to secure the contents. Leave about an inch at the knot after you tie it and then trim the rest off. You won't need the rest of the stocking that you cut off, or you can save this piece to use later on in your garden.

Now you get to decorate the Dirt Baby with the wiggle eyes, pipe cleaners and felt. It's your call on what you want your dirt baby to look like.

Place your Dirt Baby in a dish to catch any water run off while it grows. I used a small salsa dish here but, any small saucer or bowl will work just fine.

Over the course of the months you will see little changes in the growth of your Dirt Baby.

Be sure to keep it well watered and in a window so that it can have as much light as it needs to grow.

Your Dirt Baby will grow his "hair" and will need to be trimmed from time to time.

And, eventually you will have one hairy little Dirt Baby!

Skylar and his Twitter

My son has been begging to have a Facebook account of his own for quite sometime now and well, being eight it was not only allowed by Facebook. I also wasn't too hip about allowing my eight-year-old to use Facebook anyway. A lot of silly things happen on there and I just don't think he is ready for something like that anyway. So, I settled on allowing him a Twitter account and he has been very good with it. I went on his Twitter last night and this is what I saw. I laughed quite a lot at what I read, it made my day!

Of course, I am pleased that he gave a shout out to his mommy.....paint me proud! :)

Putting it off......

So, I've been putting things off a bit on moving my Serendipity blog here, over to Blogger. I've been procrastinating because I just can't let go of my blog I've had for a great long time. So, I made a new one and will be placing TU on hold for a moment. I might transfer everything over to the new blog once I get situated, or I may even save everything and dispose of it, I haven't decided. Nonetheless here we are with a new blog and I will keep up with it just the same as I did with TU.....

Enjoy!

Easter Egg Baseball!

BATTER UP!

So all those good-looking eggs you saw in the previous post? They are about to become baseballs. Sad, I know, but it's a lot of fun, really!

Skylar is eyeballing his prize winning home-run helpers.

Messy to some degree, as you can see. See other photos of the Egg Baseball here.

I'm sneaking because I like to slip in a few fresh eggs into the batch without telling anyone and when they go to hit it.....I have a big laugh, HA!

See more photos of Skylar hitting eggs here. He had a blast!

Poor Skylar! ha ha.....

Good practice for his baseball season, game play too.

It was a lot of fun to hit the eggs and we are going to keep this tradition going. I think rain parkas might be needed for the sideline though. :)

Our Easter for 2012

These pictures are a bit tardy, but nonetheless I felt like sharing them. There's more pictures of this epic Easter egg day over at Skylar's site and Jeff's oh, and more here. Check em out!

I love all the bright colors of the egg dye! So pretty, I just wish the eggs looked that bright when they came out of the bath.

Plush PEEPS!

As we were dying eggs, this was going on in the oven!

EASTER HAM!

They did a fantastic job!

Since it's always such a wet holiday here in Oregon, we hung plastic eggs and fill them with goodies. The wet grass doesn't work well with the dyed eggs, but we have other plans for the eggs we dye. hehe......