Ikea

Hello, monday

A pretty golden m to begin the week.

Snufkin hats

Snufkin, the vagabond and philosopher, arrives each spring to Moominvalley to set up camp, fish, and comfort the small creatures of Moominvalley. He is always wearing a green hat, sometimes decorated with flowers and sometimes with feathers.

If you would like to make your own Snufkin hat, you can use this Pilgrim's hat template, using green paper instead of black. Then decorate. Instead of gluing the headband, we cut notches like this.

Make your hat soon. At the first sign of autumn, Snufkin slips away from the valley and doesn't return until spring comes again.

Dick Bruna

Happy Birthday,  Dick Bruna: amazing and fantastic since 1927!

All the best kind of people are born in August ^_^

Watermelon stars

A nice and cool snack for a beach picnic: slices of watermelon + cookie cutter = watermelon stars. Watermelons punch out shapes cleanly, and they'll hold the shape and juiciness more than a day. Summer's almost over, you have to slurp it up quick!

Beach

We spent our family vacation on a pretty little island called Hornby. The beaches were warm and sheltered and there was nothing to do but act like cavemen (collect rocks, throw rocks into the water, skip rocks — we are easily entertained), swim, lie around on hot sand, and draw in the wet sand. The little rocky beach near our cabin was full of crickets, sandpipers, little crabs and rockpools and, as we were in a heatwave, the water was warm even in the evening.

Starfish by the dock.

On our best day we hunted for shells on a wide shallow, sandy beach and found we were walking through a bank of live sea dollars. On our worst day, we all needed a snack.

A sand dollar shell that made it home,

and one that didn't.

Nesting pebble, one of our rock treasures (one of us also found a rock that looks exactly like a potato and was quite excited about it — we're quite easy to please as cavemen go). We are so happy to be home in the city, though, since we caught summer by the tail.

A slinky go-go

I found this on the floor today. It's a blender cap and slinky sculpture: a "slinky go-go".

mix mix rice

We took home a book from the library recently that really caught Auggie's imagination, which was Bee Bim Bop by Linda Sue Park. The story is about making bibimbap (which she calls mix mix rice because you mix everything up at the end) for dinner. At the end of the book is Linda's family's recipe, split into tasks for a child and an adult. We copied the steps in the book, going shopping for the ingredients and making the dish together. Auggie was really enthusiatic for all the steps, especially mixing up the ingredients at the end in his dinner plate. He wasn't so interested in really eating much of it. However, that is true of all non-noodle food and he has been more into rice, since. It was fun and maybe another little step towards being a less picky eater (sheesh). I found a simplified vegetarian recipe, Vegetable Bibimbap, via pinterest as well.