It’s hard to let summer go, but it really is over now. School’s in full swing and the weatherman assures me the heat wave is over. I wanted to do one last summer journal entry, because there were so many little bits of our summer I missed sharing with you.

We picked our fair share of berries (including this enormous blackberry from our backyard).

We went to the farmer’s market almost every week.

We built ferris wheels and rode on some too.

We built forts…that were much, much harder than they looked.

We did silly thing too like coloring our hair with chalk…

…and making cakes out of watermelon.

Mostly we played: inside and outside and wherever we could. How was your summer? Messy? Busy? Too hot? Too long? I want to hear about it!

Pick up a packet of plastic cups at the store and your kids will play happily all afternoon. At least that’s what happened to me. This is just a small sampling of what my kids did with a stack of cups.

–building pyramids

–making bombs out of cups to throw at the cup pyramid

–jumping cups!

The idea for the jumping cups came from this awesome project from All For the Boys. We were too lazy to make a minion (I need my own minions to do that) and our cups were little so we could just wrap the rubber band around the whole cup, but it’s the same idea. This is an awesome little trick to file away for a rainy day.

–jumping cup variations

There were 3, 4, 5 cups jumping at one time. And my son even hooked up two passengers to jump with a cup!

–play money

My daughter cut up a few cups, while we were flinging them all over the living room, and made play money. The coins are the bottoms of the cups and the bill is the rest of the cup.

–bracelets

She didn’t get my “By the power of Isis” joke, but they are still cool bracelets.

catching fireflies…

…and letting them go.

Spaghetti monsters! Noodle aliens!  Spaghetti squid! Whatever you call them, they are ridiculous. But summertime is about ridiculous food, like fried dough, things on sticks, and candy floss. Why not stick some uncooked spaghetti in hot dogs and cook them up for dinner? Your kids will think you are the best!

Super simple and super fun project. Cut out a square of a picture from a magazine or newspaper. Next, glue it to a piece of paper. Then finish the drawing. See what strange and hilarious things come out of it! Title of my children’s works appear below the pictures. (please excuse the crummy phone photos.)

Alligator Loves His New Pants

Two people sitting on a couch with their heads on fire and Monster 

Pretty Darn Cute Cat

Two Donuts

Have you done any good projects lately?