Author: Danielle Beerli
10 Fun and Free Activities to Do With Your Child This Summer
- Go to the library and check out books. Then come home and have your child make a bookmark using paper, crayons, ribbon, stickers, paint, markers, etc.
- Check with local libraries to see what free children’s programming they are offering and attend one or more
- Bake cookies or a cake
- Go on a hike. Check your state website for trail listings
- Have a picnic lunch in your backyard or at a local park
- Get active! Have a dance party, jump rope or hula hoop contest, or play tag
- Take your kids outside with paper and paint and have them sit on the grass and paint a nature scene
- Collect acorns, sticks, flower petals, etc. and make a sign, story or press flowers
My daughter collected extra nature, created a scene and then wrote a story about herself and two friends on a camping trip 
After picking a bunch of flowers from the garden, we pressed and framed them 9. Go to the beach, collect shells and make shell art
My son made this shell collage using sand as an extra decoration 
My daughter made an underwater 2-in-1 scene with a mermaid, but it is also a smily face. On the back she wrote a story. 
10. Set up an obstacle course or scavenger hunt
End-of-the-Year Teacher Gifts
It’s that time of the year- again- when the school year is wrapping up. This year it was important for me to get my kids’ teachers a special gift because after homeschooling for a year and a half, my kids started a new school mid-year and their teachers have been phenomenal! They were so welcoming and caring and helped my kids transition almost seemlessly and helped to create a wonderful environment where they are happy and thriving!
For my daughter’s teachers, I wanted to buy them a children’s book that touched upon teaching or thank you teacher, but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted so my daughter is going to make them a book in her own words about her experience with them, which I think will be more special. She also made a card for them. I found this printable on Pinterest that was pinned from www.weheartedu.com.
I resized it and printed it in the center of the page and then had my daughter paint on her handprint, a book and a heart. She will sign her name in the heart.
My son, on the other hand, is a Lego fanatic and he is in fifth grade, and I think he has outgrown the crafting stage. So for his teacher, he made a gift card holder out of Legos. He used a blonde minifigure to look like her and the minifigure is holding an apple. Then he made a slot to fit the gift card in.
Garden Pallet
Last year I was looking for ideas for using an old pallet and I came across this picture on Pinterest.
It looked easy enough. I bought landscape fabric for the backing and a staple gun and got to work. After fastening the landscape fabric to the back of the pallet, I flipped it over and started filling it with soil. When my husband came home from work, we tried to lift it up and snap, snap, snap, the soil was too heavy and the fabric came unattached and soil started spilling out. Ok, now what? I went back to the hardware store and bought a piece of plywood. So after reattaching the fabric, we added the plywood for extra support and I started planting. Oops, big mistake. Once we lifted it, the plants all sunk as the soil went south. So I fixed all the plants once it was upright and bought a package of wood with pieces that were ruler size and cut them into smaller pieces and placed them as a support under each plant so it wouldn’t fall. What a mess, by July, this is what it looked like! Plants were rotting and falling and the soil kept sinking. Note to self, reuse pallet next year for something else!
And that is what I did. After I cleaned out all the soil, ripped the landscape fabric off and hosed it down, I leaned it back up against the house and looked at it for a long time, loving the pallet so much and wondering what I could do with it that still involved flowers. That is when I thought of hanging buckets of flowers off the pallet. I went on Amazon to search for something and found these buckets and hooks:
Then I went to the local greenhouse and bought some flowers and also uprooted some pansies that decided to grow in my grass.
I filled the buckets and planted the flowers, hung them up and wow! Looks so much better than last year!
A Great Mix of Tim Hawkins Parenting Songs
If you are a current of past parent of children in the tween/teen stages, you will be able to relate to comedian Tim Hawkins and this awesome mix of his parenting songs.
Enjoy!
Winter Mouse Gives A Spring Surprise
Happy Post Memorial Day Week! This past weekend was the official unofficial start to summer~FINALLY!!! For those of you who live on the East Coast you know that we had a HARD winter and I think we will be savoring every moment of warmth! I think with the first sign of spring we may have still had a small amount of snow in the driveway that was still melting from the plowed piles, but we couldn’t wait to pull out the patio furniture and get outside! We live in a suburb and our backyard is surrounded by a fairly wooded area. We certainly get our fair share of animals: fox, deer, hawks, chipmunks, raccoons, mice, skunks, possums, rabbits, coyote, bobcats…well you get the picture. The mice always seem to be the most bothersome though. They like to nest in the winter any place they think they will be warm and comfortable and they will go to extreme measures to help themselves to any and everything to do so. In the past, they have made their winter home in my central air conditioning unit, munching through wires and pulling insulation out. This year, I thought we were in the clear. Last spring my son and I made a birdhouse out of wood that he had broken during karate tests. In the fall, we discovered that a mouse had made it’s nest and home in the birdhouse. Fine with me, it was away from my house! With spring fever, we pulled all our patio furniture out from under the deck, cleaned it off and set it up. Then we went into the storage box we have had for two years to get the cushions. SURPRISE!!! Upon opening, a sheet of mouse poop. Okay, a mouse was in there, no big deal. We will just clean it out. So we start pulling cushions out and one by one we find they are chewed into and the stuffing is pulled out. Cushion after cushion into a black garbage bag. Then the biggest surprise when I saw a hole on a cushion and poked the outside just to have the mouse come running out and scare me half to death. NOT HAPPY! What do we do, now we are left with four out of ten cushions to put on our outdoor sectional couch. Would you believe it took me a ton of time over a week to figure out what the solution would be? I was ready to buy a new couch, but didn’t want to spend the money again since I just got it three years ago.
I consulted cushion making people and every website that would carry cushions just to find out that there was nothing to match or that would fit or that had the special corner cushions for the sectional. Just as I was about to buy a new set, I decided to order a pair of cushions I’d seen on Lowe’s that has a stripe design. Even though the cushions are slightly smaller than the original, I think it works. We split up the sectional and the original cushions blend well with the new ones. So, here’s to the mouse who cost me $150+ for new cushions. I will enjoy them this summer, I hope you enjoyed your warm home, it was a horrible winter and I’m glad I could provide it for you.
Wooden Box Repurposed Into Jewelry Holder
I love old wood. There’s something about it that immediately attracts me. I don’t know if it is the feeling that I might be holding old history and that it must contain a story or that I just find it intriguing. I have a lot of items in my home that I have purchased that feature repurposed old wood. I’ve picked up boxes, crates, benches, a framed chalkboard and others along the way (see some pics of items below).
I found an old wooden box at a tag sale for $4, so without a plan bought it. I had it for a while and tried to think of uses. I used it as a purse holder and then a holder for unused picture frames, and then it just sat empty. Finally, I decided that it would make an awesome jewelry holder. I had necklaces hanging one on top of another always getting tangled, some jewelry in a jewelry box and some on a shelf. Now, this could be a place where it is all together and I can actually see it. So I went to Home Depot and got some small nails, a piece of chain and some hooks. This is where the “imperfect” part of my crafting comes in. Home Depot had the chain in silver, but not the nails and hooks, those were only in gold. I didn’t prefer them in gold, but was anxious to get the project done because it was, after all in my mind. I screwed two eye hooks on the back in the center, but towards the end of the box and attached some picture hanging wire. Then hammered two picture hooks in the wall so the box would hang evenly on two sides providing more stability than just a center hook. Then I counted my necklaces and bracelets and screwed in the screw eye hooks and tapped in the nails. I used the screw eye hooks for the necklaces and the nails for the bracelets and then hung my dangling earrings in pairs from the chain. You will see more imperfection if you look closely, I didn’t take time to measure out evenly so some don’t line up, but you can’t even tell with all the jewelry on because the necklaces and bracelets are different lengths. And there you have it….a new jewelry holder and it only cost me $13.00 to make!
Party Favors and Supplies
Hi!
I am in the process of building my Etsy Store! It is a little eclectic right now, but the main focus will be party favors, decorations and gift items. Right now you can find some party favors, invitations, a handmade birthday sign, vintage jewelry and photography on canvas for sale. I am testing the waters, but hope to be adding items on a frequent basis.
Check it out!
Mom Song
With Mother’s Day still fresh in our minds, I thought I would share one of my favorite comedy routines. It was recorded back in 2007. It is of Anita Renfroe singing to the William Tell Overture what a mom’s life is like in a twenty-four hour period. For me what makes it funny is that it is so true!
Here is the YouTube link to the song: https://youtu.be/CxjLVyYiIgM
Baby Quilt
My friend had a beautiful bouncing boy this past February. I wanted to make her a quilt for her baby shower which was held in December. (If you read my other quilt post, you will see I do have good intentions regardless the outcome of the quilt).
Her room theme was nautical, but it is very hard to find a “cute” nautical fabric pattern. I went online and explored and came up with some fabrics I liked, pieced them together and came out with the first row seen in the screen shot below. Perfect! I tried to figure out the quilt size I wanted and ordered the fabrics. Wouldn’t you know when I got the fabrics and cut all the squares and started to lay them out, I realized how stupid I was! Of course it would not look very much like a patchwork quilt because it would all line up with the same piece in every row. So, I went back on the computer and played around to come up with the second row seen below in the screen shot. Very good, now it will be mixed up and look better.
Ok, everything was cut and it was time to put together. Do you think I laid everything out? Nope. Just the two rows and then sewed an even amount of rows in the two patterns. Then laid it out to find out it looks like a quilt split down the middle. Ugh! Oh well, I was running out of time. In my defense, it had been a long time since I made a quilt. So I sewed the front together and got the back together and was time to sew the whole thing including the batting. I layered it up, sewed the whole quilt and OMG! When I pulled it out the batting was on the outside. I had to sit down and undo every single machine stitch and then re-sew the whole thing. I finally finished! If you look closely though, you will see that even though I had a nice template, the squares are not all the same size and don’t match up evenly. At least they match up unevenly! Two lessons learned here: 1. Don’t attempt to take on a quilting project if you don’t have the time and focus for it. 2. I taught my kids how to use a sewing machine, they made the pillows in the picture to match the quilt seen below.
I told my friend that the intention anyway was to use this on the floor for playtime and it looks like that’s what they are doing!
Bittersweet Baseball- Update
Update-
Well, I can not report on how bittersweet going to Yankee Stadium was on Mother’s Day because I woke up with the stomach bug and couldn’t go : (. My kids and husband still went and brought me back a ball signed by Joe Girardi. Wasn’t the same as being there, but cool! I will have to wait until June 20 when we go to a game which happens to be on Old Timers’ Day. Maybe, just maybe, Derek Jeter will be there and it will be more sweet than bitter!
On Sunday, Mother’s Day, we will be attending a Yankee’s game. I am super excited because I love going to Yankee Stadium and what a great way to spend Mother’s Day with my family! However, I feel it may be a bittersweet experience knowing I won’t be hearing Bob Sheppard’s voice announcing, “Now batting for the Yankees, number 2, Derek Jeter, number 2”. My husband and I were lucky enough to have met Derek Jeter last June. Everyone thinks I have a thing for him, granted he’s good looking and a legendary Yankee, but my feelings for him are misunderstood. I think I didn’t even understand them until I sat down and wrote him a letter to hand deliver to him at the Meet and Greet last year. Below is the letter:
June 21, 2014
Dear Mr. Jeter,
I want to tell you what an honor it is going to be on so many levels to meet you tonight. I have been a lifelong Yankee fan and for me that runs deep and is special. My father loved the game of baseball and was a huge fan of the Yankees and Mickey Mantle. I have fond memories growing up watching Yankee games with him both on TV and at the stadium and listening to them in the car while I ran Saturday errands with him. Unfortunately, he died in 1993 of cancer at age forty-four and never got to see you play with the Yankees. If he had, he would have instantly become a fan of yours as well. You represent everything sports should. You are a loyal team member, great player, fantastic role model (for both kids and other players) and truly a Yankee legend. Guys like you don’t come around that often, and the Yankees have been lucky enough to be a legendary team because they have acquired such greats. I am so regretful that he never got to see you play, however, I am lucky to have had the opportunity to become a fan of yours at the same level he was of Mantle’s and I know he would have been a proud fan as well.
I have grown up during your career, from a teenager to an adult. I have attended many games as an adult and with my own children. Although my father never got to see you play, he lives on through my family. My son was born on Mickey Mantle’s birthday, October 20 and in 2004, during the fateful Yankee/Red Sox playoff game. I gave birth while the game played in the background. My now nine-year-old son, Luke, plays baseball and it is his choice sport. He loves the game! Thankfully, he has also had a role model like you to look up to. Raising children is a hard job and as a mother, I appreciate the positive morals and attitude for yourself and others that you portray in a world where there is a lot of negative and violence. Your Jeter’s Leaders program is a fantastic social change program. As a social worker and parent, I commend you! We have talked about your Pillars of Leadership and use them as a reference in life and on the field.
You have helped bridge three generations since my children never met their grandfather. You have given them and me the opportunity to love a team and a player as my father did. Meeting you tonight is to thank you for everything you have meant to me and my family! You truly are one of a kind, both on and off the field, and I thank you for twenty wonderful years! You will certainly be missed, a game without your presence will not be the same. My family and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors!
With honor and gratitude,
Danielle Beerli
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