Summer 2014 Bucket List!

June is here and it means so many things to us! Warmer weather, shorter school schedule, more time with friends, pools and waterparks but mainly it means:

Summer is here and so is our Bucket List!! We are so ready to get started that we almost could not narrow the list down to something manageable! You can get your own printable copy HERE! 

2014 Summer Bucket List

3 Kids, 2 Parents, 1 Awesome Summer (Again!)

• Drive-In Movie
• Make Crayon Candles in the Sun
• Make Garden Mint Iced Tea brewed in the Sun
• Visit New-To-Us-Park
• Take long bike ride
• Picnic in the Park
• Go to community Movie in the Park
• Have a mud and water outdoor party
• Bike Wash
• Lemonade Stand
• Neighborhood watergun fight
• Volunteer for a charity in need as a family
• Kids plan and make 1 week of dinners
• Go to a concert in the park
• Zoo trip with friends
• Camping
• Amusement park with friends
• Build a large fort to play games in
• Rainy Day Movie Day!
• Attempt to fry an egg outdoors
• Make a smore in the sun
• Race homemade boats
• Backyard Scavenger Hunt
• Visit 1 new park
• Splashpark Play
• Waterpark Day
• Tie-dye t-shirts
• Make glow-in-the-dark garden rocks
• Make finger puppets
• Ice Cube Treasure
• Painting with Plants
• Hole Punching Leaves to make Summer Garland
• Beach Day!
• Sand Play!
• Neighborhood Smore’s Party!
• Turn Slide into waterslide and fall in a pool of water!
• Keep a summer journal
• Road Trip!
• Wear costumes in public!
• Do School Outdoors!
• Practice 5 random acts of kindness in one day
• Visit 1 new park
• Make a fairy garden
• Build an outdoor car track
• Bike obstacle course
• Have a tea party
• Make a movie
• Make Ice-Cream in a bag
• Pool Play & Learn
• Firepit Party
• Create a special drink
• Outdoor Science Lab
• Chalk-Art an entire block
• Make a wishing tree in a park
• Set up our Park Play Kits in random parks
• Visit 1 new park
• Practice 5 Random Acts of Kindness
• Take a tour of some place new
• Visit a grandparent at work
• Buy dinner for someone in a restaurant
• Install and Fill our Free Little Library
• Have a neighborhood field day
• Make a salad from all garden veggies
• Farmers market visit and dinner from the buys
• Buy unusual fruits and veggies for a sampling day
• Have a giant sleepover
• Make cards and deliver to a local nursing home
• Have a table that the kids run at a garage sale
• waterpark fun #2
• splashpark fun #2
• Try 1 new restaurant
• Buy Ice cream for the person in line behind us at the sweet shoppe!
• Make a new friend
• Have a book swap
• Create a city-wide day of play in a local park
  Make it one to remember and don't forget to enjoy every minute!

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No-Cook Play Dough and Bonus...NO CREAM of TARTAR!!

The Sottile family was in the kitchen for a measurement math class and what was on the menu? Homemade play dough! Unfortunately the weather is warming up a bit quickly and I didn't feel like working on the stove AND we were out of cream of tartar. I was striking out but knew I could work with that!

What you need:
4 cups of flour
1.5 cups of salt
3 TBSP of oil
1 cup of water
1.5 cups of boiling water

Step 1: Mix everything together except for the boiling water.

Step 2. Begin to knead while in the bowl.
Step 3. As you mix all the ingredients, slowly add the boiling water as needed (you may not use it all).
Step 4. (Adults only) As the water begins to cool, continue to knead dough.
Step 5. Flour surface lightly where you will be working
Step 6. Roll out dough and work it until it is pliable and dough-ready
Step 7. Divide dough based on colors you will be using.

Step 8. Place food coloring in 2-3 drops in center of dough.

Step 9. Knead dough until color begins to be absorbed into the dough.
*Color will get stronger the more it gets played with, the kids think this is MAGIC dough!*

Step 10. PLAY!!!!!!!

*For longer lasting dough, store in glass or air-tight jars. We use ball jars and they have lasted 2 years so far!! This is a fresh batch we made today in order to give to friends :)

Enjoy every minute my friends!!

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Menu Plan & Parenting Tips!

Monday! Hope you all had a fantastic weekend!

Monday: Stuffed Burgers and Garden Salad

Tuesday: Bean Burritos served with Chips & Salsa

Wednesday: BBQ Chicken served Button Mushrooms and Spinach Salad

Thursday: Grilled Skirt Steak over Rice with asparagus and Garden Salad

Friday: Picnic Dinner and a Movie in the Park

Saturday: Birthday Pizza Party

Sunday: Grilled Brats served with Grilled Veggies and Garden Salad

Get creative with your fruit and watch it fly off the table! We took a picnic to the Zoo and when I was grabbing some extra napkins from their snack counter, I saw some coffee stirrers. I grabbed them and skewered our fruit! These were gone in the blink of an eye!

Use empty spice containers as vials for a nature sample!

Masking Tape and a new car make the cutest most inexpensive gift for boys! Add larger car sets for even more fun. They use the tape to make roads. I usually start the first strip of tape with a plastic bread tab that they can re-use to find the end over and over again and I also add black dashes to the center of the tape on the first section so that they can see how easy it is to visualize tape as road!

Use a gumball machine capsule to house dice and keep them from flying across the room

Our 2013 Bucket List is seeing a lot of action and we have been striking things from the list almost daily! go to the original LINK and link up any posts about Summer or your very own bucket lists!

Enjoy every minute my friends, for as you wake up each morning, you realize how another day has come and gone so quickly...

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Summer Bucket List #6 - Lemonade Stand!

It's feeling like Summer, so it's time to get working on the awesome things that we plan on doing! Our Bucket List has 100 items on it and I am so glad to see us bumping them right off the list!

Want to print one out without the lines crossed out? GO HERE!

We started with this MARKET STAND from IKEA! This was sold flat, so it was easy to transport home and super easy to put together. My husband also added a shelf to the counter for spills and to make it sturdier. He is in the process of making a stand on casters for the bottom of the stand in order for the children to be able to push it around outdoors and to protect it from the ground.

I helped the kids make signage and decor using this awesome LEMON TEMPLATE from HERE! I altered it many times to fit my needs. Making the lemons smaller and then using different types and sizes of font. It was perfect!

We began decorating with the small lemons punched out with a Circle Punch and then glued on the sides of the stand. We used coasters with stickers to spell out the word LEMONADE. It still looked pretty plain, so we headed on to add more! We did add a working Cash Register from Learning Resources and it's absolutely perfect for this and holds real money.

As the stand will only be outdoors when it's open, we did not need a closed sign. I just taped this right to the register and it does double duty for role playing in the playroom and the lemonade stand!

If you are interested in printing any of the signage I made, please HEAD HERE!

This is the view from the back! On the bottom is a small bucket with a towel to keep the stand sticky free and clean! On the shelf are cups and straws. Beneath is a jug from TARGET (5.99) and a flower pot from IKEA with lemons and limes for slicing.

The left side of the stand has a shelf for a small container holding cut limes and lemons (IKEA), a tip jar also made from a flower pot from IKEA and a sign that I slipped into a page protector! A small jar of cookies holds a treat for the kids as they work but they also plan on selling them for .25 if someone asks!

So what do you think? I hope they do alright today, I am so nervous for them! I just don't want all their energies to be wasted on a slow day and then for them to be too disappointed.

I had absolutely nothing to worry about! The community turned out in full force and the kids sold almost 100 glasses of lemonade! Count in the tips and it was near 200! I was amazed and so proud of the people that stopped. The children had a blast and learned so much. When it started out slow, Autumn knew we needed a sign to draw in the crowd and boy was she right!

Always do more than you think is necessary and it will make a difference! Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Summer 2013 Bucket List with Linky!

It's that time of the year, you know, when Summer is on the brain and the excitement of what is to come stays on your mind. Every year, we do a Bucket list of things that we hope to accomplish that Summer, and 2013 is no different. Well, it's actually a little different! We are planning on keeping school going year round but will loosen our schedule a bit. 

We will take 1 or 2 days off a week as part of our "Summer Break", which is why some of the tasks on our list are rather simple, they allow us to still check things off on our school days as well. All of these museums and Zoo trips and the like are where we are members at or have recipricol membership due to our purchased ones so in reality we are making it a low $$ Summer. Summer is about the memories, not about the money spent. It's about the feelings we have, not about the things we buy. I want us to continue to grow closer as a family and to make memories with my children. 

Memories will cost you next to nothing to create. Your children only want you and your time, they will be happy with a pot of water on the back porch if it means that you will sit there next to them pretending that it is a gourmet soup that needs flowers and twigs and dirt to make it perfect! They will create lasting memories, even if all you do is freeze ice cubes with food coloring and little toys of theirs in them and then pop them into a bowl and let them chip away at them with play hammers or see who can melt them the fastest...memories are what the past is made up of, make yours count!

Make your memories count!!!

Do you have your bucket list ready yet???  Grab the button to put in your post & Link up below!!

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It's Over....

Yesterday after school, I picked up the kids and we headed to the Children's Museum in town. As they played in their uniforms, I realized how Summer is really over! They are completing their first week of school already and having so much fun. With the heat still blazing in the Midwest, it's hard to believe that school is here.

Our long bike rides must now wait until the weekends and only if there is nothing else planned with school sports and the like...

Our lazy mornings spent miniature golfing are now on hold until Saturdays and only if daddy has not been called into work, because it's so much more fun if we're all together!

Now we have to go to the zoo during the weekend when it will be crowded and visited by all the other people with children in school.

As the Winter nears, our walks will be darker, since they have to take place after school and after homework is done....I certainly will miss Summer.

Fulfilling Our Bucket

Friday Morning 7am at our Garage Sale:

Bucket list #25 is in action on this cold and rainy day! It's supposed to keep warming up, so let's hope it sticks with that thought and decides not to get any colder! haha!! I parked them into the far back of the garage where they could keep warm and also stay out of the rain! They surprisingly made some decent money in here!

12 noon and we have moved outside with the stand! The kids are still having a blast, but have decided that taking turns at the small table may work best! I had to frisk my daughter as she left, because she was keeping all the quarters of the lemonade glasses that she sold! hahha!! I told her it all goes into 1 pot divided 3 ways at the end of the weekend and I don't think she was too thrilled on that!

One tip that I read in a local paper was to put a donation jar at your lemonade stand, many people won't want the lemonade, but will throw in a dime or 2 just to help out the kids! It worked out really well so far. It's 12:45 and we've been open about 4.5 hours and the donation jar has about 6.00 in it! People are really sweet to little kids and I love that!

1pm and we are over halfway done! Looks like I have to make up a new batch at lunch time for the second half of the day! The best parts of this entire experience so far have been the kids learning about money and giving change and measurements when mixing the lemonade too. They are also learning about sharing, when they take turns behind the table.  So many lessons to be learning in such a small task and of course fun is being had by all!

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