Pinterest Thursday-Nail Polish Mugs Pt. 2

Last week I shared some nail polish-decorated mugs we made using this pin.  Since we ended up getting some nail polish on the lips and insides of the mugs, they became pencil cups.  🙂
After learning our lesson, we made another set for drinking, and here is how those turned out:
The Girlio:

The Boy:

The Little Guy:

We did make these outside, which was a lot less mess.  I forgot plastic gloves again though, and had messy hands for a while.  Oh well.
We got a different style of mug this time, but otherwise the project was pretty much the same as last time-except now we can use these for drinking.
This was definitely a fun and easy project, and especially if you have lots of nail polish colors, I would say give it a try!

Wednesday Words

pin found here

August Lawn Fawn Haul

I got a few Lawn Fawn goodies for my birthday, along with an Amazon gift card-which, I of course spent on more Lawn Fawn.  🙂  I also found an amazing deal on Ebay, and was able to pick up Meow You Doin’ and its coordinating dies for only $17, which I thought was quite the steal!
Anyway, I thought I would share with you the Lawn Fawn products I got in August:








So, there you have it!  A lot of fun goodies, right?
Mostly dies this time, but they are ones I have been wanting for some time, so I am pretty happy to be adding them to my stash.
Look for some new projects using these in the near future!  🙂

Homeschool Bible and Science

Today I thought I would share what we are using for Bible and Science for the 2016-2017 school year.  We are adding something new for Bible, and as I have not been happy with my choices for science the past few years, we are trying something new for that this year as well.
We decided on Answers in Genesis for Bible, and while I do like it, I think it is geared more towards Sunday School and a longer time period.  As I don’t want to do 45 minutes to an hour of this each time, it has been kind of disjointed to do smaller sections at a time.  I like the material, so I will probably go through, pull out parts I want to cover, and revamp it a little to fit a smaller time frame so that it doesn’t feel like we are constantly reviewing, and can cover the material a little quicker.

We are also rewatching the What’s in the Bible DVD series.  It is amazing to me how much the kids are getting out of this, so I thought it was worth watching again.  We borrow these from the library and watch one each week.  The kids also each have a devotional Bible, and they practice reading one aloud each week to me.

Because we are doing Answers in Genesis for Bible, I thought I would give it a try for Science as well so that they can coordinate together.  The kids decided they wanted to study weather, so we started with Our Weather and Water.
So far, I am liking it.  It is for older elementary students, so I make sure to read it through prior to reading it with the kids-mainly so that I can use some easier words for the boys.  The Girlio has done one of the experiments with her dad so far (another change for this year-and I am happy to just prep experiment materials and hand them off to him!) and she liked it so much, they did the experiment three times.  She has also really enjoyed the extra science assignments for older students.  And, I like that it coordinates with what we are doing for Bible (same terminology used, etc.) so that is nice too.
So far, I would say this is a success, so that is nice!

Also for science, we are watching an episode of Magic School Bus each week (I am excited for the new episodes coming out in September!)  We have a membership to The Space Foundation in our town, and we attend the homeschool days (which we all LOVE), as well as special events throughout the school year.  And, our library has a homeschool science club that meets once a month.  Usually 50-100 kids attend these meetings, so we try to get to several throughout the year.  It will be much easier this year as we have always had to leave early in the past to be home for the public school bus, which we don’t have to do any more-yay!
So that is Bible and Science for this year.  I am definitely happier with the science, which is a relief after being pretty disappointed the last few years!

Pinterest Thursday-Nail Polish Mugs Pt.1

I thought it would be fun to decorate some special mugs that we can use during our homeschool time.  When we try a new treat recipe, or when we have read aloud time, how much fun would it be to have hot chocolate or lemonade in a fun mug to make it more special?  That was my thought anyway!  🙂
So, I decided we were going to use this pin to decorate our mugs using nail polish.  I picked up a dishwashing tub and some mugs from the dollar store, and we already had tons of nail polish, so it was a relatively inexpensive project.
The Boy’s:

The Girlio’s:

A few thoughts on these:
First, I let the kids dip their mugs in the liquid, and they put the whole mug down in sideways to get patterns all the way around.  This is fine for decoration, but I didn’t want them putting their lips on nail polish when they used them.  So, these mugs ended up being pencil cups.
Second, the directions do state to do this quickly or you could get a film stuck to your mugs.  No matter how fast we went, we still had this problem.  I was able to remove some of it, but the kids liked the way it looked, so I did leave a lot of it on the mugs.  I am not sure what we could have done differently to keep this from happening.
Lastly, this is best done outside (which we did do the second time we made these), and with plastic gloves-it took quite a while to get all the nail polish off my hands!
Otherwise, this was a pretty easy project, and the kids sure loved the results!  Next Thursday, I will share the SECOND set of mugs we did that we are going to use for our special drinking cups!  🙂