Just the Two of Us

Today found just DD9 and me home alone together. It was a perfect opportunity for us to spend some one-on-one time together. We agreed that doing art together would be fun, but she said she wanted me to actually teach her how to do something instead of her just playing with paint and stuff. Actually, I think it was a ploy to have me more engaged with her instead of us each just doing our own things -- which often means I'm in my own little world separate from her. (She's a smart cookie. Me teaching her would mean I'd really be paying attention to her. I'm glad I caught on!) So we did a quick search of Kathy Barbro's Art Projects for Kids and decided to try a cat painting. There were step-by-step instructions, so I showed DD9 how to do each step (and explained how I would have written the instructions a bit differently ;) 


Here she is comparing her drawing to the example -- and she was quite pleased with her work!

Here is her finished piece, which I think is awesome! I like it better than mine because it has more character.

And here is mine. (More angry eyes! What's up with that?!?!?)

DD9 had also  talked about making lollipop flowers, and her dad had suggested painting a lollipop garden -- so that's what we did next. We started by painting a sky and grass background, then painting circular "blobs" on which we stamped hand-made, plasticine lollipops. We got the idea for the  modeling clay stamps from a pinterest post -- quite brilliant, I think! Here's my lollipop stamp:

Here are our gardens before we stamped them with the lollipops:

And these are our finished gardens:

Baking/cooking was also high on her list of things she'd like to do, so we made chewy granola bars for an afternoon snack -- but I forgot to take a picture of them. Trust me -- they were yummy! 


For supper, she had a real hankering for mushroom soup. I didn't think we had any mushrooms, but she rummaged around in the fridge and found some! She had lots of ideas about how to go about making the soup -- so that's what we did! We sauteed mushrooms, onions, and garlic, added vegetable broth and almond milk (because she wanted it to be creamy) and then blended it a bit with a hand blender (because she wanted it to be chunky, but not too chunky ;) A dash of salt, and -- voila! 

It was DELICIOUS! 

 I think DD9's love tank was sufficiently topped up today. My undivided attention and words of affirmation made her glow. And I know I sure enjoyed our time together. 


What says "love" to your family members?