Our Family Foot Book 2015

I feel so bad for taking so long to post this, but it's a time consuming post and I just couldn't get around to it until now! I know I said on IG that this would be up like the night we did it..but yeah, life happens! But, this is an activity that we do annually, every Dr. Seuss Day. 

We make a family foot book inspired by the Dr. Seuss Foot Book. I gather some ideas for footprint crafts from Pinterest, and I come up with some on my own. I use some of the lines from the Foot Book and then come up with the rest. I like to make it rhyme.

This year I put my daughter's foot prints together to make a heart shape and then used a Sharpie to make the outline of a heart around them. I of course wrote the title "Our Family Foot Book 2015."

 I started with "left foot, left foot, left foot" like in the book by doing my daughters left foot print three times in a row on one page.

 Then came "right". My daughter insisted on using "disco paint" for it.

 Then I did the "red feet" line with each of her feet red foot prints.

 I let her pick when she wanted me to do my footprints and she chose me to do the "black feet" line so I did each of my feet in black.

 Then I came up with some lines. I came up with this footprint idea on my own too, "A foot at night" was a blue foot print horizontally on the page like it's laying down. Then I painted some silver stars on it, and a yellow crescent moon next to it. I wanted to give it a night cap but didn't want to risk painting it and messing the whole thing up.

 Then to rhyme with it I did "feet that take flight" The butterfly footprints however were an idea I saw on Pinterest.

 Then we did "mommy has a big foot" with my purple footprint horizontally on the page.

 Then "Charlie has a little foot" in purple horizontally on the page.

She wanted my foot in green for the "one foot"

 Her feet in pink for the "two feet"

 I saw this footprint craft on Pinterest, but came up with the rhymes myself. "An ice cream foot that is super sweet"

 "A rainbow foot that can't be beat." For this one I painted her foot one color at a time in the colors of a rainbow from red at the toes to purple on the heel.

 Saw this footprint idea on Pinterest. "A bird foot going tweet" again, my wording though. Just painted her foot brown, did the footprint, then used some red paint to give the bird a belly, feet, and a beak. Used a Sharpie for the eye once it was dry.

 "A car foot going down the street" I used blue paint for her foot and put it on the page horizontally. Once it was dry I used a Sharpie to give it some wheels, then used silver paint to add to the wheels. Sharpie made the lines for the road, then yellow paint made the dashes on the road and the headlight for the car.

 Saw this footprint on Pinterest, wording is from me. "There's the foot of a little lady"

 "and one that is shady" This footprint was my idea and a really good one, but it was a bad time when I was adding the details to this one so it didn't turn out as perfect looking as it could have. I did her footprint in yellow horizontally on the page, then once it dried I used a Sharpie to draw sunglasses on the foot's "face" used blue paint to make an ocean, brown paint to be sand that the foot was laying on, and red paint to make an umbrella for the foot to be under. Used Sharpie to make some dots on the brown paint to make it look more like sand,

Finally, I did my foot in red and her foot in white on top of mine so it would show up, and wrote "Our families feet are pretty neat"

You'll notice I alternated every now and then as to which foot I was doing prints of so both were represented a fair amount.

After every page was completed and dried I used a glue stick to glue the pages together in twos, in order. Then I stapled all the pages together to make it into a book.

Dr. Seuss Day Breakfast

Here was our Dr. Seuss Day Breakfast!

We had green eggs with organic ketchup, Cat in the Hat skewers, and Pink Ink Drink. Pink Ink Drink is my own idea and we have it every year! I'll share the recipes on this post.

For the green eggs I used Trader Joe's organic brown eggs with added omega 3's. I cracked them into a bowl and whisked them a bit, then I added in quite a few drops of neon food coloring, and regular green food coloring. They mixed together to make just the color I wanted when I whisked the rest of the way. They came out beautiful after cooking as well, as you can see.

For the Cat in the Hat skewers I put some slices of organic bananas and organic strawberries on a skewer to look like the cat's hat, and then I put a jumbo marshmallow on for the cat's face. We didn't have a food marker or I would have drawn him a little cat face on there.

For the Pink Ink Drink (which I was inspired by One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish to make) is made by blending some organic strawberries with some organic almond milk.

Mulberry Street Playdough

This brilliant idea, like most brilliant ideas, came straight from my daughter herself! I asked her what kind of playdough she wanted to make and told her to keep in mind that St. Patrick's day and Dr. Seuss Day were both coming up. She then said she wanted to make blue playdough so she could make her own Mulberry Street. What an amazing idea! I love it because it brings a book to life.

So we made the blue playdough together, and then flattened it out on her table and added some of the animals and Little People we thought fit the descriptions from the book, and then some of her own ideas as well since she was making it her own after all.

I also made a Mulberry St. sign for it by using a popsicle stick and ripped a Post-It note down to just the size I needed to write that at the top, and stuck it into the playdough.

If you're wondering how we made the blue playdough, here's our recipe:
- 1 cup of all purpose flour
- 1 cup of water
- 1/4 cup of salt
- 1 TBSP lemon juice
- 1 TBSP vegetable oil
- Blue food coloring, as many or as few drops as it takes to get the color you desire

Step 1:
Put all the ingredients into a pot and stir them together with a wooden spoon.

Step 2:
Put the pot on the stove over medium heat and stir CONSTANTLY with the wooden spoon. Once a ball forms gather up all the playdough out of the pot and put it into a bowl. Once it cools down a little bit knead it until it's not sticky anymore.

Cat's Hat Bath Paint and Thing 1&2 Bath Paint

Dr. Seuss Day was yesterday and I made this awesome bath paint for my daughter the other day to get her excited about it!

For the Cat's Hat Bath Paint I used a small baking sheet, squirted some shaving cream on it in the shape of a hat, and then put a few drops of red food coloring in rows to make the stripes, took a paint brush and spread the food coloring drops out to make the stripes. 

For the Thing 1&2 Bath Paint I just put some shaving cream in a little plastic bowl and then mixed in some blue food coloring. Just like their hair! 

"Are You My Mother?" Tabletop Activity

I love to bring books to life for my daughter. It's easy to bring the "Are You My Mother?" book from Dr. Seuss to life with a few toys and animal figures! Having an activity on a tabletop puts more focus on it rather than just having it sprawled out across the floor, but gives you more room than a tot tray.

I set out the book, and then I set up everything in the order that it went in the book. In case you're not familiar with the book, there's a baby bird who can't find his mother and he asks several things along the way if they are his mother. He asks a cat, a hen, a dog, a cow, a car, a boat, a plane, and a construction vehicle. He eventually ends up back in the nest in the tree with his mother. 

Our baby and mother birds came in a pack from Dollar Tree

The big cat is a ball baby toy that was donated to us

The chick that we used for the hen is from Dollar Tree

The dog, cow, and airplane are all Little People toys

The car is a police car stress reliever from Walgreens

The boat is a sandbox toy

The construction vehicle was donated to us, but it is Fisher Price

The tree/nest for the birds is just a recycled paper towel tube.

So the point is for the child to take the baby bird and move it all around the table, trying to find it's mother. It may help if you read the story during play, but reading it once before may be sufficient enough.

Dr. Seuss's Pink Ink Drink

I'm sure at some point you've heard the story yourself, or read it to your kids. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish is a very popular Dr. Seuss book. Every year on Dr. Seuss day I like to go all out on making mealtimes themed and fun. As a fun addition to breakfast on March 2nd, I always add our very own Pink Ink Drink like the Yink drinks in the book. My daughter thinks it's hilarious.

Recipe for this version:

Ingredients:
- Desired amount of whatever milk you prefer to serve to your children
- Enough strawberries to flavor and color the milk

For example, about 1/2 cup of milk and 3 strawberries.

All you need to do to make it is blend the two ingredients together.

Here's what our's turned out to look like: