A Do-it-yourself I Spy Jar

Samantha and I had a mommy-daughter date today.  We went out for tea at a real English tea room, and it was so fun to watch how grown-up my little girl has become.  She learned about proper tea pouring (or hot chocolate pouring, in her case) etiquette and how to eat tiny sandwiches.  Isn't she cute?

Then we went into a ton of really cute shops.  The kind we wouldn't dare enter if the younger brother were with us.  We were in the coolest toy shop and Samantha stumbled across all these little miniature animals.  She just HAD to have them.  I immediately thought of the DIY I Spy projects that I have seen on pinterest, so I decided to try to make our own.  I'm all for games that are self-contained and require no pick-up.  I may or may not throw away tiny game pieces whenever I step on them.  And I figured it would be great for the long car rides to Montana.

What you need:

• A jar or bottle of some sort (we had a 32 oz mason jar)

• 20-30 little items

• Rice (or beads or sand)

• A camera and printer

• Glue gun or other sealing agent (unless, unlike me, you like to pick up little toys and rice with your feet)

• Fabric (optional)

• Ribbon (optional)

• Laminator (because laminating is fun and we really don't get to do enough of it)

• Hole punch

What to do:

Collect your treasures.  They can be all kinds of things from your junk drawer.  We had some cool animals from the toy store to put in plus random coins and stuff.  Oh, and the fake ring I got for when my fingers were super swollen from being pregnant and couldn't fit my wedding ring on my sausage fingers.  Putting that bad boy in there because I won't be needing that again.

Arrange your treasures on a white background and snap a picture if you have kids who can't read yet.  I wrote a list and took a picture to encourage my just-reading daughter to use the words, and my son has the picture.  My picture looked like this:

You can print it out and laminate it as is, or add a list of the items on back.  Punch a hole in the corner so you can tie it to your jar.

Fill the jar 1/4 of the way with rice and then put a handful of your little treasure in. Fill half-way and then put the rest of your little treasures in.  Bottles with small openings will make it harder to fit things in, but our wide-mouth jar was a cinch.  Fill the rest of your jar with rice, stopping about an inch short of the top of the jar.

Glue your lid on.  Really glue it on there.  Nothing turns an I Spy jar into a bad idea like an open I Spy jar.  Especially when opened by an almost three year-old boy.

You can leave it like that, or you can decorate it with some fabric and ribbon.  If you don't have fabric, just figure out a way to attach your picture/list to your jar.  I had some burlap and chevron ribbon laying around, so my jar ended up looking like this:

{Please kindly ignore that my word processor automatically corrected Krone (Norwegian currency) to crone (an offensive term meant to insult a woman's age, appearance, and temperament).  That is a lesson for when the kids are a little older.}

This took about an hour or so to complete.  One hour for countless hours of no questions?  Priceless.  This unplugging thing has been so much more than I thought it would be.

Finding Silence

I've been quiet lately.  Maybe not in every aspect of my life, but I have been intentionally silencing a lot of competing voices and vices.  Mainly of the online and social media sort.  After having what felt like a gorge fest of social media presence, I retreated.  And took a giant sigh of relief.  Don't get me wrong, I still love to peruse facebook, pinterest, and instagram.  I am just trying to limit my time on the two-dimensional screen, so I can intentionally spend my time doing, well, real life.

I've been gardening.  For those of you who know me well, you know that me typing that sentence is like...well, frankly it's monumental.  So we've been enjoying our strawberries, fresh lettuce and spinach, and the best cilantro in the world.  I've been picking mint and putting it in my water (in my amazingly cute mason jar) and for some reason this makes me inexplicably happy.  I don't love the weeding, or the dirt, or the actual gardening part.  But I do love to see progress and to realize that sometimes the effort you spend on something is what makes it grow.  I want a lot of things in my life to grow well.  Mostly relationships.  So I have been slowing down, unplugging, and spending time reading books about Fancy Nancy and pushing swings higher and higher.  And every giggle is confirmation that this is how I want to spend my precious time.

And I've been doing projects that have been half-done or just dreamed up and not done.  It's time to just start doing things.  Dreaming is good.  Dreaming is necessary for the soul and for this world to become a better place.  But all the dreams in the world are for naught if we don't do something.  So let's do something.  Start small and I can pretty much guarantee, like my garden, it will grow.  And that is pretty amazing.  I just want to be more conscientious of how well I am tending to the important things, even if those might seem rather insignificant to others.

Here's how my projects turned out!  I am super happy with them!  These babies have been in my brain since last year (maybe longer), and I'm so glad to finally have them done.  I've switched over to glass containers to get away from plastic and in the hopes of buying in bulk to cut down on waste.  Now I am excited because I get to do some of the things I care about (less toxins for the family and less waste for the world) and like the way it looks =)

I made the dictionary entry labels.  Every single one of them.  Because I love words and dictionaries.  I also love food.  A lot.  So this is a marriage of things I love.

Once I started with the anchor jars, I had to keep going with the spice containers.

I love that food can be this colorful and beautiful.  Seeing it on display like this just makes me appreciate the creativity of its Maker.  He didn't have to, but He gave us rainbow colored food.  I seriously marvel at the variety of flavors and textures and my heart swells with gratitude.  Why was I hiding all this beauty in a cupboard?

Anyway, there may not be as many blog posts about my ponderings for a while.  Not because I have stopped pondering because that is quite simply impossible, but because I am on a quest to squeeze every moment of joy out of this life.  To be present and to invest in what matters the most to me.  To make phone calls and coffee dates instead of liking and commenting on facebook.  To not just be a dreamer, but a doer.  To push swings, hold hands, and capture giggles.  To date the man I married, and celebrate who we've become on this journey together.  To smell like campfire, harvest a garden, and count the summer freckles on my daughter's cheeks.  To read books until 1 a.m., to find a new favorite restaurant, and to remember to take time to feed my soul.

I might not get pictures of every moment, and it's okay.  I want to build memories, and that requires my full attention.  I want to remember the tastes, smells, sounds, and textures and then weave them together with the emotions and thoughts of the moments.  And it's my hope to take the time to write some of life's richness down to share.  So here's to a summer full of rich memories just waiting to be made and dreams just waiting to be accomplished...

Call me so we can have coffee.