Sowing (no sewing)

I can't seem to get any sewing done this week.  

It could be because my sewing table is a mess.  It could be that my insomniac 7 month old is teething.  It could be that I've been pushing all 3 of us through afternoon nap all week long so we could stay out and play longer.  But at the end of the day, when the exhausting bedtime routines are complete and the kitchen is clean and the wine is poured.... I just don't want to sew.  

So instead, here we are sowing!  

Compostable pots!  Kid-sized gardening tools!  Thank you, Ocean State Job Lot!  You have all the things I never knew I needed.

Dirty boots required.

Filling up pots with soil, in our fanciest pink outfits :)

Our supervisor!

Labels written on colorful popsicle sticks!

Tap tap tap

Our supervisor, sleeping on the job.

Taking her watering job very seriously.

Grow seeds, GROW!

Rainbow Rice Party

It's all fun and games til someone spits up in the rainbow rice!

I thought we'd have a little fun today and play with the rainbow rice Raina and I made last weekend.  We made it by scooping plain old white rice into sandwich sized ziploc baggies (about 4 cups per bag), squeezing a few droops of food coloring into each bag, adding 2 tablespoons of rubbing alcohol, and SHAKE SHAKE SHAKING until the rice was all coated in color and our arms and legs were tired out from the shake it up dance :)

I realize these pictures show nothing except playing with rice.  The actual process of pouring rice into bags required assistance, and I was not able to provide said assistance while operating a picture taking device :)

this is taina after we added the food coloring.  it got on her hands and then she rubbed her face.   did you know blue food coloring is a beast to get off skin?

We ended up with bags like this (that we let dry for about a week... probs doesn't take that long for it to dry, but we got busy!)

I set up the kitchen table with some scooping, pouring, and "Rice Tea" (get it?!) goodies, poured out the rice into a nice shallow container, and let her go to town!  Raina was in heaven.  She played by herself for about 35 minutes (amazing!) before I joined in the fun (more on what I was working on in a soon to be written post!)

we even planted some flowers!

Even Meow got in on the fun!  Oh meow, you're such a good sport!

This toy was so much fun, but it made a huge mess!  I did not expect the rice to fly as far as it did!

Questions, answered:
Did it make a mess?   Yeah, it made a giant stinkin' mess.  But a totally worth it mess!  Besides, dry rice is really not hard to clean up, and Raina helped with that part, too!  (I tape a 1 foot by 1 foot square off on the kitchen floor, give her a dustpan and broom, and have her sweep messes into the square!  It makes cleaning a game!)

Did the color come off on our hands?  Nope!

Are we going to eat it now?  Absolutely not!  This was my husband's question, and I think it was a joke :)  I suppose you could make and eat colored rice, but you should probably omit the rubbing alcohol!  :)