winter blues

I don't know about you but I am so over winter, and I'm pretty sure Lily is too. Often times I will see her just staring out the window and I know she's secretly wishing she were outside playing at the park, having a picnic on the porch, filling the driveway with sidewalk chalk, taking long walks through the undiscovered parts of our neighborhood.....well ok maybe she's not thinking ALL of those things, but I sure am.

This winter I've had to get a little creative with things to keep Lily busy and ways to beat the boredom of the same ol' same ol' when we are stuck indoors. Thankfully pinterest is full of fun ideas for little ones and I picked up a few other ideas from my cousin as well. So, I thought I'd share them with you because it looks like we will be experiencing at least a few more weeks of this cold stuff!

Here's just a handful of ways we tried to beat the winter blues around our house.......

Watching movies and listening to books on the ipad - brother even got in on this one!

Bringing snow inside to play with, sort, pile, eat, you know - all the fun stuff.

I found these play dough and puff ball (don't know the technical name for them) print outs on pinterest and they are so fun. They are different shapes, numbers, letters, colors and the kiddo has to just place the puff balls and/or play dough on them to create a picture. Lily loves this one! I also thought this would be a great thing for the car. I bought a binder and those plastic paper covers and made her her own little binder full of them.

We baked, and ate, chocolate chip cookies!

We tried out our decent sized hill with some sledding and snow man building with our cousins for the day!

Baking soda and vinegar - who knew something so easy could be so much fun! My cousins blog gave me this idea and Lily loved it. I filled a small pan with a thin layer of baking soda then placed vinegar in a handful of small bowls - used food color to die the vinegar, and then we used medicine droppers to squeeze the vinegar onto the baking soda. Lily loved watching it bubble up and of course doing it herself.

Salt. Another one from my cousins blog - I took a small tupperware and filled it with salt, then let Lily use her finger to draw things in the salt. Another simple thing that she loved. Although I must share, this one was going really well so I thought I'd sneak upstairs quick to lay Preston down and let Lily continue playing. Bad idea, I came downstairs to salt all over the kitchen floor. Lily's reaction "whoopsies Mommy, don't know what happened...." Right.......

Give mommy a pedicure! Haha - I only add this one because my lovely husband DID give me a nice foot rub while we were back at his parents one weekend and of course Lily had to help. Although this may come in handy in a few years.....:)

We painted finger nails - Lily absolutely LOVES having her finger nails painted. Most every day she gets into the cabinet where I keep all my polish and brings one to me telling me to "paint please" Although I am finding it to be a good outlet for helping her learn her colors!

And that's about all I got. I must admit we had some fun making up our own ways to entertain ourselves during these cold days however, we are so so ready for spring in our household. I love the smell of spring, I love having the windows open and hearing the birds, I love going for walks to the park, and so many other things. But for now we will just think about these things and enjoy our time together cooped up in the house :)