Best Bubbles Ever!

Most of the recipes I have found & tried called for glycerin, which you can find but it can take some searching and honestly, I didn't have as good of luck with the glycerin recipe as I did with this one that uses water, dish soap & corn syrup. This recipe was used to make the bubbles used with the giant bubble maker.

So, I am going to refer you back to my idea #138 Homemade Bubbles.

#153 Making A Giant Bubble Maker

This is simple to do with items you probably just having laying around your house. All you need are some dowels, some eye screws, a washer and cotton string. If you don't have these items at home, you can purchase them for a minimal amount at your local hardware store.

I saw this idea on Frugal Family Fun Blog and she got the idea from Childhood Magic.

The only thing I noticed was that our rope twisted at the bottom, but it still creates the giant bubbles you see above. We purchases a big fancy plastic giant bubble wand from a rummage sale this spring and it's difficult to use. Once you try a couple times to make these bubbles it will be a cinch.

Another noteworthy thing is to make sure you have GOOD bubbles. A friend gave my daughter a huge container of store-bought bubbles as a gift and we tried using that at first and it was very frustrating. Then we made our own bubbles (much more economical, plus you can whip up a batch with things you have at home - that recipe will be the next post) and we made these wonderfully huge bubbles.

#152 Carpet Squares Area Rug

This was quick and easy and makes a big impact in a room. A friend tipped me off that our local Lowe's was selling carpet samples for 25 cents a piece and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with them and we filled up our shopping car buying carpet samples to make these area rugs for three rooms. The ones featured above are in my daughter's room and in our room. I still have one to make for the basement family room area and that one will be about the same size as the one for my daughter's room.

What I first did was lay all the pieces out right side up and assemble them into a pattern I was pleased with. Then turned them over and began taping.

First I taped a small "+" where each 4 pieces met (you can't see that under the tapes over the seams). Then I alternated taping the horizontal seams with vertical seams so that they would overlap each other. Finally, I placed a short piece of tape over each end of tape to help keep it secure. I pressed the tape firmly before flipping. I was able to flip the smaller rug by myself, but the larger rug I needed help flipping since it was so long.

We already owned the duct tape and I went through about 2/3 of a roll doing these two rugs. I spent $3.75 (plus tax) on the smaller rug (4.25'x5.63') and $6 (plus tax) on the larger rug (4.25'x9).

My daughter is very pleased with her rug and very proud of it. She helped pick out all the pieces for her rug.

#151 Making Sun Prints

This was quick, easy, fun and had a great impact on my daughter on what kind of power the sun has. There is no need to go buy special sun printing paper, just use construction paper (which happens to be on sale this week at Target for 88-cents for a pack!)

I read all sorts of instructions on doing this and lots of them said to let the items sit on the construction paper for 4-6 hours, one even said to tape the items down and put the paper in the window for a week! We got out prints in 1.5 hours and it wasn't even at high noon. It was from 2:30-4pm on a sunny day. That's it.

If you want to make more of a science experiment out of it, you could use the same color of paper and put them out at staggered times, but end them all at the same time.

We just used items around our house that could lay flat on the paper and wouldn't blow away in a slight wind.

My daughter plans to use her sun print paper as the cover to a book she wants to create, I am using mine as a card.

#150 Cook Outside with a Solar Oven

There are many different websites out there that tell you how to make a solar oven out of a pizza box, but the one I used was this one. My daughter got a kick out of the fact that the sun cooked her pizza. From the various websites I read, it seems like this is best left to heating up items that are precooked (like hot dogs) or are melted like pizzas we made with a tortilla crust or grilled cheese.

The one picture is of her "cooked" pizza and my uncooked pizza.

Salad from our Gardens

This was a salad we had this past weekend all from our garden: lettuce, spinach, zucchini, peas & radishes. It was very yummy!

#149 Upcycle a Shirt into a Preppy Bib

The original idea to this was not mine; my inspiration came from lil Mop Top. I bought this shirt from a thirft store and am using an old terry handtowel as the backside. I also used the entire collar on my bib and added elastic on the backside so that as my son got older I could easily get it over his head. I am going to make him some more. They are very cute & I can make them big enough that he can continue to grow into it. It' hard to find decent large bibs for kids as they get older and now that my son is feeding himself finger food there is a lot more messes that those small bibs can't cover.

I decided to use elastic at the back because I dislike tie bibs and I dislike velcro bibs (which most tend to be) because they get stuck to everything in the wash & are easy for kids to pull off as they get older. I like bibs that you can pull over your head & snap bibs are ok too, but I don't have the tools to put snaps on (might be something I think about investing in some day.)