End of summer

You know the end is near when the evenings turn cold and deep in sleep; your hands reach out for the blanket early in the morning.

This summer has been wonderful. Lots of outings, tons of activities and a couple of short vacations, wouldn’t have asked for more and wouldn’t have had even the energy for more!

This post is just going to be a rounding off for things that did not get a mention in the summer coverage. And just because they got written about towards the end does not mean they rank last in my list of fun things that we did this summer. You see, I saved the best for the last!

Cereal Art

With so many Art and Craft kits available in stores, finding something for your kid to do at home during the holidays is easier than finding an appropriate Television show for them to watch. But you know what, you don’t even have to go as far as the nearest store for what I am going to suggest next.

All you need for this fun filled Art project is:

1)      Fruit loops or any other cereal

2)      Thick white paper

3)      Pencil to draw

4)      Glue

5)      A couple of friends and lots of enthusiasm

It was actually my daughter who came up with this idea. She started arranging her colorful fruit cereal on the dining table one morning while eating it and made a lovely pattern. “Mommy,” she called, “this would look so good on a piece of paper”! That’s it, we invited a few of her friends over the next afternoon for ‘Cereal Art’. To give the afternoon a party feel, we added a couple of festive touches like covering the table with a pink (for girls of course) table cloth and having cupcakes and lemonade at snack time.

Of all the little projects that I did with my girls over the years, I would rank this as my personal favorite because of its simplicity. It showed me that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to create beautiful things or to indulge your kids positively or to have fun with friends. You just need to come up with ideas on how to creatively use things lying around at home and make the project fun yet affordable. It is true, I thought, as the pink sun shines and smiles brightly on my kids’ room wall, money can only buy the supplies, not the fun!

Sundry Substances

A  3 day trip to Mt. Rainer National Park with 4 other families, front row seats at the awe-inspiring Oregon Air Show, singing ‘Happy Birthdays’ for a couple of cute kids, capturing the never –seen- before kind of blue waters of the famous Crater lake in our camera, driving through a wild life safari where the animals roam free and not you, a couple of more picnics at the park and wanting to be a kid all over again seeing the girls splash each other at the community water fountain.

The summer days went by fast and hot, happy and lost! I wrote my first summer fun post on 7^th July and it is already two months since then. I am already feeling a little sad as the schools start, marking the end of summer. But not for long!

Soon, the spell will be broken and the leaves will change color. Fall will arrive, cool and crisp, deep and vivid; swathed in a beauty of its own.