Our Life in Pictures

We've been so busy this summer!

We literally went over a month without staying home for a full day!

Here's a bit of what we've been up to the past month or so.

Visiting some cool local sites

Attending birthday parties

including L's birthday

(which I still need to post about)

and this adorable outdoor movie party featuring "Cars"

 ending many of our summer evenings at our favorite swimmin hole

attending storytime and crafttime at the library with our friends

and getting out early to play outside with our friends before it gets too unbearably hot

Antique and thrift store shopping

and a few VERY successful thrifty shopping trips to Goodwill!

 staying up late to play outside in the dark

and getting to know our neighbors...and their INDOOR pets.

family art projects

and a great date night with the hubby to see Daughtry in concert. 3rd row seats!

Finding lots of neat critters

like this 6 inch praying mantis!

and leaf bug

LOTS of LOVE

 laughter

and bad hair days!

in which we are thankful for hats :)

 

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Treasure Rocks

I made coffee can stilts for L's best friends 4th birthday and not wanting to waste the coffee, I decided to use it to make
treasure rocks to add to the gift.

Treasure rocks are made with coffee dough. Trinkets and toys can be molded inside and then the dough is baked to harden. They look and feel like rocks, but break open fairly easily to reveal their prize inside. I tripled the recipe below to make about 20 rocks. Some for the gift and some for L.

Ingredients

1 cup fresh coffee grounds

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1/4 cup clean play sand

3/4 cup water

toys or trinkets to put inside

How To

Mix all dry ingredients together

  

Add the water until dough is very moldable. Too wet and you won't be able to work with it, too dry and it will crumble. Depending on your results, you can add a bit more flour or water to perfect it.

Mold your small toys/trinkets within the dough. You can leave them outside to dry for a few days OR you can bake them on your oven's lowest setting for a few hours. I baked mine for about 4 hours on 170. Turn them over halfway through.

They really look like rocks!

and of course the fun part is excavating and breaking
 them open to find the treasure!

For the birthday boy, I packaged the Treasure Rocks in a brown paper bag. I knew I couldn't just hand them a bag of rocks that smelled like coffee, so I thought up a little rhyme to explain them, then printed and stapled this to the bag.

The birthday boy's completed gift

We also made these a few years ago!

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