Sunday, January 23, 2011

Embracing winter

My body finally gave in yesterday to whatever nastiness has been infecting our family since JANUARY 1st! Can I tell you how ready I am to be done with this? SO READY! I am taking it as a good sign that Spencer hasn't vomited in three days now - the longest he has gone since two Tuesdays ago. Did that make ANY sense? From now on, all is going to be well! I am knocking on wood just to be safe.

It is cold out. The kind of cold where you don't even want to be near the outside. Last week the kids and I started a sun catcher ice project. Since the sun decided to shine today for the first time in I have no idea how long, we decided to finish our project.

We started with some ice cubes tinted with food coloring.


Then we placed them into various receptacles filled with cold water and put a piece of yarn inside to work as our hanger. It was so cold out the day we did this, the ice cubes and cold water started to slush up almost immediately. It was a matter of hours before these were covered with snow, but I didn't have room in my freezer and the front porch was way colder than the freezer anyway.


Today we brushed the snow off of them, popped them out of the molds and voila!


We used our string to tie them to the tree in our front yard and we had some festive sun catchers made of ice.


Since our front porch slants down a bit, the ice tended to migrate a little toward the slant. Oops.



I will be curious to see how long they last. I am regretting that I didn't use a white string as a hanger. I think the dark blue may conduct more heat and cause them to melt out where the string is before the discs melt. We will have to wait and see. Still, a super easy and fun little project.

2 comments:

jensenbo said...

How "cool" or cold is that!!! Love that project for the kids. How pretty they are. Let us know how long they last. I might make some myself. :))

dr said...

Great project. Mira's school had a similar concept of a blue themed collaborative art project. It is really cool. You remind me that we have not added to it yet. Another potential activity for a snowy week!