i’ve been wanting to try this one for a while now… and we finally did! remember that plethora of stones we got from the beach recently? well, we chose a few…
and baked them and colored on them with crayons. visit our guest post all about it over on moms by heart.
happy summer solstice! the solstices are special to me, as my birthday is the winter solstice and our wedding anniversary is the summer solstice (on the years when solstices fall on the 21st.) so this (legitimately HOT day in the bay area – whoo hoo!) first day of summer was a day of celebration and fun for us!
during N’s “summer camp” in the morning, my husband and i had a breakfast anniversary date to celebrate our eight years of marriage. (as a gift, i gave him some redstone meadery juniper honey wine from boulder for old times’ sake – we lived there for 3 years, during which time we got married, and so enjoyed this mead!)
table 8 for 8 years! (that card is in the shape of INFINITY by the way 
after camp was over, we hit the kiddie pool in the backyard! i’ve been obsessed with making lemon juice ice cubes that i saw on one of my favorite blogs, salt & chocolate. what a simple idea and yummy for summertime water, lemonade, tea, and arnold palmers. i bought a bag of organic lemons (i’m not one of the lucky ones with fruit trees in my yard) and N helped me wash them…
then with lemon squeezing…
i froze them in ice cube trays for later… (note: this bag yielded 2 cups of lemon juice, and i added about a cup of filtered water to it to fill 2 ice cube trays.)
…which made me think about making sun tea! what a perfect day to let the strong summer sunshine do its thang brewing some delicious tea!
as all of this was going on, N grabbed a paintbrush from her play shed and randomly began water-painting on her little (freecycled) picnic table and on some driftwood.
N also made “nature soup”
we noticed that the mama bird who made a (pimped) nest in our play shed had three more babies, and she was teaching them to fly today, which we got to witness firsthand! here’s a baby bird standing on the ledge of our shed shelf… which he did for HOURS while watching mama flit around inside the shed.
look at that little cutie!
we had a beautiful day together, soaking in the rays — and, of course, blocking the harmful ones with mad amounts of sunblock. we finished the day with a yummy glass of lemon-iced sun tea.
and an adorable homemade (and sounded out) half-birthday sign from my favorite little artist.
happy summer! happy soltice! happy half-birthday to me! and happy 8 year anniversary to my special sweetheart!
what a perfect thing to do on these sunny summer days – make your own nature photos with sun art paper
on saturday, N had a friend over to play. i tasked them with finding interesting looking natural objects in our backyard. they mostly gathered leaves and flowers.
then we went into the shade and pulled out a couple sheets of our sun art paper. (i bought three sizes of it from amazon over the winter, when i was daydreaming of sunny days ahead. this time we used the 5″x7″ paper.) we arranged the leaves and flowers on the paper before going into the sun.
next we put a clear acrylic sheet (comes with the paper) over the objects. this holds down your things so they don’t blow away in the wind or move around while exposure is happening. each sun art paper kit comes with just one, but if you want to do more than one at a time, raid your picture frame stash (especially the cheap plastic ones) and borrow some more from those. we left the paper in the sun for just 3-5 minutes (until it turns a very light blue.)
next we put the papers into a tub of water for one minute. because we wanted out images to turn out a deeper shade of blue, i added a few drops of lemon juice to the water (like it said to on the package.)
we repeated the process with more leaves and flowers… and some bubble wands, too!
after the prints have soaked for a minute, let them dry on a towel. (once completely dry, you can press them in a book for a day or so to make sure they are flat.)
the girls had fun watching how their pictures turned out, but mostly they were psyched just to run around with their popsicles. (perhaps the reason the package of sun art paper says for ages 6+)
these beautiful natural prints would make lovely cards, but i think i will frame this batch in a series to display in our home.
