So, since I am currently “financially challenged” – I am always on the lookout for something inexpensive [ahem, free]  to do with the kids. Yes, they are still in daycare 3 days a week thanks to my mother, but I really wanted to look on the positive side while I am  a woman of leisure and enjoy my kids while they still think Mom is cool. And I love crafts. So, while at the playground on Tuesday, my 2 year son brought over a handful of brown-things to Mommy and said “look, nuts!”. And they were nuts! Don’t ask me what kind, I’m not the scientist in the family, but to me they looked like some sort of pigmy acorns. I was astonished by my 2 year old’s naturalstic prowess in separating the nuts from the other brown playground rocks — until I realized that my husband had shown him this trick last week. Oh well, on the upside, it was a great way to spend 45 minutes gathering nuts with both kids. Now all I had to do was figure out what to do with a bucketful of them.

Luckily, I’m a craft store addict.

I spent about an hour kicking around what you could do with these. Glue them to paper plates in funny faces, paint them, etc. I decided that I had a big jar full of Modge Podge and needed to break it in, so these would look AWESOME with glitter. Now, if you have never taken a 3 year old to Michael’s Crafts while screaming “Glitter Nuts” at the top of her lungs….you have not lived.

Not for the faint of heart

A friend of mine once told me that if you want to do a craft with glitter, prepare for a commitment. I wish I heeded her advice a little more seriously. Now, I DO love glitter – and I’m not that particular about the house (yes, it is clean, but with 2 small kids you can’t lose it everything something does not get put away). But let me be honest: Once you open the jar, your house will not be glitter-free until you finished paying off your child’s college loan.  Everything you do in your home from this point forward will be ‘sparkly’.

Less is more

I love both of my children. But, it’s hard to be both the keeper of the glue and the keeper of the glitter, and the keeper of your sanity. So, after surrendering to the fact that I would have to vacuum the floor, table, chairs, and the cat, I just let them each have a color palette of glitter on a paper plate. And I’m not going to lie, I didn’t take offense when my 2 year old son, Lane, left us because he would rather brush his teeth than finish the craft. Matilda, the 3 year old, took the lead and finished her glitter…..then she helped Mommy by opening a NEW jar of glitter…in the middle of the kitchen. I really hope my husband likes purple sparkles. Lane did come back and finish his, and now they are all glued and happily drying in the kitchen. But for future reference, perhaps glitter projects are best done in a 1-to-1 setting.

Later today, when they are all dry, we will put them in a large glass bowl I found at Michael’s for about a buck and put them on the windowsill next to the fish. I’ll post a picture of the finished product once the kids are up from their nap…. and I have vacuumed the house for the 87th time.