Feelin' Groovy

A few summers ago

I had grandiose plans of doing crafts with the kids everyday

- or at least every other day.

This tie dye kit has been pining away in the cupboard ever since.

I brought it out into the sunshine the other day and the children rejoiced.

The kit came complete with dye in these sweet bottles

(which I will definitely refill with my own dyes),

a bunch of gummy rubber bands,

some thin gloves and

some very sparse instructions.

The kids twisted and banded and banded and twisted. . .
And then they dyed!
died? dyed?

OH NO NOT THE DYE!

Oh how I love this little face!

I could just squeeze his cheeks off every time I see him!

The cheeks on his brother here were once just as sweet.

It is only recently that he has outgrown them

and it is a good thing

because he was getting tired of me pinching them!

Look at what a wonderful job he is doing putting the colors on his shirt.

His shirt was one of the best ones actually.

Too bad I don't have an after picture of it - yet.

Ah man, could you tell this sweetheart no?

"Sure honey play with the nasty dye,

the package says it's nontoxic,

just let me eat your cheeks first."

After the t-shirts were finished I let use up the excess dyes on a pillowcase.

Look at all that dye squirting fun!

This is just one of the minor casualties that resulted from the dye squirting fun.

The pillowcase actually ended up looking black

but once it was soaked, washed and dried it turned out a dark purple.

The next day I told my girls to put on their t-shirts and pose for me.

This was their first pose.

It is always their first pose.

They think it's funny.

And in this photo they are shooting me with very large imaginary guns.

I don't even pretend to understand them anymore because,

after all, they are in junior high now,

but you can kind of see the shirts and how cute they turned out. We did have a lot of fun,

so much so that we are going to do it again next week.

This time we are going to experiment with

faux tie dying using Sharpie markers.

Stay tuned for more exciting pictures!