The book can be printed and used in a multitude of ways — you can cut it into strips to make a tiny book for your purse, cut it in half for a medium sized book, keep the pages intact for a binder, or cut each little square out to make little notes for the fridge and such to remember those quotes.

Click here to go print yours!

1.  Go walking in the rain.  Or the drizzle, if your rain dance doesn’t work. 

(We currently have snow outside instead of rain, but I’m telling myself that it can’t possibly last forever!)

2.  Visit the humane society and volunteer to brush cats, exercise kittens and take dogs for walks.  They’re generally happy to have extra help and the animals love the attention.

3.  Decide on a totally silly word or saying to say when you answer the phone.  A friend of ours absentmindedly answered the phone recently with “Three!” and the kids and I found it so hilarious we vowed to do the same.  Hint:  caller ID makes this much easier to do without too much harm or embarrassment.

4.  Go off the beaten path, literally, and explore somewhere you’ve never been before.

5.  Play an old fashioned game with your kids like marbles, hopscotch or jacks.

6.  Grab a pack of colorful sidewalk chalk and head out to make the world more cheerful.  Have the kids leave happy faces, sweet notes, rainbows, silly cat faces, flowers, goofy aliens, you name it, in various places just to make people smile.

7.  Play mud tag.

8.  Get a DVD of a favorite TV series from your childhood from Netflix or the library and watch it with your kids.  Prepare to feel old and cheesy. 

9.  Plant a row of sunflowers and see if you can get them to grow taller than the kids.  Even better, see if you can get them to grow taller than you!

10. Make a bean teepee for the kids.  This year we really must finally get to this project!

Have a magical week!

Artwork Copyright Katie Daisy 2010, http://www.flickr.com/people/thewheatfield/, Visit her etsy shop at http://www.thewheatfield.etsy.com

Happy Monday!

I hope all is wonderful in your little corner of the world.  Winter is holding on tight around here but we’re planting seeds and making plans anyway.  My spring fun Pinterest board is stocked with ideas I want to try with the kiddos.

Here’s a few ways to make a little magic this week…

1.  Tie long sticks to ribbons and go ribbon dancing in the back yard or park.

2.  Make grapevine wreaths and bracelets.  Click here for a tutorial from my Victoria a few years back.

3.  Mop the kitchen floor by letting the kids sock skate.  Or take it a step farther like this family did and make some sponge skates.  If you go for the mop hockey idea (which is brilliant, if you have a large enough floor and the bravery to say yes to such a thing!), I’d definitely recommend helmets though. 

4.  Cheer up your bill-paying.  Have the kids use crayons or colored pencils to draw a picture on the back of each bill as you mail it in, plus decorate the envelope and write something cheerful.  You might make someone else’s day magical as well.

5.  Make some seed bombs.  You can make these little guerilla gardening goodies with shredded paper or clay, plus a bit of dirt, compost and wildflower seeds.  Then have fun flinging them into unloved areas that could use a bit of color (including your own back yard!).  Be sure to use native wildflowers that will not be invasive and follow all those commonsense sort of rules.    Find tutorials at every(nothing)wonderful (with free printable labels!), The Ecologist (where you can learn the very old history of seed bombs and lots more), Mademoiselle Chaos (where you can make moldable little seed bomb shapes with recycled paper), or use this basic formula from BH&G:

Guerillagardening.org recipe: Combine two parts mixed flower seeds with three parts compost; stir in five parts powdered clay (available at art or crafts supply stores), and moisten with water. Form balls one inch in diameter; let dry for 24 to 48 hours (stash in an empty egg carton). Gather in paper and tie with raffia; add easy how-tos on a tag.

6.  Got any Harry Potter fans?  Make their day with homemade Butterbeer, complete with sugared rims on the glasses.  Now if I could only figure out how to make those tiny brooms….

7.  Start a weekly project of making homemade toys together.  These can be simple (like turning unwanted stuffed animals into puppets) or sophisticated (like making homemade dolls).  Check out my Homemade Toys board for lots of tutorials and inspiration.

8.  Start some seeds.  You can start them in egg shells, egg cartons, newspaper pots, muffin tins or toilet paper tubes (cut in half) in recycled plastic boxes (the clamshell boxes from organic salad mixes are perfect) for mini-greenhouses.

9.  Do electric griddle drawings.  These are so much fun that even I have to take a few minutes to make some melty crayon art.    Click here for our tutorial and be sure to be safe.

10. Go puddle stomping!  You too. 

And with that, my pretties, I’m off to start a nice pot of soup to try to kick this spring cold that thinks it’s going to get us down.

Have a magical week!

(March nature calendar by J.A. Partridge in Natural Science Through the Seasons:  100 Teaching Units, 1946, via A Holy Experience. Click to enlarge)

Happy Monday!

I’m back from my blogging hiatus.  Daryl is recovering well from his hip replacement surgery.  It will still be some time before he’s fully mobile, but it’s all going great so far.

Here’s a few ways to make some memories with your kids this week.

1.  If you’re lucky enough to live in the right climate, go maple syrup tapping.  This is a can’t-miss experience for those of us who live near sugar maple trees this time of year (here’s info for Minnesotans on how to find sites that are doing it and others can google their states for locations and info).

2.  Use recycled newspaper to make plantable muffin tin pots for seedlings.  Visit Hands are full, Hearts are full for the wonderful tutorial.

3.  Make some whimsical finger puppets.  Check out das-wolkenschaf’s photostream for more wonderful inspiration.

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/daswolkenschaf. If you want to pin this idea, please visit the original site so the proper person gets credit!

4.  Tape a length of string across the room as a net and play balloon volleyball inside. 

5.  Do some nature studies.  This is the perfect time of year for lots of spring nature fun.  Here’s ten ideas to get you started.

6.  Buy or make a blank book and start a family cookbook.  Make up a new recipe for it each week together.  Some good simple dishes include smoothies, soups and jazzed up grilled sandwiches.  Encourage the kids to think up really fabulous names for each recipe.

7.  Make a painter’s tape maze and then have the kids dribble or kick a ball through it.

(Original source unknown)

8.  Make a sticky spider web.  Hands on as we Grow came up with this wonderful activity where you make a painter’s tape spiderweb and throw newspaper balls at it and try to make them stick. 

Visit http://handsonaswegrow.com/halloween-activity-a-sticky-spider-web/ for more information and to pin this idea.

9.  Make some hand puppets from old stuffed animals.

10. Let the kids play with their food! Give them an assortment of fruit pieces and let them go nuts.  This idea is courtesy of my son, Jack.  He and his little brother even set up a store and made everybody fake money so we could all buy the ones we liked!  Look at the lovely creations my boys made this morning. 

And with that, my pretties, I’m off to tackle the next 99 things on my to-do list.  Have a wonderful week!

It turns out we completely missed Saint David’s Day yesterday, but I found this blog post full of Welsh crafts from Filth Wizardry so delightful that I had to pass it on anyway.

I’m in love with the easy paper leeks!

(Long-time readers also know that I’ll celebrate any excuse to have fun that involves sheep.) 

If you want to continue with the theme of St. David and Wales, here are some wonderful compilations of crafts and activities on DLTK (did you know that dragons are considered Wales’ national animal?!) and Activity Village (I love the dragon sock puppet!).

In any case, happy March, chickadees!  Spring is really coming.  Yay!

Look for a post on ways to make the day magical on Monday.  My husband’s recovery is coming along well and I think it’s time for us to start easing out of hibernation.   

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

My sweetie got a new hip last Friday at the Mayo.

He’s had arthritis since he was two years old, and as a child he was told that he’d be in a wheelchair by the time he was 18.  He lasted a lot longer, but the time came when his hip was too demolished to hold up any longer.

So last week we had a family vacation of sorts in Rochester while the doctors worked their magic. 

Surgery was tricky.  His femur splintered when they inserted the artificial hip so they had to wrap it with cable, and then his pelvis was so disintegrated that they had to put part of his femur behind the new hip to build up the space.

Leave it to my hubby to keep the Mayo on their toes. 

He came through great, though, and as soon as he was back in his room he asked for a phone so he could call and wish his dad a happy birthday.

We’re home now and we’re all helping out while he recovers.  He is doing wonderfully, but because of the complications it will be a little longer recovery. 

Lucky for us, winter is a little slow around here anyway.

Oh yeah, and we have sick kids now, too.  Never a dull moment.

I might be a little quiet for a while.  I’ll be back soon. 

Go make some magic and come back in the comments and tell me all about it! 

See you soon!

If you’re lucky enough not to live in one of the freezing cold places right now, you can still take part in lots of fun with snow and ice!

Here’s a list of ten ways to make the day magical, warmer style for warmer climates.  And here’s a little round-up of online snowy fun.  Help the kids make some snowmen, “cut” some snowflakes and more. 

Happy Monday!  I hope you’re staying warm in your little corner of the world.  We have some crazy temperatures here lately (even for Minnesota!).  I’m hoping it gets above 0 today.  How’s that for a crazy wish? 

Cold, snow or not, here’s a few ways to make some memories with your kids this week….

1.  Make watercolor snowballs.  Just bring in a pan of snow and give the kids some watercolor paints and paintbrushes.  They can pack the snow into snowballs and then paint them.  Store them in a bucket in the freezer until you’re ready to return them to the wild.    You can decorate the yard with them or the kids can toss them, but let the kids know they should toss at targets like trees and not people since they freeze a little hard.

2.  Go sledding inside!  Get out a big towel and drag the kids around the kitchen floor.  Kids can pull each other around, too.

3.  Make a “gingerbread house” for the birds and squirrels.  Get together some graham crackers, peanut butter or sunbutter and a variety of bird seeds and then assemble like a regular house with peanut butter as the icing/glue.  Take a picture of your masterpiece and then leave it where it’s visible from inside so you can watch to see who visits.

4.  If you’ve got snow where you live, head to one of the spots where the snowplows dump it off to play.  It makes for instant mountain ranges!

5.  Get glow in the dark paint and help the kids write secret messages and pictures on their ceilings.

6.  Use kitchen gadgets to make supper fanciful.  For instance, use a cookie press to pipe out mashed potato stars.

7.  Make giant ice suncatchers.  Here’s the easy instructions.

8.  Make up a couple dozen fortunes and stash them in cereal boxes, snacks, the cookie jar, etc.  Make some especially silly (Beware of odd rabbits today.  You will have a monkey on your head….) and some sappy (Your mama loves you more than peanut butter cups.  I’m proud of you…).  Slip some in drawers and leave some for your sweetie, too.

9.  Take advantage of the cold and do some cold weather science experiments.  Vaporize hot water in the air, blow frozen bubbles, experiment with salt and water on colored ice, and more.

10.  Start a pride jar.  Every time you’re proud of your child, write the reason on a slip of paper and put it in a pretty jar. Encourage the kids to peek in their jars!

And with that, my pretties, I’m off to do the magical job of catching up on laundry!  Perhaps with a whimsical side of kitchen cleaning…  And a bit of hugs and kisses and crafts and silliness with some marvelous little people scurrying about. 

Have a magical week!

I’m very sorry for my long absence! 

Five year-old Alex had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy last week and the recovery has been really hard on him.  We’ve also been out of town to celebrate my birthday and to meet with doctors at the Mayo for my husband to get a long-overdue new hip.  Also, a friend (and magical mama to six kids) died suddenly (click here if you would like to help the family), and I just didn’t feel up to writing for a long time.

But times like these mean we need more magic for our kids (and us), so I’m back on my feet to do my best.

This morning, I got out the shaving cream and food coloring for Alex to have a bit of messy fun. 

I sprayed his name in shaving cream and then had him smooth it out, then dropped about 3 drops of each color (red, blue, green, red) on various parts. 

He used his finger to swirl the colors, then used chopsticks and spoons, making colorful mountains and experimenting with lots of color mixing.

It was a huge hit!  His brother joined in the fun for a while too, and then helped clean it all up. 

I hear it’s good for wood tables, too.  I have no proof, but our 50 year-old wood table can pretty much handle anything at this point. 

This craft works marvelously well in the bath, too, of course!

Hug your kiddos, count your blessings, and make the most of every second that you get with these amazing little people (and the amazing big ones, too).

I have written an awful lot of New Year posts on this blog and for the Magical Childhood newsletters over the years.  I started A Magical Childhood when my Annalee was just a baby in my arms as I typed, and next month she is turning 13! 

I am so glad that life kept throwing us unexpected blessings and right now I get to make some magic with just about every age group (my “babies” are now 1, 5, 9, 12 and 14), and that I can still yap at you all in the middle of the night with a little person asleep in my lap.  Thanks for understanding when there are weeks between those yappings, too! 

I, for one, am kind of happy to see 2012 on its way out the door.  This was a rather intense year for our family, especially with Victoria’s cancer diagnosis, sepsis, surgeries and some continuing immune issues.  At the end of it all, though, we’re so blessed and we know it.

I wrote this for New Year’s Eve in 2003, with my baby Jack in my arms.  It seemed appropriate to post again.

I wish you and your families all the best for the new year.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the mayhem and the clutter and the lists of what we ought to be doing.  Don’t forget what the biggest things on your to-do lists should be– having fun, loving the heck out of your children & relishing life.

Slow down.  Give things up.  Laugh it off.  Make each day count, with at least one thing that is magical or truly matters.  And give yourself a break!

And when life gets crazy this year, take the advice of those wisest of people (aerobics instructors) and don’t forget to breathe. 

Happy New Year!!
Alicia   (December 29, 2003)

PS  Click here if you want 10 awesome ways to ring in the new year with kids.  Again, it’s stuff I’ve recycled from various Magical Childhood posts in years past.  I do that a lot!

Happy 2013!!!!! 

Here’s wishing us all a truly magical, happy, healthy new year.