Monday, July 21, 2008

crayons for little hands, more poppies, fruit flies, and more

I bought some crayons for Phillip's birthday, and we tried them out this afternoon. He did really well with them, but they just looked too good to not take a nibble. Or two. I'm expecting some interesting diaper changes tomorrow. To make it less tempting to bite them, I decided to unwrap them, and melt them down in silicone muffin tins, so now they're a little less stick-like. I just broke them up, sticking similar colours together (my favourite is the grey / black / white one above). I had the oven on 350 for ten minutes, then turned the oven off and left them in, for maybe another ten minutes or so. Let them cool completely, and you're all set! And here's Phillip's first picture (being held on the fridge by Plato):

These crazy and oh-so-fun poppies are back.
As are the fruit flies. Death toll so far: two. My trap: 1/4 cup cider vinegar in a glass jar, with a piece of paper rolled into a funnel.
And this little poppy seed pod was in the garden. I love its little cap!

"A frontal system over Nova Scotia will continue to give periods of rain tonight. The rain will be at times heavy with thundershowers especially over southwestern sections overnight." Tonight's forecast, as issued by Environment Canada.) A tropical storm, Cristobal, with a ton of rain is on the way. I love the sense of battening the hatches before a storm.

6 comments:

Goatmeal_Crisp said...

Hope you stay dry!

Anonymous said...

Hey!

I stumbled upon your blog through others that I read mostly knitting, I don't have one yet...but soon.

Anyway I saw that you work with visually impaired people. My brother is visually impaired, he has been since birth. I found this cool article about a website that will enable him to use other computers that don't have the zoom program he has on his. He's a computer programmer so he's pretty happy he can help out programming cause it's free source or something(computer lingo).

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080720/blind_internet_080720/20080720?hub=Health

That's the article link.

Catherine:)

Sherrie said...

Wow, that looks incredible! I don't know if the organization I work for has heard about this yet - I will definitely let them know, and have some of my students try it out. Thanks so much for sharing!

Sherrie

Austen said...

Oh, fruit fly season! I have to admit, I don't miss that aspect of life in Nova Scotia AT ALL. :)

VoofaVoofa said...

Okay, so we made your fruit-fly trap. And we immediately caught four of the little buggers!

Then they all escaped.

Do you have this problem as well?

Please help. I detest fruit flies.

Sherrie said...

Hmm, maybe fruit flies in NB are just smarter? It might help if you try making the opening at the bottom of your funnel a bit smaller, or using a larger jar... I put a little piece of mango peel in the bottom, and that attracted many more fruit flies than the cider vinegar alone, and I've got a ton of casualties in there now. (So I need to clean it out!) Good luck!