So, I started over this spring.  At some point over the winter I stumbled upon this blog post about a paver hopscotch pad and fell in love with it.  But I wanted mine to be longer and a bit more hardy.  Finding the paint for the hopscoth path turned out to be the hardest part of the whole thing.  The big box stores were no help, so I finally ventured out to paint stores and Benjamin Moore sold me a quart of cement/patio paint and seperately, the tints for all of the rainbow colors I wanted, so that I could mix them myself.  Then I painted nine 16″ pavers in rainbow colors in the garage.  My little helpers were only too happy about this.

We let those dry for a good week with the truck parked over them, then I set about excavating, graveling, tamping, sanding, tamping, placing the pavers, and mulching. Oye! This was one of those projects that seemed like it would be super fast and easy, but then took on a life of its own when we decided that we should do it “right” and took much longer and was bigger than expected. But, we LOVE it.

You can see that we ended up putting the hopscotch in the middle and the ends and sides are all a “normal” pattern of pavers. I hope that the paint stands up over time, but I do have a bit of extra paint in each color for touch-ups after the winter if necessary.

The kids love hopping down the path, too. Here’s some proof:

We have having a fabulous week of swimming with friends, sisterly sleepovers,

bike riding, front porch tea parties,


and we’re going to end the week with taking our new tent trailer camping.  The Easter Bunny will probably be able to find us no matter where we are, don’t you think?

Another thing we’ve done this week is to break out an Easter sensory bin.  This has been great during quiet time and when I need to take a shower in the morning with both girls home and pushing each others’ buttons.

This one has yellow peas from Winco’s bulk section, plastic easter eggs, a few dollar tree spring fake flowers (pulled off their stems), and some glittery egg ornaments (also from Dollar Tree).

We have been doing lots of sorting with this one.  Frequently, matching the glitter eggs with the same color plastic egg and hiding them inside is the favorite game.  Super fun!

Next, we went to the best place EVER a couple of weekends ago.  Its in NE Portland and its called Art ala Carte.  It is essentially a space for kids to create whatever art they want to and parents don’t have to clean up the mess.  They have all kinds of art supplies.  In fact, if you can think of it, they have it.  My girls loved it.  And oh, the glitter.  Nancy had a ball with the glitter.  For like an hour.  And I didn’t have to clean up any of it!  That’s her above glittering a record.   Clara built a “house,” painted it, and even found a My Little Pony to live in the house before moving on to like three other projects.  By the end, the trunk of my car was full of wet art projects to take home.  It was a great rainy Sunday afternoon activity.   With a family membership, it is really quite affordable, too.

Finally, we made a valentine’s day rainbow based on this beautiful post from No Time For Flashcards. I simply put contact paper sticky side out on the wall (this is harder than it sounds and an extra pair of adult hands are helpful) and drew a rainbow outline on the contact paper with markers. Then, I used a heart punch to punch rainbow colors of hearts out of my wallpaper sample book. Then, I invited the kids to sort the hearts onto the sticky rainbow. It turned out beautifully! I love walking up my stirs and seeing it on the landing every day.