This past week has been blustery, snowy, cold.  Which makes it all the nicer for me — I’ll exchange the snow for sun, sand, and sea.

I shan’t be posting anything till after March 22.  In the mean time, I wish all the best for all of my readers!

Au Revoir.

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Oriental Trading Company. If you hurry and order today, you just might get some fun things from the Oriental Trading Company in time for St. Patrick’s Day.  Like these bouncing balls.  Or a Leprechaun porcupine character.  Or mini shamrock rubber duckies.  Or mini squeeze shamrocks.  Fun, fun, fun.  You could put together a pot ‘o gold for your grandchildren with some of these items.

St. Patrick’s Day Games. Here is a page of online games for your grandchildren to play.  (I liked the puzzle where you click and drag the columns AND rows to put the pieces in the correct place.)  You can play the games, too, and keep track of your time.  Then, challenge your grandchildren to see if they can beat your time.

Shamrock Potato Stamp.  Cut a potato in half. Trace a shamrock shape onto the cut end of one piece.  Cut away the potato leaving a shamrock shape.  Mix equal parts of evaporated milk and green liquid tempera paint.  (The milk helps the paint cling to the potato.  If you use acrylic paint, let me know how it turns out.)  Pour your paint mixture over several layers of paper towels placed on a plate or a Styrofoam egg carton lid.  Press shamrock stamp onto the pad and then stamp away on your art paper.

Shamrock Rubbings.  Get some heavy duty sand paper.  Cut out different sizes of shamrock shapes and place rough side up.  Place a piece of white copy paper over the shamrocks.  Using different shades of green crayons, color over the shamrocks.

Blarney Stone. Get a small stone.  (If you need any, let me know.  I have TONS in my yard and garden!)  Wash the stone.  When the stone is dry, paint it with green paint.  Add googly eyes, glitter, or other decorations of your choice.  (If you kissed the real Blarney stone, you get the gift of eloquence.)

When your grandchildren are ready for a treat, you can fix them this shake.

Peppermint Candy Shake

2 1/2  cups vanilla ice cream
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup Peppermint Pattie bars, or Junior Mints cut into pieces

Place candy into the freezer for 15 minutes.

Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend on medium speed for 30 seconds.   If you want a thicker shake, place blended milkshake into the freezer for a few minutes.  Top with whipped cream and more mint candy pieces.

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It’s been quite the convoluted process to get these patterns into a pdf file.  I won’t bore you with the technical challenges I had.  Suffice it to say that they are finished and they are uploaded here for your carving pleasure.  There was probably an easier way — but I just couldn’t figure it out.  (Maybe my brain was just too tired tonight to figure things out.)  Oh well.

Here’s the first set of 4 soap carving patterns.

Here’s the second set of 4 soap carving patterns.

Here’s what I recommend.  Print up the patterns.  Cut them out.  Using a knife, trace the outline into a bar of Ivory soap.  (Ivory soap is the brand that is the easiest to carve.)  Carve out the figure.  If there are details, shallow carve them in.  Ta da!  You have a soap carving — and probably a huge heap o’ soap shavings . . .

But, wasn’t it fun?

What happens if I come back later and want to print out the patterns?  How in the world will I ever find them? you ask.

Good question.  You’ll notice that on the right side of my site underneath the search box, there is a list of pages on my site.  Do you see the word ‘freebies?’  If you click on that, it will take you to the page where I have all of the fabulous free things for my dear readers.  At the moment, there are only these two patterns.  I hope to have more free things to share with y’all in the future.

Happy soap carving with your grandchildren!

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The other day, I saw a website that did a ‘Mailbox Monday’ post.  I thought that was a clever catchy title.  I wanted to share that little phrase with you, my Dear Reader.  Maybe you haven’t heard of it before, like I hadn’t.

You can dub your Mondays as Mailbox Monday and make a special effort to send e-mail to your grandchildren that day.

Do you worry that you’ll run out of things to say if you e-mail them every Monday?  Why not send them a joke, a recipe, a photo you took, or a motivating quote?

Share the story about the day your grandchild was born and how you felt — especially when you were first able to hold your newborn bundle of joy.

Send a story about something their parent (your child) did when s/he was your grandchild’s age.

Share an interesting news story that they might not be aware of.

Most importantly, tell them how special they are and that you love them.

Teen-aged grandchildren disdain e-mail.  It’s oh so old-fashioned.  They’re into texting.  So, have a Texting Tuesday for them.  (Ha!  I made that phrase up . . . or at least I’ve never seen or heard anybody using that before . . .)  Do a Texting Tuesday — assuming you have a cell phone AND that you know how to text. 

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