Penny Pinching Peach

For the semi crunchy, homeschool friendly and totally frugal!

Tag Archives: flower


by Leave a comment

Dandelions Are My Favorite Flower

Sweet Smiles of Spring!

Sweet Smiles of Spring!

Dandelions are my favorite flower!

A lot of folks look at dandelions as a weed, a nuisance, something to be combatted removed at any cost. I see a dandelion and I think of dimpled hands, smiling faces and bright yellow bouquets offered with lots of sunshiny sweetness and pride in a gift well chosen.

“Penny Pinching Peach is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com”

Many people see dandelions as pesky plants they want to eradicate. I see a beautiful bloom that speaks of love and innocence.

♥ I love this beautiful Real Dandelion Seed Pendant Necklace! ♥

 

I’m sure most people list something fancier as their favorite flower, like roses or tulips, and I understand that. I love those, too. They are lovely to look at, last longer, and smell sweeter than the humble yellow blossom that I’m so fond of. Fancy flowers can’t compete with dandelions and the feelings they evoke in my heart, though.

Sweet Smiles of Spring!

Sweet Smiles of Spring!

These plain and simple flowers have been handed to me by sticky hands, accompanied by the biggest, most genuine proclamations of “I love you!” that you can imagine, with slobbery sweet kisses and tight hugs from dirty little arms. I have very early memories of running to my mom with a sunny bouquet picked with all the love in my little heart and seeing the smile it put on her face. Dandelions bring up so many memories of sunshine and love, that I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.

Dandelions may be a nuisance to you. That’s okay.

♥This is a beautiful story of a dandelion seed in The Dandelion Seed Book!♥

To me, dandelions are a symbol of all things sweet and special, generous and innocent about childhood and the love of the children God has allowed to touch my life!


by 17 Comments

Getting Artsy With D, E, and F

Tracing "D" With Pompoms

Tracing “D” With Pompoms

My newly turned five year old and I are continuing our fun journey into reviewing the

Tracing E With Pompoms
Tracing E With Pompoms

alphabet and adding in the phonics side of things as we go.

She looks at school time as one of her favorite games, since Mommy is playing it with her and she is actually learning. I’m lucky that my kiddo inherited my odd fascination with learning new things, so it makes homeschooling her (thus far) more of a joyful journey than a chore.

This lesson is one we did several weeks ago, and is all about the letters D, E, and F. We did all of the activities over the course of a couple of days, along with other things we were working on. My little peachy princess really enjoyed all of the things I came up with for these letters! 🙂 I’m not going to list these alphabetically as much as by activity, to keep it from being too befuddling.

Tracing F With Pompoms

Tracing F With Pompoms

My little girl loves colorful pompoms and art projects, so it was easy to dream up this first activity! I filled an empty wipe box with multi colored pompoms Pepperell Craft Making Assorted Pom Poms, Standard Colors, 750 Per Package and wrote the letters D, E, and F in large print on three pieces of paper. I had her trace each letter using the pompoms, talking about the sounds each letter made as she traced it. She was very pleased with the results, and wanted to glue them to show off later, but we didn’t have enough pompoms for all that. 🙂

D is for Dog and Disguise

D is for Dog and Disguise

Next, we talked about what words started with each sound. She was delighted to realize how

E is for Elephant

E is for Elephant

many words she could come up with beginning with each sound. From there I asked her to draw or color a picture of something she really liked starting with each letter sound. She chose to wear a “disguise” while coloring a picture of “dog” biscuits for the “D” sound, to draw a picture of an “elephant” for the “E” sound, and to draw a picture of her daddy, the firefighter, for the “F” sound. She was so proud of her artistic abilities, and learned to write some new words. 🙂

F is for Firefighter

F is for Firefighter

For some outdoor educational fun, we went on a hunt for flowers to go along with the “F” sound. Since we were still enjoying ourselves so much, we created a beautiful letter “F” on our back deck using some of our flower finds. My peachy princess was fascinated with her floral creation! 🙂

How have you been having fun with your alphabet lately? Here are some fun activities for ABCs!

F is for Flower

F is for Flower

“Penny Pinching Peach is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com”

Please sign up for my Mailing List for a weekly update, coupon codes, and extra savings!


by 3 Comments

Egg Carton Flowers

Egg carton flowers

Egg carton flowers


I had a stack of egg cartons piling up, waiting on some inspiration, and my daughter brought them to me wanting to do a project. I came up with egg carton flowers. She was thrilled! Since my little princess enjoyed her new project, I thought I’d share it with other folks who might want something new to do to keep their munchkins happy. 🙂

We gathered together our supplies: An egg carton (of course! 🙂 ), then some scissors, markers, marker stampers and some stickers that aren’t pictured below.

Egg carton flower supplies

Egg carton flower supplies

First, I cut the top off of the egg carton, then cut between the cups. Next, I cut the cups into a smoother rounded shape around the top. Last, I went snippety snip around the cup to make the petals. The different stages of development in the picture should help fill in any confuzzlement left by my description. 🙂

From there, it was up to Princess Peachy to finish up. She smashed the petals flat with her little hand, then got to work decorating. She had a good ol’ time being creative with decorating them all sorts of different ways with the supplies we had on hand. When she was finished, we arranged them in a flower shape on a green piece of construction paper. You could glue them on, if you want, but my little one enjoyed rearranging them too much to let me glue them on.

What household item do you have overflowing, but don’t want to throw out because you think you can find some nifty way to upcycle it? Maybe I can come up with something. 🙂


by 2 Comments

Crafty Snacking

 

Smiling With A Smiley Face Cracker

Smiling With A Smiley Face Cracker

Crafty Snacking

My daughter loves all things cutesy and yummy. Combining those two loves, I sometimes make her snacks or meals in cutie patootie delicious forms.

Princess Peach loves peanut butter on crackers. I take large round crackers, peanut butter and either craisins or raisins. I spread the peanut butter on the crackers, then make faces, flowers or sun designs with the craisins or raisins. She loves it!

Flowery Crackers

Flowery Crackers

She also adores marshmallows, so that was an obvious one to make a crafty critter out of. I took eight small pretzel sticks, painted a smiley face on a flat side with one of the pretzel sticks dipped into a drop of Hershey’s syrup, then jabbed them in the sides of the marshmallow to look like spider legs. This would be a fun and easy snack for those who celebrate Halloween.

Happy Spider

Happy Spider

We often have sandwiches for lunch. Sometimes I’ll cut it into triangle shapes and put a large cherry tomato in the middle, all arranged like a flower. I’ll also take a cookie cutter and cut three or four pieces out of the sandwich in whatever shape it is.

Flower Sandwich

Flower Sandwich

There is an endless array of cool things you can do with food! I only do the quick, easy and cheap varieties myself, since I am actually chasing around the kiddos I’m feeding, but I’ve seen some “food art” that would break your heart to eat.

Does anyone else like to get creative with food for their munchkins sometimes for no reason other than making them smile? 🙂

For more great food for kids, check out After School Snacks!