We got pretty crafty with my son's birthday party this year. He chose "camping" for his theme, and his father and I wholeheartedly signed off on his choice. The party itself was at our local park, which provided an excellent backdrop for our campsite decor.

Dakota did most of the projects, honestly, although I helped out where I could. My primary contribution was the campfire cake, adapted from one I saw on Pinterest (of course). It's a regular cake, but I melted red, orange and yellow lifesavers to make candy "flames" and then used chocolate cookie sticks (Pocky) to make the logs. I am not a very adept cake decorator, but this technique was easy enough for me to master.

Dakota made some simple wood A-frame tents, and I attached flat sheets with sewed-on elastic loops. They turned out very cute, although I admit that the kids spent most of their time playing inside Dakota's old blue boy scout tent.

You can also see a cardboard "campfire" to the right there. Several of our partygoers had a fun time adding real sticks to the fire and adorably sitting around it on camping chairs.

And we combined our talents to make a bean bag toss game. Dakota built the wood part and I made the beanbags on the sewing machine. They're full of split peas.

So, overall, it was a successfully home made party, not counting the pinata. While I could have attempted to make one myself, I elected to head down to Los Angeles' Pinata District (Downtown just past the Flower District) to let my son pick one from the thousands available. That was a fun excursion of its own, and it reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad would take us down to the local pinata store before our birthday parties every year.

One of the major benefits of being married to someone with a fancy wood shop and the skills to use all the tools is that he can pretty much make anything.

I usually try not to brag too much about Dakota on this blog, but I have to share the favors he made for our son's recent birthday party. It was a hootenanny theme, and Dakota decided to make a hand-crafted cigar box guitar for every kid.

If you knew Dakota, you'd know he never does anything half-way. So, the guitars came out beautifully. They have wood handles, sturdy boxes and individually carved pegs so that they can be tuned. They are, in my humble opinion, pretty awesome.

While you (and I) might say this is a lot of work for a 3rd birthday favor, in the end I feel like it was worth it. It was really fun to hand out each one and see the excitement on the kids' faces. Hopefully, they will have a great time jamming on their guitars at home. That's what's happening at our house.

I have always thought that making play dough for my son sounded like a good idea... in theory. But it also seemed like one of those things that might be a big pain in the ass, and I wasn't certain the final product would be as good as the store-bought stuff. But, my son started preschool last week and they use school-made play dough. It looks pretty great and all the kids love it, so I decided to give it a shot last weekend.

Turns out, it's easy and the dough at the end is actually nicer than the store stuff. I used this recipe from Instructables. It involves cooking the dough for a little bit, but was still quite simple.


You stir everything together and then cook is mostly to dry the dough. What you end up with is something that looks a lot like sugar cookie dough.


After kneading briefly, I added food coloring, making colors based on my son's shouted requests: "yellow!" and "pink!"

He loves the stuff, and is constantly begging to play with it. I've the play dough it in a big airtight container on the counter, and it seems to be holding up wonderfully. Another nice thing is that this dough can really teach color blending. A little chunk of pink plus some yellow makes a lovely orange after some vigorous toddler kneading.

Oh, and if he eats it, no big deal. Everything in the dough is technically "food." I doubt he would want it after a quick taste, though. It's very salty.

The other day, I was talking with my mom and sister about adventure playgrounds. Specifically, the playgrounds full of scaffolding, piles of wood, old tires and rusty tools that were popular in England in the 1960s through 80s. (If you've ever seen the awesome documentary series 7 Up, they use the kids playing at an adventure playground as a framing device.) My mom, sister and I were laughing about how those playgrounds were weirdly dangerous but also extremely fun. I never really played at one, but apparently my sister really loved to use the saw at the adventure playground she went to when we briefly lived in London as children.

These days, most playgrounds are super-safe and rusty-tool-free, which is good, I guess. But I also think kids need to be able to scramble around and fall down and have "adventures" when they can. Happily, I think our backyard is turning out to be a private adventure playground for my son--and possibly his more rough-and-tumble friends.

As my son gets older, he's starting to really love backyard playtime. In fact, today he ran right to the back door as soon as I suggested it. And why wouldn't he love it? There are rocks and pebbles to collect, stairs to climb, sticks to swing, buckets of dirt to dig in, plants to smell and hills to scramble up (and occasionally fall down). And, of course, chickens!

Yesterday, my son made his way around the yard while I tried to clear our some weeds so I can plant the awesome wildflower seeds my sister gave me for Christmas. It was really fun to watch him explore, and when he's just a little bit older we'll be able to spend even more time out there digging, playing and learning. I can't wait.