Blossoming Ballpoints

I have a magic drawer in my home. It is the pencil drawer of our computer desk. This is why it is magic:

I toss a couple sharpened pencils and ball point pens in the drawer. I close the drawer. I go about my normal mother-jobs. Then, when all the sudden I need to write something extremely important down--quick--I open the drawer to locate a writing utensil. And what do I find? Broken tipped pencils, yellow crayons and no ball point pen in sight. This happens all the time! Arg! Do you have a magic drawer in your home?

My kids' second grade teachers must have a magic drawer in their desks too, because they make these flower pens.
They had their students make them for Mothers Day gifts, and I can tell you right now it is the best Mothers Day school present I've ever received.

Mothers Day was back in May, now it is July. Do you realize that means I have kept track of my flower pens for FOUR MONTHS now?

Like I said, best Mothers Day gift ever.

(It turns out that we could have been even more creative with this craft--we went to REI last night and they had a pen with a big long fern frond attached to it. )

Thanks, Ms. Benton and Mrs. Cheek!

Roses Are Red, Carnations are....

For this week's craft we changed some plain, white carnations into all the colors of the rainbow. It was so easy.

First we put in the food coloring, drop by drop.

Then we put the flowers in their vases.

And then we waited...do you think if we are quiet enough we can hear the flowers drinking?

The next morning our flowers looked like this:

Now all we have to do is give them away!