Our Fun Adventures in the Crayola Experience

Yesterday we were able to get a preview of the Crayola Experience in Easton, PA.  The girls have been to the Crayola Factory before and it was definitely fun, but then they closed to renovate and opened a whole new world of fun! It is still in the same location at Center Square (except now the store moved in with the Experience instead of being a couple doors down.) We were there for about 3 and a half hours - we had so much fun that time just flew by.  It was a lot of fun for the whole family, not just the kids!

The Crayola Experience opens to the public Friday May 24th and they are giving a box of crayons in a classic box with admission on opening weekend.  The price is $16 a person for admission and $29 a person for annual passes which is what we will probably be doing since I am sure we will be there a few times over the summer.  More information can be found here: Crayola Experience.  We are not affiliated and we do not make money on sales of tickets, this was our experience and our opinions.

Are you ready? Ok here we go on to the fun adventures we had with the crayons! First we went through the newly designed Crayola Store.  They had the same great stuff and more! Stuff you can only buy directly from Crayola.  One thing that was really cool (and this is new to the store) is that you can personalize a large crayon (I can't remember the size exactly but will say around 2 feet long) and name it whatever you want.  After naming it and having the wrapper (with your name) put on, it will be in a box with a certificate of it's birth and also it's birth weight - how cool, right? I can't remember how much this was in the store, but thought it was really neat!

name your own crayon in the Crayola Store

They have a cafe now instead of the McDonald's that used to be there.  There is a selection of items to choose from, including pizza.  When you visit, you want to go inside the cafe (even if you are not hungry) because that is where they keep the world's largest crayon - seriously it is huge! It used to be in the store and the girls always loved this crayon.  It was made from crayon ends that children donated and they were all melted down to make a huge crayon!

The world's largest crayon

Some of the other cool things we did was to design our own crayon label on a regular sized crayon.  You can pick the design and then the name you want on it.  This is a part of the Experience and you get 3 tokens with each admission - this costs 1 token.  Then you get to wrap the crayon and keep it with your name of choice.

We moved on to take a picture with the crayons in the background (it became a coloring page to color in.)  There were so many things to do that I am trying to remember the order we did them in! We also went back in forth between the rooms to try things out again :)

My personal favorite activities in the Crayola Experience were the interactive ones.  I felt like a kid again with these! We did some coloring with a stylus on a mini computer screen.  You could pick between markers, crayons and spray paint.  After you got your picture done the way you liked, you put it on a big screen and you could interact with it.  It detected your movements and reacted to your movements.  This was awesome! You should have seen the girls running back and forth with their creation.  This was called Art Alive.

The 4 of us creating our art to bring it to life

My turtle I created on Crayola's Art Alive

Her shark she created and was interacting with

We watched a really cool show that showed us how the crayons are made.  A fun lady was showing us along with red and blue crayons (they were helping with the show) how they make them in the machine and how they get packaged.  It was an entertaining and informative show! In another cool room we were able to make a marker - well we watched the machine make it so we know how markers are made.  We also got to keep each of the markers.

The Crayola Experience has a really cool indoor playground.  The playground had a super fast (and I mean super fast) slide! Oh the girls loved this room.  There were also activities set up around the room where the playground was - you could make a puzzle and even play with some paint.

The Water Works room taught us about how canals work and how boats get around in the canals, even when they need to go uphill.  Kids learn by taking crayon boats up through the canal and they learn how boats get up to a higher level in the canal by doing it with their boats.

Learning about canals

There are more fun things we did and more to do, but the last one that I want to share (have to save a little surprise for you) was my favorite! This was another interactive room too and it was called Doodle in the Dark.  There were crayons on a big screen that detected your movements and moved along with you, screens to doodle on with markers that looked like lights as you colored and a really cool game on the floor. The game on the floor detected your movements and you did things like pop bubbles and play air hockey.  I loved that room!

Meet the Crayola crayons! These crayons move with you

Here is what the girls had to say about our Crayola Experience adventures:

My older daughter-

I had a lot of fun when I made a puzzle.  It might not have turned out the way I expected because of my bubble letters that I made, but it was fun! I also had fun making what I drew come to life.  I made a tiger shark.  It was orange with black lightning bolts on it.

They also have a dance floor and it was fun.  It was called drawing in the dark.  I also liked the playground.  The slide was really fun! The best part is when I saw how they made the crayons.  We had a lot of fun!

My younger daughter -

I liked the doodle in the dark.  It was really cool to draw on the window like boards that made my pictures light up.  The dance floor was fun, it lights up different colors and games.  The playground was a lot of fun! There was a cool paint tower I climbed up in the playground, there was a bridge in there and the slide was like a tunnel.  It was really fast.  There was a rope bridge to walk on in playground.

I had a lot of fun at the Crayola Experience and want to come back again soon.

Garden Soil pH Experiment With the Kids

soil pH experiment - baking soda

soil pH experiment

We have had a little garden here for the past few years now.  Our plants have always looked quite healthy and usually any problems we had with the plants could be linked to me not planting at the right time or the weather so we always figured our soil pH was pretty good here.  But we have never actually tested the soil ph before today.

I belong to a cool gardening forum (I get a lot of tips from there) and one of the members had shared a simple way to test your soil's pH and it looked like a cool experiment to do with my youngest daughter.  She has been helping a lot with the plants and she is really excited about the garden.  This is a fun little science project really and we got to know a little more about our soil pH while we were at it.

soil pH experiment - vinegar

We took 2 jars and put some of our soil in each.  To the one jar we added a half a cup of vinegar to see if it fizzes.  If it fizzes your soil is more alkaline and ours did not fizz.  We did see a couple little bubbles (almost like a couple soap bubbles) but no fizz.

The other jar of soil had a baking soda and water mixture added to it.  We combined a half cup baking soda with a half cup water.  If it fizzed it means that the soil is more acidic.  Again we saw no fizz here.

Being that we saw no real reaction with either the vinegar or the baking soda and water combination, this means that our soil pH is pretty well balanced.  And at the same time our daughter had fun with a little science project!

The gardening forum is a great place to ask questions and it is free.  A lot of nice people there and I have got a lot of questions answered - http://www.gardening-forums.com 

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms :)

Mother's Day is a wonderful day to celebrate all Moms.  A mom brings you into the world and helps you grow up to be the best you can be.  She loves you always and is always there for you.  My girls drew me their cards and handed them to me this morning - which means more to me then buying one.  They were beautiful!

Our girls also drew cards for all of my readers to wish all the lovely mothers a Happy Mother's Day.  We all deserve to have a wonderful day today! Here are your Mother's Day cards from our family to you :)

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day

Trying Some New Vegetables in the Garden

Chocolate and purple pepper plants

Yesterday was a busy day here! We had bought a variety of vegetable plants and yesterday was the day
 to weed the garden and plant our plants.  Gardening has become a fun hobby and of course the vegetables taste delicious when you grow them!

This year I did it a little differently with the plants.  In the past I have bought a couple plants and then started most of our plants from seeds.  This year we bought mostly plants and the only seeds we bought were pea seeds.  My mom picked them out for me as there was a place by her that was having a great sale on them and she picked out some really nice plants.

tomato plants 

We missed out on the green bell peppers because of the sale - she said she literally just missed them too and the last one was sold shortly before she got there.  But that is ok as we are now able to try a different variety.  She got us some purple peppers, chocolate peppers (don't think they actually taste like chocolate) and sweet peppers.  We also got a variety of tomatoes, one of which I have never heard of before - pink girl.  And we also have our cucumber plants which we had a lot of luck with in the past.

This year we added the little tag by the plants so I know which ones are which.  In the past I haven't done so, but this year we have more of a variety of pepper and tomato plants.  We will know which ones are which if we try one and like it better then another.  I planted 5 different kinds of tomatoes and 4 different kinds of peppers so knowing the difference will help!

We got all the plants planted yesterday and we also got our pea seeds planted too.  I am hoping it is not too late in the season for the pea seeds as we have never planted snap peas before.  One of our girls really wanted to buy them to try so we are hoping for the best there :)

I can't wait to try the purple peppers, I bet they will be delicious and they look like they will be shaped like a bell pepper.  I think the chocolate peppers (not the hot variety - there is a chocolate pepper that is hot) is only called chocolate beauty because of it's color.  Hoping this year will be great for the plants!

Have you started your garden yet? Are you trying anything new this year?

Excited about a washing machine?

Am I excited about a washing machine? I have been asking myself that for the last 2 days, but the answer is yes I am! Ok before you think I am crazy (well I am a little but before you think I am really crazy), our old washing machine broke during a load of laundry.  It filled up just fine but when it went to go into the wash cycle, it made a loud continuous noise and started to drain instead of agitating. Ahhh was my first thought, yeah and my second and third thought too! I had a few loads I was going to do that day too.

We decided that instead of fixing the old one (and it was getting old) that we would buy an affordable new one.  But of course this took some time and research.  So in the mean time our laundry has been piling up and I have been carefully hand washing a few items at a time just to make sure everybody had some clothes to wear.

It is coming today and they are calling before delivering so I am patiently waiting with the phone in arms reach for our new washer to get here.  I guess I can be crazy for getting so excited about a washing machine, but when I look at the dirty clothes pile that just keeps getting bigger I can't help but be excited! Of course I am not excited about all the work I will have to catch up on when it gets here tho :)

Have you ever had a washer break on you in the middle of washing a load of laundry?

Crazy Hair Day

Our crazy hair style

In our schools they do some fun and silly things in the younger grades.  We have a pajama day, green eggs and ham day and so much more.  One of the fun days is crazy hair day.  As soon as the notice came home, she was already planning her hair all out, even tho it was about a week away from the day she got the notice.

So this is the hairstyle she wanted, only she wanted me to pull some strands through the middle of the buns (they looked better in the morning but we were running a little behind so I took the picture after school), but we didn't have time as it is crazy getting the kids up some mornings.

But it looked cute the way it was, 2 buns in the front and then a braid in the back.  Crazy hair day was a fun day here! She loved her hair this way too.

Do you have crazy hair days? Well besides the "I'm cleaning and my hair is mess" kind of days - I can relate to those days :)

Our Science Project - Turtle Made Out of Recyclables

Our turtle made from recycled materials

We were asked to make a science project for school in celebration of Earth Day.  This was a lot of fun and
we did this together as a family.  Everybody put their ideas in and I am sure our daughter's project will be a hit! The project was to make an animal using recycled materials and she decided that she wanted to make a turtle.  It was a little tricky to come up with at first but as we starting thinking together, we started to come up with some great ideas! For Earth Day our daughter's school is having a science fair to display all of the kids' animals that they made.

How we made it:

for the turtle shell

We took a 2lb strawberry container for the shell.  This was perfect for the shell, it has a 2 corners that lock closed and it has the 2 tabs that stick up there a little bit.  The locking lid helped to keep everything in place since we were not going to be able to glue the legs in (the glue probably wouldn't hold on this thin plastic.)  The tabs were used to help hold the neck and tail in.  Glad we had recently bought strawberries :)

Our turtle's tail

For the turtle's tail we used a cut piece of toilet paper roll and then she painted it with watercolors once it was on the turtle.  This was glued lightly onto one of those tabs on the strawberry container.  That tab helps to hold it in place once the lid is closed.

For the turtle's legs

For the turtle's legs we cut the handles off of milk jugs.  I did this and would not let the kids do this part.  The  plastic milk handles were then covered with black construction paper.  The turtle's legs then fit in the spaces on each side of the tabs.  

For the neck we used a toilet paper tube wrapped in construction paper and then she used construction paper rolled up for the head inside the neck.  I put a slit into the toilet paper roll so it could be glued onto the other remaining tab.  

We then assembled it altogether.  The tail and the neck were each glued onto the tabs and the the legs were added next to the neck and tail.  We then closed the strawberry container and used the locking corners to close it.  We did have to squish the top of the milk handles before putting them in the container just so we could get the lid closed.  I then added glue to 2 locking corners to give it extra support to stay closed.

She also used some water colors to add some color to the shell and to add eyes to the turtle.  And that is her science project - a turtle made from recycled materials for Earth Day.