No Carve Pumpkin Decorating Ideas

My favorite season of the year is fall. I love the changing leaves, the cooler temperatures and the need for funky looking blazers. And, of course, fall means Halloween. I love carving pumpkins and roasting the seeds. It’s a tradition we've had in our house for a long time. But when my girls were small, carving pumpkins was a tricky and scary ordeal. So, we came up with some other alternatives that our girls could help with that didn't involve sharp knives.

Candy Pumpkins

Instead of carving faces in this Jack-o-Lantern, we would use candy instead and glue or pin it to the pumpkins. It’s a great way for kids to be able to decorate the pumpkins themselves - and a sweet way to do it. From experience, hot glue guns don’t work so well - it melts the candy but craft glue or push pins will do the trick.

Potato Head Pumpkin

If your toy box was anything like mine, the Mr. Potato Head pieces are always floating around. Using the pieces to create fun and goofy faces is always a fun job for the whole family. The pieces go in fairly easily by twisting back and forth.

Foam Pumpkin

You can get those packages of sticky foam pieces at any craft or dollar store. You can get them in all different shapes and sizes to decorate your pumpkin. Even the littlest fingers will have fun helping with this.

Painted Pumpkin

Paint, glitter glue, puff paint and even glow-in-the-dark paint can all be used to decorate After you’ve painted, you can spray glitter paint to make the whole thing sparkle.

Do you have any other ideas? We’d love to hear them.

Girls Rock

By Amy Music is a great skill to have in life, and being able to play an instrument can boost a kid's confidence and help them to express themselves. My daughter is only 3 right now, but her father and I are already planning music lessons for her.

For older girls there's a pretty awesome option.

Ottawa Rock Camp for Girls is an annual three-day camp for girls ages 13-17. The camp is run by volunteers, all local musicians, who encourage campers to express themselves through music .

Registration is now open for a camp taking place November 1, 2 and 3.

Registration is open to 25 girls this year thanks to an IndieGoGo campaign. Campers spend three days not only learning about playing electric guitar, bass and drums, but they also learn all sorts of other skills involved in being a musician, like sound checks and vocals, even stage presence. The goal of the camp is to encourage self-esteem at one of the roughest times in any girl's life.

There is a fee of $20 for the weekend but that can be waived if it makes it inaccessible to a girl who wants to attend. Parents or interested girls can find more information on the website here.

When Your Kid Goes to a Co-op

By Amy My daughter was born in January, two weeks past the cut-off date for kindergarten for September 2013. We decided to put her in preschool and found a good fit at Katimavik Cooperative Nursery School.

We took her to an open house during the summer and she started the afternoon program in September.

Katimavik has three excellent teachers, and my daughter has made fast friends. They do lots of crafts, which is her favourite thing, they play outside every day and they sing and tell stories. Some days she doesn't want to leave.

But this isn't about our great nursery school, this is about a cooperative.

When your child goes to a cooperative preschool, you as a parent become responsible for a lot of the things that happen with that school. Each family at KCNS has duty days, where a parent actually hangs out and helps out in the classroom. We have cleaning duties, we provide snacks for the whole class and we help supervise the kids when necessary.

The parents also make up the school executive – I accidentally volunteered for a position on ours – and committees. As cooperative parents we fundraise to help the school budget for resources and supplies.

I was a little overwhelmed when we went to our introductory meeting and learned about all the things we would be involved with at KCNS, but now that we're a month in I feel great about the school we chose. I got to spend a day watching my daughter interact with her peers and I've had the chance to have some great conversations with the teachers and other parents.

I think there are a lot of things I'll miss about the cooperative environment when the kid starts kindergarten next year.

The Annual Biology Butterfly Show

It's that time of year again! I'm not talking about the start of football season, or Thanksgiving, or even Fall. I'm talking about the butterfly show! The Annual Biology Butterfly Show at Carleton University is here and is open until October 14th. This is a free event open to the public and is pretty amazing. You get to walk around a greenhouse and admire all the colourful butterflies flitting about. Pick up a piece of fruit and hold it up and you just may have a little guy land on it.

The colours are just incredible.. from dull grey to bright blue and red and green, but the most impressive, in my opinion, is the Owl Butterfly from Costa Rica. When it closes its wings it looks like there's a big eye peering at you.

So grab the kids and your camera and head over to Carleton to catch the show before it's gone. And don't forget to take your picture in front of the huge picture of a Canadian Tiger Swallowtail butterfly. It's a tradition!

Tips:

• Don't bring a stroller. It's pretty cramped in the greenhouse.
• Don't wear a sweater because it's muggy and, if your kids are anything like mine, you might end up carrying one.
• Wear bright colours to increases your chances of having a butterfly land on you.

By the numbers:

• 10 - Days the butterfly show is open (October 5th - October 14)
• 9am - 4pm - Time you can go
• 1300 - Number of butterflies
• 41 - Species from around the world
• $0 - Cost of admission!

Have you been to check out the butterflies? What was your favourite?

Welcome to FlowersInspire and Little Florist Birthday Parties

FlowersInspire, our new sponsor, is a great idea for kids of all ages. They are a professional floral design studio providing inspiring, fun flower arranging experiences for all ages and interests. It’s fun, unique and you get to take your flowers home to share with the whole family. When you’re trying to decide what to do for your little one’s birthday party, I bet you’ve never thought of Flowers.

FlowersInspire, located at 174 Colonnade Road, provides everything you need for a Little Florist Birthday Party - all of the tools, containers and flower supplies for your birthday child and their guests. They offer one-on-one training for each kid and a great space to do it all. There’s room for your floral creations, food and fun. They even have space to open gifts.  Plus, they take care of the clean up, which makes it tops in my books.

For older florists and adults, FlowersInspire also offers Seasonal Floral Design Seminars where you can learn to create different arrangements throughout the year, celebrating occasions with unique, decorative, floral accents. And best of all, when you take a seminar and make your own arrangement, the cost is about the same as buying the same arrangement in a store… but you get the fun and experience of making it yourself!

Working with flowers is a great way for kids and families to connect and to tap-into with their creative side.

With FlowersInspire, it'll be a blooming good time (excuse the pun!)