Squishy Bags and Simple Goals

Pinterest is both a wonderful and a terrible place.  It's full of ideas, crafts, and images of basically anything your mind can come up with.  It's so full, however, that it's very easy to get sucked in to a wormhole of ideas of things to do.  It's not uncommon to realize that it's 8pm, and you haven't moved from the couch all day because you were looking for crockpot meal ideas, and got caught up in some other time space continuum vortex.

Fortunately, the good side of Pinterest is going to help me with my goals for the new year.  I hate the idea of making a "resolution," but I'm not really sure why.  I think it's because it makes them seem like something big, and unattainable.  For me, it's easier to focus on smaller goals relating to various aspects of my life.  While I have a number of them that relate only to me personally, I also have a goal in mind that relates to Lyric.

I have a friend who posts photos on Facebook on a semi-regular basis of "Sunday Craft Time" at her house. This friend has a child who is only a few days older than Lyric.  Each week she has a different craft that they work on together - sometimes they are themed for the season, and most of them have a dual purpose of helping motor skills, color recognition, counting, etc.  I love the idea of doing something new and beneficial each week for learning, and for fun.  Plus, it will give me a chance to actually put the hundreds of Pins I've wasted my time finding to use!  I'm going to make an effort to blog about them each week, so that maybe someone else can get some ideas for those boring days at home.  You know, those days where you want to just shove them in a room with a bucket of Cheerios and go to your happy place.  No?  Okay, maybe that's just me...

This week's fun was squishy bags.  They're an easy sensory play item to make, and I picked up the supplies from the dollar store on a whim.  All you need is hair gel, ziploc bags, items such as beads, noodles, small toys, etc (I used beads and small decorative rocks), and duct tape.  The bags are double layered, so hopefully they will hold up for a bit.  If they break or get too grungy looking, they were only about $1.20 or so to make, so it's easy to just toss them.  So far Lyric's favorite thing to do with them is use them as a punching bag.