Flower Pressing

My King bought me a beautiful bouquet of roses last week and it is still hanging on by it's last little threads of life. They are the palest peachy-pink with a pale yellow color on the inside. I've been enjoying them all week.

Today as I was changing their water and trimming the ends, some of the petals of the roses were falling off. So I thought I should save these. I put them in a bowl and after I was done decided "Hey, why don't I use that flower press that I bought at Goodwill and have never tried?" So I'm moseying along cleaning up my flower mess, when suddenly I realized "Duh, Pooh has never used the flower press either! It's a new thing! We'll RDI it and video tape it for our consultant!!!"

This just goes to show that no matter how much you think about planning, nothing beats those natural moments when you realize there's a neat RDI thing to do. And sometimes, you don't even realize you're doing it until you're halfway through doing something! Then there's those times when you finish something and think "Ahhhh, I could have done an RDI activity with that!" I'm going to have to start note taking on my frig so that I can record all these passing ideas and thoughts that run 180 miles through my brain. The more busy life gets, the less I remember. Let's hope when I get up tomorrow I remember to start the frig list. ;D

Just so you know, the Flower Pressing went great. I was even able to include Tigger. I had to prep him by telling him he couldn't boss Pooh around and then decided that it should just be no-talking for Tigger. At one point through the activity,Tigger, who wanted to continue with us, said "Can I stop talking now Mommy?" "Sure, sweetie." I responded. LOL

Pooh definitely referenced for help in figuring this new thing out, was eager to participate and did great turn-taking with Tigger unprompted or aided by me. We did three sections in the Flower Press which took us about 20 minutes for the activity beginning to end. That included learning to take off the butterfly nuts (I only know the name because I just yelled for help from the King ;D) and screws, laying the cardboard, cutting the wax paper, laying the petals, cutting another wax paper, then laying more cardboard, etc, etc. The butterfly nuts were taking a little bit of time to get off, so I started singing Around the Mulberry Bush and when they came off, we said "Pop goes the weasel". When we put them back on they became helicopters coming in for a landing "bubububbububububu". They liked the idea of 'smooshing' the flowers.

I was very pleased with it all. Two more ideas I really want to do this week are 1. using the crayon maker I picked up at a yard sale this week (must read the directions myself first) and 2. buy a nutcracker as I have some pecans that we could crack. Both are 'something new' for Pooh.