About a week ago, my boys planted honeydew seeds. When we checked them today, they had sprouted!
My boys are excited! When they get just a little bigger, we’re re-pot them.
To Grow A Honeydew
I recently realized that I live in the perfect place to grow some of my favorite food. Honeydew? Yes please! Coffee beans? I’ve always wanted to try roasting my own, so why not grow them too? Vanilla beans? I’ve been toying with ordering some so I can make vanilla extract. Growing them would be great! OK, so one thing at a time. Honeydew is first.
Apparently you can grow honeydew from seeds that you get from a store bought melon. I saved a few out of the last one we ate and my boys and I planted them in little pots (from a kids project at Home Depot) in potting soil.
Now we wait and see if they grow.
Water Filter vs. Bottled Water
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We normally buy bottled water for camping. Campground water tends to be very chlorinated and makes funny tasting coffee (definitely NOT a good thing!). We decided to try out a water filter that goes on the faucet. There are several models available. We bought a Brita 35214 Base Faucet Filtration System (affiliate link). It’s a pretty basic model and not too expensive. It allows for filtered water or unfiltered water and it’s easy to switch between the two. Installation was very easy – unscrew the end of the faucet and put the filter on and screw the Brita onto the faucet. One thing you may want to do is install it on your kitchen faucet (or other faucet at home) and run water through it for 5 minutes (per the instructions). Running water for 5 minutes in a camper leads to filling up the gray water tank much quicker than usual!
 The pros:
- it does make the water taste better
- doesn’t take up much space
The cons:
- makes a small sink seem smaller – filling the coffee pot with water was tricky and I think I would take it off to do dishes (can’t run hot water through it anyway)
- if the filter lasts the 3 months that it claims, it would last for at least a year, maybe 2 depending on how often you camp.
I’m pretty undecided about which is better. We normally pack a cooler full of soda and water so even with the filter, we’d still be taking the cooler for soda. However, I wouldn’t have to take gallon jugs of water for cooking. What do you do? Do you just use campground water? Take bottled water? Use a filter? Something else?
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Teaching Kids to Sew, Part 2
Read part one here.
I started my six-year old out the same way – making a pillow. He made one and was ready to move on. I knew he wasn’t really ready for anything more complicated, but he was insistent and he had it in his head that he was going to make matching sleepy shirts for him and Dada. Shirts aren’t that hard, but when you’re six and just learning they can be complicated. But, he was intent on making a sleepy shirt, and I can’t resist his face when he looks so brokenhearted (after I tell him that he can’t do something), so I decided to go for really simple.
I took a t-shirt of his and one of Dada’s and folded them in half. I used that as my pattern. We used a knit material (so the shirt would have some stretch – much like a t-shirt) and folded it in half. Then I pinned the shirt to the material on the fold and cut it out.
I ended up with two shirt halves for each size. It was very easy for my six-year old to sew the side and shoulder seams.
Dada’s shirt fit perfectly, but for my son I put elastic around the neck so it fit better.
My son was thrilled with the shirts! Now he’s hoping to make shorts. I’m thinking he needs to practice a little more. The hardest thing for him is keeping the seam width even.
Do your little ones sew? What do they make?
Camping – Wheel Chocks
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Wheel chocks are one of those things that we never got around to purchasing last year. It’s probably a good thing that our campsites were fairly level! However, we just recently went on our first week long trip and one of the things I felt we really needed were wheel chocks. I found these at WalMart for under $6 a pair. A similar pair can be purchased here
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