Duct-Tape Flip-Flops

Zebra-Striped Duct Tape Flip-Flops

 Last weekend we found some cool duct tape at Target and decided to try our hand at Duct Tape Flip Flops. We like this rep from the Duck Tape Brand duct tape company...her videos are easy to watch and she clearly provides the instructions for a whole range of different duct-tape crafts.

First we took cardboard we had left from a pizza we bought at Whole Foods:

We traced around two pairs of old, dog-chewed flip-flops to create our foot beds.

Then you just add strips of duct-tape around the foot beds to form the top of the flip-flop.  I used the old chewed-up flip-flops to position the whole for the straps, and used scissors to poke a hole through the duct tape and the cardboard.

To make the straps, you take a long piece of tape--about 14 inches long for a kids foot.  And fold the tape into thirds to create a long strip of tape that will form the strap.  I positioned the tape seam sides down, folded it in half, and then poked it through the hole.  Seam-side down will enable the seam to be against the foot, rather than on the top of the strap. I then had the kids position their feet to see where they wanted the straps to be, and then used three pieces of tape to secure the straps to the bottom of the flip-flops.

Once the straps are secure, we used the duct tape to finish out the bottom, and trimmed the edges to make everything look neat and tidy.

Leopard-Zebra Duct Tape Flip-Flops

Duct Tape Flip-Flop - All Zebra

These are pretty cute!  They have worn them nearly every day for a week, and they are holding up great.  I'm thinking that next time, it might be fun to add foam, to make the foot bed more comfortable.

Considering how many flip-flops we've lost to the dog this summer, this may be a more economical and fun way to go. 

Nine

Time is racing by. Today, I looked at my sweet, beautiful, radiant 9-year old daughter and had a momentary freak out.  She is nine.  NINE.  When I was nine, I definitely began feeling the early surges of independence.  At times I was fully compelled to rebel against authority, whether it was a teacher, an adult in charge, or my parents.  I was obsessed with horses and the idea of a boyfriend.  I was completely enamored with my friend Suzanna, who breezed in and out of each day with authority and confidence.  I risked punishment to do what I wanted to do, and did it even when I was commanded to stop.

I wanted my parents to understand me, and to listen to me, and to tell me that I could go right on ahead and do what I wanted to do.  But my Dad was mostly absent, as he traveled extensively for work, and my Mom was fundamentally unable to understand my desire and need for more control of my life.  This was the year where she and I began to be at odds with each other more often than not. It was the year I began to be grounded.   It was the first time I based my decisions about what to do based on whether or not I would get in trouble. It was the year I began to be spanked with a wooden spoon because apparently the force needed had somehow grown greater.

When I look at my precious daughter, I am blown away by how big, yet little she is.  I see the age of nine as another year of experience, another year of growth.  But the time it has taken to get to age nine seems about a fraction of nine whole years.  It seems like it’s been about 2 years, maybe. 

So, when I see this great kid growing up and being NINE, and I think about where I was emotionally, physically, and relationship-wise when I was nine, I am completely blown away.  She is much more innocent that I was.  Still very much dependent on me for the tiniest of things.  Very much unwilling to spread her wings of independence, and, in fact, not willing to even consider them.  At this moment, I am so thankful that I can still help her with so many things that I wouldn’t have ever asked help for at her age.  I'm gracious for the opportunity to observe her growing at her own pace, and without the bulk of the demands and situations that shaped me by my 9th year. 

Kids grow so fast.  I knew time flew before I had kids, but it seems like once they are a part of your life, the calendar hits rocket-speed, and only continues to go faster.  I am hoping I can find ways to span moments into lifetimes more often, so that all this doesn’t just pass me by.

I promise to work more on being the kind of perfect parent I want to be, because my precious, beautiful, amazing, quirky, funny, silly, and brilliant girls deserve that more than anything else.

Today, I am very much feeling the passing of time, and feeling a little blue about it. And I rarely feel blue...

"Well, there's nothin' like experimentin'!" --Juno

I've learned about some fun experiments lately, and we wanted to try the egg one first.

We put one home-grown egg, fresh from Great-Grandma's chickens, into a 1-Qt size mason jar and covered the egg with white vinegar.  Within minutes bubbles formed over the surface egg as the vinegar began reacting to the calcium carbonate of the egg shell. Within 24 hours, the brown color of the egg was removed and remained on the surface of the vinegar.  Within 5 days all of the egg shell had dissolved and we were left with the membrane that holds the egg within the shell.  Despite having lost the outer shell, the remaining egg and membrane were larger than the egg we started out with as a result of osmosis.  

"Water always moves through a membrane in the direction where there are more dissolved materials, so the water in the vinegar moves through the thin membrane into the egg because the water inside the egg has more materials dissolved in it than does the vinegar" (Janice VanCleave's "201 Awesome, Magical, Bizarre, & Incredible Experiments." 35).

The next step of the experiment called for adding the egg to corn syrup, but we didn't have any, so we thought we'd see what would happen if we covered the remaining egg with coca-cola.

After three days in the coke, it didn't look like much was going to happen.  I had thought that maybe the coke would be able to dissolve more of the membrane, and it looked like that was happening through the dark liquid, but when we took the egg out, the membrane was still intact.  The membrane had begun to turn into a cool golden color.  The size of the egg had shrunk just a little, but it was still larger than it had been when we started.

In the end, we never had the chance to put the egg in corn syrup for the supposed reverse-osmosis effect I read would happen...Signe decided to smash the egg up. Once the innards were squeezed out, the membrane was left like a leathery remnant.

Our next experiment will be the rice experiment based on Dr. Masaru Emoto's premise that our intention and words matter.  We'll see how that one goes!

But How do They Learn?

Jeff Sabo's Blog has an older, but timely post regarding compulsory education and the Cradle to Career educational  policy of the Obama Administration.