Our Low Tech Spring break part 1 (Galaxy in a Jar)

When I was a kid, it seemed like spring break always took forever to come and was far far too short....that sentiment seems to hold true for my kids as they excited looked forward to spring break which, consequently, came a little sooner for them as the school system here in Kansas lets out a couple of weeks earlier than their last school in Georgia.

                                                                                               

My sweet baby girls back in the day!

In years past, if I was able to get military leave (which wasn't often), we were able to go and do fun things like visit family back home in Indiana or, a couple of years ago, we visited Universal Studios in Orlando. That was a super great time but this year, the funds just weren't there for that kind of extravagance and honestly their attitudes of late had been very.....teenager-ish and snippy. Both of my girls had started to act is if I owed them something and social media was then end all be all. I was getting pretty tired of it so I did what any mother in this situation would do....

I took it all away.

That's right...no phones, no tablet, no social media, Facebook, TwitteR, Instagram, or Kik...all if it was gone and they were none too thrilled. When we made the decision to turn everything off, I was worried that they would revolt and things would be worse but instead what happened was that the more removed from the social media and electronics they were, the closer it seemed we all became. Now, I won't act like we all sang and danced the entire time and the kids were never bored BUT they were able to find things to do for themselves...they read a few books, played a few board games, and even had a few family discussions that were not cut off by a ringing cellphone or text notification.
So what did we do, if we weren't on our phones and tablets?

Now they're 13 &14 and sometimes....ughhh!

Well, one thing that we did was take a quick drive to out local Goodwill store and pick out some mason jars and glass plates that were 50 cents to a buck each (!) along with some other finds to work on and made our way home to do some crafting.


GALAXY (OR NEBULA) IN A JAR

This seemed to be one of their favorite craft picks after all of the different things that we did over the break so it will be what I write about...

What You Need:
Mason Jars
Paints in whatever color you want your galaxy to be (We picked pink, turquoise, purple, and dark blue)
Glitter
Water in small cups (to thin and contain the paint)
Cotton Balls

Once you have all of your supplies gathered and the paint gets thinned with a the little bit of water in the dixie cups you are good to go with your galaxy!
All you have to do is open the cotton balls a bit and put them at the bottom of the mason jar, sprinkle with some of the glitter and pour a bit of your paint onto the cotton. You can use wooden skewers to help with fluffing the cotton and absorbing the paint.
Continue the process with each color layering the cotton balls, glitter then adding paint

Looking Goofy and not believing that I was actually taking their picture for the blog...hahaha!

A different day but the same craft...

Here is the finished product of attempt #1

 Was it perfect? No...BUT perfection wasn't the point. The point was to get them off of the phone and engaged with the family and THAT was a smashing success! All in all we had a pretty fun spring break.

They used paint markers to decorate their Jars