My love for Pinterest, and a GIVEAWAY

In case you hadn’t heard. I’m addicted to pinterest. It is fan.tas.tic. By far my two favorite areas to pin are fun ideas for the boys and FOOD.

Last week I followed inspiration from THIS pin and made these sensory bottles for Bennett.

The bottles contain the following:

Beads and water- these make such a fun (nonabrasive) noise!

Glitter, water, and a little corn syrup and soap. I’m not sure why I added the corn syrup. I read somewhere it helps to ‘thicken’ the water? I added the soap because my glitter was all clumpy. The soap reduced the surface tension of the water (I believe) and now the glitter is so pretty!

Stuffed dragon. That’s all. It makes Jackson mad when I tell him it’s in there to stay, but it’s a great size and Bennett likes to watch it fall from one side of the bottle to the other.

Seashells and ‘sand’. We didn’t have sand so I used salt and sidewalk chalk to give it a little color. Honestly probably the least favorite.

Glass beads and corn syrup. It is so fun to watch the pretty beads fall slowly move through the thick corn syrup.

Water, food coloring, soap, and plastic alligator. Makes bubbles AND tornados.

I used 500ml VOSS water bottles (found at the Commissary) and hot glued the lids on when I was done.

But, it gets better. I saw THIS pin and found bigger sized bottles (850ml) to make Jackson some toddler worthy I SPY bottles.

Jackson had a great time ‘helping’ me by dropping objects into the bottles- and then pouring them out- it was a fun activity by itself.

We don’t have lots of ‘little’ items around here, so we spent a while in the dollar section at Walmart and came up with all kinds of great stuff. Though when I got home I realized we did have more items to use than I had thought.

Two notes about these bottles. One- they are a little crowded. Maybe I should have had less items. Two- for some reason my rice was all static-y in the bottle so I shot some Static Guard in there and it solved the problem.

The bottles are great because they can grow with your child. Bennett is interested in them. Loves the shaking noise, and tries to grab at the objects in the bottle. Jackson loves to sit on my lap and look at the bottle with me, pointing out all the different items. I also took a picture of all the items before putting them in the bottle and when Jackson is bigger he can play with this toy independently, looking for, and circling each item as he finds it.

Here is the fun part! It was so easy to make I ended up making an extra I SPY bottle to give away to one of my fantastic readers! I know I’m up to at least 4 or 5 now J. So c’mon thow me a comment telling me YOUR kiddos favorite toy right now-homemade or otherwise- and you’ll be entered to win! Entries close Thursday (1/26/12) at Midnight and I’ll pick a winner and send one of these bottles your way!

Hmmm. Just in case I need to add a disclaimer- both the sensory bottles and I SPY bottles contain small objects that could cause a choking hazard if they got into little hands. I did hot glue the tops on but you may want to add a piece of strong tape around the lid to make sure it stays on, and as a visual that the seal is still intact. Also please never your leave little ones unattended with these- sealed or not. :)