Summer | Oopsey Daisy

Road Trip Bingo {Printable!}

July 6, 2011 By Alison@Oopsey Daisy 24 Comments

This is a post that I originally published on 30 Days as part of Mique's fun series, Funner in the Summer.

Just a few weeks ago, my family attempted our very first road trip. In the past, we have always flown with Little Man. I was a bit nervous about taking a lengthy trip in the car!

Thankfully, with a few tricks up my sleeve, we all survived the long 10 hours together in the car! I have many happy memories of summer road trips with my own family growing up. Every summer, my family would make a looooooooooong trek across the country to Utah for family reunions. That meant packing up in a small station wagon with these monkeys:

Living in the car for 2 days might have been painful. Luckily the homemade root beer, family baseball games, and toasty camp fires made it all worthwhile once we got there.

Surprisingly, road trips are now one of my favorite memories.

My Mom was a genius! She kept us entertained in the car with prizes to unwrap, vacation journals to write in, and (my personal favorite!) games to play. Our favorite game to play was Road Trip Bingo! My siblings and I searched for windmills, license plates, birds on phone wires, etc. It was sibling rivalry at its best!

Now that I am a Mom myself, I am already anticipating that ominous question, “Are we there yet?”

So I created a few printables to help entertain our kiddos for those long summer road trips!

Directions

Each Road Trip Bingo game has 5 unique gameboards.

Just print on cardstock, laminate if desired, and bring the gameboards along on your next road trip!

This version of Road Trip Bingo is ideal for older kids. They can search for different road signs as you're driving. You can download this game here.

Clip art for this Bingo comes from Scrappin Doodles.

This game is ideal for younger kids with shorter attention spans. Search for diggers, trucks, cars, trains, fire trucks, airplanes, jeeps, and police cars. You can download this game here.

Clip art for this Bingo comes from DJ Inkers. Used with permission.

In this version of the game, kids can search for different colored cars. You can download the Road Trip Bingo for colored cars here.

I hope this helps make your summer road trips a little bit funner!

Linking up to Tidy Mom

Filed Under: download, summer

Watermelon Lemonade

June 20, 2011 By Alison@Oopsey Daisy 34 Comments

I hope you enjoyed a fun-filled Father's Day with your families yesterday!

We spent our Father's Day on a road trip, making the long trek from Utah to Colorado. Mr. Oopsey Daisy has 2 brothers getting married this summer, so this weekend we attended wedding #1. We have lots of stories and pictures to share later on.

I finally feel like summer is here. Bring on the season of barbecues!!

Any good summer barbecue includes a yummy punch!

One of the things I love most about summer is watermelon! The only problem is that in our house, our small family simply can't eat an entire watermelon before its delicious fruit become damp and slimy.

I do try to avoid wasting even a morsel of watermelon. So last summer, I started experimenting with recipes for watermelon drinks.

This recipe is fresh and tasty--plus it helps solve the problem of what to do with excessive amounts of watermelon! After our family has munched on watermelon all week long, we finish off our leftovers by making this watermelon lemonade.

Come along and see how to make this yummy punch... It's simple!

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Filed Under: recipes, summer Tagged With: lemonade, recipe, Summer, watermelon

The Family Fun Sack

May 23, 2011 By Alison@Oopsey Daisy 27 Comments

This is a re-post of an idea I shared at Brassy Apple...

Eek! Summer is just around the corner!

Summertime is pretty chaotic at our house. We always have BIG plans at the beginning of the summer, but it seems to fly by way too fast. Without a bit of organization, we simply take advantage of those warm summer months. Here is a fun way for the entire family to get organized for all that summer fun!

Introducing the Family Fun Sack!

My parents started many classic traditions, and this is another project that I owe to their genius. At the beginning of every summer, we would have a Family Night and my Dad would introduce the Family Fun Sack--a simple brown paper bag that he had decorated in his simple "Daddy" style.

Each family member anonymously wrote down 3-4 "must-do" ideas for family summer fun. Some ideas might have included:

Going camping,

Going miniature golfing,

Making s'mores,

Playing at a local water park

Attending a baseball game,

Etc., etc.!

As kids, we often drew pictures to accompany our ideas. After everyone contributed their ideas, my Dad would make a calendar and map out all of our summer fun. He made sure to include everyone's ideas! We were so tickled to see one of our ideas on the calendar!

A few nights ago, we began this tradition in my own little family.

Here is how I made the sack:

I started out with a simple gift bag that I already had on hand.

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Filed Under: craft, organization, summer Tagged With: family fun, organization, Summer

Strawberry Poppy Seed Salad

May 19, 2011 By Alison@Oopsey Daisy 12 Comments

There is just something about being in my swimsuit that motivated me to start eating light and healthy! When we returned from Maui, I honestly craved something light and simple. (And that is NOT always the case for me!) This strawberry poppy seed salad was the first meal on my menu!

It's not only a simple meal, but tasty too! I'm not really a salad girl. But this is the only salad I will eat as an entire course. I love the sweet strawberries paired with the salty bacon. The best part of the salad, though, is the yummy poppyseed salad dressing. YUMMM!

This is also a special meal for our family. I always make it for our Valentine's Day dinner! Something about strawberries just seems so romantic, so this salad always makes the V-Day menu.

Want to make your own??

Strawberry Poppyseed Salad

Toss together:

Romaine lettuce (or your choice of greens)

Strawberries, quartered

Bacon, cooked and sliced

Toasted slivered almonds

Green onions, chopped (optional)

Mushrooms, sliced (optional)

Drizzle with poppyseed dressing:

Using mixer, mix together:

1 1/2 c. sugar

2 tsp. dry mustard

2 tsp. salt

2/3 c. white vinegar

Beat on high speed while slowly adding:

3 T. onion juice

2 c. light olive oil

Beat until thick and creamy, and then add:

3 T. poppy seeds

Don't worry about writing down the recipe...

Now hurry up and go make your own! Yummy!

Filed Under: recipes, summer Tagged With: poppy seed salad, recipes, strawberries

One Last Summer Project!

September 3, 2010 By Alison@Oopsey Daisy 15 Comments

Hello Oopsey Daisies!!

I'm back!! It's been a slow week on the blog for a couple of reasons. First of all, I put in about 15 hours in a mad rush to finish my quiet book!! Since I don't even own a sewing machine, I've been practically living at my Mom's house as I've finished it up. I was just about ready to move in, toothbrush and all! But as of late last night, it is complete! I am bursting at the seams to share the finished product with you. So stay tuned for that!

Also, I ran out of photo storage on blogger. I paid for an upgrade, but it took 24 hours to kick in! And blogging without photos?! I just couldn't do it! But thank you for your kind comments throughout the week that have motivated me to come back as soon as possible!

I feel sheepish sharing my last summer craft with you, considering how Halloween has already completely taken over blog-land!! But I am going to justify this project for a few reasons:
1. I wear flipflops year-round, even here in Colorado. So this project is relevant to me year-round!
2. I will also share how to repurpose this project even after the summer season is over.
So with that justification, let me share my upcycled flipflops with you!

I saw so many cute ideas for flipflops that I wanted to use all of them!! So after buying a cheap pair of flipflops at Wal-Mart, I started taking my scraps and created little flowers and rosettes. I absolutely adore the zipper rosettes!! I also made satin rosettes and red pinwheel flowers. Love those polk-a-dots! It has been so fun to interchange embellishments!

I hot-glued a piece of felt to each flower/rosette, and then hot-glued an alligator clip to the felt. Using clips, I could interchange my embellishments to match my outfit or even my mood! (Not to mention they can also double as hair accessories!)

I really, really love the combination of red, black, and white together. So I have worn these little beauties a whole lot this summer....

But I love the simplicity of the white satin layered flowers. These were super easy to make. I just layered satin circles, burned the edges, and hot-glued them all together!

And then this dark, chic combination! Love, love, love the dark zipper rosettes with gold teeth!

So what can you do with these embellishments after stashing away your summer flipflops??

Well, I have a few ideas....

These make super cute hair accessories! (Don't make fun of me for the pictures I attempted to take of myself!)

Even my new Coach purse looks cutsified with a little embellishment!

And this red pinwheel looks just charming on my finished Quiet Book.... here is your sneak peek!! The full reveal is coming on Monday!

Filed Under: accessories, repurposing, summer

Happy Little Watermelon

August 30, 2010 By Alison@Oopsey Daisy 8 Comments

Yikes!! Just after posting my Halloween advent calendar, I realized I still had a couple of last summer projects to post! Do you ever have a pokey little project that seems so simple but somehow takes forever to wrap up?? Admittedly, most of my projects turn out that way! So let's rewind just a bit... we still have 3 more weeks of summer. That's plenty of time to enjoy the season!

Let me introduce you to my newest creation: This sweet little wooden watermelon. August is National Watermelon Month, so I feel quite festive to finally have this hung on my porch! I had so much fun creating this!

I started out by spray painting the bare wood that I bought at the Wood Connection. If I haven't yet declared my love for this store, let me do it now!! I love that this store supplies all of the bare wood to let me go craft-crazy!!! (And watch out, because I think I bought out all of their fall wooden projects!)

Next, I cut out some watermelon seeds from the scrapbook paper. I mod-podged them onto the red piece. After those dried, I gave the entire top a good coat of mod-podge to protect it.

Next, I gorilla glued the two wood pieces together. It needed overnight to dry completely. My hubby drilled some holes in the top, and I added some wire to hang the melon and curled up the ends around a pencil. I thought the bow would be my finishing touch... but it just needed a little somethin' something.

So the cricut saved the day again with a bit of vinyl! Ah... that's better!

I thought about hanging this on my orange front door, but this little melon is brightening up my porch now instead!! I absolutely *LOVE* this bright touch to my summer projects!!

Have a super week!

Filed Under: craft, summer, vinyl, wood crafts