Seeking Imperfection

This week's Unplugged Project theme was rocks. As usual, I thought a long time about what to do for this project, looked online, found some different ideas but nothing I was really happy with, and then today I realized I'd been making it too hard. As usual.

For Easter my mother-in-law gave Paige a set of Disney Princess Flashcards.

They each have a number on one side, and the corresponding number of "jewel" outlines on the other side. When I saw them I thought it'd be fun to find some fake jewels, and have her match - putting one jewel on each of the jewel outlines. Suddenly I thought, why can't I use rocks? We have a fountain in the bathroom, and a bowl with river rocks and little candles in it. I grabbed a handful and showed her how to put them on the cards. She liked that for a little bit. She was actually more interested in just moving the rocks around. She kept saying they were "seashells from under the sea." She's a Little Mermaid fan, so anything that's from "under the sea" is pretty cool. She started referring to the handful of rocks as her "collection." Later I stuck them in the box of rice and macaroni that she hasn't played with for awhile, and showed her how to scoop them in and out. She liked that.

I looked online for a recipe for "rocks" and found a few different varieties of cookies. My friend Michelle then went and found her own version after seeing that the one I picked out had coconut in them, which she doesn't like. So she actually joined us this week - we went to the grocery store while Paige was napping, and then the girls all donned aprons and made cookies this afternoon. The name of the cookies are "Space Rocks." I told Paige we were making Space Rock cookies and she changed the name to "Rockstar Cookies." Lately it has all been about being a rockstar!

The cookie recipe called for a "German chocolate cake mix with pudding added." We couldn't find that at the store, so we ended up just using a "moist" chocolate cake mix. As a result, our cookies were really dry. I think the recipe might be ok if we could find something to add to make them more moist. Paige took a small bite of her cookie and didn't like it - although she's not much into cookies anyway.

Michelle knows I'm a perfectionist, and told me, "the important part is that she had fun cooking with us, not that the cookies were perfect." I am fairly proud of myself because I wasn't even that upset that the cookies didn't turn out perfect - I didn't even need her reminder this time. That's progress for me!