30 Days of Christmas – Project 22

I did quite a bit of sewing for gifting this year.  I found this and this adorable puppet theater on Pintrest. 

I am all about imaginative play and knew my kids needed one.  It was so easy for me to put together I actually made a second for my nephew.

I used a combination of new and on hand fabrics and trims.  I then picked up a couple of tension rods.

Now all we need are some puppets…  though my kids are pretty entertaining without them.

30 Days of Christmas – Day 20

(My laptop charger AND battery died simultaneously forcing me to play catch up for much of this series.)

There are lots of great ideas online for classmate gifts.  Last year, we brought reindeer food, cookies and hot cocoa mix.  This year, I wanted to do something different.

I found this cute idea on Pintrest but definitely needed to tweak it.  I can’t very well send in glass jars to a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds – and I kind of hog my glass jars because we do so much food preserving.

After some thought and a little research, I decided to go to my local deli and ask to buy some clear soup containers.  I found a printable label here to dress up the containers a little.  The kids and I then got to work making the play dough, which was a super fun project in itself.

 

The dough was really easy to throw together.

The peppermint smell is perfectly potent.

30 Days of Christmas – Day 8

(My laptop charger AND battery died.  I’ll be playing a little catch up over the next few days now I’m back up and running.)

Remember our Jack O’Lantern fridge?

Today, we turned our fridge into a snowman.

Monkey loves practicing her scissor work, so I drew the pieces out on the back sides of the papers and let her have at it.  Little Man helped me place the pieces on the fridge with some plain scotch tape on the back to hold in place.

Easy.

Cute.

His mouth has since been straightened out.  ;-)

Jack o Lantern Fun

I snatched this idea from a friend on Pintrest earlier this week.

Source

But Jodi, that is a snowman and it’s fall.

Yes yes.  I know.

How about a jack o lantern instead?

Monkey wanted to make a happy pumpkin.  I used white chalk to outline our facial features and Monkey cut most of it out.  I just used rolled scotch tape on the backs and let the kids put them where they wanted.

Easy peasy fun.

It’s a box!

No, it’s a car!

What you need:

• 1 cardboard box
• 1 toilet paper tube
• 3 paper plates
• Glue (glue gun, craft glue – whatever you have)

1. Cut 2 plates in half. 
2. Attach to box with the flat part of your cut towards the floor to make wheels.
3. Attach tube to flap inside box (on a short end of the box).
4. Attach last plate to the tube to make your steering wheel.
5. Let the kids have at it with paints, markers, crayons – whatever you feel like (or don’t feel like) cleaning up after – to decorate.

It took longer waiting for the glue gun to warm up than it did to assemble.  This will lead to a pretty full rainy day of fun.  I’m pulling out some stickers when the marker fun wears off.  ;-)

Voila!  Look how crafty I was before 8 AM.

There’s been a lot going on here in the past month.  I have so many projects to share!  I’ll probably be able to while the kids are busy with the box car.  hehe

The Very Full Day

My nephew Scooby is visiting us today.

I’ve been trying to find new activities to do with the kids while he’s here.

We started the day by making S’Mores Pudding Pops.  MUCH better than the juice popsicles Scooby thought we were going to make.  (Verdict – they were super tasty but the pudding pop portion was WAY tastier than the marshmallow portion, in my opinion.)

After a quick lunch, we went to the park.  The kids played on the slides and swings, kicked around the soccer ball we brought with us and then had fun throwing rocks in the water.

Next in my bag of tricks was making liquid sidewalk chalk.  This one is a HUGE hit.  (They’re playing with it as I write this.)  It was just as fun to make it and mix up the colors as it is for drawing in the driveway.

Scooby wants to know if we can make something else.  My bag of tricks is currently empty.  I’m off to hunt for something else before the chalk is all gone!

Tissue Paper PomPoms

Monkey’s birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks.  She’d like a flower party.  I started working on our DIY party decorations this morning.

Martha Stewart has these awesome tissue paper pompom flowers I’ve been seeing pop up all over Blogland.  They’re adorable and girly – perfect for a flower party.

We gathered our supplies,

folded our tissue,

and tied a length of wire around the center.

I then trimmed the edges (Good Lord I need a manicure – and Monkey needs her nails trimmed!),

and carefully started spreading the tissue out (Monkey photography).

Hmm.  Not nearly as pretty as the ones I’ve seen in Blogland.  This looks like a big bow.

My second attempt wasn’t much better.

For my third attempt, I cut three sheets of paper into quarters.  I then did the same as above, in a smaller version.  (She loves both equally)

Much better, yes?

The trick?  Don’t be cheap and use more stacks.  (My first was only five sheets, my third and smaller version had twelve sheets).

Now I know the trick, I’ll be heading back to the store for a bit more colored tissue paper.

Monkey’s First Sleepover

My little girl is having her very first sleepover at my parents tonight. 

Sleepover as in just going to spend the night and not because Mommy & Daddy needed a sitter.

Little Man cried and cried as his big sister left (and for about 40 minutes afterwards).

He soon got over it.  When we called to say good night we found out Monkey is getting ready for the royal wedding.

Yep.  She’s going to get up bright and early with Grammy to watch.

What’s a royal wedding without a crown?

 

Queen for a day!

Egg Carton Crafts

My kids have cabin fever.  Actually, I do too.  So I set off on a virtual hunt for an idea on what we could craft now that my craft stuff has finally made it out of it’s boxes.  (YAY!)

I found these great egg carton caterpillars, and having no shortage of empty egg cartons in our possession, I thought this would be a great activity.

It required quite a bit of help from me, but they loved it.  Then I started chopping an egg carton apart and let Monkey have at it with paint.  Some pipe cleaner stems and we got some adorable roses to add a touch of spring to the playroom.

Having not had enough messy play, Monkey wanted to make pictures while Little Man had his nap.  I also have a large collection of mulberry scraps for scrapbooking (because I do so much scrapbooking nowadays – note the dripping sarcasm). 

I think I’m framing them for the playroom.

I really channeled my inner Picasso – except with paper and glue.

 

What messy fun have you been having with your kids? 

I’m currently hunting for more ideas along the lines of the egg cartons.  I have a few to pull out for next week…  and Monkey wants roses for her bedroom too.

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown

With our upcoming move looming over my head, I decided not to get a Christmas tree this year.  I even went so far as to pack up all of my ornaments and most of our Christmas decorations.  They have all since made their way (along with numerous other loads of boxes) into my parents shed for storage.

Thanksgiving came and went.  The holiday spirit started to nibble it’s way in to my soul.  BAH.  How can I not have  a Christmas tree for my kids?

What did I do?  I went into the woods behind my house (on my land, k?) and dug up a 4 foot Charlie Brown tree.  I didn’t even cut the thing.  I dug it up.

 

I even had to buy a string of lights because those are all in storage, too.  (I like to buy the strands that are green with white lights but wasn’t paying attention and picked up white.  Oops).

Ok.  We have a tree.  We have lights.  Now what? 

A trip to JoAnn’s was in order.  We found some great papers for a paper chain garland.

The only casualty during the construction of the chain was a slice of my thumb when Little Man tried to help with the paper cutter.  Better mine than his. 

Well, that’s a little better.  I should have bought more paper and made a longer chain.  Oops again.

A trip to Target got us a few $1 ornaments to add.  During the packing of some boxes last night, I found the ornaments we picked up at Santa’s Village this summer.  This week, we’ll have a crafting session to make some salt dough ornaments (especially the hand print ornaments!).

Will it be the prettiest tree we’ve ever had?  Not a chance.  But it will have been decorated 100% with love.

Now what do I do about a topper?

Sweet Treats – PBJ Crunchers

I found this recipe for PBJ Crunchers some time back.  I forgot to write down where I found it, but it’s online!

These are a great one to let the kids mix up with their hands and get MESSY.  They are very very very easy. 

I didn’t have any grape jelly so I used some of our homemade strawberry jam.  While they admittedly look like little balls of turd, they taste just like my morning toast. 

Monkey tested.  Monkey approved.

Enjoy!

Children’s Creative Corner – Breakfast Edition

Monkey decided she wanted green pancakes for breakfast.  I feel a color lesson coming on!

I mixed up the batter (sorry – boxed mix because T keeps buying the huge boxes at Sam’s Club – I think I’m finally on the last one and can start making my own!!) and then grabbed some food coloring.  What do yellow and blue make?

That’s right.  Green.

Monkey then decided she wanted white yogurt and red strawberries with her green pancakes.  Maybe we should have had these on Christmas morning?  HA.

She also noticed the red strawberry juice turning her white yogurt pink.

Not our traditional kind of crafting, but it sure was tasty.

Children's Creative Corner

This craft has created a few craft sessions for us. Unfortunately, my camera died half way through each and every session (we were planning on replacing it when we ended up having to replace the computer), but I did get a few pictures.

We gathered our supplies for Salt Dough Ornaments.

You may remember we made salt dough ghosts for Halloween. I thought it would be lots of fun to make ornaments for our tree. Nicole over at Breaking Even, Inc. had the same idea. Instead of cooking them in the microwave, I baked them like she did. Ours were thicker so they ended up baking for about an hour.

T's cousin E had the great idea of making hand and foot prints for her newborn. I decided to try it with the kids. We used a circular cookie cutter. They turned out fantastic! I believe we've begun a new tradition. We even made more at my parent's house last week with Scooby - a set for each set of grandparents.

The second part of this particular craft is to decorate the ornaments! (You can see Monkey's handy work in the above picture. She wanted to be sure to include it with the hand prints for all of you to see.) I think I'll be painting the hand prints themselves black and then a contrasting color on the rest of the ornament.

It was fun and easy!

Enjoy your kiddos!

Children's Creative Corner

I wanted to add some spooky decorations to our Halloween collection. After some contemplation as to what kind of project to attack with a 2 year old, I decided against papier mache and opted for another dough project.

After a little searching, I found this site to make Salt Dough Ghosts.

We gathered our supplies.

And mixed it all together.

Monkey says "Don't taste the dough. Yuck!"

After a little effort, I found it impossible to get the ghosts to look like the ones included with the instructions. I ended up laying them flat on the plate for their time in the microwave.

Here they are in their new home. I made the candles last year - and the hands are from our glitter project last week.

The 2 "ghosts" on the right aren't very ghost-like. I'm going to pull out the acrylics and turn them into tomb stones on small grass knolls.

I can see us using this recipe for other projects in the future. Christmas tree ornaments are currently floating around in my brain. We can either color the dough with food coloring or paint it afterwards...

Also, I said I'd let you know when our play dough needed to be tossed. It's been 2 weeks. It is still wrapped in plastic wrap. And it is still soft and doughy, even with a lot of use.

Have fun!

Children's Creative Corner

We've had more than one crafting session this week, all inspired by this Martha Stewart project.

First we needed to make some glitter. Every recipe I found online was pretty much the same.

You'll need:

Mix together 1/2 cup salt with food coloring to get the color of your choice.

Spread evenly on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 350 (yes, I need to clean my oven. It could be - has been - worse).

Store in an airtight container (I'm using small jelly jars).

We ran out of time that afternoon to do much else because we had company coming (I'll explain later with "The Power of the Internet").

The next day, we pulled our glitter and plastic skulls and bones out only to discover a lack of glue in our house. Somehow, I didn't think using my hot glue gun would be safe with a 2 year old. I'm sure Monkey's fingers thank me for that. Off to an Internet search and I came up with this website, with different homemade glues and pastes. I opted for the No-Cook Paste but made it a little too soupy.

The soupy paste worked well enough. I do need to touch up a few spots, but I need to let it dry completely first (and the homemade stuff takes longer to dry).

Being as impatient as I am, I had to put them on display immediately (it also helped keep it out of Monkey's reach until they're dry, though!). Notice the $3 cake platter from our yard sale fun last spring. It got a paint job and now works great for displays.

Have a great day. And most importantly - have fun!

Children's Creative Corner

I mentioned Monday I wanted to start having a weekly craft afternoon with Monkey (and Little Man when he's old enough, obviously!).

We started yesterday with an old recipe for play dough. I copied this from my mom's recipe box. She's had it since I was a kid, so I have no idea where it originated from.

I'd like to mention, I think she had more fun actually making it than playing with it afterwards.

You will need:

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

2 cups water

4 tsp cream of tarter

2 tbs oil

1 tbs alum

Mix together.

Stir until no lumps.

Cook 3 minutes (I had it on medium heat), always stirring.

Pour onto wax paper.

Monkey deleted the picture I had. I was certain I had messed it up because it was still pretty juicy. It ended up sitting for about 15 minutes because Little Man needed to eat.

I sprinkled a bit of flour on it before kneading and this is what I got.

Then I added food coloring. This is what happens when you aren't careful about mixing it in well and touching the coloring with your bare hands. Oops!

This is what we ended up with.

She enjoyed making blue pizza (even tossing the dough like me!). And loved the Mickey Mouse heads. I currently have another sitting on my kitchen table!

Wrap your dough tightly in plastic wrap and it will last a while (I'll try to remember to tell you how long when I'm forced to toss it. haha).

Most importantly - HAVE FUN!