back to school countdown

Day 5! I made it. Five posts in one week! This craft came together in just 10 minutes, and it's one of Claire's favorites. I'm trying to prepare Claire for school as best as I can, obviously. One thing I wanted to make clear to her was exactly when she'll be starting school. September is fairly arbitrary to her, but this chain helps her realize exactly when she'll be sitting in the classroom. (With Mommy standing outside crying.)

I used my cricut to cut out the bus. I used my cricut because if I had drawn the bus myself and cut it out, you might have thought Claire had drawn it. If you don't have a cutting machine, you could print out a picture of a bus. Or you could cut an apple out of paper. Lots of possibilities. I used red and yellow construction paper cut into 1 inch (ish) stripes of paper to make the chain. Claire liked helping with this part. It's a great opportunity to teach your kids about patterns. That's it. Every day she rips off a piece of the chain, and she's one day closer to going to school. 

Linking up with: Six Sister's Stuff &  Skip to my Lou & Weekly Kids Co-op & Flamingo Toes & Tatertots and Jello 

Halloween thumbprint art

What's great about thumbprint art is that it is so quick and easy to do. Also, there's very little mess involved, which isn't really true for all of the other painting crafts that we do! I did so this project in stages- since my daughter has given up naps, time isn't as affluent as it once was. Man I miss those naps.

I started by first cutting out the scalloped circles and the happy Halloween letters, using my cricut. Then, after the kids were done eating supper one night, we painted all of the thumbprints on the tags. Once the tags were dry, Claire and I added on all of the details on the tags. 

Then all I had to do was put it all together. I picked up the frame at a second hand shop and painted it white. The cork board is from the dollar store. I cut it to size, and taped it to the back of the frame. (Claire's not napping anymore- I didn't have time to put it in properly.) Next, I glued on my happy Halloween letters and added a piece of patterned paper to break up the picture a bit. I just stuck the pins on the cork slipped the circles over them. 

Want to see some close ups of the pictures?

The pumpkins. As Claire is getting older she's wanting to help me add all of the finishing touches to the pictures. She drew the stems.

The ghosts. We just added googly eyes once they were dry. 

 The spiders. I did encourage Clarie to draw 8 legs on each spider, perhaps even 4 on each side of the spider- BUT Claire beats to the sound of her own drum apparently.

 The bat. I cut off the wings from one of the bats that I had cut out from my Halloween bouquet. Draw on ears and a smile (my kids are still small, so we make friendly bats and witches!) Add some googly eyes and you're done!

What sort of projects are you making for Halloween? Link them up in the comments so I can see them!

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Linking up with: Skip to my Lou & Tip Junkie & Sun Scholars  &  Tatertots and Jello

lions, lions everywhere

I thought of this handprint lion face as I was going to bed one night (because that's when everyone thinks of new crafts to make. Right?) It didn't turn out quite how I had envisioned it, but I still think it's cute. Sure it looks more like a friendly kitty with a big mane than a fierce lion, it was still fun to make. I just helped Claire paint her hand orange and we stamped it on the paper. We did all the orange handprints first, and then did the yellow ones. We glued on some googly eyes, and a nose, and then just drew on the mouth and whiskers.

This next lion we actually made way back in March. I was reading one of my most favorite blogs ever, Meet the Dubiens, and I saw her post where they made a handprint sheep and lion. I think that I sat down with the kids and made ours on the same day I read the post. Click on the link above for the instructions on how to make them. (If aren't already a fan on Jill's blog check it out. She is so crafty, and seriously makes some of the cutest lunches for her kids that I've ever seen!)

 After we were done making the handprint lions, I was felt a creative urge to make the lion into a gift tag. I cut out a few scalloped circles on my cricut and Claire and I made some lion tags. Claire just stamped her thumb on the tags, and then when they were dry we added the face details. For the mane I just went through my scrap paper and found shades of yellow and orange to use. I ran them though my Xyron and the Claire stuck them on the face.

My favorite way to use these gift tags up, is to attach them to gifts when Claire has a birthday party to go to. And because we always make a few of the same handprint crafts (you never know which one will turn out the best) I have been known to make a few of the handprint crafts into birthday cards for Claire to decorate for her friends. I mean, how many handprint sheeps/lions do we really need to keep??

Linking up with: Skip to my Lou & Sun Scholars & Tatertots and Jello 

picnic food book

After using corrugated cardboard to make the trees on our red bird, blue bird cards I started thinking of what other household things you could use to make stamps with. Turns out there are quite a few things...

The cover of or picnic book was easy to make. I just cut a piece of checkered paper (like a picnic blanket) and Claire used her thumb to make some ants. Draw on some legs and antennas, add some googly eyes and you're well on your way to making your picnic book.

Cut a potoato in half and chop off one of the ends to make these prints. Claire painted the bottom of the potato pink and stamped the cards. Using the end of a lollipop stick she made the watermelon seeds. I added on the green line so that we didn't end up with a giant scribble of green paint all over the watermelons! (Inspired by the watermelon wrapping paper seen here.)

I think that the grapes were my favorite one. As you can see below I drew a triangle on the card so that Claire could stamp anywhere within the triangle, which she did, more or less :)

 This one was pretty straightforward, we just used an apple to stamp- the apple!

Claire and Simon each made a strawberry page. If I may say, please don't worry about perfection. (Normally I like things just so when I'm crafting, but I'm learning to go with the flow- at least when it come to crafting with Claire.) As you can see her hand wasn't painted well enough so there was a gap between her thumb and the rest of her hand. No big deal, we just made two berries out of it.

Corn on the cob. Claire just painted a piece of bubble wrap to make the corn. Then we popped outside and picked a few leaves off of some shrubs so that we could paint the husks for the corn.

The hotdogs and hamburgers were made the same way (just used different colors.) A piece of corrugated cardboard for the bun, and a mini carrot cut in half lengthwise for the hotdog/hamburger. Then you can just paint on any extra condiments that you'd like.

Claire and Simon both used their thumbprints to make the ice cream cones. We just used another small bit of cardboard to make the cones.

Claire really liked making this book- but it wasn't done in just a day (or two). I spread it out over a week and a bit because Claire has the attention span of a 3 year (which is fitting since she is 3!) I used my cricut to cut out the shapes, but really square or rectangle pages would have been easier. If you make one of these link it up, I'd love to see it. (Or, if you have ideas for new pages that we can add to ours let me know in the comments.)

Linking up with: Skip to my Lou &Tip Junkie & Sun Scholars & Tatertots and Jello

summer picnic book preview

Just wanted to give you guys a quick preview of the picnic food books that we've been working on. We made a book of picnic foods using things that we found around our house and stamped them on the pages. Tomorrow I'll share all our secrets and what we used to make each page!

ABC print

So, ages ago you may remember me posting about this number print that I made for Claire's room. You can read all about that here. As soon as I finished the number print (see pic below) I knew that I wanted to make an alphabet one to match it. So I went through my paper stash and picked out 26 pretty colors.

 I cut a snippet of each color so that I could have the paper arranged in the order that I wanted it in. Then I used my cricut, and 3 different cartridges, to cut out all of the letters. I played with the layout of the extra shapes on the print and in the end, I decided that less was more. I had quite a few shapes on the number print, but when I tried to add loads of shapes to the ABC print it just made it way too busy. So I picked out a few that didn't take away from the letters.

There you have it a piece of art for your little ones room. Customize the colors as you desire! I'd like to make one for Simon's room using blues and oranges. Have you made any art for your kids rooms? Leave me a link in the comments, I'd love to see it.

Linking up with: Sun Scholars & Tatertots and Jello &Skip to my Lou & Delicate Construction

My Baby Turns 1!

A year old already?! I can't believe it. We hosted Simon's first birthday party at my Mom's house this past weekend. It was a small party, I just invited 3 of my friends, but with all of the kids we had 9 kids under the age of 5. That's a lot of kids :)

The theme for Simon's party was under the sea. Not everything turned out quite how I imagined- but Simon and his guests had a great time anyway! I used my cricut to cut out the banner and sea shapes. Luckily for me I have a friend who has every cricut cartridge that you could ever need, so I was able to borrow this sea themed one from her.

Inspired by the fish bowl gelatin that Martha made, I wanted to try to make it for Simon's party. However, I thought that it would be easier to just use blue jello. Um no- there's a reason Martha didn't suggest just using blue jello- you can hardly see the fish.

The cake wasn't quite what I had envisioned either. It was cute- but as it turns out I'm not so much a cake decorator, which lead to a few problems when I was trying to finish off the cake.

 I made each layer a different shade of blue/green for the under the sea theme.

I used this recipe to make my own goldfish starfish cheese crackers.

 We also made some fruit kabobs with some kiwi starfish. (As my sister was cutting out the stars from the kiwis she said "Uh Lila, you can add kiwi to the list of foods that cookie cutters aren't meant to cut.") But they looked great!

 I made apple carrot muffins which the kids loved- Simon especially.

When I saw these ruffled streamers on pinterest I knew that I wanted to make them for Simon's party. In fact, I'm already trying to think of more events that I can make ruffled streamers for.

 Claire loves twirling in her party skirt.

 Simon enjoying a piece of birthday cake- his first treat. (He did enjoy it, he was just a bit tired by the end of the party.)

 Linking up with:Tatertots and Jello  & Sun Scholars &&Skip to my Lou & Delicate Construction

happy spring

I am so ready for it to be spring here. We've had a few nice days, which give me some hope that spring's here, and then I hear the weather forecast. Snow tonight. Seriously? It's April. I just want the weather to warm up, the grass to become green, and the trees to bloom again. I want to go outside in t-shirts, draw hopscotches, and see the tulips grow. I don't think I'm asking too much of mother nature.

I'm bringing spring inside with this wooden sign that I made. I (as I've said before) love these pastel colours, they're so refreshing. If you're interested in the tutorial on how to make this sign, please look at this post.

 If this doesn't will spring to come, I'm going to need some other suggestions...

Linking up with:Tatertots and Jello & Sew Much Ado & Laugh Love and Craft & Somewhat Simple & WhipperBerry

chicks and bunnies

 

Some of my favorite crafts to make are ones that I don't have to make a trip to the craft store for. Granted I had picked up these pails a while ago at Michaels (for just $0.75) and I knew that I could use them for something!

 I kind of cheated, and I used my cricut to cut out the bunnies. I think that they look pretty cute though.

 But the chicks- the chicks were inspired by Bakerella's Spring Chicken cake pops. I just love how they turned out. And they were so simple to make. I cut out a circle (about 1 1/2 inches). I added googly eyes, and cut a small triangle from a scrap piece of cardstock for the nose. I had these flower sequins that I bought ages ago that I used for the feet, although any sequins would look cute. The comb on the head was actually a vellum flower that I also had in my stash. Obviously you could just cut this out of cardstock.

There you have it. The perfect little decorations for Easter. I put sheet of tissue paper in the bottom of the pail so that the skewers would stand up. Yes, I know floral foam would have worked just as well- but I was all about not having to go to the store for this craft!

Stay tuned for more Easter craft ideas with the chicks and the bunnies later this week.

Linking up with : Sew Much Ado & Somewhat Simple & Sun Scholars & Tatertots and Jello & ABC and 123 Learning & Skip to my Lou