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!

summer fun printable

Update: I recently posted an updated version of this list. It's much more printer friendly, and doesn't have the year on it. Check it out here.

This project was totally inspired by all of the summer bucket lists that I've seen floating around on pinterest. Now, I need to take a minute to once again declare my love on pinterest. Are you on there yet? I l.o.v.e. it. (If you need an invite to join leave me a comment with your email address and I'll send you an invite.) You can see my pins here.

I love the idea of having a list of things to do with the kids this summer. Last summer I had wanted to do some of these things with the kids, but somehow the summer passed and we didn't get a chance to do half of them!
I've seen lots of these lists, but I think that a lot of them are geared for older kids. Mine is definitely geared towards toddlers, which is good since I have a 3 year old and a one year old! Some of the ideas I saw on pinterest- like the make your own car wash, tin foil river and giant bubbles. I made my own list and then rounded it out with some other ideas I've seen floating around. I especially liked this list form The Crafting Chicks.

I had my summer fun list printed at Costco, since I was ordering a few other enlargements anyway. It's an 8x10 and was just $1.89 (mine has a matte finish). Then I cut a piece of foam board to mount my picture on. I put some tape around the edges of the board so that it looked a little tidier. Foam boards not so easy to cut, so my edges were a wee bit jagged! You could use ribbon too.  Then I just covered the front of the foam board with a light coat of Mod Podge and stuck my list on top of it.

Looks like we're going to have a busy summer! If you'd like to download this list click here. (For personal use only please.) Let me know if you use it, I'd love to see how you display it.

 

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

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

red bird. blue bird

Oh dear- time got away from me last week. I meant to post this last week, but better late than never, I guess. This project was actually inspired by this craft, which uses potatoes to stamp the birds. Now, we actually tried making that craft but, we used small fingerling potatoes and I forgot to cut the potatoes in half. SO the birds ended up being huge, and the whole craft was a huge fail. Well- not entirely I guess, because it did spawn these adorable little note cards.

One of my favorite parts of this craft was the use of the corrugated cardboard. I cut a small bit of cardboard and then had Claire dip it in brown paint and stamp it on the card to create the tree for the birds. Then I just poured some red and blue paint so that Claire & Simon could stamp the cards with their thumbs.

Then when the paint was dry I added the googly eyes (of course!) and I added a few leaves for visual interest. The cards looked cute without the leave too, but I liked the punch that the green added. And there you have it, an all occasion note card.

Linking up with: Skip to my Lou & ABC and 123 Learning & Tatertots and Jello

handprint flamingos & ostriches

Carrying on with our bird themed crafts this week, we made some handprint flamingos and ostriches.

 Unlike the peacock, these ones were very easy to do. And really the only difference between the two birds are the colours of the handprints.
 

 Just have your child stamp their hand on the paper, and then depending on the child's age, they may be able to help put the finishing touches on the birds. Now, I cut the legs out of paper, but you could just as easily draw some legs on the bird. Then just cut a small beak and add a googly eye and you're done! So simple.

I added a small piece of ric rac to the neck of the ostrich for the feathers. And there you have it- another quick and easy keepsake craft.

Linking up with: ABC and 123 Learning & Tatertots and Jello