Summer Snapshots

Summer in Snapshot

Hey there!  This summer we have been keeping busy and blogging has taken a backseat to being outside and doing other fun activities with the kids so I think I'll be doing a few of these types of posts, sharing some snapshots from the past week!  As for activities, I've found so many fun ideas on Pinterest and the Play at Home Mom Blog.  All the bug/insect related craft activities were from LizzieJanes 20 Bug Craft Ideas and the rest can be found on my family activities board in pinterest including more we haven't done yet!  Things not pictured are many trips to various pools and splash pads, sprinkler fun, keeping J practicing her handwriting, riding bikes, laying around being lazy and watching cartoons, and eating lots of popscicles (in my mind I can hear my husband interject "you mean ICE POPS!" lol) - love the Breyers Real Fruit Popsicles in particular.  Watching fireworks, Nebraskans love fireworks!  We can hear a show going on almost every weekend and this week....every night there are tons going off.  Fireworks stands are not illegal here so every parking lot has a big tent and giant gorilla, dragon, t-rex, eagle, etc inflated next to it!  I can't even count how many are within 5 miles of our house.

 Bead Caterpillars

 Hatched Bird Egg we found in the yard

 Butterfly Fans 

 Hand Print Caterpillar Art

 Colored Ice Blocks from Play at Home Mom. This is a favorite and I have more in the freezer to do this again!

 Stitching Board idea from play at home mom but used stiff felt and a real needle, gave her an assortment of buttons, beads, etc and it's an ongoing project she like to do a little more each day.

 Summer Soccer....it's hot, kids don't know what's going on but she loves it

 Introduced the kids to painting with stencils

Play till you drop, worn out from the spray park all morning

Fathers Day Craft

Cute and Easy Fathers Day Craft

Shrinky Dink Neck Tie Key Chain 

Here is a super cute, simple and easy fathers day craft kids of any age can make for their dad...even babies can scribble on the paper.  I had never heard of shrinky dinks until earlier this week when my friend had the girls make some on a playdate and sent us home with the scraps to try making more.

Pick up some shrinky dink paper

 My friend found some at Hobby Lobby in the kids craft area in the back.

Preheat oven to 300 F

Draw a basic tie shape on the paper, or find a clipart drawing of a tie and print it out on the shrinky dink paper.

Have your child color in the tie with regular markers.  Younger ones can just scribble..older ones can try and make a pattern...

Carefully cut out around the edges once it is done being colored and punch a hole near the top.

The colored tie in the middle used to be the size of the outlined tie

Place the tie on a baking sheet lined with parchment or wax paper and put in oven

Set timer for 3 minutes (according to instructions but ours took longer)

watch it curl up and shrink, then it will slowly start to open back up.  Once it is looking pretty flat, take it out of the oven and press it flat with an oven mitt.  Let cool.

Attach neck tie keychain to key ring.  I had to use a safety pin to attach it because I made my hole too small for the key ring to go through.  You can do this too, or use string or something else thin if your hole comes out too small after it shrinks.  

Now daddy with have a cute fathers day craft from the kids that will always be with him!

And for more fathers day neck tie goodness...check out these free fathers day printables
http://amandaparkerandfamily.blogspot.com/2011/06/freebie-fathers-day-printables-are-tie.html

St. Patty's Day Fun

Getting Ready for St. Patty's Day!

We already made an awesome Leprechaun craft named Inifinite P which you can see HERE.  This week at our friends' house she had the girls make an adorable tissue paper rainbow craft and painted their toes sparkly green.  

If you haven't seen this common tissue paper rainbow craft before, you simple make a rainbow template or print one. Then cut tissue paper into small squares.  The girls centered the tissue paper on the end of a pencil, wrapping the excess down, dipped in glue and stick on the rainbow.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

Are you doing anything fun for St. Patrick's Day?

Lacey Heart Valentines Shirt

FYI-Head on over to Wanna Be Balanced Mom today to see my latest guest post featuring my new tutorial.  It's a super cute customizable character (make it  like your child) and rainbow magnet set to be used as a "chart" to get your kids eating healthy called Rainbow in My Tummy!

Doily Heart Valentines Day Shirt Craft

From Family Fun's February Issue

We have been really making use of our February issues of Family Fun Magazine! After making the Indoor Snowman...we made these Valentines Day shirt activity is something J was DYING to make when she saw it in the magazine.  I found the turtlenecks on clearance at Target for $1.78 and just cut the neckline as I did with her other clearance turtleneck shirt and made the turtleneck part into a headband (SEE HERE) We also tied a piece of tulle into a bow on the headband.  We did everything else the same, put a heart shaped doiley on top of the shirt and then the girls sponged on fabric paint.  After you remove the doiley, this is what it looks like....

You can find the instructions for this Adoily-able Shirt Here.

And we are making a bunch of valentines for our MOPS group that the kids can hand out to the residents at a retirement home so we used one of the valentines ideas from the February family fun too.  Instead of useing madlibs, We rolled up crossword puzzles, wrapped in a heart doiley and secured with a ribbon.

3-D paperbag snowflakes

3-D Paper Bag Snowflakes

Since there's been very little snow this winter might as well make some

I originally shared this tutorial as a guest post over at Dear Creatives and have been meaning to share it again in case you missed it! (click here to see the original post over at DC)

Spend a cold winter day with your kids making these beautiful 3-D snowflakes that are super easy.   These snowflakes have a very dramatic effect, especially if you make a collection and hang them together. My friend and I got the idea when we were at Whole Foods and they had big snowflakes like this made from various kinds of paper bags hanging from the ceiling in the front of the store.  You could use any kind of paper bags you have on hand, we used white lunch paper bags.  This is a great craft you can do with the little ones too, which is what we did. 

What You’ll Need

• 10 paper lunch bags (for 1 snowflake)

• scissors, edge punch, etc

• stapler

• ribbon or string

• hole punch

Cut the top edges of all the paper bags to make pretty snowflake edges.

Take two bags and line them up.  Open the tops and staple one side of the bag to one side of the other bag.

Repeat until you have five bags stapled together. Staple the five bags together at the bottom and then open it up creating a fan…half your snowflake.

Take the other five bags and repeat, attaching them all together and making another fan shape.

Take the two half snowflakes (fan shapes) and staple them together through the openings at the top of the bag.  Staple the tops of the bags together, but also the bottom edges as you can see in the picture above.

Use your hole punch and make punch a hole for stringing a ribbon or yarn through so you can hang your 3-D paper bag snowflake.

Adjust all the bags so all the creases are straight.

After putting it together I decided to go around all the edges with the hole punch to add more detail.

We had 4 year olds cut the edges of the snow flakes, but you could make more dramatic or designed edges changing the look of this paper bag snowflake, so it has more shape and is less of a giant circle when looking straight on.  These also look great when made with brown paper bags.  You could even get more creative and spray the finished snowflake with spray adhesive and sprinkled with glitter to give it some bling, glue on some jewels or sequins…or just enjoy as is.  My daughter wanted me to hang hers above her bed, she loves it.

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy making some of these fun 3-D paper bag snowflakes. 

PopEye the Stick Man

Meet PopEye the Stick Man

no relation to spinach sucking sailors

Today we had a BIG mess on the table of all our random arts and crafts supplies.  My 4 yo daughter and I decided to make a little puppet toy for her baby cousin when we found this red Popsicle stick and one big googly eye....hence the name....Popeye.....

J glued the eye on and then we were looking around out stash for some hair...hmmm..this blue octopus foam sticker turned upsidown looked fun and then all we needed was our pipe cleaners.  

He makes a really fun pet

Popeye loves the outdoors

He knows how to drive

He's popular with the ladies

 He's housetrained

 He's on top of the fresh breath thing

And he's very.....

studious....

He can teach your kids all about the number 8

Now he will make a very low maintence first pet for our baby belly dancing Rainbow Gotters.  J says her mommy and daddy will play peek-a-boo with him while Rainbow Gotters is in the crib and do puppet shows for her.

Who is Rainbow Gotters? (my newborn niece)  And yes she belly dances...

Glitter Spiderweb with Pom Spider

Glitter Yarn Spiderweb and Pom Spider

Halloween craft activity for kids

This was a super easy little Halloween project I did with my daughter.  She saw a sparkly spiderweb decoration at the craft store and wanted it but I wasn't trying to spend money on that so I told her we would make one when we got home.  We had some dark brown yarn so I cut the yarn into long strips and dipped it in glue and let her drop and arrange the sticky strands of yarn to create her spiderweb out in the garage on some cardboard.  When it was done but still wet, she sprinkled it with glitter.  It was her idea to have the long strand hanging down for a spider so I helped her make the spider, I made a pom out of the yarn (learned how to make those from the Mondo Pom Pillow Tutorial by Living with Punks) I meant to leave some longer strands of yarn for legs when trimming but oh well, kids think it's a good spider! :P  We had 3 goggly eyes so J put those on and we left one long strand and tied it to the spiderweb.  This was  a fun halloween activity for my kids, they had fun and J keeps asking to make more spiderwebs and spiders but we are out of glue!  Oh she also decorated it with her neon glitter glue sticks.

When the glitter spiderweb was totally dry the next morning, we just carefully peeled it up off the cardboard and hung it up on a tac.

Apple Print Stationary - Fall Crafts for Kids

Apple Print Stationary

Fall Crafts and Activities for Kids

Hey!  So I wasn't sure what to post today, but then I remembered this fun activity we did last week that we got out of Family Fun Magazine.  We made apple prints by cutting an apple in half, horizontally to get the circle shape with the star inside.  It was the perfect after school activity while dinner was being made since my daughter was learning all about the letter A and apples at preschool last week.  She thought this was really fun stamping the apple in the paint and then stamping the apple on the paper.  Once it was dry, we cut the paper to make smaller apple print note cards.  She wrote a letter to her grandparents in it.  Once she was done and her paint colors had mixed and turned really dark and muddy, she stuck her finger tip in the paint and made apple seeds.

Autumn Placemat - Crafts with Kids

Make a Autumn Placemat with Fall Leaves

Fun Easy Crafts with Kids

I love doing projects with my kids that involve various activities.  This was a fun and easy project that I did with my daughter last fall when she was 3.  First I let her use her trick or treating pumpkin and we went for a nature walk and collected fall leaves.  She collected A LOT!  When we got back, she had a nap.  When she woke up, we went through and picked out the leaves that weren't torn.  We cut a section of contact paper the size of a placemat with the sticky side up and we arranged the leaves on top.  Then we cut another sheet about the same size and pressed it on top, so the two sticky sides were against each other.  She pushed it down and I had her rub it to get out the bubbles.  This was her placemat for the fall!  A fun, easy, cheap, no stress activity that even little ones can do and enjoy!  And for those of you with Vinyl cutters, I bet you could make this even cuter adding some lettering or something on top over the middle!  Maybe someday....sigh....:P

Coffee Filter Flowers

Here is our most recent arts and crafts project, we made coffee filter flowers.  We went for a walk last weekend and saw some tulip buds shooting up and one tulip that had opened and we started talking about spring and how everything becomes new again.  After that nature walk observing the beginnings of spring and talking about flowers, we had a rainy day and talked about how God sends the rain to make things grow and we decided to make some flowers to enjoy in the mean time.

How to Make Coffee Filter Flowers

1. To make coffee filter flowers, have you child color on coffee filters with washable markers.

2. Fill up a spray bottle and set it on mist.  Let them spray the coffee filters and watch the marker colorings take on a watercolor effect as they bleed together.

3. Let the coffee filters dry completely.

4. You can make flowers as big or small as you want...making a flower with a single coffee filter or layering 2 or 3 together.  Pinch the center of the coffee filter and push the rest up. 

5. Wrap a pipe cleaner tightly around the pinched center part of the coffee filter.  Fluff up the flowers however you like and put them in a vase.