Halloween Banner Tutorial

 

No Sew Halloween Banner Tutorial

supplies

1 sheet stick back black felt

1/2 yard white fabric (I used flannel)

1 inch wide black ribbon

1/8 inch wide orange ribbon

scissors

glue gun

Cutting board & Rotary Cutter (optional-makes it easier!)

1.  Trace or free hand the letters to spell out HAPPY HALLOWEEN on the back of your sticky black felt BACKWARDS.

Don't make the same mistake I did and end up with backwards letters (see how the P's turned out?!).  I realized I needed to reverse the rest of my letters in time to fix the rest, I just cut them opposite than what I had originally drawn.  I could have gone back to the store and got more felt to fix the P's...but I'm notorious for making mistakes like that so I figured I'd just leave it that way...it's almost a tradition, I always mess up something simple!

Since you need to cut the letters in reverse so they are facing the right way when you stick them on the Halloween banner, it might be easier to draw a template or print a template, cut out the letters, then place them on the back of the felt BACKWARDS and trace them so it looks like the above picture.  My letters are just about 3 inches tall.

2.  Cut Letters out and set them aside.

3.  Cut out 16 Triangles.   

I made my triangles 5 inches wide across the top and 7 inches long.    

As you can see in the pics below, I stacked up my fabric 4 layers thick while cutting to speed up the process, that's where the rotary cutter and board come in handy, but you can always cut these out with scissors.

Peel off paper backing on felt letters and apply them to the triangles.  

I cut out shapes for the jack-o-lantern faces from some of the scraps.

Cut the orange ribbon into thirty 9 inch long strips.

Using a glue gun, start gluing the triangles to the black ribbon starting with the end 

(so you start with a pumpkin face, then N-E-E-W-O-L-L-A-H-Y-P-P-A-H-and then last pumpkin face.)  Also be sure to leave 10-20 inches of ribbon on each end for hanging)  Glue two strands of orange ribbon between each triangle.

Hang up your Halloween Banner!

Read for the Record

 

Yesterday was Read for the Record day and we happened to already have a copy of The Snowy Day, so we pulled it out and helped set the record of most people to read the same book on the same day.  Read for the Record is a campaign put on by Jumpstart to help raise awareness of the early literary crisis and raise funds for Jumpstart's yearlong early education program.  If you participated in Read for the Record, make sure to make it official by visiting the Jumpstart website and registering to be counted.

The Perfect First Food

Well, the little guy is 6 months now! Can you believe it?  The time has gone by so fast!  And the day this little guy has been waiting for finally came....his first solid foods!  Our pediatrician told us that Avocado's are the perfect first food for baby, so that is what he got...his first food (not counting the sugar crumb topping from banana bread my daughter snuck him..oh and the piece of chocolate chip muffin when he was like 4 months).

 Big sister was so excited to feed him!

 He was excited to eat...but not liking his sister doing it so much....

 We're introducing foods opposite the way we did with our first.  Our ped says avocado first, then all the green veggies, then the orange veggies and so on...then cereal is last!

Cheap Easy Halloween Crafts

Check out these easy Halloween crafts!

I'll admit it, I want to be festive and decorate for Halloween, but I hate spending a bunch of money on stuff that will be in storage most of the year (and storage space is a precious commodity for us apartment dwellers!) so my husband and I have been reminiscing our elementary school years, making decorations with paper, scissors and glue/tape....mostly.  It's been fun making a few things with what we have lying and that our daughter can enjoy.  It's been a family project...well, ongoing because we plan on making more stuff throughout the month.

My 3 year old and I whipped up this easy hanging ghost decoration.  We used a wire shirt hanger, plastic bags, white garbage bags, elastic band and string...and a sharpie.

Another ghost, this one is small made with some waxy tissue paper and plastic bags in the head.

We used this How to make paper spider web video and found a spider picture and free handed it onto our black paper to cut out.  For any silhouettes just Google image search and try drawing it or print it out and trace it to make some easy halloween crafts.

create a halloween lantern with paper sillouettes and a lamp shade!

Started this scene on the wall, hope to ad to it! We are currently out of black construction paper now!

Fun Easy Halloween Crafts!

Don't forget to link up all  your fall crafts and decor projects HERE!

Fall Decor Tutorial Linky

 

I don't know about you all, but it's taken me a while to warm up to the idea of fall...although now I am enjoying the cooler sunny days with a light refreshing breeze.  Now all of a sudden I've got the itch to do some fall decorating but I am running a blank for making up any of my own ideas.  I've been perusing the blogosphere for some inspiration and here are a few fun fall decor tutorials I've come across that have gotten the creative juices flowin'.  What about you?  Have you been busy making any fall decorations or fall crafts?  If so, please share and link up your awesome fall decor tutorials and show off your projects here! You don't have to make something yourself either, if you are proud of your decorating skills and want to show off your fall arrangements, bring it on!

I really want to make some of these fall topiary trees!!!

 DIY Fall Topiaries by Decor Chic

And loved the versatility of this project

Every Season Banner Wreath Tutorial 

And this which I see everywhere, I like the lighted ones, which you could easily add a strand of lights to

Grapevine Pumpkin Tutorial By Make it and Love it

Here is a wreath I made up real quick because I had NO fall decor...Now link up your awesome fall decor projects below!!!  I need more inspiration! ;)

<a href="http://candacecreations.blogspot.com/2010/09/fall-decor-tutorial-linky.html" target="_blank"><img alt="Candace Creations" src="http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r240/blondbomb1984/FallLinkyParty.jpg" /></a>

When our 3 year old Stopped Using the Potty

I haven't been as active a blogger recently,and not just due being busy with the little ones, trying to work in our preschool lessons at home and keep the now crawling baby from getting into everything that he's not supposed to....our 3 year old stopped using the potty.  To put an end to the potty resistance, it's been very time consuming and exhausting...but WORKING!  My approach to potty training was always, "she'll do it when she's ready" and I was never overly concerned with forcing her to be completely potty trained by any specific age...hopefully before kindergarten! But I just assumed that if I just waited and let her do it when she was ready, then everything would go perfectly smooth with no set backs.  Until my 3 year old started holding it in all day to avoid using the potty.  Before the potty avoidance, she would disappear and go potty all by herself, on the toilet, with no fuss, commotion or anything...and I'd panic and run into my room to see if she was trying to wake up the baby only to come out and find her walking out of the bathroom.  She was however, different when it came to going poop in the potty.  She would always hold it in and wait till she had a diaper on at nap time or bed time and then go.  She was always very private about it and would lock her door when she was going number 2.  It wasn't a big deal to me though....until she started holding in her urine as well.  She would hold her urine all day until bedtime when she got a diaper on and then would pause the second she got it on and immediately go.  Now it was time for intervention...holding the poop in was making her constipated all the time and now holding in urine, that could cause infections and enough was enough.  We basically had to RE-TRAIN her to use the potty, even pulling out the training potty she used to use.  It was hard, but the only way we could do it was to quit diapers cold-turkey.  I remembered how parents use the "binky fairy" to get rid of pacifiers, so I decided to hire the "diaper fairy".  We told her that the Diaper fairy was coming and was going to take all her diapers away and give them to babies who don't know how to listen to their bodies like she does, and that the diaper fairy would leave her a big kid surprise in exchange.  So one night we rounded up all her diapers and pull-ups...she put them in a basket and by the front door.  Then the diaper fairy came!

The Diaper Fairy Came!

 

 Our 3 year old was excited to find her basket of 'big kid" stuff from the diaper fairy!  A colorful preschool workbook, more underwear (we were going to need it!!!) nail polishes and a night light for her bathroom.

The first couple of nights, she wet the bed 4-5 times.  

The first day with no diapers, I had given her a lot of fluids so she couldn't hold her urine all day, and we had been giving her miralax (as directed by our pediatrician) to help make it easier for her to poop and be more regular without having any constipation pain that would make things worse for her. 

She started asking for a diaper, but when we had none, she started to freak out.  She started sobbing, holding onto me, screaming that she needed a diaper.  It was SO hard to not give in after 20+ minutes of her acting traumatized about having to go to the bathroom and not having any diapers to go in.  Her legs were so stiff because she was holding it in trying not to go.  Finally, she had no choice, it was coming out no matter what...I thought it was going to be a huge turd or something....but she just peed.  And her face lit up, she was so excited and proud of herself.  I was glad too, but couldn't help but think all that over having to go potty???  She used to do it all the time without a thought!  Anyways, it's slowly gotten better, and we had some similar instances when she finally had to go poop, but now, 2 weeks later, she is staying dry through the night (the past 5 nights have been dry anyways), and she goes potty without any drama.  She's doing great, but she still cries when she knows it's time to poop.  She says "I don't want to!"  "I can't!" "I need a diaper!".  But after 30-40 minutes of pep talking and getting her to sit on the potty, it'll come out and she'll be excited about it. 

Oh, and how this all started????  We were at the mall and went into the Macy's restroom and it was really loud and echo-y, she started sobbing when we were in the bathroom stall and ever since that day, it was like back to square one. 

Anyways, to all the other parents out there with strong willed children who do not enjoy using the potty....GOOD LUCK!

And The Winner Is...

The Winner to the Kick My Butt Beachbody DVD Giveaway is....

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kkfoster35 said...

Following you on twitter (allthingsavon) kkfoster35 at msn dot com 

  

Thanks everyone for participating!

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