Saturday, July 2, 2011

Project #6: Mom, my babies need a bed

Just sharing this easy idea- a $4 wooden cd crate makes the perfect cradle for small dolls. She painted this all by herself so it makes it even more special (and it now has a permanent place on her bed). Her monkey babies also needed food so we took a little doll bowl, printed a clipart picture of banannas, and used epoxy glue and some yellow stickles to make it look extra special.


Anyone remember the monchhichi's? (the biggest draw of course for a 3-year old baby/ princess obsessed little girl is their 'ba-ba's' are permanently attached to their hand) We've been watching a lot of youtube tv epidodes lately. There were only a few (really bad quality) Monchhichi shows but her auntie passed on an old Sailor Moon plush backpack and now we know all the songs....

Fighting evil by moonlight
Winning love by daylight
Never running from a real fight
She is the one named Sailor Moon!

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Project #5: princess frames

The plan is to repaint girly girl's room pink (of course). I printed our favorite princess pics from Disneyland and bought some $1.50 frames.

Aren't they pretty?

Project #4: our very own dinosaur suitcase

Yep I am getting very behind on my 52 projects goal- or at least posting them anyways :)

We actually completed this one last month. I stole the original idea for a dinosaur suitcase from this blog. If you want a tutorial check it out!

I had planned on doing this at Christmas but ran out of time but the thrift store suitcase was waiting for us.

We used a hot chocolate container (volcano), 2 boxes from the recycling (caves), and a $6 can of Great Stuff expandable foam.

We prepped the suitcase by painting it brown and once the base was done the kids did all the rest of the grass and lake painting (we were messy a few days in a row!)


The expandable foam was also painted (and to keep it that way we sprayed it with some clear sealant).

The kids also helped with the hot gluing (yes I'm crazy) of the rocks and trees. I started following Teacher Tom's blog and reading more about his projects with hot glue guns and preschoolers. So off to the store we went for some low-temp glue guns.

Most of this stuff we had around the house but we did spend another $10 or so on 'lava' rocks and more trees. So totally cost for this project was about $16.



And of course the best part is it closes together with all the dinos inside!


Sunday, May 15, 2011

Project #3- Autograph books



I am so happy to be part of an amazing online community- some of these women I've known for over 5 years now. Lucky for me when Michaels runs out of the supplies I need (lol) other crazy online crafters are there to support my addiction (thanks Dawn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Here are the homemade autograph books for the kids. The cool part is I dusted off my Cricut for this one (you know that cutter that I promised my hubby I'd use all the time because I NEEDED it).

I used a pretty inexpensive 4X6 sketch book and to make the books more durable I laminated each cover and glued it to a piece of cereal box. The cool part is that Alladin commented that "someone did a good job on these" while he was signing (yep I was always a fan of his!)

And guess what, they are now FULL of signatures of all the characters we met!

Thanks Pluto, Mickey, Minnie, Pooh bear, Dora, that guy from Pinnochio that we can't remember the name, all the Princesses, etc.. etc.......................

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Project #2- Ikea knockoff

For our room makeover the little guy found this canvas at Ikea for $35. So we took a picture of it.....



Bought a $5 canvas at Jysk and we painted our own!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Project #1- Headbands

And here is the first and an easy one too. Hot glue, cheap headbands, + ribbon and other doo-dads = fabulous headbands for my little girly girl.

Just keep wrapping the ribbon around the headband while burning your fingertips with the hotglue. :)

A perfect way to match to her little outfits. Since we can never find matching socks in this house at least her headband can match.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

sharing some of our good ideas

We've been busy, busy, busy lately (always!) with fun projects so I thought I'd share some of our faves with you. Beware this is a long post, it's been awhile so I guess I'm making up for lost time!

1) Our fairy house



The little guy and I worked on this project for babygirl's christmas gift. Well he mainly worked on painting the buckets (for the fairy beans) and popsicle stick siding while I burnt the crap out of my fingers hot gluing moss, colored stones, and butterflies and flowers. We picked up the house from M's for pretty cheap with a coupon and everything else was dollar store finds. Turns out there is also a super cool handmade fairy house in Tinkerbell II (another Christmas gift) which was super cool.



2) Space Shuttle



After putting the final touches on the fairy house the little guy said to me "I can't wait to see what you made me mommy!" Well that sent me in a panic trying to come up with something special for the little guy too (they ended up opening them both on Christmas Eve morning so they'd be a little special, you know before super cool commercial toys were opened). The wine tube was picked up at the dollarstore (do you see a theme here?) I tried spray painting it initially but it was too glossy and wouldn't cover well. I ended up using tin foil and black permnanet marker which worked well (the very top was just a rolled cereal box hot glued on). The control panels were online images and I added some details like bottle caps for a little more fun. And of course we need a place to store the moon rocks too (a small plastic container from dollarstore covered with tinfoil).


3) A Knight Party- It started with a little idea to have some of friends over to make pizzas (which were yummy!) and the new Castle from Santa and empty boxes from Ikea inspired me to help make it an extra special playdate. We spent the night before cutting out different shield shapes out of cardboard. To make them strong I hot glued a second piece of cardboard to the inside. It kept four 5-year olds and one 8 year-old busy for a good 45 minutes- each designed their own battle shield with paints (think lots of gold and silver) and gem stones. Once they were done we hot glued another piece of cardboard for the handle. We gave each kiddo a newspaper sword also made the night before complete with a cool handle. I have to admit it wouldn't work well for me but the hubby came to the rescue. The princess (complete with a cardboard tiara she also created) helped determine the winner(s) as they chopped off limbs in our livingroom.

4) Another fun little 'party' we had over the holidays was an 'ocean' party with my neice and nephew (both 3). We hung blue streamers from the ceiling above the kitchen table and taped a big piece of blue plastic (dollar store rain coat). Then we used glass stones, ocean animals, and playdough to create an ocean. I was amazed that they sat there a good 50 minutes happily playing. After we decorated fish using paper plates and ate lots of swedish fish and goldfish crackers of course. We are going to try to do a few more themed play dates I think. It is good for my inner kindergarten teacher and keeps the kids from screaming and fighting

5) Our Idea Jar-


Our latest project is our idea jar (and come on, so much more fun than a pickle jar). The little guy keeps making comments about it smelling like pickles :)

To make it easier I colored coded the strips with ideas for anytime,weekends, and ones just for them. All the ideas are things (or toys, games, etc..) we already have around the house. It helps them from killing each other while we are stuck in the house for the rest of the winter and also to make our time together after work/ school a little special too. So far it's been a huge hit! The rule is one per day although we went through lots this weekend having been snowed in since Friday! There must be 50 strips in there but here are some of my faves (in case you wanna make your own idea jar, there are also lots of examples online too which is where I originally stole this idea!)

ANYTIME:
Make some 'thumb print' animals
Read a book and draw a picture about it
Draw a picture of your family
Make a craft using items from the recycle bin
Make a rocket from lego
Make a boat from recycled stuff
Make a car using lego wheels
Have a go go crazy bones battle
Build an obstacle course for the mighty beans
Use your moon sand so astronauts can land on a planet
Make dinner using playdough
Build the tallest lego tower that you can
Play hopscotch inside with masking tape
Make a fort under the kitchen table
Use your playdough to make some bugs

WEEKEND:
Go to the library and learn about space
Have a scary movie night- don’t be scared!
Go swimming
Go to a playpark
Cook something special that you pick out yourself
Make your very own book
Make a puppet show for mom and dad- make sure to practice
Make your own pet store using stuffed animals
Build a fort and sleep in it

BABY GIRL
Give your baby a bath
Play with your dress up dolls
Let strawberry shortcake go swimming
Put on the music and have a dance party
Color a picture for mommy
Make a necklace
Have a tea party with your dollies

LITTLE MAN
Go to a cool science website http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/
Play your favorite Wii game
Do a new science experiment
Dissect some aliens today
Make something using popsicle sticks

and the list goes on.....................................