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.

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.....................................

i've created a monster

a craft monster.

Ever since he was super little we've always done crafty stuff. It was always my plan to get him interested in doing projects (preparing for school) and to keep him contained for more than 3 minutes at a time.

But now at 5 he follows me around the house (I can't shake him- seriously I've tried. He even stands outside my door while I'm in the bath) talking non-stop about all his crafty ideas. And he has lots of ideas and talks fast (and the faster he talks the harder he is to understand). He loves making anything (in fact he asked for "science" from Santa). I asked him, what is science? And he said, "you know making stuff and testing stuff".

As I type he's standing next to me holding a chipboard aligator, an acrylic bird, a felt bear sticker, a felt rocket, and a chipboard thing that says 'on cloud 9' and asking me if he can scrapbook.

Like what the heck, (first off where did you find these precious items?). I wanted to get you interested in crafts but NOT scrapbooking. Mommy scrapbooks and doesn't like to share. Can I tell him scrapbooking is only for girls? Just kidding of course.

the way my brain works

is that I get a project idea in my head and I want to make it happen.

Well unfortunately it's 9:30pm on a Monday night and Wal-Mart isn't open for it's 24 hour christmas shopping yet. It's just me, my big ideas, and this blog (and my husband watching some lame show and everyone else nestled all snug in their beds).

This year I've decided that everyone is going to get a special handmade gift from me (of course they'll get other gifts as well- just in case what I turn out makes it on Craftastrophe- you know 'because handmade isn't always pretty.'

Well I found this post and now I'm on a mission to make a fairy house or 2. I already have a small bottle but I'd also like to do something with salt dough as well. Check this out this one. We are getting the little one Tinkerbell 2 and I've already picked up some of those micro mini Disney fairies. So small that for most 2.5-year olds it's probably a big no-no. But my girl loves all things little and she is really good about her little toys too. I can't wait to see if I can pull this off to give the fairies and littlest pet shops a nice little home.

Still working on ideas for the little man but check out this- wow!

Our Saturday

I came across this post on Friday night and showed it to my little guy. Of course that started his 'talking-a-million-miles-a-minute-about-his-ideas' thing that he has been doing lately- so cute and proof I am definitely helping nurture his creativity. Well usually cute except when it's 7am on a workday when I'm trying to get ready and he follows me from each room of the house listing all his ideas. Of course I knew what we'd be doing on Saturday and it fit well with the halloween weekend too (not to mention mommy needing to be close to the computer to finish her assignment and presentation).

One can of $7 silver spray paint from Home Depot, 2 boxes, and some printable gauges and dials (thanks clipart!) and viola- 2 homemade robots.

The little one has an extra cute robotic voice "I.. am.. a... robot... I.. am.. a.. robot...."



While we were waiting for the paint to dry we took out the collections of cute Mickey Mouse paint chips we also grabbed (free!) and made some color books. I cut out chipboard pieces for the front and back and used eyelets and ribbons to hold them together. For the little guys book we wrote the names of each color so he can see the spelling of each word (since he thankfully knows all his colors of course)



Nana also surprised us with some cool halloween foam kits for the kids. We tried out best to put them together (@#$$#!!!) and when that didn't work we resorted to gluing the pieces down to construction paper and letting the kids decorate. When we were all finished I cut the leftover pieces into shapes and they spent 45 minutes having a late night Saturday bath before bed building more robots. See this post and prepare to be amazed. We were! So much that we spent Sunday afternoon before trick-or-treating in the bath again with more foam pieces (dug out some foam packs I had picked up from the dollar store). No fancy cutting here- just basic geometric shapes turned robot and alien monsters and obstacle courses.

now I know my ABCs

Sometimes I have troubles matching my ABC's with the sounds so it's nice to have visual cues to help me out. :) Plus it's a great tool for speech therapy.

Here's how you can make your own ABC box:

1) Steal the original idea from someone else's blog

2) Spend $10.79 (on sale) at Canadian Tire for a box meant to hold nails/ screws

3) Spend another $1.50 for some letter stickers- epoxy them on with Glossy Accents so they don't keep falling off




4) Go digging for what is now being referred to in my house as "small stuff" (most of this we already had although I did spent about $5 at the $ store). Actually we've been talking about this 'small stuff' since last Wednesday- the little guy is coming up with ideas non-stop (yep I'm good) and keeps talking about letters (big mommy point for me!) For some of the harder letters we used clipart because no matter how hard we searched there were no mini YAKs or OSTRICHs to be found in this house :) I'd love to pick up a little laminator so they last a little while longer. We also added some magnetic letters (another $1.50 purchase) but I'd love to find some smaller case alphas to add as well. I tried raiding my scrap stash but it's already been ransacked (evidently I scrap too much). This might help encourage him to use smaller-case when he is writing (he still insists capital letters are the ONLY way to spell his name (even had a long "discussion" with his teacher about it on the first day of K!)

5) Fill boxes!!!



B- bandaid, bucket, butterfly, bat, button, barrel
C- cow, card, crayon, car, cake, cup
W- wheel, whale, worker, window
P- princess, plate, parrot, popsciel, pumpkin, penny, pirate, paperclip, pig
D- dog, donkey, dino, duck, donut



A- alligator, ants, axe, acorn, army guy
L- lizard, ladybug, lego, lion
H- heart, hat, horse, house
R- raft, take, rock, rooster, ring
T- truck, tiger, tree, turtle, tanl

And in case you want to make your own, here's some ideas for the harder ones (= lotas clip art).

E- eraser, earth, elephant, eight, eskimo, envelope, ear
I- icecream, icecube, iceskate, insect, igloo
J- jack, jet, jam, jacket, jaguar
K- key, king, kettle, karate, kiss, kite, kangaroo
N- nail, nailpolish, nest, neckllace
0- orange, octupus, olive, otter, ostrich
Q- queen, question (mark), quarter, quilt, quill
U- umbrella, umpire, unicorn
V- violin, van, vaccum, valentine,
X- xray, xylophone, x-men (lol),
Y- yoyo, yak, yellow, yarn
Z- zoo, zebra, zero, zombie


It's a great tool for the little man and will get lots of use with the little one too. She already sings the song :)

our latest two boxes

So while 'surfing blogs when I should have been doing something important like cleaning my disaster of a house or doing coursework for that Masters degree that I'm supposed to be working on hard on,' I came across another cool bloggy site- Pink and Green Mama

And of course I decided right then and there that an ocean box was exactly what I needed to make my kids-but instead of just rocks I'll add gallons of water. And wait if I keep their socks on will that equal washing the floors?

Add colored rocks and shells from the good ole Dollarama, one tube of sea animals, the lego boat, a scuba pirate dude from dollarama, the MickeyD's mermaid, a treasure chest that used to have some sort of hard yucky gum, a $7 plastic bin + 2 kids = so much fun.



But what happens when winter comes? It snows of course! Except this kind is way more fun because it's inside. But it's still fluffy and cold and you can shape it, kinda. And it lasts weeks!

Add some penguins, polar bears, a Reindeer and some Husky dogs and we have winter!



Next up- sand. Yes I'm crazy but crazy is the best kind.