Razzle Dazzle Your Kids

Blue's Clues Steve Shirt

2012-01-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

All of my kids have been big Blue's Clues fans, probably because I think it is a really cute show and have encouraged it. Miss B. was Blue for Halloween when she was two. It was just a simple one piece

pajama-ish outfit with a hood with ears, but it was plenty cute. Of course I kept it and my son wore it too (but not for Halloween). Then came the twins, and they really like Blue, so I decided for Halloween that they could be Steve and Blue! Trying to find a Steve shirt is near impossible these days, and Ebay is not cheap.

But I found a shirt at Target that I thought would do.

Mr. A. saw it and said, "Teve! Teve" and immediately attempted to remove his current shirt. I showed the hubs and figured Mr. A. could wear it as is, but Hubs asked if I was going to make it more Steve like, so I decided I should.

Let me preface this with saying there is probably an easier way to do this, a prettier way, but this was the way that worked for us. :)

I decided I could just zig zag stitch some felt on there. I should have planned just a tiny bit better, but more about that later.

First take your piece of felt and measure the stripes you need to cover.

Fold felt so you can cut as many stripes as you can. I just used some sheets of felt I had laying around (that was my mistake)

Pin stripe on. I did try doing it without pinning, and for me, well, it wasn't pretty. So I ended up picking it out and starting over.

Zig zag stitch a stripe on. You don't have to zig zag it, but I think it will hold better, and looks cuter.

The stripe that went just under the v-neck opening was a bit tricker, as I had to sew it inside as well.

Because I used felt rectangles I had about 3 of that color. I thought it would be easy to get more and just wanted to get started one day. WalMart only had single sheets in certain colors, this green not being one of them. I could buy a whole new pack with this color, but I already 2 of them at home, and they weren't in my current budget. I decided I would buy some fleece off the bolt, thinking that there must be something close to the color. I looked and looked and looked, and they had barely any felt at all on the bolt. I made a special trip to Hancock (special as in taking twins with me and attempting to find something that was proving difficult! ha!) They were entirely out of their single sheets. But thankfully they had some felt on the bolt, and they had a similar enough green to finish up. It did not match exactly, but it would have to do, because we were getting down to crunch time.

Around the armpit was trickier for me as well. I did not feel like unpicking the store stitching on the shirt, so I turned the shirt inside out and sewed in a straight line as close to the armpit as possible.

So the thread was white, but barely noticeable.

Then the felt rectangles were not long enough, so I had to stitch a piece to the other piece. I tried to keep this in the back so it would not be seen as much.

Also, after sewing the stripes on I could see there was some excess felt where the two pieces met up, so I just took some scissors and trimmed the excess off.

Then I attempted to sew the sleeves, but 2T shirt sleeves are pretty skinny and I could not get it around my machine to sew. Well, I got it around it, but it was so ridiculous to sew, so I improvised and got out the hot glue gun!

I thought much of it looked sloppy, but I just needed to get it done. And the main idea of this post is to let you know what whatever you make for your children, whether it turns out what you had envisioned or not, your little one will love it! My little man was so excited to wear his Steve shirt. Did the sleeve stripes match? No. Did the hot gluing look as good as the sewing? No. Did my almost 2 year old care about my sewing skills? No. Did they look super cute in their costumes? Heck Yes!

We went to a church Trunk-or-Treat and the boys got soooo many compliments on their costumes. And they were super easy, especially just adding a pair of tan pants to Steve's shirt. :)

I'll do another post on how I made their cute and easy Handy Dandy Notebook Trick or Treat Bags

Tot Spot Circles

2012-01-17T21:20:00.000-08:00

I watch my cousin's daughter 1-2 times a week, she is about 7 months older than my boys. On the days she is here, we try (key word try, it just does not always happen) to get in some kind of an art project and/ or lesson.

Being that my boys were not quite two (this was some time ago, I'm a slacker when it comes to posting), and Little Miss is just over two, we're not covering anything major. We have been working on our shapes.

First we made a felt pizza with all circle shapes (idea found here). I went with the colors I had, so we had yellow dough, orange cheese, brown sausage, red pepperoni, and green bell peppers. We talked about each shape/color/item as it went on the pizza. It has become a fun new little play set for them.

A little later we made pizzas out of construction paper. Before this we had not done a lot of pasting, mostly just painting, because I did not think they would grasp gluing something onto something else (from trying once before). I think having made the felt pizza before really helped them get it. Little Miss got way into it and glued lots of stuff onto her pizza. Mr. W. added some pretty pen marks to his. Mr. A. is not much into art. He will do it for a minute, but I think it requires too little body movement for him.

Another day we did some circle prints, I had various circle things that they kidlets could dip into paint. We had empty toilet paper tubes, empty ribbon spools (I always keep them, even though I have a ton, because they just feel like an art project waiting to happen), jar rings, etc. I just choose one color because otherwise it tends to get too messy (and I really am the messy art mom, but three toddlers and paint, yeah...)

We also made a felt snowman. I did not get any extras made for him, just the three white snowballs, and I showed the kids how we make a snowman (out of felt anyhow). And of course we sang Once There Was a Snowman. I then tried to have them glue their circles on a white paper, they were less than interested. I mostly glued it for them. We also added some white tiny snowflakes (paper punch excess) for them glue. Mr. A actually loved that and added quite a few to his, Little Miss was not at all interested, and Mr. W. liked it just fine.

Doing craft-y things with the littles has been fun for me. I enjoy watching these three entirely different personalities and learn their different interests and strengths, even in their twos. I am constantly testing what I think will work well to keep three little ones interested. If it were just one child, it would definitely be easier to do actual lessons, but with three, I am finding it so much trickier. But mostly, as long as they are having fun and experiencing new things, I count it as a win.

As a second win, Little Miss was saying "cir-cuh" when her parents came to get her, and she said it again the next time she came, and Mr. A. was saying it too. And a few months later both A& W can identify a circle. :)

Easy Felt Candy Clip Tutorial

2011-12-04T19:54:00.001-08:00

This is a super easy clip to make and super cute too!

I found my inspiration in these super cute Lollipop Ornament Craft Kit from OTC. I bought the kits for a craft for my daughter and her friends to make.

Start with two thin strips of felt. Mine were about 9 inches long, maybe 1/2 in wide.

Glue two of the ends together with the glue of your choice.

Roll the two pieces together, keep it as tight as you can.

You also want to try to keep it as flat as possible on one side.

It should look something like this you when you are done.

You can kind of push one side flat after you are finished rolling as well.

Next to a quarter so you can see the finished size.

Find a coordinating piece of tulle (I always find small sections in the fabric remnant section at Walmart). My piece measures about 6 inches by 5 inches.

Place your felt candy disk toward one edge of your tulle.

Wrap it up.

Find some thin ribbon to tie around the edges. This time I used some rickrack. Before tying the ribbon around the tulle take a look at your candy and see which side you think looks the most presentable, tie so ribbon ends show on that side. I like to have the flattest side face up.

Cut off excess edges of tulle.

Again, compared to a quarter.

Now you just need to attach to a ribbon lined alligator clip. This time I used a wide red grosgrain ribbon.

Finished product measures about 4 inches in length.

This is one my 9 year old made herself with about 2 seconds of explanation.

And another clip being modeled

She asked why she always has to be the model, I told her because she is cuter than I am. :)

And modeling her own clip

This is a fun clip to match almost any outfit, and made with scraps (which I always have hanging around). You can make it festive for Christmas, or for any other time of the year as well!

Girlie Turkey Clip

2011-11-22T15:13:00.001-08:00

I know it is uber close to Thanksgiving, but I decided to whip out a Turkey clip for my daughter last night, and took some step by step pics (very dark unfortunately) in case you wanted to make your own.

I made a tom-turkey for her last year that needed some repairs, so we fixed him, and decided to make another in more girly colors.

To start you need 5 silk leaves in 3 different colors: 3 in the first color, 2 in the second color, and 1 in the last color.

We chose purple, pink, and a sparkly brownish clear one

Layer the 3 strategically (or not so strategically) like so, and glue once you like the arrangement

Layer the two on top of that one. You just don't want to cover your back color too much, so try to have the points of the second leaf color (pink) inbetween the gaps of the first color (purple), and glue.

Then place your last leaf in the middle on top of the rest and glue. (I had to take this photo with a flash, so you could see the transparent leaf, and add a little tweaking to the color)

You need about 12 inches of any coordinating ribbon for your turkey's head and body.

a 5 in piece

a 3.5 in piece

and a 2.5 in piece

Take the 3.5 in piece and make a loop without twisting the ribbon, like so:

Do the same with the 5 in piece.

Glue the smaller loop inside the larger one.

Make another loop with the 2.5 in piece, this is the turkey's head, place it round end up.

Place two googly eyes on the head, about the middle of the loop, which will push the head down flatter as well.

You need another 1.5 in to 2in piece for the turkey's waddle. Put glue on back side and fold in half, making it a skinnier piece of ribbon. Glue one end onto turkeys head and then just fold and glue where you think it looks good.

We used a small pink jewel heart for the beak, but I have also used ribbon cut and folded into a triangle for the beak.

Then just attach to a ribbon lined alligator clip.

And your girlie turkey is ready to go!

I like to do my daughter's hair in a half bun/pony type do, the accentuate the turkey tail feather look, but I think it would look cute for any hair do.

And here are some pics of our turkey from last year, in more traditional colors, and some other turkey do's we did.

For this one we just did a simple ponytail, and took a few thin strands of hair and twisted them and pinned them in a loop with bobby pins to make turkey tails.

This one I made a triangle with small elastics in Thanksgiving colors and pulled it into a large ponytail. Then we ratted the hair a bit and "boufed" it up and used lots of bobby pins to hold it in place and with both placed the turkey in the middle of it.

My daughter has received many compliments on both the hair dos and the clips. :)

Dinosaur Birthday Party (6 years old)

2011-11-09T22:05:00.000-08:00

Dinosaur Party (6 years old)

So I am a little late in posting this, since my son turned six back in January, but anytime is a great time for a dinosaur birthday party! I honestly have loved every birthday party I have done for my kids, but this one was extra fun. I think it always helps when the birthday child is super excited about each little step along the way, and boy was he!

I loved this photo prop we got from Oriental Trading. All the kids had fun with it, and it was super cute. It did not come with a stand, so we taped it to our table legs, not perfect, but the price was right.

First off, I feel awful that I did not get more photos of all the little details. It was a busy week. There was Christmas, and the on the 28th my twin boys turned one, and Mr. T.'s birthday is on January 3rd. We had to do the party before we left out of town on vacation (a few days later) and so, we decided to do his friend party on New Years Day. I was a little worried about attendance, but thankfully most of the friends he invited came. :) We did the family party (for all three boys) the following day, so there was lots to be done. Hopefully the photos I have will suffice!

Many of the things we made for this party needed to be made at least a week before the party, and some of them I forgot to get started on, or rather 4 kids and Holibirthmas (what we affectionately call that time of Christmas and 3 Birthdays in 9 or so days) kept me distracted! So if you want to do some of these things, give yourself time, it is MUCH nicer that way!

Our opening activity was digging some dinosaur fossils.

I decided that this would be so much fun, to make our own treasure rocks with dino skeletons inside. I had seen some previously at the dollar store, ready made, but of course, could find none when it was birthday time. So I did lots of searching for a recipe for treasure rocks. Most recipes called for coffee grounds, and since we are not coffee drinkers, I kept looking. I finally found this one at Chef Tess Bakeresse. It worked well, but took a lot of work. Because my sweet son has a winter birthday, dirt is wet, as was our sand. So I was cooking dirt and sand in our oven to dry it out (again, time was not on my side). And I ordered super cute dino skeleton toys from Oriental Trading, but they ended up being MUCH bigger (5.5") than I expected, so I kept making more and more of our concoction to cover the "fossils". And then we baked them, and baked them, and let them dry, and it took SO MUCH TIME. These I had planned ahead some, and so they sat for maybe a week before the party and dried some more, maybe too much. ha ha! Anyhow, as the kids came in we led them to a table to dig their fossils. The fossil rocks ended up looking very much like, well, poop. Oh well. I had kid hammers and paint brushes ($ store), and other random tools to help them break open, and a little help from grown up hands to twist them a little to break the exterior. But they all enjoyed it and broke open at least two.

We also made a salt dough volcano for an activity at the party.

This required A LOT more dough that I had thought. I think I made 3 or 4 batches. Form your volcano around a small plastic water bottle, and then bake on a low temp in the oven, or leave out for days, or both. lol. (there are some good instructions here: here) Then we (and by we, I mean my sweet husband) painted it. Then I let the kids take turns pouring in the ingredients to make it "erupt".

warm water
squirt of dish soap
2 tsp baking soda
food coloring
and then for the eruption add vinegar.

I think we did this at least twice at each party.

Dinosaur Egg Pinata: We also made a pinata, because my kids thoroughly enjoy the pinata making process and the excitement of breaking them open. This was the easiest birthday pinata ever, because it was just the balloon shape with nothing added besides a little paint. We added some small dino toys from the $store and of course, candy.

The cake was fun, but did not turn out as planned. I felt like it looked a mess, but Mr. T. LOVED it, so that is all that matters. I have learned that I am not a perfectionist, and this works to my advantage come birthday party time. My kids think their cakes and other things are awesome, and I do not have the time to spend to make it all perfect, so it works for all of us! :)

On to the cake:
I had meant to made a dinosaur scene with some of my son's plastic dinos, and include a cake volcano on the cake. My cake volcano did not work well. I made a sheet cake and frosted it brown. I also made a round cake and a smaller round cake to stack on it. Once on the cake, it just did not look volcano-ish, so I decided to carve it.

Not a good idea for a moist cake and someone who is not a cake expert. I was getting quite frustrated at this point, and in came my hubs, who just helped me haphazardly place pieces of cake and globs of frosting to somewhat resemble a globby volcano (and reassured me it did that it was just fine!). We added some crushed graham cracker crumbs to the base to make it sandy.

My favorite part of this cake, both in looks and making it was the volcano spewing. This was a lot of fun. I found directions at Family Fun. I bought some cinnamon candy at the dollar store and melted it.

You have to melt it slowly and on a low temp, but not too low, or you are just stirring candy in a pot, so I had to turn it up a bit after my husband point out that after 5 minutes it should probably be melted a bit. ha ha!

It starts to get really sticky, and then more like liquid.

And then I just drizzled it onto aluminum foil in what I thought looked like lava spewing. Then you let it harden and stick into the cake. My son and his friends LOVED this. :) They all wanted to eat a piece of the volcano, but most decided after one lick of cinnamon candy that they wanted no more.

I included another pic of my holding it, so you can see the size.

Then I asked Mr. T. to go get some small toy dinosaurs from his toy box to put on the cake. He came back with much larger and less realistic dinos than I had in mind, but it was his cake, so we washed them up and I let him place them on.

Because his family party was the next day, I saved some of the volcano pieces and remade the volcano. It looks like it finished spewing, but still fun. And we had smaller dinosaurs on the cake then as well.

Paper Mache Dinosaur Egg Loot Bags
I thought it would be a grand idea to have the loot bags be dino eggs. I do think it worked well and was fun, and kept their loot a secret until they were home. But it is time consuming. My fave paper mache recipe is here. This is the method I use. Because it was a crunch for time, the eggs did not have as many layers as I had wanted to, maybe 2-3 thin layers, so once we popped the balloons, some of the eggs dimpled a bit. After popping the balloon I cut a 2 in (or so) square hole to insert the loot. I found some great stuff at Oriental And then, the eggs soaked up a TON of paint. I think we went through 3 cans of white spray paint for the base coat. That was smelly as well. We did it in the unfinished part of our basement and I think my sweet hubs may have got a little high from all the fumes, bless his heart for working so hard for me! Then Mr. T., myself, and Miss B. painted all kinds of fun colors and designs on the eggs.

We made a TON of these! I think we made 12, because even though we only had 4-5 kids at the party, we had a family party the next day, and some good friends coming as well. My son helped paint a few, but mostly my daughter, the artiste helped me paint them. In their "loot eggs" we included these cute foam dino masks (apparently one of the only pics I took, and not a great one, sorry!), dino sticker scenes, small dinos, dino fruit snacks, and some candy. Most of the stuff I got from Oriental Trading.

Hopefully this is helpful to you for your dino-riffic party!

Stained Glass Butterflies

2011-05-13T17:13:00.000-07:00

Thus far it has not been a very warm spring around here, and we were in need of some Spring, so I found a little craft to brighten things up around these parts. :)

I saw a similar project in the Oriental Trading catalog. I love perusing their catalogs, they have great stuff at super prices. I have ordered many things from there, and have been dissatisfied with very little. Anyhow, they have lots of ready made craft kits, and this was one of them. I figured we could make our own, and I think they turned out pretty cute. We had some friends and a cousin over, so six kids in all, from 3-8, and they all enjoyed it.

Supplies needed:
A butterfly template
Construction Paper (The OTC kit comes with foam)
Scissors
Clear Contact Paper
Glitter
Tissue Squares/Pieces (I bought mine from OTC some time ago)

I found a butterfly template online, you don't need anything fancy, because you are just using it for the shape, no need for details. I enlarged it to about 8.5x11 size and printed it out. I'm sure you could even free hand something fairly easy as well. I folded mine in 1/2 (so really you only need to print half).

Fold your construction paper in 1/2 and trace the template onto the paper. I did about 4-5 sheets at once.

Then with your paper folded cut an outline of the butterfly. Be sure to NOT cut on the fold.I did this several times, so each butterfly got smaller. Sometimes they lose a little bit of their shape, but not too much.

Then unfold the butterflies and you will have a menagerie in multiple colors and sizes.

Then cut your contact paper in a rectangle about the size of your butterfly. You will need 2 squares of contact paper, one for each side. Remove the backing from one piece and lay it sticky side up on the table. Adhere your butterfly outline. I let the kids each add a little glitter to their contact paper. Then I let them have the tissue squares to place any where within the butterfly outline.(If you don't have tissue squares, I am sure you could cut up pieces of tissue paper from gift bags, etc)

When finished remove backing from the second piece of contact paper and place over your butterfly. To finish it off, just cut around the edges. Be sure to leave a little outline for the contact paper to seal itself on the edges. The place in the window for all to see!

Where's Mommy?

2011-05-07T10:27:00.000-07:00

This is a favorite new game with the twins. It is essentially a toddler version of hide and seek. Maybe you have even played it before, but sometimes I need reminders, maybe you do too!

When both boys are near me, I ask, "Where's Mommy?" (in a very excited, get ready to run voice!)

And then I take off running. Be sure to pick super easy spots for your tot to find you. I have hid in the bathtub, behind a door, in a corner, in an open closet, behind a chair, under the table, etc.

The key to this game is running fast, because as everyone knows, toddlers are FAST. So I run to my spot and say loudly again, "Where is Mommy?" to get them coming toward me. As they get closer (this is another reason to pick an easy spot, so you can see them coming and watch their expressions!) I say in a quieter voice, "Where's Mommy?" and when they get close enough I yell, "BOO!" It usually startles them, but they laugh too. I praise them for finding me, and we start the game over.

This little game can keep my boys busy for at least 10 minutes, maybe more. Sometimes Mommy needs a break to catch her breath though. Often it seems they are looking right at me, but not noticing, its hilarious! I'm sure as they get older they'll catch on a little more, but they love it, and are learning great listening skills from it.

Tot Spot Thoughts

2011-05-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

I have decided to add a new little segment of ideas to do with the littler ones, the toddlers. :) Being that my son will be starting first grade in the next few months, I will soon have just two little tots to keep entertained. This will be an adjustment for me. I have been doing preschool stuff for the last 6 years (my son is in half day kindergarten). So I am coming up with new things to keep the babies busy and happy!

I had a good friend donate a book to me, and I LOVE it, it is Toddlers Busy Book. It has tons of great ideas. Of course some of them are a little advanced for my 16 month old twin boys, but others are right on. I am sure we will be using this book for some time. I have tried out more than a few ideas, and they have all been winners.

So in my little "Tot Spot Thoughts" I plan to share little ideas for entertaining the littler set. Hope they help!

April Fools!!

2011-03-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

I just LOVE April Fool's Day! Such a fun holiday, one gets to play pranks and tricks upon ones loved ones without getting in too much trouble!

I thought I would link back to two of my posts from previous years, since I have not decided on what to do for this years pranks! :)

April Fool's Breakfast
and
More April Fool's

So if you are looking for reactions like this:

or this:

Then follow the links above!

Clean-Up

2011-02-16T10:25:00.000-08:00

Whenever I hear clean-up, I hear the Barney "clean-up" song in my head. My husband likes to sing this song as well. We help in the nursery at our church, and it does seem to help the little ones clean up. I wish it worked with my older kids (8 and 6 now).

I must admit that we often live in a state of chaos in our home. I wish my house were cleaner, but I don't always WANT to put the effort forth to make it that way. I LOVE the quote, "cleaning while children are young is like shoveling in the middle of a snow storm." I don't feel that my house needs to be spotless, because I really feel that spending time with my children is more important than having a perfectly clean house.

We have tried different things in our house over the years to help keep things clean, and some have worked better than others, but none have been awesome. Usually they work in the beginning, but the newness wears off, I guess.

As a kid we had plenty of chores, more than my children have now. I think most of us can say that. Maybe it helped that we had more expectations placed upon us? I see a number of teens and twenties that are fairly irresponsible with jobs and chores and such. I know I want my children to have things easier than I did, but then I look at their unwillingness to help in things, and I wonder what kind of disservice I am giving them. I don't want to overload them, but I want them to learn how to clean and to be able to do it efficiently. Maybe I am not qualified to teach them efficient cleaning, because everyone knows I am no expert!

I'll share a few of our more successful ideas here, but I would also LOVE to hear what you do to make chores more fun and less work around your homes!

Reward Charts (Toddler/Preschool):
I made these simple charts when my children were small. It was mostly to help my daughter work on listening the first time Mommy or Daddy asked. She could move her princess closer to the castle for each good deed noticed. This can be hard as a parent because you really have to pay attention and praise good behavior when you see it. If my daughter was misbehaving (whining, not sharing, etc) I would move her princess away from the castle, but never more than one step at a time. It was a good warning system for her, to help her realize and choose good behavior. But again, if you are only noticing the bad behavior and not acknowledging the good, this does not work well. My son had a frog that hopped across lily pads to the other side of the pond. These were very simple drawings, the charts do not need to be fancy. And my children LOVED moving the frog or princess by themselves.

The Mom Box (Preschool & Up):
I started this when my children were littler, too little for most chores, but also in need of some rewards for other good behavior. They could earn tickets for good behavior, especially for listening the first time they were asked. They also earn tickets for doing small jobs, whatever they may be, brushing teeth, picking up their room, fetching something for mom, etc. They can then exchange tickets for items of their choosing from "The Mom Box". The things in there were not costly. Many things were toys and books purchased at the thrift store. Often when they were with me, and wanted a toy, but I do not like purchasing a toy for them every time we go somewhere, so I would buy it on the condition of, "it goes in the mom box", if the price was right. I also had notebooks, crayons, pencils, markers, and other small doodads I have picked up on clearance, or leftovers from birthday party goody bags. I still have this box in my closet and they often ask if they can earn something from there.

Allowance:
After rewarding them with tickets, my husband I decided we wanted them to earn actual money. Then they could learn the name and value of coins, saving, and tithing. They earn very little for their chores (don't tell them!). They earn about 10-20 cents per chore, and have one chore a day, so up to a dollar a week. I have heard before that kids should earn $1 per their grade in school. This sounds good for early elementary, but could get fairly costly as they age. We have a divide penny bank (we need to get another) so that the kids can keep their tithing and savings separate from their spending money. We tithe 10%, but you could do any amount. I think it is great for children to do some kind of charitable donation. The sacrifice will teach them much! We also save 10%, this can be for whatever you desire, college, church missions, etc.We started this one in the last year, and unfortunately have not been overly consistent with it. We started it with the stipulation that they need to have their chore done each day in order to earn their dollar at the end of the week. I was hoping that this would teach them hard work and delayed gratificatio, but it is not working for us. So I think we will be switching to paying per chore, since at this age, they seem to still need the instant reward. Hopefully saving their money from each week will help them learn delayed gratification in this age of instant rewards.

I recently learned about this website, My Job Chart from one of my favorite blogs, The Idea Room. The site is completely free to use, and is easy to use as well. I think the idea of your child logging in to update which chores they have finished can be fun and techy. You can set the point value of each chore, and then they can earn rewards from Amazon or what not. I have not finished using this site myself, but I REALLY like the idea. My kids were thrilled with the idea of earning something and having it mailed to them.

My favorite magazine is Family Fun, and they have a great website as well, http://familyfun.go.com/. This month they had an article (not online, that I could find) about one family's solution to their less than clean home. I thought it sounded like a great idea for our family as well, and we tried it for the first time yesterday. It worked very well, and we will definitely be trying this one again. It basically consisted of a one minute clean up. The whole family concentrates on room/area in the house and you set the timer for one minute (two if needed) and everyone cleans as fast as they can for one minute. We cleaned four areas in four minutes. Two rooms were entirely cleaned, and two more needed a little extra help, but the house looked SO much better. The one thing to make it work (as the author pointed out) is that your MUST stick to the one minute rule to keep it working. If you add on another minute after the fact, your family is going to be less enthusiastic about it. We had fun racing around to put things away quickly before we took a fun family jaunt, and it was just enough to help things look better before we left.

In trying to find the article online I found this article, which also had LOTS of cute ideas to help children clean up Tidy Up Games

As a side note, I have four children, two of which are toddler twins, my house is not going to look stellar at all times. And even when my kids are grown, it is not going to be perfect. A clean house is just NOT the most important thing in the world to me, and thankfully my husband understands this. (He is THE dishwasher in our home, even though we have a mechanical dishwasher as well lol. He does a much better job at keeping dishes washed than I ever have!) Anyhow, I have told more than a few people, "I am a stay-at-home-mom, not a stay-at-home housekeeper." My children come first, and when my children are grown I would rather my children say, "My mom played with us when we were kids" than to say, "My mom was a really great housekeeper." I realize that some people can do both, but I, alas, cannot. :)

Candy Land Birthday Party (8 Years Old)

2010-12-06T20:47:00.000-08:00

My oldest child turned eight this past Autumn season. We threw her a Candy Land birthday party. I LOVE doing birthday parties. We do a friend party every other year, because birthday parties sure get expensive quickly! We do a family party every year though, so I get to do a little something every year.

She was really wanting a cowgirl party, with her new cowgirl Jessie (Toy Story) obsession, but we did a horse/cowgirl party for her 6th birthday party, so I was really hoping to do something else. I had a few ideas, and thankfully she got very excited about doing a Candy Land birthday party. I must say, this was probably the most fun party I have done so far. I would definitely recommend this theme to anyone with a little girl (I'm sure it could work for a boy too). I did get a ton of great ideas from here: Birthday Party Ideas.com. I scrolled through and found the ones that would work the best for us, and also came up with a few of our own. I also did a whole lot of googling looking for more ideas and photos of Candy Land cake, which is what has inspired my posting. I am hoping it will be of help to someone wanting ideas for their Candy Land party!

We made some super cute invitations. The kids had fun cutting out circles for them. And I think Miss B. assembled all of them herself, with just a tiny bit of help from mom. Unfortunately I did not get a photo, so I need to find the one extra we made for her. Basically it is colored cardstock circles stacked on top of each other, about 5 of them, each one getting smaller. On the smallest circle we printed "King Kandy cordially invites you to Miss B.'s 8th Birthday Party. On the back side were just two circles, and in the smaller circle it had all of the birthday party info. In between the front and back we put a straw as a lollipop stick (it did not work as well as I had hoped, not sturdy enough, maybe a popsicle stick would work better) and tied a ribbon at the top of the stick as well. They were so darling, and more than one mom said they daughter had to show everyone the invitation.

We also made out own pinata. I got instructions here (Family Fun: How to make a pinata). It did take some work, but we had a lot of fun doing it. My daughter even told me I was "the best mom ever". :)

Find a large balloon, inflate and tie it. I followed the recipe for the paste, and found it to be more than enough. You could probably half the recipe.

It is messy and gooey, so here I am in my awesome IKEA apron.

I did not follow their directions for applying the strips of newspaper. I did not want to dip each newspaper strip in the paste and basically squeegie it off. I found instructions somewhere that said you could cover the balloon in the paste (or at least a small section at a time) and then put a dry strip on it. Then you cover that strip in the paste and keep doing that. That was much less messy, and much less time consuming as well. It took about 3 coats of newspaper, and I waited at least 6 hours between coats.

Here it is unpainted. It ended up being a little lopsided on the cone. For the cone we just used a rolled up piece of posterboard and taped it well.

We taped the balloon to the cone and then did another layer of paper mache' to attach it to the cone more securely. My daughter is holding the deflated balloon in her hand. Once you pop the balloon it shrivels right up and comes out the hole you cut.

We cut a hole with a steak knife, and then after inserting the candy taped it shut.

Here she is painting it She chose the colors herself. :)

We kept putting off putting the tissue paper squares onto it, and it was a crunch at the last minute, but we got the cone covered, just hours before the party! To attach the tissue squares we just crumpled and glued. We tried the old scrunch them around the end of a pencil and dip that in glue, but it took longer. :)

Miss B. did say, "After all this work we are just going to destroy it?" But it was a lot of fun to make together, so we both decided it was worth it. Pinatas are so expensive to buy too! We had used some embroidery thread to hold the pinata, but it broke after a few swings, so at the end my sweet husband just held it by the cone. I loved watching his face as the girls took some wild swings at it! My advice, use some thick yarn, maybe doubled to attach to the pinata.

The cake was a ton of fun, and full of sugar! We made a Candy Land board game. We used starburst for the game squares, mini candy canes, icecream cones, marshmallows, green coconut grass, tinted frosting, skittles, gumdrops, and more!

Since I made two cakes for the two parties, the first was kind of a trial run. I had used white frosting and then covered it in the coconut grass

(most of the girls were not coconut fans, so thankfully it had a few sections sans coconut (the peppermint forest, gloppy, and Snow Flake Lake). The second cake I tinted the frosting green, and it turned out better.

I also took photos of each of the signs on the board game, (peanut acres, gumdrop mountains, etc) and stuck them in my photo editing program and printed them all on one sheet.
We cut them out and attached each to a toothpick and stuck them in the appropriate places on the cake. The Peppermint Forest sign was very close to the candles (because Miss B.'s candles were pink striped like the candy canes she wanted them in the peppermint forest), so when we lit the candles that sign burned! We sanitized the game pieces in the dishwasher and placed them strategically on the cake as well.

This is what we used for each section:

Rainbow Trail (shortcut): Fruit roll-ups
Gingerbread Tree: we left blank :(
Peppermint Forest: mini candy canes and pink/white striped candles
Gumdrop Mountains and Pass: gumdrops (when searching in the store for these they are apparently called "spice drops")
Licorice Forest: cut pieces of licorice
Peanut Acres: Nutter Butter cookies
Lollipop Woods: lollipops, of course
Snow Flake Lake: white frosting and mini marshmallows as a border
Chocolate Swamp: chocolate frosting, and a frosting covered oreo with fruit roll up mouth and chocolate chip eyes.
Candy Castle: skittle path, upside down ice cream cones with a graham cracker square cemented in with frosting.

For decorations we found an old Candy Land Lotto game that came with little tiles. We used the tiles to kind of confetti the table.

We didn't buy any themed plates, cups, etc. Instead we just bought a rainbow of cups, plates, utensils, tablecloths, and napkins, and since they were all from the Dollar Store, we kept it under budget! My daughter
made the little candy rolls on the table. I gave her the empty toilet paper tubes and tissue paper (again, from the $ store) and some scotch tape and she did them herself.

We made a giant size candy land game, at least the squares anyhow (construction paper in plastic sheets) but sadly we ran out of time to assemble it, and it was too windy outside anyhow, so we just used it as a decoration. Miss B. made the pink squares, the ones with the gumdrop, ice cream, etc, and being that she is a little artist, they turned out so cute! And we put actual licorice in the stuck in a licorice space squares.

We made some darling lollipops with styrofoam circles from the dollar store, kabob skewers, cellophane, and ribbon. The we added our Christmas Candy Canes. We also used some kid flooring stuff to make the candy land squares up our walkway. If you click on the photo you can see them a little larger. Longer skewer sticks might have been better, but it still looked darling!

We made a cute Candy Land sign too. We wrapped pink plumbers tape around some leftover pvc pipe, and then printed the Candy Land words and taped them on a paper.

For her friend party we also painted ceramic cupcake banks (from Oriental Trading)

We also had a "Guess how many gumdrops are in the jar game" We just used a small jelly jar, and the closest guess got to take it home.

The loot bags each girl got to take home were so fun! I just love Oriental Trading! I tried looking online at other places, but you can't beat the prices and selection. I also looked for anything "sweet" themed at dollar stores, party stores, and big box stores, but no luck.

We got cute piece of cake shaped boxes and in them we put: candy cane twist erasers, gingerbread man stampers, personalized candy cane pencils (Thanks for coming, from Miss B.), a gingerbread man lollipop, and of course a little candy. Unfortunately Oriental trading did not have as much selection as I was hoping, but a month later they had a ton that could have worked, because they bring it all out for the Christmas Season. They even have an almost Candy Land theme, I think it's called Candy Town. So buy ahead, at Christmas time, if possible!

For a quick easy gift wrap, scrunch the ends to make it look like a big piece of candy!

I think the most fun part of this party was that my daughter was old enough to help with so much of it, and she just LOVED every little detail!

Barbie Clothes

2010-11-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

I have always let my kids have pretty free reign of the craft supplies. Sometimes this means they use something I rather they didn't, but then I have to remind myself that their crafting is important too. Usually it fosters their own creativity without direction from an adult. Thankfully they are not terribly messy (don't look at their room! ha ha!). What I mean is that they don't get things out just to make a mess, their messes have purpose (as do mine lol).

My daughter is getting to the age where she plays with toys less and less (which makes her difficult to buy gifts for). But she does love all things crafty. As evidenced by the photos below:

The first dress (the purple one) she did all on her own, just playing by herself, and she came to ask me where the velcro dots were. I helped her a bit, and suggested a belt and something to go on it, she chose the ribbon and jewel.

The next day she made the pink one (again, jut playing by herself) and came to ask for more velcro dots, I suggested we sew some buttons on it. She did most of the sewing of the first button all by herself. Was it perfect? Of course not, but she did a great job for her first time! She added another belt and jewel (the jewel was added with glue dots) and then she made some cute little scarves with fringe. She added some cute cuts to the bottom of the pink one, so she is getting more creative. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Well, tomorrow brought her making a dress for her friend's birthday gift. We bought a new Barbie and she fashioned a dress. :) She was so very excited.This one involved a little more hand sewing from mom (the tulle and buttons), and it had to be done quickly, since it was mostly a last minute idea.

So, grab your daughter, some felt, sticky back velcro dots, glue dots, ribbon, whatever else you like, and have at it. Felt is great because it doesn't fray (some with fleece) and is easy enough to rip or cut (we cut the button holes, but my daughter ripped it for the arm holes). I would love to see any of your creations!

It's funny that she rarely plays with those barbie dolls. :) At least we're getting some use out of them. I found this fun kit at Amazon, it seemed to get good reviews. I think she will love opening this on Christmas! Fashion Design Studio

A bike?

2010-11-14T20:52:00.000-08:00

So I know I am terrible at posting here, but I have been taking photos and itching to post here, and the babes are starting to get more cooperative with that plan (meaning their naps are more reliable, so I can clean more and still have time to post), so here is a post. lol

I saw this on another twin mom blog, and had to take a look! It is a very interesting bike, but I think I really like it! If I link this from my blog, well, I have a chance at winning it! :)

Isn't she a beauty! Wouldn't it be cute with twin little boys riding back there? And it would help me lose that last little bit of baby weight too! :)

Birds

2010-05-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

Last week was my last time teaching preschool for Mr. T. This is so bittersweet. My little boy is old enough to go to kindergarten. He is more than ready, me, not so much! I don't know what I am going to do with myself (well, besides taking care of infant twins!). I have been in a co-op preschool group for the last 5 years! It will be strange to not be preparing lessons and such. Maybe I will find the time to post lots on this blog of things I have done for the last five years, but no guarantees!

One easy bird project we did was this:

I found a bird coloring page online and cut it out on brown construction paper. Then I gave the kids white glue and feathers and let them create their bird. They loved picking colors for their birds. The boys of course did not want the pink or purple feathers (cheap tip-- my daughter's feather boas leave feathers ALL over the house. When I am feeling ambitious I gather them up and save them in the art supplies). It was also suggested to let the kids paint with the feathers as paint brushes, but I opted for the cleaner activity this time.

The other cute bird we made was this:

This one is very simple, but the kids LOVED it! Fold a paper plate in half. Trace child's hands on construction paper. Some of the kids cut out their own hands, others I cut them out. I had already cut out orange beaks (to save time). The kids colored their paper plates while I traced and cut hands. I couldn't find my googly eyes, though that would have made a cute addition. Anyhow, glue the hands on as wings, glue on beak and then its a rocking/pecking chicken. I actually cut tissue paper strips for tail feathers, but forgot to use them. They looked adorable anyhow.The one above is from this last week. My son and I made one last year as well, it had the tail feathers (can't seem to find a pic, sorry!). He didn't seem to mind at all that we were repeating the same project.

For snack we had these yummy bird nests. They are basically the same haystack recipe I made last year for Nursery Rhymes. I melted a bag of butterscotch chips in the microwave and stirred in about half a bag of crispy chow mein noodles. Initially I tried shaping them into nests, but it was too messy. I just did the best I could and before they hardened placed a few peanut M&Ms into each nest. This made at least 15 nests.

We recited this poem, which the kids wanted to do over and over again.

Wide Eyed Owl

There's a wide eyed owl (make binoculors with hands on eyes)
With a pointed nose (point ot nose)
Two pointed ears (grab ears)
And claws for toes (wiggle fingers and point to toes)
He lives way up in the tree (point up to the ceiling)
And when he looks at you (point)
He flaps his wings (flap arms like wings)
And says Who....Whooo! (continue flapping)

It also would have been fun to do The Chicken Dance, but I had a lot of song review to cram in, so we did not.

The twins did not allow me enough time to get to the library, so I improvised with books I already had. We read How Fletcher Was Hatched. This is my book from when I was young, and I always liked it. It is about a dog that is jealous of his owner's affection for baby chicks. He decides to hatch out of an egg so she will love him again. It is somewhat wordy, but all 6 kids loved it. We also read The Ugly Duckling. This was a good on since there are many different types of birds in it.

We made some easy-peasy bird feeders as well. (This photo is almost a week later after a rain storm and a snow storm! Crazy weather!)

You need one toilet paper tube per child, yarn or string, peanut butter, and bird seed. I punched holes in one end of the tube and tied yarn in them to be the hanger. Have the children spread peanut butter all over the tube. My kids did okay with this but did need some help. I poured the birdseed on a cookie sheet, then had the kids roll the tube in the birdseed until it was covered. The children were so excited to take their bird feeders home. To ease in transporting (and minimize the mess in the vehicle) we placed them in paper lunch sacks.

There were so many other cute ideas to do, I think we may learn more about birds while my kids are off for the summer.

Window Painting

2010-04-11T17:02:00.000-07:00

Anyone remember this? Sesame Street B Painting

I LOVED Sesame Street as a kid, well, I still do. I remember watching this skit as a kid, and I really wanted to paint on the windows. It actually stuck with me all these years.

A few years ago I read something about making window paints. I don't remember to do this craft often with the kids, but it is always a winner! And it is quite simple!

Supplies needed:

Paint brushes

Tempera Paints (I bought this set at the store years ago. Use some of the paint for regular painting, and then add 1-2 tsp of dish soap to the paints and stir with a paint brush.I used this soap because it is what I had, and it did not change the paint colors, not even the white.)

Drop cloth (I use plastic tablecloths (I have a myriad saved from previous birthday parties, this one is from our wedding luncheon almost ten years ago! lol)

Paint shirts (even though it is washable, it is a good habit)

and a window or two.

I used to paint holiday images, heart, pumpkin, etc. While I painted the front window I had my daughter painting the back sliding door. This is the first time I promoted the kids to painting the front window, and they were thrilled! I think it was quite the confidence booster!

My son was unhappy that I took the Easter decorations down, so I told them to paint a nice spring scene for me. I think they did a great job!

My daughter is off track from school, and I also had co-op preschool at our house this week, so she joined us. We learned about the prairie and prairie animals, you can tell that she enjoyed it! :) She is seven, and a natural artist.

My son is 5 and loves art as well. His painting is a sunset with rain and clouds, and cloud people.

Keepsake Paper Plate Easter Bunnies

2010-04-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

I got the idea from Little Family Fun. She has lots of cute ideas! This is a super simple craft. Use a white paper plate and have your child draw a face on it. Add paper ears, and voila' you are done.

To make it a "keepsake" we put the kids' footprints as the inside of the bunny ear. I don't know about you, but for me, it is very hard to throw away anything that has my child's footprints and handprints!

We also added some thumb and fingerprint eyes, noses, and tongues (with an ink pad).

My son added finger whiskers with paint!

This is a little bit messy, so I had a shallow dish with water (placed on a towel) for them to wash their feet off. I think they had just as much fun washing their feet as doing the craft. :) I attempted to do washable ink pads for their feet, but the colors were not vibrant enough for me.

April Fool's Trickery!!!

2010-04-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

I LOVE April Fool's. It started last year, I played some tricks on the kids, and have been scheming all year for this year's trickery! I love my family fun magazine subscription, so many fun ideas. Most of my ideas come from there.

Today was my first graders first day of Spring Break, and she is off track for three weeks (year round schooling). I thought it would be great fun to wake her up for school with a yummy breakfast. I got things ready and went in to wake her, and she told me, "I'm too smart for that!"

"April Fool's" I said, because there was no way she would get out of bed otherwise!

"I made you a yummy breakfast"

She rushed out of bed in anticipation, but quickly got very unhappy. I made her an egg, and, well, she HATES eggs!

It is actually very vanilla yoplait yogurt and an apricot half.

My son was not thrilled either! He was pushing the plate away and saying his trademark, "Pleh!"

This is her hiding behind the garbage can so that she won't have to eat it, and so that I will stop taking her picture.

I also had a bowl of cereal for each of them. I put a drop of food coloring in each bowl and added the cereal. Pour the milk in front of them. It takes a minute for the coloring to show up.

My daughter's is pink, my son's blue, just like their bowls, which might have made it harder to see. But it ended up working for me. When I asked in astonishment what happened, Mr. T. said, "Maybe the bowl is effecting the milk?" He's just five!

Of course, neither of them wanted to eat the cereal. They both ate the apricot. Mr. T. ate up the yogurt, Miss B. licked her fingers and no more (even though she likes vanilla yogurt.

We (or I guess I should say, I) have more tricks planned for later.

For lunch we are having mock grilled cheese. It's pound cake with orange tinted frosting

I also made a kitty litter cake.

Because we do not have a cat, I needed some explanation as to why we would have a cat box at our house. I tricked my daughter first, I told her that her aunt needed us to watch their cat, Kiki, and so there was a litter box in the garage. When she brought it in for me, I ate a tootsie roll poop, and she looked a little disgusted until she figured out it was more April Foolin'. Then I decided to let her play the trick on her little brother. She told him the same story, and well... then is when it got a little bit sad. My little boy was so excited to see his Auntie's cat, that well, when he found out it was just a joke, he was not a fan of any more pictures, and he started to cry. This is when I felt like the worst mommy ever!

Thankfully he got over it fairly quick, and was ready to get our daddy tricks ready!

We left this little gem in the potty for daddy! (Sharpie on toilet paper)

My daughter then left a little note for me, isn't she sweet!

Our last trick had us all rolling, though my husband did not find it quite as funny. At this time last year my twin boys were just 2 months old, and had infant breastfed diaper poops. As I was making the frosting for the mock grilled cheese it kind of reminded me of their diaper fillings. So Miss B. and I got a clean diaper and filled it with some frosting. We left it sitting on the floor, half open (I know, we're disgusting). Miss B. licked the diaper in front of her brother, which of course he found utterly disgusting. And then when Daddy got home from work, I stuck my finger in and licked it. So gross, but seeing the look on my sweet hubby's face was well worth it.

Could we be much more disgusting, probably not. But it sure was fun, and we're making some fun memories!

(Please ignore any messes in the background, as previously stated I had infant twins, so not much was getting done around our house besides diaper changing and feeding the kids!

Goop

2010-03-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

Mr. T and I made goop the other day while Miss B. was at school. He gets so bored when she is gone all day, and we needed something to do. I just love Family Fun Magazine. They have such fun and cute ideas. This month they had a recipe for goop. I showed my little man the photos and he was sure that he did NOT want to make it. I kept trying to convince him, but to no avail. Finally I told him I was making it for me.

The recipe is SUPER simple!

1 c. cornstarch
1/2 c water

Mix.

It does not mix well at first, but keep stirring. Of course once I started mixing and playing he joined in the fun. It looks solid-ish until you pick it up, then it becomes a liquid. We added some food coloring for more mixing fun.

He and I played with it for a while, and then he played by himself for a while. It looks uber messy, but honestly, one of easiest clean-ups ever!!! Because it solidifies and the dries out, its all just crumbly powder. This was much easier than even cleaning up the table after dinner!

By the time my daughter got home from school (with a friend) it was pretty solid, so they wanted to make a new batch. They are both 7 years old, and made it without my help. They added food coloring as well. The food coloring can be more messy, since it stains, but you don't have to add it either.

This was a very inexpensive, fun, sensory activity, and easy clean-up too! We will definitely be making this again!!!

More jean recycling

2010-03-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

After making the shorts and hair bows, I decided to do some more jean recycling. :) My daughter has had this cute pair of jeans with holes in the knees for some time. I did not want to just cut them off, because they had such cute embroidery on the calves. I decided I would try converting them into a skirt. I found a few tutorials online, all basically the same. This is the one I followed.

Basically you cut the inner seams out, and sew the legs in.

My tips after completing this project:

Almost all the tutorials said to rip your seams out, and so I did, and it was a lot of work. The tutorial I followed said to not worry about ripping them out, just cut them out because you do not need the seam allowance. I completely agree. I ripped them out, and ended up cutting them some anyhow. So DO NOT waste time ripping the seams out, just cut them.

I like that I got to use the embroidery in the skirt, but it did make it look a bit different than if I had not had to use the outside leg seam.

It is difficult to sew through in some spots. I still need to sew just below the zipper by hand, because it was too thick to even get under my presser foot.

I think leaving the bottom of the skirt to fray looks the cutest. You could sew a hem, but eh, its easier not to!

The jeans I had were a bit stretchy. I don't know if that made them easier or harder to work with, but it still was not a difficult project.

But all in all it was a fun, quick project. When my daughter got home from school she said, "Oh cute!" So it was worth it. Does it look perfect? No, but that gives it more character. Besides, when the skirt is on a body you really cannot see all the flaws. :)

Then I had just a tiny flower from the embroidery, so, of course, I made a bow!

Recycling jeans

2010-03-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have two kids that are hard on their pants. Seems like their pants always have holes in the knees. I think Mr. T. wore out 5 pairs of pants in about two weeks. Thank goodness I buy pants on sale, and for the gift of hand-me-downs!

I have had a growing pile of pants to convert into shorts for sometime. I recently decided to tackle it. So I cut off all the legs and then thought they were too good to throw away. Blame it on all the fun crafting blogs I have been viewing lately. I just could not bring myself to dump them.

I did some googling for ideas. I found a few cute ideas, but still not exactly what I wanted. I have recently discovered my best thinking time is in the middle of the night when nursing a baby. With two nursing infants I have a lot of great thinking time! Its great really, its quiet and completely dark, so I have no distractions. Anyhow, I digress. I thought they pant legs could make some very cute hair bows for my daughter. So the next day I did some more googling (while nursing, since its hard to much else while breastfeeding, and it just forces me to take a minute for myself). I looked on etsy as well for inspiration, and really, what I found was not that cute. I then remembered making hair bows with my sister as a kid. We used fabric scraps and hot glue. It was easy and fun. So I went out on my own and tried a few things. I hot glued each bow on an alligator clip.

Here is my first attempt.

I thought it would be cute to use the seams in bows, but decided after that it wasn't. The bow is too big, and I don't like the big loopy holes.

Attempt #2
I decided to start with a rectangle and hot glue each edge. Then I pinched the middle and used a skinny scrap to wrap around the middle.
This bow looks more finished, but also quite plain. At least the size is better.

Attempt #3 (now we are getting somewhere)

I started with a rectangle, 2x5 inches.

I frayed along the long side by pulling threads.

Then I folded over one end, and put glue along it and folded the opposite edge to meet it.

(I found you do not want the glued part exactly in the middle, or it does not pinch off as well, hence why it is off to the side.)

Pinch the middle

I then used the cuff from the pants (I did cut off some of the really frayed strings)

I used the cuff to cinch the pinched middle.

Then I made another to "match". Notice they aren't really the same size/shape, but when in the hair, you cannot really tell. It's times like these that its a very good thing I am not a perfectionist!

I then decided that the cuffs themselves could make for some very cute bows. These were super simple to make. I did not line the alligator clip. I just hot glued the cuff right on, just slightly bigger than the clip itself. Because the clip is not lined, I did stick a small scrap between the metal to keep them from sticking to each other. What good is a clip that you cannot open.

Then added a little embellishment.

I love the frayed look to them. I think all of the bows look very 1980's, so its a good thing that look is coming back in.

The longer I kept at it, the more ideas came to me.

Back to this step,

I added an X of ribbon (hot glued where the ribbons meet)
And hot glued it onto the bow
Then add your cincher to hold the pinch. You can use either the cuff, or a scrap. And of course it needs just a little more to pretty it up...

Add a little more color,

and for Miss B, a little glam!

I got lucky that day, the twins were super sleepy (because of a cold, not so lucky there) and contented enough to let me create. Then Grandma was visiting from out of state, so she was more than happy to hold one of the boys while my sister-in-law and I went to "work" (Hard to call work when you are having so much fun!)

I was able to get all the bows pictured here (and 4 more for my little niece Miss M) done in one day. Even more impressive, I got 8 denim bows made, and 8 cuff clips done from one pair of 4t cut off pant legs! Not too shabby!

I obviously did a few bows besides the denim ones. Miss B. needed some St. Paddy's clips. And a while ago I saw some cute pom-pom caterpillar clips somewhere, and knew my daughter needed some of those as well.

These are just too fun! I used silk leaves from silk flowers I previously pulled apart for flower bows. Hot glued the leaves onto the alligator clips, and then hot glued the pom-poms on, added some tiny googly eyes, and pipe cleaner antennas. I am so ready for Spring!!!

St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been a while since I have updated here. Being pregnant with twins, complete hospital bedrest, and caring for and nursing two babies puts a damper on the blogging. :)

Sorry this is posted so close to St. Paddy's Day, but I did want to share a few festivities that the kids and I have had fun with in years past.

I have had hosted two different St. Patrick's Day Parties as a preschool teacher. The students favorite activity, and my own children's as well is this:
(idea found here: Perpetual Preschool)
The End of the Rainbow: We go searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! I run a very long length of ribbon throughout our playground. It weaves around trees, under large toys, around corners, etc. Actually, it is several long pieces of ribbon tied end to end...first red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, and gold . The kids follow the rainbow path to find treasure -- a leprechaun's pot of gold coins, small toys, stickers, gold rocks, or whatever you want to hide!

My daughter actually reminded me of this activity a few months ago. She is very excited for St. Patrick's Day this year, so we can do it again.

Here are some photos from this year's festivities!

For snack we usually do this (idea found here: Preschool Education )
Magic Powder On St. Patrick's Day, pour three boxes of instant Pistachio pudding mix into a plastic airtight container. Label the container "Magic Powder." Leave the container in an obvious place with directions from the leprechaun for making pudding.
Note:
Dear children:
*Open the lid and take a whiff of my magic powder, What does it smell like to you?
*Add 6 Cups of cold milk. I left some in the fridge!
*Put the lid on tight.
*Take turns shaking the bowl while the whole class says:
Leprechauns, Leprechauns
Shamrocks seen
Magic powder
Green, green, green!

The kids love shaking it up and watching it turn green. Some kids try it, some don't. The ones that try it usually like it. ;)

For an art craft for 3-4 yr olds (though my six year old quite enjoyed it too) we did this:
(idea found here: Hummingbird Ed)

Depending on the age/skill of children, you can precut circles, or have the children cut the circles themselves. You want circles in the following sizes and colors. I did not do those exact sizes,
I just made sure to graduate the sizes, with red being the largest.
CIRCLES
Red-12"
Orange-10"
Yellow-8"
Green-6"
Blue-4"
Violet-2"
Have the children glue the orange circle onto the red circle, the yellow onto the orange, etc. Before the glue (which will be thick in some areas) dries, fold in half-colors out- any way the colors look best or however the child chooses. We punched a hole in top and hung them from the ceiling in the room. We added a little gold glitter glue to ours as well.

Here is my son's hanging, and my daughter's with glitter (the boy didn't want glitter lol)

In the past we have also painted our own blarney stone. I found some rocks and painted them green ahead of time, so
they would be dry. The kids added all kinds of green
embellishments, glitter, pipe cleaners, foam stickers, etc. We
also added eyes to them. The kids had fun, and they turned
out adorable. Unfortunately that was 4 years ago and I was not
the photo nut I am now.

Another fun art project we did was torn paper shamrocks (idea found here: Free Kid Crafts)
What You'll Need: Green construction paper, Large sheet of contrasting paper, Pencil, Glue. What to Do: Tear green construction paper into small pieces. Half inch squares work pretty well, but you can go a little bigger if you're working with a very young child. Draw a large shamrock shape in the middle of the sheet of contrasting paper. Spread glue around the inside of the design. Try to cover the entire surface of the shamrock so that covering it will be easier. Put the torn green paper on the glue to create the shamrock design. Let the glue dry completely.

We also danced an Irish jig. The best music I had available was from the dancing scene in Titanic, but the kids loved it.

And the best St. Paddy's movie to watch, is of course,

I love any excuse to make a cute craft with the kids, and these are the ones I think worked best. What things do you like to do for St. Patrick's Day?

School Clothes Shopping

2009-07-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of shopping. It wears me out, and isn't much fun. I usually know just what I want, get it, and leave! But school shopping is not always easy. But I have found out how to make it fun for me......find awesome deals! I get such a rush off of saving money! I tend to buy things all year long when I find them on sale. My favorite places for clearance items are ShopKo and Target. Mervyns used to be my absolute fave, too bad they went out of business!

Anyhow, My daughter is in year round school and starts first grade on Tuesday, so I needed a few more things to finish things up. My son will be starting his second year of preschool in September. My daughter needed some long shorts, which are very hard to come by, but short shorts do not work in school, and I am trying to teach her some modesty while she is young. *wink* I also had lots of long sleeved shirts, but not too many short sleeved ones. So today we headed off to some not so local outlets to finish up.

I came back quite proud of myself. Then I grabbed what I already had in the closet for each of them, and well... it was a lot more than I thought, especially for my daughter! She is set for the year (well, besides her constantly growing out of shoes)!! My son did not need quite as many things, because he only has school a few times a week, and he also recently received a HUGE amount of barely used hand me downs from a family friend.

Anyhow, I thought I would share my spoils!!

This is my son's stash

This includes
(3) long sleeved shirts
(6) short sleeved shirts
(2) pairs of pants (jeans and athletic)
Reversible coat
Hoodie
Pajamas

14 items pictured. This does not include 2 pairs of shorts and 2 more short sleeved shirts he got early because he was low on summer things.

The retail item for all the above was: $217.91
The grand total I paid for all of the above: $67.71!!!

14 things (including a reversible winter coat) for under $70! Yehaw!!

My daughter is going to look quite spoiled now, but anyone that has kids knows that the older the get, the harder their clothes get worn. I always thought it was the opposite, that they got older and took care of things better, but not what I have found to be true. We also receive less and less hand me downs these days (though I recently got quite the stash from her 11 year old aunt!)

Here is my daughter's take:

(had to break it into two shots so you could see it better)

Her loot included:
(10) short sleeved shirts
(6) long sleeved shirts
(4) under skirt leggings
(3) pair of shorts
(2) pairs of jeans
Jacket
Pajamas

so 27 items.

The retail on her clothing: $406.78
The grand total I paid: $157.65!!!

I got 27 items (maybe 28 if you count the removable vest that can be worn with other things) for about $150 smackers!

The leggings were the only things that were not on clearance, so they ran the price up a bit, at $9 each, which seems crazy to me for stretchy cotton stuff, but my daughter LOVES to wear skirts, and wearing skirts to school and also loving the monkey bars is not always a good combination, so leggings are a requirement! And she wore the ones we bought last year a ton, so a good investment nonetheless!

I did not pay over $10 for anything pictured above, I even paid $1.48 for one shirt, and a few others were under $3 each. We bought things from Old Navy, The Children's Place, Osh Kosh, Target, and ShopKo.

I do have to say that boys items are much harder to find on clearance. The racks tend to have a lot less on them, and finding clearance items in the size you need is not always easy. It is easier now that my kids are a bit older, because I can usually guesstimate fairly well what size they will be for what season and what not.

I now have a headache from all this math, but the high of getting a great deal is still lingering, and probably will continue to do so as I see them wearing all the cute and cool stuff we got!

Nursery Rhymes

2009-07-10T20:56:00.000-07:00

This post is a long time coming. I have more than a few to catch up on.

I had the Nursery Rhyme theme a few months ago for preschool. I think this was one of the most fun units I have ever done! There is so much to do, it was really hard to narrow it down!

We finished the alphabet, so we had been doing numbers, and we happened to be on numbers 13 and 14 that week. So I made worksheets to match that.

First day:

As the kids arrived I had a little activity set out for them (got the idea here:http://www.preschooleducation.com/gnursery.shtml). There were two bowls set out, one filled with oatmeal (Little Miss Muffet's curds and whey) with plastic spiders hiding in it. They were to spoon out one spoonful at a time into the bowl on the right. They were supposed to work around the spiders. The kids actually did really well at this, and thought it was great fun, asked to do it over and over. It is supposed to help them with directional reading, but also just a great hand/eye coordination activity!

Little Bo Peep Paper (The kids had to color her sheep, so they would be easier to find)

Then we did a Put Humpty Together Again craft. I provided the background paper, a red (brick) square, and a white oval, cut for them to fit together. It was up to them how to arrange it on the paper, and add Humpty's little extras.

For snack we made muffins, while singing, "Do You Know the Muffin Man" over and over and over.

Once we got the muffins in the oven to cook we did a messy craft (great thing to do right before snack, because they have to wash up before eating!)

We made a sheep black for Baa Baa Black Sheep. (The below pic is not a true reflection, it was an extra and got a little paint on it, the kids COVERED their's so much you could not see a sheep on it!)

Then we made a Hickory Dickory Dock clock. I bought foam numbers, and gave them a clock to look at, but mostly left it up to them on how to put the numbers on. The raindrop shaped mouse was attached on some yarn so that the kids could move him up and down the clock.

For our songs and movement we did a Jack and Jill Spill. I had a bucket filled with large blue poms poms. We let the kids take turns (2 at a time) being Jack and Jill. We would recite the poem, and when we got to the last line dump the bucket on the kids as they "fell" down, they LOVED it! (Got the idea here! http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/preschool_themes/nursery/nursery_rhyme_misc.htm)

Then we had some candlesticks (toilet paper and paper towel tubes in various sizes with a paper flame) for the kids to jump over. This gave us an opportunity to talk about fire safety. We had some great jumpers in our class!

We also had to find Little Bo Peeps sheep. I had paper sheep hidden around the room for them to find.

And lastly we used a Nursery Rhyme dice. Each side had a nursery rhyme pic on it (got my pictures from my Story Time Felts Nursery Rhyme Set!), such as Ring Around the Rosies, Humpty Dumpty, etc. Each child had a chance to roll and we would sing whichever landed on the up side.

I had even more planned, crazily enough, there was just so many fun things to do. But we did manage to get all that done in two hours! I'll post our second day tomorrow! I made sure to put the words to each nursery rhyme on the front or back of each paper, so that us parents can remember them too!

Not so informative commercials

2009-04-29T20:51:00.001-07:00

I shared this on my personal blog, but I wanted to share it here also! :)

With the switchover to digital TV we get a few new channels. Qubo is one of them that is great! My kids love it, cartoons at any time of day (not that we watch all day). Many of the cartoons are older ones, or from Canada or the UK. The shows themself are GREAT! The commercials inbetween leave something to be desired. Add in the fact that you see the same commercial probably 6 times in a one hour time period.

I am realizing the kids may be watching too much television.

Yesterday my son told me, "Mommy, did you know if you have Bendaroos you can turn a bottle into a fashion model?!"

As far as I know my four year old has no idea what a fashion model is, but he was sure excited about the possibility. In Bendaroos defense, the kids played with them at a relatives house and they were quite fun!

And then today, while we were walking my daughter to school, my dear son says to me, "Mommy, do we need an Awesome Auger? I was thinking, how does my son know what an auger even is??? I asked him what it was, and my six year old said, "You know, from TV." Aahh, yes, I remember, they have both been telling me how it makes your dirt soft. I've been also trying to explain how things on TV do not always work the same as they show them.

Then my daughter ask, "Do you know what a Topsy Turvy is? I thought she was talking about the "cool" hair thing we saw the other day, Bumpits. (Oh my, their website is bighippiehair!). I asked her, "Is it a hair thing?" and she tells me, excitedly, "No, you can grow your tomatoes upside down!" I told her that one of her grandma's has one! :)

And then there is My Gold Envelope. My daughter saw this one and thought they turned your gold into actual money, and then mailed the money they made back to you. It took a little bit of explaining.

And to further illustrate this point, as I have been making this post and trying to find the names for all these products, I asked the kids, "What the hair thing called?" and "What is the name of the Gold one?" And they could supply each one!

Oh my! I thought it was silly that they had such adult commercials during kid shows, but apprently they know what they are doing. Repetition, repetition, repetition! So how come me always telling them to clean their room and such doesn't work? Maybe I need to get a tape recording of Billy Mays saying, "You too can have a clean room! All it takes is this nifty thing on the end of your arm! It does all the work for you!"

BUGS!!!

2009-04-16T10:59:00.000-07:00

We had preschool at our house this week. The theme was Bugs and Insects. As a kid I LOVED LOVED LOVED bugs! :) I spent most of my summers looking for bugs under bricks, stones, wood, anywhere! Anyhow, I was quite excited to teach this subject to the kids. We have made it through the alphabet (a letter a week) so now we are also teaching numbers. I had numbers 5 and 6, which worked great, we had ladybugs with 5 spots, egg carton caterpillars with 5 humps, and then of course insects has 6 legs. :)

Anyhow, I'll just share some of the activities that I think worked well. Bear in mind, the kids are all four years old.

As I mentioned before we made egg carton caterpillars. The kids donned paint shirts and went to town. I pulled one child aside at a time and gave them a coffee filter, water color paints, and an old medicine dropper. I did not tell them what this was for, but they just enjoyed without asking questions. :) I told them they could not take their caterpillars home because they needed to dry. When they came back two days later they caterpillars had climbed in paper bag cocoons. I had attached the coffee filter wings as well. They were very excited. The filters are not wing shapes, but they flap up and down very well when you make your caterpillar fly!!

I also made these worksheets myself. The graphic of the ladybug I got from another website, but the rest I made myself. :) If you would like a file of it, let me know and I could probably email it to you.

I taught them a bit about spiders. To teach them how spiders do not stick to their own webs, try this: Insects get stuck in a spider's web because the spider's web is sticky, but a spider does not because it's legs are oily. We experiment with this idea by taping two squares of contact paper to the table, sticky side up. We pretend our hand is a bug, with our legs (fingers) sticking to the web. Using the other square of contact paper, we pretend to be a spider, dipping our legs (fingers) into cooking oil first, then walking across the sticky "web". (from http://www.prekinders.com/bugsunit.htm). The kids loved this.

For story time we read:
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Great children's story. I have not met anyone that did not like this book!

View all my reviews.

and then made a hungry caterpillar from a pipe cleaner. I found various free graphics on the net and printed them all on one page. The kids colored and cut out, and I punched a whole in the middle.

We made a very cute ladybug snack, that I neglected to get a picture of. Slice an apple in half lengthwise, and lay with cut side down on a plate. The ladybugs' spots are raisins, put on with a dot of peanut butter. The head is a grape attached with a toothpick. (from here: http://www.preschooleducation.com/cbug.shtml). I used what I had on hand, so our ladybugs were green, with 5 chocolate chip spots, and no grape head. The kids liked it anyhow, though they did ask why it was green. :)

I found a "New Itsy Bitsy Spider here: http://www.hummingbirded.com/spiders.html
The kids LOVED this!
"A New Itsy-Bitsy Spider"
The itsty-bitsy spider
Crawled up on (Name)'s head.
He crawled all around, then used it for a bed.
He crawled down (his/her) back
and jumped down to the floor.
Then the itsy-bitsy spider
Crawled underneath the door.

I also learned about the Tarantella, I have heard this song many times over the years, but did not know its name. Apparently one would dance to this song to keep the mania from taking over if you were bitten by a tarantula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantella). My son wanted to hear this song over and over and over again!

Thursday our snack was these cute butterflies

We served snacks both days with nectar juice (any kind of juice, served with a straw through a paper flower)

This may look like a bunch of scribbles, but its not

I gave the kids brown paper (color of the month) and told them to use a yellow crayon, since bumblebees are yellow, and I played, "Flight of the Bumblebee" and told them to draw to the music. I did this same activity a few years ago, and the kids always seem to like it. Unstructured art is great for small kids, no frustration when it doesn't turn out like the model.

We also played this little game: Sleeping Caterpillars: Bring in sleeping bag to use as a chrysalis and place it on floor. Let one child at a time pretend to be a caterpillar and crawl inside sleeping bag. Then have everyone sing the first verse of the song below. When child crawls out of the sleeping bag, have everyone sing the second verse (also from Hummingbirded)
Sung to "Goodnight Ladies"
Goodnight caterpillar,
Goodnight caterpillar,
Goodnight caterpillar,
You'll be a butterfly.
Merrily you fly away,
Fly away, fly away.
Merrily you fly away,
Pretty butterfly.
We did this a few times each. :)

Some other great books we read were:
Little Miss Spider by David Kirk

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Cute story!

View all my reviews.

The Very Lonely Firefly by Eric Carle

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews.

Clara Caterpillar by Pamela Duncan Edwards

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
cute story, filled with lots of C words!

View all my reviews.

Ladybugs: Red, Fiery, and Bright by Mia Posada

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a great factual book about ladybugs, but set in a cute rhyme to keep it interesting for the littles.

View all my reviews.

Slugs in Love by Susan Pearson

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Cute little rhyme-y story.

View all my reviews.

(I just love my local library!)

We also played with lots of felt from Story Time Felts (I just love their stuff, which is why I sell it)

We had this out to play with before we started

We played with this felt as we read the book by Iza Trapani

and we sang this more than a few times both days, I love this set!

I had hoped to do some bug hunting with the kids, but alas, the rain and snow put a stop to that. Overall, the kids had lots of fun, and I think they learned too!