Day 59: Penguin Mache Day 2

Ha, this turned out!  I actually popped the balloons and they stayed formed!!!

We did this in a multi step process today.  First, Penny and I painted her penguin while Iris was at school.  Black coat first, then white a while later.  Then we did Iris' when she got home from school the same way.   We had van issues today, so the girls didn't finish their faces/wings until Mike got home from work and I was making dinner.  But here the finished products are.  I am proud of them, they look so cute!  Iris' penguin has big floppy ears more than wings lol.  Still cute though :-p

This will be my last blog until Sunday night.  The girls are going to my aunt's house for the weekend.  BUT!  They have TWO crafts planned for the weekend, and I may still write one tomorrow after I get home from dropping them off.  We shall see what is going on when I get home... This will be (i think) the FIRST weekend that we will have NO kids in the house for more than 12 hours since C was born!!!! Time to clean and pack to move south!

Day 58: Penguin Mache day 1

I have talked about this blog to a LOT of people over the past 2 months.  One of the most common comments I get from other parents is, "Oh, no, I am not into that sort of stuff.  I just don't do messy."  To which, I have always said, "Eh, it all washes up, no harm, no foul."  Well, after today, I understand the, "I just don't do messy," train of thought!

I saw these ADORABLE  penguin paper mache things and I just HAD to make them with the girls.  I mean, really, how hard could they be?  1 part flour, 2 parts water, some news paper cut into 1-ish inch strips, and a  couple of water balloons.  I can TOTALLY do this!  Sometimes, I should think "Just because I can do this, should I?"

We mixed up the "glue".  Basically, I used 1 cup of flour and 2 cups of water, (if you live in a high humidity place, use a little salt to prevent mold) and whisked it until it was smooth.  The kids enjoyed this part too.  So, we mix up the glue, I cut 1 inch strips of news paper, basically, the bottom half of section A in the Friday paper covered 2 water balloons if that gives you an idea.

Next, we dunked, there is NO way to do this cleanly, the strips of paper in the glue and then started pushing it onto the balloons.  Believe me, expect to get M-E-S-S-Y.  You just have to reach in and coat the news paper with your fingers, and then squeegee off the excess glue between your fingers.  It is a mess!!!!

As I was wrist deep in flour/water/glue my phone obviously had to ring.  Well, guess what, I left that one go to voicemail!  I will say that I was mildly uplifted when, halfway through the craft, Iris looked at me and said, "Mommy, this is a really fun craft!"

After we were done, THIS is what my dining room looked like.  If you don't have hardwood floors in your craft room- TARP IT! lol

But, I can't complain too much, I gave Iris and Penny each a washcloth and told them to clean the dining room up with me, and they did a VERY good job.  It wasn't as hard to clean up as I had expected it would be.

Now, as long as these dry properly, tomorrow, we will paint them :)

Day 57: Egg Carton Penguin Chicks

Well, I came up with this BRILLIANT idea of making Penguins from egg cartons.  It sounded really easy in my head.  I mean, how hard could it REALLY be?  Well, those are the famous last thoughts of an overzealous crafting mom!



First, you need to cut the egg carton apart- we use cardboard... they you have to glue them together so that it makes an egg shape.  Convenient right?  As I was standing in the office (we have one of those now haha), trying to hot glue the pieces together without hot gluing my fingers, i thought "You know, it is almost Easter time, I bet every craft store in the state has wooden easter eggs, that would work a LOT better than this!" but alas, I stood there, gluing egg cartons together and thankfully, not gluing myself!

So, I ended up with this egg shape... really should have taken pictures of each step this time... and I let the girls go with black paint.  Penny and I painted the whole penguin black, Iris only painted the top of hers black.  We let them dry, then added "bellies" to them with white.  Well, Penny ended up with the rare, Cow Speckled Penguin, and Iris ended up with an equally rare, Gray Breasted Penguin because she decided that she should mix the white and black paint together as she painted the bottom.

So, now we have our penguins, we let them dry, cut out some beaks and little black wings, a little bit of Elmer's glue, and voila!  Penguin Chicks!  (they are actually pretty cute, imo... but then again, what penguin ISN'T cute????)

Day 56: Triangle Penguins

 So, today is day 2 of Penguin craft week.  I was planning on making an egg carton penguin with the girls, but Iris really wanted to make a "Triangle Penguin"  I thought for a minute and decided that it would be SUPER easy to make, so, we came home and made triangle penguins... Which leads me to the fact that it is 10:32 a.m. and I am blogging about today's craft, ALREADY!!!!!

Supply list:

Construction paper
Scissors
Glue Stick








So, we start with a full sheet of black construction paper and turn it into a cone and glue it so it stays:

<-- if you don't trim the bottom it is going to sit like this... which is just sort of weird lol

 Trim the bottom    -->
and it will look like this










Now, cut a triangle out of the white paper to make the penguins belly and glue it on the front of the penguin, followed by a yellow beak, and 2 white eyes.. in this case, all triangles.  To finish your penguin, cut 2 long skinny black triangles for wings.  Only glue the bottom of the triangles:

Then glue them on to the body and turn them up a little... and instant penguin!

<-- here is Penny's penguin.. which by the way, she has been asking to snuggle with lol

And here is Iris' penguin. I think it may have had an     --->         extra chromosome or something... i don't know what would cause a penguin's wing to grow out of its head lol.

I am loving Penguin Week so far!

Day 55: Penguin Family

So, I have decided to do a week of Penguin crafts and to jump start our week, we did a family craft... a family of Penguins.  There is always a learning curve when you do a craft, and you would THINK the learning curve would be with the 1 year old, or the 2 3/4 year old, or the 4 year old, or the person who only sometimes does craft with us... but no, today, it was me.  I just had to color the wrong foot!  Though, I think I can partially blame Mike since he WATCHED me paint the wrong foot lol.

Supplies for today:

1 potato, cut in half
black paint
white paint
yellow paint
paper

First, you cover MOST of your foot, heel, toes, and ball of foot with black, then, the arch you cover in white paint.  Then, step down on your paper.  The toes are the feet of the penguin.  Then, you paint your thumb and press it down on the paper to make "wings"  this proved to be the most challenging part of the craft, honestly.

To finish, you let your penguin dry, and while it is drying, cut your potato half so that there is only a triangle left in the center.  Once you have a triangle cut, dip it in yellow paint, put it point down on the face of your penguin and press... you could also free hand this, but i have been wanting to make potato art for awhile now and this was a good opportunity.  Finish it by putting eyes on it, and you have a penguin.

Coraline

Penny

Me

Iris

 Mike

I really like our little penguin family :)

Day 54: Drink Cozy

(Sweaters before)

So, here I sit, trying something new... I am in the bathroom while the girls all get their baths before bed.  We shall see how this goes, as Coraline is splashing water everywhere, and I have a towel draped over my laptop as I type.

I found these ADORABLE drink cozies on http://www.meetthedubiens.com/search/label/crafts website.  She has some really really cute craft ideas, and I really wanted to try these as soon as possible.  I had to buy sweaters though, so a trip to Salvation Army was in order yesterday.  I am sure that there was a lamb and rabbit somewhere crying that I was SHRINKING 2 EXPRESS 100% wool/angora sweaters by washing them in hot water- twice, and drying them on high- twice.

But, once I had them dried, I cut the cuffs off the sweaters and started.  The blue sweater was good enough that I didn't feel the need to stitch the cut ends, but Mike felt like the gray/black sweater needed to be seamed, so he did a very basic stitch to keep his from unraveling.  Once that was done, we were able to start sewing accents on.

We obviously started with the girls, Mike "helped" Penny sew her heart and buttons on.  Basically, Penny picked the thread color and the buttons and he proceeded to sew everything on.  She did help by pulling the thread through a few times before she tired of it.  I must say, Mike is becoming a very good sew-er (I want to say "Sewer" but I think that that would be too easily confused with the place where sewage goes :-p).




I helped Iris, which I must admit was very similar to helping Penny, but she had a longer attention span and more opinions lol.  Iris wanted a cat, with a pink heart nose, and pink eyes.  She was quite insistent on it having a yellow mouth, so I accommodated with HORRIBLE stitchery :-p I am learning quickly that I am not a cross stitcher by any stretch of the imagination, so I just wing it and hope it turns out well.

Mike likes to call his "As Whimsical As OCD Gets"

And then mine... Obviously, I am Mom haha.

(Our Cozy Family)

Oh, and btw, I started this blog at 6... it is now 8:10 and i have spent the last 45 minutes messing with pictures getting them to show up the right orientation... STUPID BLOGGER!!!!! I am actually looking into getting my own website so that I don't have to fight with blogger/word press that doesn't have a ROTATE option on pictures!  That would serious be the best option ever for this this.

Day 53: Bird Feeders

Today was the easiest craft I could come up with.  We had a friend here, and I knew that we were going to be running low on time today.  This is actually something that I have wanted to do for awhile because I thought the girls would enjoy it.  I just had to wait until we had enough toilet paper rolls.  I swear, I am CONSTANTLY trying to collect these things now!!!

But, simple!  Less than 20 minutes start to finish- great for craft in a pinch.  The best piece of advice i can give for this craft is PROTECT YOUR SURFACE!  If you give a 2 and a 4 year old a butter knife full of peanut butter, you want your table COVERED.  Once again, this was a craft where that huge stack of paper bags i've been saving has come in handy- BIG time.

After the tube was covered with peanut butter, we rolled them in bird seed. I need to hang a string from it to go hang them in the tree tomorrow, but this is what they look like (not ours, but hey, a tube covered in PB and rolled in birdseed is all going to look the same, right? lol)

Day 52: Penguins, Christmas Trees, and Names

Wow, can we say hodgepodge?  I started today looking for a craft.  This was the first day in a long time that I have had to whip out Pinterest, but I was stumped.  So, I started searching and I found some really adorable penguins.  IF you know our family, you know that we have a slight obsession with penguins, so any opportunity to make a penguin is going to be a big hit.

This was the easiest penguin ever too!  It was supposed to be made with construction paper but I changed it to foam at the last minute which made it a little more difficult honestly.  I need to get foam glue, i think is what it boils down to.  But, hot glue works, it just makes it stressful when I am trying to do a craft with the kids and have to grab the high temp hot glue gun.  I am always fearing little fingers and melted glue.  But once again, I digress... So, i had half sheets of foam and i cut them slightly uneven, it worked out to be a 2.5 inch strip of foam and a 3.5 inch strip.  We glued them into tube shapes then glued the small one on top of the larger one.  Then it was just as simple as cutting out a beak, 2 feet, 2 wings (we ended up having to use construction paper because I didn't account for wings when i used ALL of my black foam, oops!) and a white belly.  With a little glue, and the help of googly eyes, we have the cutest little penguins ever.  I also found this awesome website with a ton of penguin ideas... I sense a penguin week in our new future! http://www.squidoo.com/best-penguin-crafts

So, onto "craft" 2.  It is actually totally related to craft 1, but I just want to take a proud mommy moment because sometimes, I feel like I don't celebrate the little milestones enough at times.  Iris asked me if she could write her name on the back of her penguin with chalk.  She started with the I and then I asked if she could make an R and she managed to make a very nice R without any help.. but then she ran out of room.  So i grabbed the scrap of black paper and wrote her name on the top and asked her if she could write it.  Well, this is what came of that.  I was so proud of her that i was clapping and cheering her on and I could see how excited she was in her face.  Well, I was so proud, that I wanted to save it for her, and of COURSE it was written in lime green chalk.  So, the first thing that runs through my head is "$#@!, this is done for." but then i remembered that I had spray on clear coat in the basement.  So I went running down there, grabbed the clear coat, and sprayed it on the construction paper.  I had this brief second where I thought I ruined it because the chalk completely disappeared.  I was convinced that it was gone forever and I was getting ready to kick myself in the butt and suddenly, the chalk reappeared!  So, now I have Iris' first ever written name, clear coated, on a sheet of construction paper, to save for her.  One day, in 20 years she is going to look at me and say, "Mom, you were absolutely ridiculous  you know that???" and I am going to smile and remember how happy and excited we both where.  And I hope I remember her standing there in that pink princess dress-up gown and tiara, jumping up and down and smiling ear to ear.

And, that brings us to craft #3.  Totally unrelated to #1 and #2.  I started this with the girls before Christmas, and just never got around to finishing it.  I don't know why, because it took me all of 30 seconds to get it finished, but I guess it was just easier to procrastinate.  Mike actually did the hand prints with the girls before Christmas, then I didn't have a star stamp for the top and oddly, it took me almost 2 months to find it.  Then, all I had to do was stick Coraline's feet at the bottom of the tree before her feet grew too big to fit on the canvas... yeah right, i think she'll be 6 before her feet get that big lol.  But, I did it today, and it looks adorable!  I can't wait to hang it in our office :)

Day 51: Snowflakes

You know that old saying that goes something along the lines of "if you don't use it, you lose it"?  Well, I TOTALLY lost it.  I lost something I never realized that I could possibly lose.. my ability to make a folded snowflake cutout thingy.  I am ashamed to admit that it took me THREE attempts to actually make my own snowflake before i folded one to give it to the girls.  But, alas, I remembered how to make one.  (It really got my goat because Mike made one at the Children's Museum without any thought at all, and it worked the first time :-p  Oh well, I figured it out eventually.

I got the girls each a piece of paper, folded it, cut a general circular shape then let them each at it with a pair of scissors.  I was actually surprised at how much strength it required for the girls to cut through 4 layers of construction paper with safety scissors.  I was even more surprised that Penny actually asked me to help her!   So, I cut the snowflake out for her after her first 2 cuts and handed it over for her to color it in.

In the end, this is what she came over and handed me, telling me "Here you go Mommy, it's for you!"

Iris also made her own snowflake.  She was determined to get hers done completely by herself.  I was really impressed when she came to show me hers. .. my girlies are growing up so fast!

Oh yeah, and we apparently figured out SOMETHING to help Iris sleep.. I don't know if it is was the antibiotic, the clairitin, the honey elixir  or the humidifier, but SOMETHING has made her sleep the last 2 nights, so i am afraid to change anything :)

Day 50: Sick Kiddos :(

Well, we didn't sleep much last night, at all!  Spent the morning at the doctors office with a 4 year old with an ear infection, a 2.5 year old with a cough, and an 11 month old with a 102 fever... all of them coughing their heads off.  Thankfully, it seems that it is all bacterial- except maybe Iris' ear infection, but nothing seems like it is dangerous, just really annoying.  But, because of the lack of sleep, we were ALL tired today.  Craft was difficult today just because of the exhaustion, so I was REALLY thankful that I had those butterfly pieces ready to go for Penny.

She really enjoyed putting the glue on the butterfly, and she actually allowed me to help her put tissue paper on the butterfly.  She was very proud of it when she was done.  I see her getting more patient with crafts as we go.  It is truly baby steps, but I am noticing an improvement.  She gets frustrated, she screams and yells, but she cools off quickly and wants to get help, or at least wants to continue and is willing to bend her prevailing opinions.

While I worked with Penny on her butterfly, I gave Iris her own little project.  I like allowing her to have truly creative work from time to time and today was a great day to do that.  I gave her a small sheet (a little bigger than a 5x7... maybe 6x8? i dunno)  of foam and free reign on all of our peel and stick foam pieces.  Letters, bugs, animals, princess, flowers, hearts, ladybugs, etc etc etc. 

I decided against pictures today because you have already seen the butterfly yesterday and Penny's isn't substantially different than Iris', just different colors.  And, Iris walked away with hers and I can't find it :-p  Hopefully, we will be feeling MUCH better tomorrow!!! It sounds like the kids are sleeping very well with the humidifier.  Iris hasn't had a coughing fit in over an hour, knock on wood!

Day 49: Butterfly Sun Catchers

Now, this is dedication.  I am sitting here in bed at 10:35 p.m., with a 4 year old who is coughing her head off lying next to me, watching Bubble Guppies (omg, TV at 10:30p.m. WHAT?!  She has never seen a TV at this hour!!!) and now, I am blogging!  But, that is neither here nor there when it comes to blogging!

So, today, I asked Iris what she wanted to do for craft and she mentioned she wanted to make a butterfly.  I thought quickly and decided that a construction paper and tissue paper sun catcher may be a lot of fun for her and Penny (who slept straight through craft, btw).  I find crafting with Iris to be much more relaxing, and I find that I get a LOT more done in a much shorter amount of time when it is just the two of us.  I was able to cut her a basic shape of a butterfly with purple construction paper, and then had her practice using scissors to cut some of the shapes in the wings.  I helped cut other shapes for her and then we got colored tissue paper out and cut them into smallish squares.

Iris used glue around the cut outs and then put the tissue paper around to fill in the holes.  It was super sunny today, and when it was done, I held it up the window to let her see it with the sun.  I must admit it was really pretty.  It honestly turned out better than I had expected it to.

I have everything cut out for Penny, so hopefully she will enjoy making a sun catcher tomorrow.  

(The heart paper punch Mike got me for Valentine's Day :) )

Day 48: Daisies

We are working sooo hard at getting the house ready to sell that Craft time on the weekend is running short. I had every intention of getting back to the mobiles that we started yesterday, but I had an idea yesterday as we were making them that I decided to act upon.  I want to get dried lavender and stuff it inside of Penny's to hopefully help calm her at night.  She has been having TERRIBLE night terrors for the last few weeks, so I am happy to try EVERYTHING in my power to help her relax.

So, as we were getting ready to start dinner, I realized that I needed to come up with a craft, STAT.  And, it was if the Craft Fairy beat me on the head with her wand, because I thought about making a flower out of hand prints.  So easy, and fun, and the kids could be really involved.

I traced their hands 6 times each on a paper color of their choice- Iris, Pink (obviously!!!) and Penny chose yellow- a nice surprise :)   I cut them out, they each helped me glue them in a circle. I made a center out of blue construction paper, and then a huge green stem.... then I set them free with markers.  They LOVE markers, so it was a lot of fun for them.

To be honest, I think that this is one of my favorite crafts!  I am starting to have more faith in my craft ideas, and I am spending less and less time on Pinterest.  Which is good, because I can burn HOURS there!

Day 47: Felt Mobile

So, today, I decided that I wanted to make a craft that I have been sitting on the back burner for almost 3 weeks. I have been holding off because I KNEW that it would be incredibly time intensive, and it hasn't been something I've really wanted to bring upon myself.  That being said, I am usually more adventurous and able to tackle much bigger projects when Mike is home and able to help control three kids!

I heard about this project in Handwork at Iris' school last month, and I thought "oh, what a cute idea!  I could easily make this with the girls."  I ended up cutting 9 hearts of different sizes and colors, and a bunch of  white clouds out of felt.  Mike and I worked as fast as possible whip stitching the sides together so that we could stuff them with batting.

I figured that this would help with fine motor skills for both girls.  Penny tends to give up easily when things are difficult, so I am happy that she at least tried to stuff the pieces and with some help she did really well.  Iris, of course, took right too it and managed to stuff all of her hearts and clouds in a matter of minutes.

I haven't had a chance to help the girls sew their hearts and clouds shut yet... well, at least most of them, I started helping Penny sew the clouds shut.  I would get the needle started, then had her push the needle through the fabric, then once it was through, I would flip it over and she would pull the needle and thread through the rest of the way.

Tomorrow, I am going to use fishing line and hangers and help the girls make mobiles for their rooms.  Hopefully it helps Penny sleep better.  I am seriously thinking about making a dream catcher for one craft.....

Day 46: Thinking About a New House

First, here is yesterday's craft.  The girls were so proud of them, and I really think they turned out nicely.  I have to give a shout out to my dad for cutting the hearts out.  He is learning quickly what it is like to have a LOT of granddaughters.  I just hope one day, he can have a grandson haha.  I mean He loves the girls, but I bet he will have a blast with a little boy trailing behind him the way our girls do!

So, back to today.  We are getting really close to putting the house on the market, meaning that we are just slightly further from buying a new house. That means that we are going to be going through a big change.  I have been really happy with how well the girls have dealt with the idea of moving so far.  Mike and I have really tried to play it off as something that just happens.  We tell them that we will have a bigger house, closer to school, and it is going to be better for us.  They seem to be really excited about the move, even helping us pack up.  But, I am sure that when we actually go to move, there is going to be a lot of emotion involved.  So, I have been trying to get them ready for the fact that we are going to have a new house... especially since Iris can now direct me to our house from a mile away :-p

I decided to periodically throw in a craft for our new house, so today, I had them make their "dream" room.  We started with the color paper that they want the paint to be in their room, then Mike started cutting out "furniture" from construction paper.  We didn't get it all the way done, you know, there is no bed yet... but, there is a dresser and a Christmas tree.  And if you know our house, you know that the Christmas tree is a vital part of the girls' room. 

At some point, I want to make a collage/scrap book of this house so that they remember it, and they have it just in case they get out of sorts in our next house.  I know that this is going to be a transition period for our family, and I am hoping to make it as smooth as possible.  

Day 45: The Big Surprise!

Well, I was so excited that I finally got to photograph the surprise we have been working on for the last big hearts, which we just HAD to have... so, MORE painting.  week, that I totally forgot to take a picture of today's craft!  Leave it to me :-p  So, real quick, for today's craft, we simply painted two of the hearts my dad cut out of 1/8 inch wood.  For being such a simple craft, the girls really loved painting them and were VERY excited to show Mike when he got home.

So, here is the big surprise!:

This has been MULTIPLE work days.. First we started by painting the popcicle sticks... that took 2 days in and of itself.  Then we had to go pick out a frame to put the sticks on.  And of course, we started looking around Jo-Anns and found wooden hearts, so we had to get those, and of course, MORE painting!

Once all the pieces were dry and adhered to the frame, we got to decorate it with foam hearts, love stickers, and lady bugs.  To be honest, I think that it turned out REALLY well.

I did have to go get the kids' pictures taken.  It turned out MUCH better than I was expecting.  We went Portrait Innovations because they are the ONLY place in Cleveland that has same day pictures.  WE used them during Thanksgiving to get a picture of ALL the grandkids and my in-laws and it was a horrible experience.  So much so that I swore up and down that I would NEVER go to another Portrait Innovations, but, as they say, Desperate Times call for Desperate Measures..... well, I was desperate, especially come Tuesday... and the KILLER 14.99 photo package didn't hurt any either :-p  So, we hauled ourselves to Portrait Innovations and they managed to get me ONE good picture of all three girls together, and I walked away with more pictures than I know what to do with and Mike's Valentine's Gift in the bag!

Mike surprised me tonight too, he made ice cream and candied almonds, OMG, delicious !!!!!  Can't wait for more, possibly the best ice cream ever!  I have a wonderful husband :)