Day 211: I have no idea

Well, don't ask me.  We had a conversation that went something like this:
Me: Well, let's see what we should do for craft today....
Iris: No, I know, i'll get everything we need. (runs to craft room comes out with Construction paper, paper punches, scallop scissors, and crayons)
Me: What are we doing??
Iris: Making a headrest!

Well, here is her headrest.. i don't know, but it kept her busy for almost 45 minutes and she is VERY proud of it.

Day 209/210

Sorry about last night, COX exploded and we didn't have internet for 90 minutes... i won't even go into the nightmare of trying to call tech support lol.

Yesterday, we pulled out a craft that Ama got the girls.  Two boxes of big princess/Minnie coloring pages and markers showed up in a bag that she gave us.  Iris adores Cinderella and Penny is addicted to Minnie, so, they were definitely a home run.  Penny is really working on her coloring.  I am seeing that she is understanding the lines of the pictures and where things start and stop much sooner than Iris did.  Now, i'm not saying she stays anywhere near the lines, but when she puts her mind to something, she gets the general shape and boundaries of the picture.

Iris is still in her monochromatic phase, so when she is coloring a picture, whatever color she starts with, the ENTIRE picture has to be that color.  She is getting much better at staying in the lines.

Day 210: Barometer

So, I saw this in Family Fun 2 months ago and I've wanted to build this ever since. I couldn't quite figure out the "needle" so I had to have mike's help with it.  It turned into a family craft, and it was VERY easy.  The best way we could figure out how to get the girls involved was to rip a piece of construction paper in half and give one girl the "sunny day" to color and the other "rainy day".  While they colored, Mike made the barometer, and i was the "assistant" for anyone that needed help.
Supplies needed:
Glass Jar
Balloon w/ neck cut off
Rubber band
2 straws
Glue
Construction paper

First, you stretch the balloon over the neck of the glass jar, then you secure it with a rubber band.  Next, you stick the two straws together to make it really long.  Mike cut the tip of one of the straws in half before he glued it to the top of the balloon, i'm not sure why though.  Once it was glued on, we stuck a construction paper "arrow" into the end of the straw.  Finally, we taped the Sunny day to the Rainy Day and hung it on the wall.  Barometer complete!

PS- Iris' Rain, AMAZING!  She made rain clouds with rain coming down.  I was really really proud of her, I know Mike was too :)

Day 208: Balloon Powered Pontoon

I had a Pampered Chef party this afternoon, so I asked Mike if he could take over craft for the day.  I came home to this:  A Balloon Powered Pontoon Boat.  I have no idea where he came up with the idea, but he glued water bottles to a 2 liter bottle with straws, then the glued the opening of a balloon to another straw and glued that straw to the top of the 2 liter bottle.  The girls each decorated a water bottle, and Penny also managed to decorate her nose... But, when you blew the balloon up, it moved across the bath, it was pretty cool :)

Day 207: Brownies!

The kids are feeling better!  YAY!!!!   That meant that we were going to the family reunion, which also meant that I had to make something to take with us.  Well, I've been selling Pampered Chef for 2 years now, and since I started, I have had recipe cards for these Rocky Road Brownies.... I have drooled over this recipe for the last 2 years, but have never had a reason to make it.  Well, yesterday, I decided it was time.  The girls and I took our little recipe card with us to the store and got all the ingredients we needed and came home to start baking!

Iris has become a HUGE help in the kitchen.  She loves to help measure, stir, and even prep.  There was a lot of great things that she could help with in this recipe, there was a lot of measuring, there was a lot of mixing, she helped me cut butter into a small pieces with a butter knife (fitting, right? hehe).  She and Penny unwrapped all 20 kisses and Iris helped me top the brownies with marshmallows and kisses once they were done.

I love getting the kids involved in baking, it is so much fun :)

And here is the recipe!

Day 206: fail

Time to admit it, I have failed.  We did not do craft today.  When I started this, I had not accounted for the fact that BOTH girls may get down and out sick at the same time.  Today consisted of breakfast (yeah, that was a fail), lying on the couch with no energy to move, a 3 hour nap, lunch, (mildly more success there until penny started SCREAMING that her mouth hurt.  I had her open her mouth and her tonsils were HUGE and almost touching her uvula), a trip to the Express Care clinic @ Metro, a trip to Target for two prescriptions (one for Iris, one for penny) to get rid of tonsillitis... (On a side note, why is tonsil spelled with 1 l and Tonsillitis spelled with 2? stupid english language), home and directly to bed because they couldn't keep their eyes open.  So yes, we failed.  I thought of craft numerous times today, but I could not, in good conscious, make them get off the couch/out of bed to do a craft.  I'm bummed :(  But they were so miserable, they didn't realize that we didn't do craft.  Usually they yell at me "MOMMY CRAFT!" if we forget.

Update, again... We are up to day 205 now

So, let me start this with the fact that I forgot a day last week... We made Light Sabers out of pool noodles.  I got the idea from this website, but realized quickly that the duct tape/electrical tape thing was going to be too advanced for the girls.  So, I wrapped them with large (3 inch) masking tape and let the girls color them with Sharpies... amazingly enough, the color stayed on the tape and NOT on their hands!!!!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

I honestly don't remember how long it has been since I sat down to blog.  I do know this though, since Tuesday, we have been INSANE.  I mean, absolutely, positively, CRAZY at our house.  First, Coraline randomly spiked a fever Monday night in the tub, she was sick all day Tuesday and woke up Wednesday feeling MUCH better.  Last night at dinner- at the Hilton, mind you- Penny puked ALL over the carpet.  "Mommy, my tummy hurts" BLAAAHHHHHH all over the place- what a mess.  We felt horrible.  I scooped her up and ran, leaving poor mike behind to deal with Iris and Coraline and the epic puke puddle she left in the dinning room :/  Iris woke up at 4 a.m. throwing up, and they both had fevers by the time we woke up this morning.  We have seriously LAID around the house on this gorgeous 75* sunny day and did nothing :(  On top of the illnesses, we've been going back and forth to Cleveland State because Mike's aunt Nana has been swimming in the senior olympics this week.  She got a Silver on Tuesday and a Gold on Wednesday, but unfortunately, she fell and needed, many stitches in her leg and was unable to compete in her last two events today.

But!  We did craft every day, despite illness, puking, fevers, olympics, etc.

Tuesday: Day 203

I had no idea how long we were going to be sitting at the swim meet, so I packed a big bag oh stuff to keep me and the kids busy while we waited for Aunt Nana to swim.  As I was packing the bag, i threw in crayons, construction paper, foam stickers, beads, balloons, and fishing line... yes, this is the life of a craft mom lol.  I decided, as I was loading the bag, that we could make "noise makers" with balloon and beads.  So we did, we filled balloons with beads and then blew them up and tied them off.  I then tied fishing line around them so they didn't blow away... what i failed to account for was Penny being penny and popping the balloon and the 100+ beads she put in the balloon FLYING all over the stands... so, we played 100 pick up... yeah, that was fun... BUT, they were a huge hit, needless to say, it looks like a balloon, and the other 2 have deflated so, no pictures, nothing exciting to show really.

Day 204:

We made a "go nana go" sign yesterday at the swim meet.  I gave the girls a piece of construction paper and crayons and told them to "have fun"  So they colored and colored and right before Aunt Nana swam, we put the foam stickers on.  She said she was able to see it from the pool.  I think it really made her happy.

Day 205:

Ok, so i've been kind of keeping these little "Science experiments" in my head for the last few months.  I wanted to use them for a week right before school started, just to give the kids something to think about and see how things worked.  Well, today, with Iris and Penny running 102* fevers and throwing up, I decided to pull out one of the experiments... I saw this in Family Fun mag and I thought it would be perfect for the girls.  All you need for this is a package of dry yeast, 1/2 cup warm water, a water bottle, a balloon, and a 1tsp of sugar.  Put the 1/2 cup warm water (warm, NOT hot, hot will kill the yeast) into the bottle, then add the package (2 1/4 tsp) dry yeast, and 1 tsp of sugar into the bottle.  Give the bottle a swirl and put the balloon over the mouth and wait.  Within 10 minutes, the balloon goes from totally flat to standing upright above the bottle.  Pretty neat.  The girls were SUPER excited when the balloon started to rise from the side.  Very cute.
 

Days: well, a lot

Ok, I'm going to say it now- we have SERIOUSLY slacked.... We have been crazy busy and the kids are now so sleep deprived that Coraline is sick :(  Hopefully, things will get better, and we will get back on track here this week.

Friday:

The girls and I went to Five Below a few weeks back and they asked me for a Doc McStuffin's puzzle.  Well, I told them that "next time" we were there, we'd get one, but that I wasn't going to get one that day.  Mike and I ended up there one night and I remembered they asked for it, so I picked one up.  Friday, Iris asked about the Doc puzzle and I pulled it out.  I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get all four of us (the girls and I) packed to go to my aunts for the weekend and get out of the house by 11:30 to meet Mike for lunch.  So, I let them do the puzzle as craft that day.  Honestly, they did really well with it, they were SO proud that they got it together, and were still playing with it tonight :)  2.00 well spent!!

Saturday/Sunday:

We spent some time with my aunt and uncle and my Dad this weekend while we were gone.  Well, my aunt told them that PapPap needed help making Zucchini Bread this weekend and they were SO excited to help.  Iris became little miss chef while she helped PapPap make the bread.  Honestly, I count baking as a craft any day.  I love getting the kids hands on and doing something that requires concentration and motor skills.  So, imo, Craft was DONE.
We also spent time with my dad and his girlfriend and thankfully, his girlfriend has grandkids, which means she also has a lot of crayons and coloring books.  In a pinch, we've got to work with what we've got.  So, the kids colored a lot with her and really enjoyed themselves.  They honestly colored better with them than they have in quite awhile, and well, I was in a pinch and unprepared for craft, so Craft: done!

Monday: What day it is?  Day 202? I think....

Got home last night at 10 to discover we had no milk in the house.  So, nixes the cereal idea right quick.  The kids woke up today at 8 (SLEPT IN!!!!!), we got dressed and went straight out the door to get breakfast.  After breakfast we had to do all of our grocery shopping for the week because we didn't have anything in the house to eat or drink (obviously, hence the lack of milk!) we didn't get home until 2 and I sent the kids straight up for nap.  By the time they woke up, I was already making dinner, then after dinner it was time for Stories for Bedtime at the library, then by the time we got home, well, there was NO time to do craft.  Yeah, we counted bathtime blocks as craft today.  Penny made a castle using every block that we own... it also spanned the entire length of the tub and wrapped around.... on the bright side, the TV hasn't been turned on all day :)

Days 196/197

Sorry!  We had a late night last night, then i got caught up in Deadliest Catch and i totally forgot to blog.   Anyway, here we go:

Day 196: Condensed Milk paintings

So, pretty cool, honestly.  These turned out REALLY pretty.  Super simple, pour a can of sweetened condensed milk into an ice cube tray and drop about 3-5 drops of food coloring into each tray depending on how dark/light you want the color.  Then, let the kids go.  The cool thing is, the "paint" stays REALLY shiny, even after it is dry.  The bad thing- it doesn't last long because it is, in fact, sugar milk... and will get moldy and yucky.  But, SO pretty, glad I did this with the girls.

Day 197:  Pool Noodle Stamping

Yup, you heard me right.  This one was a fun one too.  I took a pool noodle and cut it into ~3 inch lengths.  Some of them i left whole, some i cut in half, some i quartered.  I used a large box cutter, so make sure not to let the kids cut the noodles! lol  Anyway, after I gave each of the girls a tray of glitter paint and told them to have at it.  I love the way they turned out.  Penny really enjoyed it, until it got on her hands.  I used some Target "Modern Kid" paint, it is supposed to be acrylic, I got it in a big pack for 75% off, yeah, it sucked.  It took FOREVER to wash off hands, nothing like normal acrylic paint!  Won't be buying that brand of paint again!

Day 195: Must stop pinterest...

Ok, i have been glued to pinterest for the last hour, instead of blogging, so here we go!

Today, we made "blow paintings"  I am just going to start linking instead of writing out all the instructions, because well, someone else has already done it, it isn't a novel idea, and I am going to say the same things they have so here is the idea: http://www.education.com/activity/article/Blow_Painting/ and here is how to make the paint: http://www.education.com/activity/article/make-your-own-paint/ .  I made 3 batches of paint and split them all in half so we had six bowls.  I used neon and regular food colors to color everything.

Iris really enjoyed it, but Penny didn't seem to catch on very much, or wasn't very interested, whichever.  I am not sure.  But, here they are.... along with our paint colors!

Days 191-194

So, the girls were gone this weekend and just got back home, so here is the breakdown of crafting the last few days:

191:

Theme book:  Mike's aunt is swimming in the senior olympics this coming week, which excitingly, take place in Cleveland.  So, she will be here and Mike's mom wanted to make her a "cheer" book from all the family members.  With that in mind, we printed out "coloring" pages of the state of Ohio (where she was born, and obviously where the games are this year) and another of the logo of the Cleveland Summer Olympic Games.  Iris took great pride in coloring every square inch of the state of Ohio page and Penny markered and colored on her logo sheet.  I gave them to my MIL before i took pictures though- oops, sorry guys!

192/193:

We sent the team treasure chests to my MIL's house with the girls because they wanted to decorate them.  They tried decorating them on Friday and all the decorations fell off :( so they decorated them again yesterday and the decorations are still on now :)  I also found that there is "real" treasure in each of their boxes when I opened them up tonight.  There are stickers and bracelets... they have a great Ama!

194:

Tonight, when we were driving home, the kids reminded us that we still needed to do craft for today.  So, I googled "quick toddler crafts" and one of the first pages to pop up was one titled Busy Bee Kids Crafts.  One of the really easy- non halloween crafts was a plastic baggie fish.  It is especially fitting since we got the girls THREE new fish on Friday and the tank was all filled with fish when they got home.  Here are the directions (save me some time lol): http://www.busybeekidscrafts.com/Fish-Baggies.html  And here are our fish.  Cute side note, we gave C a piece of paper to "crumble" and at the end, she was adamant on putting her paper in the baggie with the big girls'.

Day 190: "Team" Treasure chests

Where to begin:  Well, first, in the theme of Pirate week, we made treasure chests today.  The girls painted them, Mike and I built them.  It was definitely a process.  Penny's is the blue one, iris' is obviously the pink one... and yes, I will admit it, I put Iris' together and it does NOT look as good as the one Mike put together, therefore, I used Penny's as the main model.  It is pretty self explanitory how we put it all together, cut 5 Popsicle sticks in half to make the sides, then used a popsicle stick to glue the inside of the half ones.  We used partial popsicle sticks to make "strapping" on each of the boxes and then used the strapping to glue the sides together.  On the bottom, we just glued popsicle sticks.  And for a hinge, we used a piece of felt.  They are kind of crude, who knows how long they will hold up, but the girls insisted on going to bed with them tonight, and they have been calling them their "Team Treasure Chest"s all night.  They are also looking for Gold Doubloons to put inside of the treasure chests... i think we are making Gold Doubloons tomorrow, and possibly decorating the outsides of the chests tomorrow as well.  But, here's what they look like for now!

(PS, i ended up painting penny's treasure chest because she painted 2 sticks and was done lol)

Day 189: Pirate Parrots

Well, we are continuing with our "Pirate" theme... today, PARROTS! http://www.busybeekidscrafts.com/TP-Roll-Parrot.html I came up with this idea yesterday and we always have an abundance of TP rolls and construction paper, so, here we go!

First, I would be LOST without my paper cutter, that thing is a life saver.  Cut a strip of construction paper just over 4 inches wide and done!  The kids put glue on the paper then rolled it around the TP roll.  Next, I cut a triangle beak and the feathers and let the girls decorate their wings.  With a little direction, they got it all put together in a somewhat birdly appearance.  I added pipe cleaner feet and googly eyes and we were done.  Pirate Parrots... one pink one yellow :)

Day 188: Treasure Map Pizza

So, the kids are in love with Jake and the Never Land Pirates right now.  They can't get enough.  They want to make Bucky/ The Jolly Roger but I have told them that that will be a Daddy Craft.  So, I started looking for Pirate Crafts today on Pinterest.  This happened to pop up, and i was making pizza for dinner anyway tonight, so we made this: http://www.bettycrocker.com/menus-holidays-parties/mhplibrary/birthdays/pirate-party-foods?nicam4=SocialMedia&nichn4=Pinterest&niseg4=BettyCrocker&nicreatID4=Post

We ALWAYS make homemade pizza dough.  It tastes SO much better than the store bought stuff, and it bakes so much nicer.. especially on my amazing stoneware!  So, once we had our pizza made, i let it cool almost completely down because I didn't want the girls to burn themselves.  I did all the prep work by cutting the peppers, breaking the pretzels down to size, slicing the olives, etc.  I didn't want any lost fingers.  Of course, I didn't have Green peppers for the palm trees, and Mike's work didn't have pretzel sticks in the vending machine, so I had him get regular small pretzels and I just broke them.  There isn't much contrast, unfortunately, but the girls had a lot of fun.  You can see the little "path" and the X... the pineapples were supposed to be the treasure.  We don't eat pepperoni in our house, at least much, so we obviously didn't have little pepperoni pieces on hand.  The girls loved making it though.  Iris helped me make the entire pizza today while the other two napped, and then they both loved making the treasure map on top.  Actually, I got interrupted tonight by penny crying that she wanted to make "Another Treasure Map" after she had fallen asleep.  I'm telling you, obsessed! lol

Days 186/187

Well, craft this weekend theoretically should have been done in one day, but we were SO busy yesterday that it just wasn't going to happen.  If you are a regular reader, or just a huge Home Depot fan, you know by now that the first saturday of every month is a kids workshop.  Well, this month, it just so happened to fall on the same day as my High School reunion.  So, we made sure to get there at 9 a.m. so that we could leave straight from there and go to Columbus for my reunion.  We didn't get home until after the girls' bedtimes last night, so we finished it up today.

This month, the craft at home depot was a Despicable Me car... now, time for a confession, i've never seen either movie, I don't have a clue what either are about. but we built the cars then we painted them.  After previous experience, we realized that we were better off putting the wheels on AFTER the cars were painted, so, we took the wheels, axles, stickers, and wet cars to Columbus with us and enjoyed the day at the Linworth reunion.

Today, when we were finally awake and moving, Mike helped the girls hammer their tires into their cars and then tonight, the girls and I put their stickers on.  Iris did almost all of her sticker decorating by herself, i helped with the side panels.

I bet you can guess which one belongs to Iris!

Day 183, 184, 185

I really haven't been TRYING to slack the last few days, honestly, but we have been so busy that by the time we get home, i am ready to pass out!  We went out to dinner then bowling on Wednesday and didn't get home until after 10 p.m. (SOOOO late for us!) and then last night was fireworks.  The kids didn't get to bed until midnight!  omg, i thought I was going to die of exhaustion!

Iris has actually been taking charge of Craft recently.  On Wednesday, she got out paper and crayons and made an "Envelope" for her nana's card  (that we mailed 2 weeks ago.. apparently, she doesn't fully understand the concept of the US mail yet.)  I cannot find the silly paper right now to take a picture of it, but I will say this, it looks VERY inappropriate!  Even mike looked at it and went "ummm, is that what it looks like????"  Well, it wasn't, it was an envelope, that she was very proud of making lol.

On Thursday, we made patriotic pinwheels.  I found this really easy tutorial here: http://www.studyvillage.com/resources/ViewAttachment.aspx?AttachmentId=299  we cut 9x9 squares of construction paper, and the girls decorated them to be red, white, and blue.... I made a flag on mine :)  It has the right # of stripes AND the right # of stars!!! (very proud of myself lol).  Anyway, we put a foam sticker in the center once we folded the corners down, to keep everything in place.  I put a straight pin through it all and stuck them into beeswax candles.  I did add a small perler bead to the back side of the pinwheel too, it makes it spin MUCH nicer.  Theoretically, I should have used a pencil with an eraser to stick the straight pin into, but who uses #2 pencils anymore???  I had to make do with what we had.  (no pictures yet- Mike hasn't e-mailed them to me)

Today (friday) Iris told me in the car this morning that she wanted to make "trees" today, "snowmen" and "x" trees.. what exactly those were, I did not know, but hey, who am I to judge?  Well, we got home tonight, Penny is not feeling well at all, so we got her to bed early, and Iris and I came down to do craft.  I was getting ready to grab the balloons and Iris came out of the back room with scissors and a sheet of pink paper and told me she was making a "snowman tree"  So, i sat next to her and watched as she cut the paper very methodically and made sure that everything was exactly so before going back to the craft room, finding a pink (sparkly) crayon and proceeded to make ornaments.  To finish it off, she made sure to "connect" the ornaments so that they did not fall off.  She informed us both that it is a very fragile tree and we must be careful with it.

Day 182: Cell phone speaker boosters

So, this is a craft idea thought of by Mike this morning.  He saw somewhere that you could make a cutout in a toilet paper tube and slip your cell phone in it to make a super cheap amplifying device for your speakers.  Well, i googled it today to find a picture to show you all of what mike had found.  Well, this is what showed up: http://img.wonderhowto.com/img/original/84/41/63487976773702/0/634879767737028441.jpg yup... totally modeled today's craft out of a picture taken while someone played beer pong.  And, it really does work!  It really does make our cell phones louder!

The idea was simple enough, cut a hole in 2 plastic cups large enough to slip a toilet paper tube into... then, make a slit in the toilet paper tube big enough for your cell phone.

Iris is still working on hers, looks like we may have a craft part two for tomorrow, but Penny's is made and here is what it looks like.

Day 181: Parasol

I don't know about any of you, but we are HUGE Sofia the First fans in our house.  The girls LOVE her.  A few weeks ago, there was a new episode that was about the Tri-Kingdom Picnic and Amber taught a princess from another kingdom to decorate a parasol.  I have thought it would be an adorable craft to do with the girls since watching that.  Well, today, i found a parasol at Five Below and picked it up.

We honestly just used paint and stamps to make designs on the parasol, and then glue and glitter and feathers to decorate it.  Glitter + Penny= DISASTER.  As i had the parasol outside shaking the extra glitter off, penny opened a container of fine glitter and DUMPED it all over the floor.  On the bright side, we have the sparkliest floors in all of Cleveland right now.  The down side is, glitter is EVERYWHERE.. feet, hands, faces, hair, yeah, we are going to sparkle for a week at this rate.  Not only that, it has rained ALL day and is super humid in the house right now, so the glitter is just STUCK to the floor and table until you touch it with your body... then it is STUCK to you :/