Day 90: Happy Easter!!

Hope the Easter Bunny was good to everyone!  He sure was good to our family, in two houses even.  The girls were so excited.  I have really gotten into the holiday spirit this year, making multi-colored pancakes for every holiday imaginable!  Today was no different.  We started the morning with neon green, blue, pink and purple pancakes.  We spent the afternoon/early evening in Thompson with Grandma Lustig, Mike's parents and his sister and brother in law.  With dinner, we had a fruit salad with edible flowers, with which, craft was born.

Last weekend, we were going through boxes and boxes of stuff and I found frosty "laminate" paper that I thought "ohhh, that would be cool to make bookmarks with this fall.  Well, today, as we were leaving Grandma's house, I was thinking in overdrive to come up with a craft for tonight.. i am noticing a trend here, i am not planning as well as i used to be!... and as we climbed into the van, I thought "omg, flowers!" so I went running back to grab the edible flowers.

When we got home, I pulled the laminate sheets, a 12x12 white cardstock, and markers out.  I cut the cardstock into 2x7inch pieces with  my handy paper cutter from Christmas (thanks, Mike, again!) and let the girls at them with markers.  When they were done, we added flowers to them, and laminated them together.  After they went to bed, I added floss tassels.  Now i am wondering if the flowers are going to mold/dissolve, etc.  Time will tell, I guess!

oh, btw, the shaving cream flop eggs- here is a picture of them after i cracked them hahaha.  I guess it worked, just not on the shell! :-p

Day 89: Ama to the rescue!

So, we decided to go up to Great Grandma's house today, and I was thinking "ok, what kind of craft shall we do?" the entire time we were packing up, well, I never got around to gathering craft, and I knew I was going to be kicking myself for that.  But, then, as we were driving up, I remember my mother-in-law mentioning something about having a craft to do with Great Grandma.  So, I said a silent prayer to the craft god and made the 1 hour trek up to Thompson- the first of two Thompson trips this weekend.... i hope gas stations are open tomorrow, because my light has been on for at least 30 miles!

Well, conveniently, Ama did have a craft for today!  She had pretty purple, pink, and red beads as well as alphabet beads for the girls to string.  Each of the girls got a bit of cording, beads, and letters to spell their names and we let them go, stringing them as they saw fit.  Obviously Coraline didn't get to string beads, but Aunt Kathy made her a necklace.  Iris chose to make a bracelet with pink beads and managed to get IRIS in the right order but the R and S are backward :-p  Penny did really well making a purple necklace and managed to only string the E backward.

I THINK the crafts are in the van, but it is 10:02, I am exhausted to go get them and take pictures, and the Easter Bunny just showed up, so I think that is my cue to go to bed.  Hope everyone has a hoppy Easter tomorrow!

Day 88: Egg Dying SUCCESS!

So, after the major flop last night, I decided to give us a pretty sure fire success, and I bought WHITE eggs. I never buy white eggs any more, and because for some reason, only brown eggs are organic/free range/hand gathered/cage free/pasture raised, etc.  But, i sucked it up and bought a carton of white eggs today and I am SO glad I did!

We decided to make Kool-Aid eggs tonight, and they are GORGEOUS!  They are the prettiest, brightest eggs i have ever made!  We used lemonade, Cherry, Strawberry, Grape, Blue something or other, Lime and Orange Kool-Aide. So easy, so quick, and so fun!

We plowed through the first dozen eggs, so i grabbed the brown eggs, and we tried those, even they turned out pretty!

I loved the brown eggs because they looked so earthy, they almost had a wooden appearance to them.  They are absolutely beautiful!  Can you pick out the brown vs white eggs?

Also, the heart egg was Cs first ever easter egg, Mike held her and let her hold the egg (uncooked, btw!) and color on it a little with the white crayon, then he drew a heart on it and let C put it in the water.  omg, stressful!  But she did great, and she has a beautiful first easter egg :)

I guess here are the required things:

Solo cups
Kool-Aide
1 cup of warm water/color of Kool-Aide

Dissolve the powder in the water then dunk the eggs in.  the longer they sit, the darker they get.  That easy, and let me tell you what, the house smelled amazing!  Like a fruit salad exploded in our dinning room/kitchen :)

Day 87: Egg Dying gone wrong...

We tried a new dye technique with eggs last night.  I am sorry I didn't post last night, but as I got ready to start, Penny woke up crying for a nightmare, and I went upstairs to quiet her down.  I took her out of her room, laid down with her in bed, and I fell asleep about 30 seconds later! haha.  Oh well, I know I needed the sleep!

I saw the "shaving cream egg dying" trick on Facebook, so I thought I would give it a try... honestly, it didn't work well at all.  But, I will get to that in a moment.

First, you need el cheapo shaving cream, you know that $1 beard buster stuff?  Yeah, that.  You need some neon food coloring, a tooth pick, cookie sheets, and some eggs.

Well, first, you spread shaving cream all over the cookie sheet, then drop drops of foo

d coloring around the tray.  Use the toothpick to "swirl" the food coloring into the shaving cream.  Once it has a marbley, swirly look, roll the eggs into the food coloring and let them sit overnight. When you wipe them off, they are supposed to be marbled.

Well, problem 1, I didn't use gloves, I was dyed from wrist to finger tip, and still am.  Now, I used brown eggs, I didn't expect them to get as dark as I would normally expect white eggs to turn, but, this morning, as i was wiping the eggs down, they started sweating as they got warm and sweat the marbling straight off.  that is to say the ones that got "marbled" in the first place.  Most of them just looked like brown eggs.  Overall, I would say craft flop.  Won't be trying this technique again!

The girls however, had a BLAST playing in a second tray of shaving cream.  I must be a mean mommy because I had never let them play with shaving cream before, they had it EVERYWHERE, but boy did they have fun :)  Penny tried helping with the eggs, but she lost interest quickly.  I think some of these may just be a hair out of their age range and I don't realize it when I plan things.

But, I look like a dye factory exploded on my hands :/

Days 85 and 86

Talk about the walking dead.  I can hardly keep my head up to write this blog.  But, I have been slacking lately, though I would like to think that everyone could understand why.  Penny is 110% from where she was when she went into surgery yesterday.  She woke up from getting her adenoids out and she was VERY upset for a few minutes (maybe 45) and she slept in my arms.  But even as she was upset, confused, and tired from the anesthesia  i could hear how different her breathing was from when she went in.  After she slept the last of the anesthesia off, we went home and by the time we were in the van, I could hear how different she sounded too!  She isn't congested anymore!!!! Last night, I kept checking on her because she wasn't snoring.  She is 3 years old (almost) and has snored almost every day of her life.  She is so much better, so happy, and her breathing is so much more relaxed.  In the words of the ENT she had some "Big honkin' adenoids."

If C didn't have to have the arm braces for the next 3 weeks, I think she would be feeling 95% better already.  It boggles my mind how fast kids bounce back.  She had a 3+ hour surgery (from the time they took her back until she came to recovery it was ALMOST 4 hours), and they made 3 incisions in her mouth.  Today, she is eating, smiling, and playing, but the braces are driving her nuts.  Thankfully, as long as we watch her like a hawk, she can have them off.  But nothing can go in her mouth, including her fingers, that isn't super soft foods.  She is sleeping well tonight, and it has already been 4 hours since she had her pain meds.  She is going about 5-6 hours between doses and the doing well.  Metro treated her like a little queen, she came home with an adorable hand-knit hat, a handmade quilt, and a super soft stuffed shark- which Mike has named Henry the Hospital Shark.

Now, all three kids are at home, sleeping in their own beds, my hubby is at his computer, and I feel like my life is complete again.  I am one blessed mama here!

But, as promised, kids are doing a craft a day, and with the help of their AWESOME Aunt Natalie, Iris had craft yesterday :)  Penny wasn't really feeling it, but Iris enjoyed helping Aunt Natalie make these adorable Peep Blue Birds in nests.  They were really simple, a bag of melted candy chips (in our case PB), 2 cups of rice krispies, and 1 cup of chinese noodles.  They mixed them all up and dropped them by big spoon fulls onto a sheet of wax paper.  Then they made an imprint in the center and stuck a Peep bird in it and decorated the nest with jelly bean eggs.  Iris really enjoyed them, and LOVED showing her daddy when he came home.

Today, I made the Peeps bunny/M&M cake.  I was going to let each girl make their own cake, so I bought a box of lemon cake mix and a box of strawberry, but wouldn't you know, the girls BOTH wanted lemon!  So, I made 2 9" round lemon cakes and stacked them up on top of each other with some icing, iced the outsides, and let the girls have at it!  I split the Peeps and the M&Ms in half and they went to town.  I REALLY wanted to find the multi colored Peeps Bunnies, but I could only find yellow, so I gave them a little something extra to break up the sea of yellow Peeps!

Day 81, 82, 83, AND 84

So, here are the pictures of the crafts for the last FOUR days.  I am so thankful to my mother in law for doing a craft today before she brought the girls back to me!!  It was really fortunate too, because I was a total airhead today!  I went the wrong way home and took me an extra half hour.  I was SOOO exhausted after being on the road for almost 6 hours!

This was Friday- Puzzle coloring in the car:

Saturday- bunny ears

Sunday- necklaces

Monday- Easter Egg Decorations

And on a side note- Only in Cambridge would someone see this!

Day 81, 82, and 83

I know it has been a long time since I posted, but the reason is quite simple.  The big girls have been with their Ama and Papa in Charleston, WV this weekend, so I haven't seen them since Friday afternoon.  I didn't even do a car craft with them on Friday before I dropped them off in Cambridge because we were more focused on eating our lunches than doing craft.  That being said, I dropped them off with my MIL with a craft to do in the car- they were coloring puzzles.  I thought that would be something different, and exciting.  Penny has become an amazing puzzle putter-togetherer lately!

Saturday, they went to the Clay Center for an Easter Eggstravaganza which apparently included NUMEROUS crafts.  I have also seen pictures of rabbit ear hats that they made yesterday as well as Easter necklaces that they made today.

I cannot begin to express how grateful I am to my family who has been so instrumental in keeping the girls doing crafts every day that they have been without me.  I am quite sure that they are absolutely annoyed at times hearing me beg them to remember to do craft while they have the girls, but it has become a mission of mine to make sure that they get to do a craft every day.  This week will test my new years resolution to the fullest, and I am going to need all the warm fuzzies I can get sent our way...

Tuesday, Coraline AND Penny have surgeries.  Penny will be a simple adenoidectomy which should help her breathing and her horrible snoring.  I guess I probably shouldn't say "simple" because it is still anesthesia, it is still a hospital visit, and it is still stressful, but it is simple compared to Coraline's surgery.  C is having her cleft palate repaired Tuesday as well.  It is a 2-3 hour surgery  in which they will make numerous incisions inside of her mouth and bring the uvula together into one piece.  She will be in elbow braces for 2 weeks so that she cannot put anything hard/sharp/etc in her mouth, and for 3 weeks she will be on restricted diet of mainly soft foods that do not require work to swallow.  I am not sure if it just hasn't fully processed that this is actually happening, or that I am totally at piece with it, or if it is just the fact that it has been pushed back FOUR times now and I am so ready to have this phase of our lives behind us that I am ready go for it.  I don't know.  But, as it stands, it is 12:30 and I have to be up in 6 hours, so I am going to bed now.

Day 80- Bathtub Craft

So, we've done it all now, crafts in the car, crafts at home, crafts at a museum, crafts while visiting family, and now, craft in the bathtub!  This was a craft born out of necessity, but it made sense, so we tried it and it was a smashing success!  (Smashing mainly because Coraline kept smashing her hands into the water and causing EVERYTHING, and everyone to get soaked :-p)  We were on the go all day today, and at 5:00, when we are normally sitting down for dinner, we were just leaving Target in Avon Lakes after getting pictures taken. On the way home, I started thinking about ways to streamline craft, and I thought "huh, I wonder what kind of crafts we could do in the bathtub???"  It turns out, most bathtub "crafts" are messy- paint, glitter gel, etc... I wanted something clean.  Then I came across Foam Murals.  BRILLIANT!

Honestly, I have so much foam in my foam drawer, I knew I could spare some sheets of foam.  With a few minutes of "prep" that mainly consisted of cutting out large flowers, some small eyes, and other various shapes, I was ready to go.  I handed over extra foam sheets and scissors to the girls after they were done being bathed and let them go.  Penny got really into it, asking for shirts, pants, shoes, and a face... she made flowers, and many other designs. She even got ahold of the scissors and foam for a little bit and cut her own shapes.

Iris was just exhausted.  She helped make a monster, made a few little things of her own, but wasn't really into the whole make it herself thing tonight.  So, i cut the shapes she wanted and she put them up.

I think they both had quite a bit of fun, and it was a nice change to do something away from our dining room table.

Days 78 & 79: dreaming of spring

Sorry for skipping blogging yesterday to all my loyal readers.... We did in fact do a craft, but Mike and I were dealing with some stuff last night that left me totally deflated and in absolutely no mindset to blog.  Which brings me back around to yesterday's craft.

I was in a serious time/no mess pinch.  We had a realtor coming over yesterday @ 5, fairly last minute notice, to take pictures of the house to get it on the market, and I couldn't make a mess and it had to be QUICK.  So, I started thinking, and I started Googling, and I came to this:  Popsicle sticks, white pipe cleaners, medium-large pink pom-poms, and a dot of glue.... that is it.  In the end, the house isn't on the market because Parma market is in the dumps.  So, we are here for awhile still.

Quite simply, you just wrap 3 pipe cleaners around the popsicle sticks, and glue a pink pom-pom to the top. Instant Bunny faces:


Iris made hers all by herself:

Penny asked for help :)

Today was a little more fun.  It is the first day of spring, technically, but it is snowing, 23 degrees and cold as all get out!  We are supposed to get 1-3 tonight... first day of spring... yippee.

I thought it would be cute to make plate flowers.  They didn't turn out as nicely as I had hopped, they don't really look like flowers.  But both girls REALLY enjoyed it.  We painted small paper plates different colors. then cut circles of construction paper.  We glued the construction paper to the rim of the painted plates, then took scissors and snipped around the edges to look like the petals of a flower.  Then, we glued a popsicle stick to the back of the "flower" to make it look like a stem... Unfortunately, they didn't turn out as cute as they looked like in my mind.

 Iris' flower, aside from cutting the circle of construction paper she did EVERYTHING by herself

 Penny's flower

My flower... it looks weird

Finally: Rock candy SUCCESS!  It took longer than i expected it to, it looks funny, but we got to eat it tonight, and it tasted very yummy :)

Oh, and PS: Fish is still alive and swimming and very happy.  :-)

Day 77: Foam Easter Bunny Faces

I don't think I have had a day get away from me like I had today!  I swear, I blinked, it was 12:30, and next thing I knew it was 5:10 and we hadn't done craft.  Holy crap, where did today go?????  I knew I wanted to make something Easter related, so I started to think quick... and on these days where I have to think quick, I am more and more and more thankful that I have been doing crafts for 77 days now, because crafts on the fly are getting easier!

I reorganized the craft room over the weekend, so by just opening a drawer, I was able to find all the foam I could need for this project.  To make it even better is that we had white SPARKLY foam!  I cut bunny face pieces out of the foam.  White faces, pink/purple ears and noses.  I got out googly eyes out, the glue, and a black marker.

It is hard for me to give up control at times, and just let the girls make their own creations.  I am so by the books, I don't think outside of the box, an ear should go where an ear goes, etc.  I have been working very hard on giving up that control and just letting the girls create.  So today, I handed over the glue, I handed over the pieces, and I said "go for it".  Iris did SOOO well!  She put the ears on the ears, all of the face parts went where they should, and when I gave her the marker to make the face, she said "what does it look like?" so I drew a smiley face on a scrap of foam, and she copied it by herself.  Proud mommy moment. :)

Then there was Penny!  Eyes on the ears, ears on the cheeks, face on the forehead, nose under on the cheek lol.  Oh, Penny, I love her ability to eschew the expected!

btw, rock candy hasn't done much yet :/

Day 76: St. Patrick Exploded

Well, green was certainly the color of the day.  We started the morning with Shamrock Milk and Lucky Charms in green bowls:

For lunch, we had green applesauce, and for dinner, we had green pancakes... Needless to say, we went through a LOT of green food coloring today :-p

We ended up doing two crafts, which is probably for the better, because I have a sneaking suspicion that #1 will not work at all.

Craft 1: Rock Candy

It is so easy to do, boil water and add sugar to a 3:1 ratio of sugar to water.  Add the sugar slowly, because it will get REALLY thick toward the end, so you want it to completely dissolve before you add more.  Then, if you want to add 1tsp of extract and a few drops of food coloring.  Then, you let it sit for about 10 minutes while you prep your string or skewer for your rock candy to grow on.  I split our batch into 3 cups- 1 green w/ peppermint extract, 1 yellow with lemon extract, and 1 red with strawberry extract.
We used string which just eliminated a step.  I simply tied a string 3 strings to popcicle sticks, and hung them in each cup, being careful to keep the strings off each other and off the bottom.

Now, we wait... up to 24 + hours to see if things "grow"... I'm not holding my breath, but I am hoping it happens, because the strawberry and lemon smell SOOO good!
... unfortunately, the girls were much more interested in playing than helping me do this craft, so aside from them being in the same room as me, I did this solo.

Craft 2: Rainbows

As I was making dinner, Iris looked at me and said "Mommy, we haven't done craft!" and she was so panicked about it that I decided to get craft #2 set up, with Mike's help.  They decided to color popcicle sticks and make them into rainbows in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day.
Mike made a beautiful rainbow and the girls made very colorful wooden sticks :)

 

All in all, a VERY successful St. Patrick's Day!  Now time to sit back and do a little knitting.. my Baldwin the Bathroom Monster is coming along nicely, I finally learned how to do the magic circle thing and I am really making progress quickly now!

Oh, and Fish is doing really well!  He's had a few water changes now, he got his first "frozen fish food" today... let me tell you what, Bloodworms are the most disgusting thing EVER... especially for a person who is PETRIFIED of worms! ACK!!!

Day 75: Birds

You might be asking yourself, what exactly do birds have to with St. Patrick's day???  Well, the answer is this: Absolutely nothing!  But, Iris wanted to make "circle birds" for craft today, so that is what we did!

First, we went to the back room, found some styrofoam balls (smallish ones), paint, glue, and foam.  As the girls painted their birds- Iris painted hers all red, Penny painted hers red and purple- I figured out how to make wings, tails, and beaks.

I discovered that by making slices in the styrofoam balls with a butter knife, you can basically embed the foam into the balls and just used a dab of glue to hold everything in place.  Very convenient with little kids!  I also discovered that paint takes FOREVER to dry on styrofoam!

So, like 4 hours after we painted them, I helped the girls glue their pieces onto their birds.  Their beaks, we just used a butter knife and stuffed the foam into the styrofoam balls and no glue was needed at all... and, my hands were STILL getting paint on them even after drying for so long!

After the girls went to bed, i applied googly eyes and then made little pipe cleaner feet.  I have to say, these are absolutely adorable!  They are so easy to make with little ones too.  Always a plus!

Day 74: Crowns

Well, I knew that was going to happen.  We made crowns out of felt for Iris's class last night, Penny woke up and bawled that she wanted "her" crown.  The only way I convinced her to take it off her head was to promise to make her her own crown for craft today.

Felt Crowns are about the easiest thing ever to make, you need a grand total of 4 things:

a few sheets of felt
hot glue/thread
Velcro
scissors

You could theoretically by a strip of felt on a bolt at the craft store, or you could cut a $0.20 sheet of felt in half long ways, and quickly stitch them together to make a long strip of felt.... i did the latter of the two.

Then, cut out some shapes with various colors of felt.

Then, glue or sew them into place.  Last night, I whip stitched shapes onto the crowns for Iris's class.  Today, I just hot glued them.

In order to get the girls to "help" with craft today, they chose their hat colors, their string color (for stitching the crown together) and then they chose the colors for their shapes.  After their shapes were cut, I allowed them to help glue their pieces to their hats.  VERY carefully, Penny still remembers getting glued at Nana's house a few weeks ago, it has kept her on the straight and narrow, at least as far as hot glue is concerned!

To keep with the shamrock theme, I cut out a shamrock pattern for each of them to glue to their crown.  They turned out very cute, but they both went to bed with them, so no pictures :(

On a side note, if you don't follow me on Facebook- Fish LIVES!  I am 99% certain that he had/has ammonia poisoning.  We are lucky we decided to do a 50% water change last night, in hopes that it would perk him up some and that we weren't too late.  We went to bed with him sunk to the bottom on his side, his belly half floating.  This morning, and all day today, he has been swimming like his normal self.  Mike just changed his water, he looks happy, and is actually having to actively try to stay at the bottom, instead of having to work with all his might to get an inch off the bottom :)  His gills are still a little red, he's got a small red spot on his face, and under his front fins are slightly red, which leads me to believe that it was, in fact, an ammonia issue.  Going to the fish store tomorrow to have the water tested, make sure we are on the right track... never thought a fair fish could live 4.5 years!  May have to have a fish birthday party this year :-p

Day 73: Where to begin???

I have spent almost the ENTIRE afternoon and evening hunched over some sort of craft.  My head and neck are killing me, just from being bent over for so long, and I never even got CLOSE to finishing Miss Penny's craft today- i barely got hers started (and that was AFTER she went to bed, but more on that one later!)

A little back story on this one before I get into the good stuff:  Iris's class has to do a class project every year for the big school fundraiser.  This year, we are doing a quilt with the kids' symbols on it.  Iris is a moon, and well, a moon is kind of hard to "quilt" traditionally speaking, so I used this double sided web interfacing stuff. (Picture below) that you iron on to the wrong side of the fabric, then peel the back off of it, then Iron it to another piece of fabric.  I then used a very basic blanket stitch to go around the edges of the moon.

So, back to today.  I was walking around Jo-Anns with Penny, trying to figure out what to make for craft, and I thought about the quilt block that I made last week.  So, Penny and I went to the fabric side, picked out St. Patrick's Day fabric, got this Pellon fusible webbing stuff, and called it a morning.

Once we got home, Penny took a nap almost immediately, she has a horrible cold and just isn't feeling well.  So, Iris and I started working on her Shamrock Pillow case.  There was quite a bit of supplies needed for this one:

Fabric
Fusible Interfacing
Pillowcase
pencil
stencil (if you have no artistic ability like myself)
damp cloth
iron (Susie, i really do own an iron!)
scissors
and probably some other stuff that I am currently forgetting

Steps:

1) Trace your stencil onto the smooth side of the fusible interfacing

2) cut near the stencil but not directly on it

3) iron your cut out interfacing to the back side of the fabric

4) cut on the lines of your stencil

5) peel the backing off the interfacing (you will cuss and scream and grouch about this, because it is the devil!)

6) place your cut out fabric on whatever it is you are making (in this case, a white pillow case)

7) place a damp cloth over the pattern
8) iron the pattern 10-15 seconds in each spot

Now, you could just be done at this point.  Once it is adhered and cool, that interfacing will make it stick and it is not going to go anywhere.  but, i just don't like the unfinished edge look, so I made:
9) blanket stitch around the edges of the fabric

• bring your needle up right on the edge of the ironed on fabric
• follow the edge of the ironed on fabric about 1/4 inch or so and put the needle back through the fabric, don't pull the thread tight, leave a little loop
• come up directly under (about and 1/8 of an inch) from where you just put the needle in.  
• slip your needle under the the loop that you left
• pull tight
• repeat
• (Or, just follow this video link :-p http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXkSE2TTF4s)

It sounds like a lot, but it really isn't that bad.  I edged Iris's Shamrock in probably under 90 minutes.

After the girls went to bed, I started Penny's pillow.  I got to the point of ironing her shamrock onto the pillow case and had to go out to get things for Iris' birthday at school tomorrow.  Which led Mike and I to almost 2 hours of additional crafting... We used the insanely large crocheted flower that I made a few months ago, and put it on a wooden dowel rod to become a flower and stem.  Then, Mike, VERY patiently, glued a ribbon all the way down the dowel rod.  It turned out very cute.  While he did that, I made 2 prince/king crowns for the class out of felt, because the kids LOVE playing dress up!

Now, it is almost 11, we have a fish who is on his last fin :( and I hope that we get SOME sleep tonight.  Hope Fish pulls through, but it isn't looking good for him.  He is almost 5 years old though.  That is pretty impressive for a gold fish!

Day 72: Shamrocks

Time change is kicking my butt. I wish that when the time changed, things started an hour later/earlier respectively.  Then, the pope was elected today.  I am not Catholic, but I find the entire process facinates me, so that took up the vast majority of our afternoon.  Thus leaving me wondering what to do.  Then, I remembered seeing something similar to this on a craft blog somewhere.  I had to make it a little more simplistic because of the girls ages, but they turned out very cute.

I folded our last two pieces of green construction paper and cut 8 hearts out of it.  Then, I gave the girls 4 hearts each.  We put a circle of glue in the center of a piece of construction paper, stuck a "stem" on it and then put the hearts in a shamrock pattern around the circle.  the trick was to not glue the entire shamrock down, only the center most points, that way it popped out a little and looks more like a 4 leaf clover.

Day 71: Leprechauns?

What do you get when you cross a shamrock, a toilet paper tube, and some construction paper?  Obviously, a Leprechaun... I think.  Maybe.  What ARE these?? haha

So, I found this cute little St. Patrick's day craft on Pinterest today, http://www.parentmap.com/article/17-st-patricks-day-crafts-for-kids?page=3 and made a few modifications to it.

First, I had green foam, green construction paper (ONE sheet left.. must invest in new construction paper, post haste!) and everything else needed.  We didn't have colored tape though, but i fixed that problem with some green pipe cleaners and a very small hole punch.

I gave both of the girls the toilet paper tubes and green paint and had them paint their tubes.  Obviously, paint was all over the dining room, but hey it washes off with little to no effort.. While they were doing that, I cut out the shamrocks from foam and the legs from construction paper.

After they were dry, Iris and I (since penny didn't want to help anymore) put our leprechauns together.  I used a small hole punch in 2 places along the toilet paper tube. i think that the hole punch is 1/8 inch... it is REALLY useful to have that thing around!  Then i fed the pipe cleaner through the hole and bent them so they would stick, that way i could feed the shamrock face through the pipe cleaner instead of taping it to the tube.

While i did the pipe cleaner thing, Iris glued eyes on the shamrock.  Then, we both glued the folded paper arms and legs to the tube.  Iris actually did most of it.  I was really happy with how well she did with it.

In the end, here is the finished product... somewhat interesting, not sure how i feel about them, but honestly, it was a craft the girls were able to do basically on their own!

Day 70: Leprechaun Hats

Today was a surprisingly "clean" day for crafting.  I say that because we painted!  I found this adorable leprechaun hat idea in a St. Patrick's day craft site.  Basically, all you do is find a small planter, they used plastic, but I had little terracotta pots in the craft room that would serve the purpose of this craft well, and paint it black.  Then, find a black strip of foam, cut it (in our case, 3/4" wide), wrap it around the "brim" of the hat and attach it with glue.  After we glued the band all the way around the top of the pot, I used a piece of sticky backed yellow foam to make a buckle for the hat and used it to secure the band in place.  It actually worked out really well!

Iris was so excited to paint hers, and she managed to get her entire pot covered very quickly and cleanly.  Penny was even clean while painting hers, though she hasn't finished her yet, it got too late and she needed to go to bed!  I like painting terracotta because it soaks up paint really fast and it dries within a few minutes, so that served to keep the kids, and the house much cleaner today than with previous paint crafts.

No one has sent me pictures of craft from yesterday yet... so still no pictures :*(   But, there is a completed leprechaun hat.  I will have to get a little plant for these next time we go out.

Day 68/69: Failure to success

I didn't blog yesterday because we were out of town, celebrating Coraline's first birthday!  I knew I was going to have to do a craft with the kids while we were with my family, so as we were out shopping yesterday, I found Mickey/Minnie perler beads.  It has been YEARS since I've made anything with Perler beads, but I remember having a blast with them as a kid.  The girls were both SO excited to make Mickey/Minnie crafts since they absolutely love Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
We got to my dad's, and as dinner was cooking, Mike and I sat down with the girls and opened up the perler beads and tried to get the girls to make the Mickey/Minnie patterns.  I was disappointed to see how that they weren't quite as kid friendly as I was expecting.  #1, they were square peg boards when I thought they would be shaped like a Mickey or Minnie head to just put beads on top of... and then, the "pattern" got set under the peg board and you had to match the colored perler bead to colored pattern.  It was hard to figure out what color was under the peg board, especially when it was between peach and white.
Penny proceeded to spill her bead bag all over my dad's kitchen floor and sent us running to pick them up before C could get a chance to eat them.  Penny didn't find a bit of it interesting, I spent most of my time grabbing beads as they were falling off the table, and Iris put about 4 beads onto her peg board before telling us "I'm done.  I don't like this."  To say the very least, i was bummed.  On the plus side, Mike managed to make a Mickey head!
That brings us to today, as we are sitting at my aunt's house with my cousin and waiting for Coraline to wake up to open gifts and have cake and ice cream.  My cousin, Natalie, caught sight of the perler bead kit and got SO excited over it, that the kids decided they wanted to make them again.  So we, Natalie, Aunt Kim, Iris, Penny, and I run into the kitchen, open the package and start.  I couldn't believe it, they loved it!  Iris actually did REALLY well with her Mickey Mouse head and tried HARD to match the bead colors with pattern.  When Dustin showed up, he helped Iris finish, she ended up with a Mickey Mouse with chicken pox.
Penny ended up making a "Mickey" as well... I was impressed that she actually sat long enough to put all the beads on the pegboard though.  I was really happy with her patience.
I will get the pictures from Natalie tomorrow (or try) and will add them to tomorrows blog.  But, I was happy overall.  Total failure to success!

Day 67: Clear Solo Cup

I saw this craft on Pinterest a few days ago... it uses a clear Solo cup.  And all I can think about as we did this was "Red Solo Cup" by Toby Keith. 

You know what, we did a craft today... I have pictures on my phone, and I honestly cannot think of a thing to say about it.  So I think i'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Supplies:

CLEAR Solo cups

SHARPIE markers

Oven @ 325-350*

PATIENCE

Color Solo Cups with Markers... put in oven and WAIT... and WAIT... and WAIT... the person on Pinterest that said it would take a "few minutes" at 300 LIED.  it took 20 @ 300, they didn't melt... another 5 @ 325... and another 5 @ 350 before they all FINALLY melted.  Oh, and Penny is now permanently multi colored...