Day 114: Cookies!

Today, I decided that it was time to venture into the world of cookie crafts.  I have this old Cookies For Kids cookbook that I have used since I was little, and I knew that there was a recipe for these really cute, very bright, make your own cookies.  Well, we tried that recipe, and it was AWFUL!  It was a disgusting, sticky mess, and I just couldn't imagine trying to have the kids work with it, so we went with a recipe for SPELL-it- Cookies.  They are just a very simple sugar cookie recipe that you roll into thin snakes and make letters with.  I ended up combining the basics of both recipes to make colored sugar cookies.

I was really impressed that the girls really ended up enjoying making cookies so much.  Iris made spirals, she made a LOT of mashed circles.  Penny enjoyed making semi snakes.. she was so proud of herself.  I didn't have the heart to redo many of their cookies, but the ones that were just too thin from them smashing them too much, i ended up making 2 layer cookies out of :-p

I added the smiley face pieces, the caterpillar pieces, the braids, and I made the letters for us, but other than that, the girls did it all themselves... and they even taste good!

Day 112: Homemade Bath Paints

A 70* day after a bitterly cold weekend, we'll take it!  That also means that we were outside for over 4 hours today, so I am exhausted.  I don't think the kids were that tired, but are kids ever???  I came across a homemade bath paints idea a few months ago, and I thought "that would be fun to try" but bath is usually too late, the kids are too tired, and I'm too frazzled to think, so I've put it on the back burner.. until now.

Tonight, I looked up the bath paint "recipe" online and came across a few different ones.  The most common is to use clear/unscented baby body wash, cornstarch, and food color.  Another blog i found said baby body wash, corn starch and kool-aid.  A third blog said to use shaving cream and food coloring.  Now, I must admit, I was scared about the food coloring and shaving cream idea after the marbled eggs left my hands rainbow colored for three days last month.  But, I still had shaving cream, so I combined two ideas.  Shaving cream and kool-aid.  I did do 1 cup with 1 drop of blue food coloring, and it was the prettiest of the colors.  But, the kool-aid smelled delicious while they were playing :-p

The girls loved the bath paint.  The water was purple by the time they were done, they did more smear it on and erase it than they did painting, but Penny was truly disappointed when we said that paint time was over with.  All things considered, I'd call this a success!

Day 109: What a day!

Well, let me digress before I even begin.  I have been sitting, GLUED to the computer for the last two hours, afraid to blink because Watertown has been on the brink of closure.  I am so thankful to see that this ordeal can now be laid to rest for a town, state honestly, that hasn't been able to sleep comfortably for 5 days now. My heart is heavy for those whose lost loved ones, and for all those who have been injured by these senseless acts.  I am still more than slightly shocked that this happened in the US again.  I hope that EVERY family has closure, the victims, and the suspects.  Everyone deserves closure in this regard.

But, for craft today, I attempted the glitter jar idea.  I found it online through a friend on facebook.  It is a jar that you fill with water, food color, glitter and glitter glue.  The person that created this glitter jar had this beautiful light pink water with purple/pink glitter sunk to the bottom.  Well, my kids got to them and they are clumps of glitter at the bottom and Iris' is dark red and Penny's is dark dark dark blue.... as are my hands.  I look like a smurf.  Thanks to Penny dropping the blue food coloring INTO the glitter before I added water.  I had to fish the food color out and it was a nightmare.  I hope that I don't look like a smurf for the rest of the weekend :-p

It is way past bedtime, the Watertown thing has had me hooked all night and unable to focus on this.  I will leave you with the recipe to make this.

a small container with lid (WATER TIGHT!)
a few tubes of glitter (SMALL tubes of glitter)
1 tube of glitter glue (i think i would do a larger tube)
warm water
1-2 drops of food coloring

add everything to the jar, cap it, and shake.  It does turn into a very pretty glitter jar, just ours are MUCH too dark, and Penny's leaks like a breached levy!  I will need to switch bottles for her sooner rather than later!

Day 108: Sidewalk Paint

1 part corn starch
1 part water
food coloring (neon works really really well!)

Easy, I love easy crafts.  I especially love crafts that the "mess" is outside!  We mixed this inside, the girls mixed the food coloring into the muffin pan and we headed outside with a plethora of paint brushes (and our homemade chalk).

It was a little infuriating to color with chalk paint.  It takes a really long time, but when it dries, it looks AMAZING.  I am wondering if it will ever come off our driveway though.  I am thinking it may take an act of nature to dump enough rain on our driveway to clean it.  It looks like someone painted our driveway.  In the future, I will make these in small cups with lids so that we can save them and not wash it down the drain when we're done.  They are pretty, and I wish that my kids had more patience, because I could have sat and colored the entire driveway with them!

I was really happy with how well our homemade chalk colored as well.  I took a picture of the different yellows side by side.  The one that we did with actual acrylic paint was much darker, and I feel, colored nicer.  However, it would have been totally unreasonable to do ALL of our chalks with acrylic because it had to be SO wet, and it did dry funky too.  But, it has a really nice look to it.

BTW, with the chalk paint, you can use sponge brushes, i think that it may go on easier, but the sidewalk rips the sponges to pieces, so have a lot on hand.

Day 106: Chalk

It was a dark and dreary day today and I knew there was no hope in getting the girls outside to play, so I decided that today would be an exceptionally nice day to make sidewalk chalk.  I had a few reservations, mainly that I didn't have powdered tempura paint, but I found a blog that said you could use acrylic paint (more on that later) or food coloring.  So, I finally decided to bite the bullet and sit down with the girls to make chalk.

There is prep work and forethought that must go into this.  You need silicon molds (silicon cupcake holders work well) or toilet paper/paper towel tubes.  If you use cardboard tubes, you have to seal the bottom so that chalk doesn't leak out while it is still runny.  Well, I was being lazy the first time and didn't want to go find the duct tape, so I grabbed packaging tape from beside me and sealed the bottoms.  BIG mistake, it POURED out of the the packaging tape like a breached levy!  So, i stopped immediately, and replaced all the tape with duct tape.. until I ran out of duct tape, and covered the remaining tubes with large pieces of masking tape.  Lesson learned: (which surprised me honestly) masking tape is the way to go!

First and foremost- not for the faint of heart.  Chalk making is MESSY.  There was plaster of paris everywhere in the dining room!  It is just a powder, so as you're pouring it, dust is flying everywhere, ugh, what a mess.  But, I mixed it: 1 cup PoP and 3/4 cup water, and then split it between the girls in small Glad plastic bowls.  I gave them each a wooden Popsicle stick to let them mix their colors with.  We started with using acrylic paint for the dye, but there are 2 problems with that.  First, if it isn't super runny, it just clumps up in the PoP mixture and doesn't actually dye anything.. Second, you have to use a LOT of even the runny kind to dye the PoP, and it turned gloopy really fast and is taking a much longer time than the others to dry.  I will say this though, it is the prettiest, brightest chalk we have!  We used food coloring for the rest, and they turned out really nice, especially the Neon colors.

The blog I got the recipe out of said that hers took THREE days to dry enough to use, so I thought "ok, it is going to take about 3 days before it is nice enough to go out and play with the weather predictions right now."  Well, as you can CLEARLY see, it did not take three days to dry, it didn't even take three hours.  I think they were ready to come out of the molds within an hour.  Then, i let them dry a few more hours and rubbed the remnants of the cardboard tubes off the things of chalk.  Now I am just waiting to have a nice day to take the girls out to use their chalks.

Thankfully, clean up was not difficult with this and most everything ended up being trash.... which could be a problem since our trash men are on strike :/

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 :/

Day 16- Mixes Like Oil and Water

Well, after yesterday's flop, I felt some pressure to find a winner.  I found a recipe for an oil and water "lava" bottle.  It was so simple!

Necessary items:
1) soda bottle, cleaned
2) 1/3 bottle full of water
3) baby oil
4) food color
5) sequin


6) glue

The best part of this craft was that the kids did EVERYTHING (save for adding the food coloring).  First, I measured about a 1/3 bottle of water then dumped it into a cup.  I know that seems counter intuitive, but I really wanted to keep the kids involved the whole way.  Then I pulled out the trusty funnel and my box o' misc. craft supplies.  I had each girl dump the water in their soda bottle then I added the few drops of food coloring.  After that, I let them have at the craft supplies.  Sequin, beads, rocks, it was all free game... even buttons and a googly eye lol.  After they were done adding things to the bottles, they poured baby oil to the top of the bottle, then I glued the cap to the top of the bottle.

Simple, CLEAN, and a lot of fun!  The girls really got into it, and I have enjoyed the finished product tonight haha.  I would HIGHLY recommend this project for those of you with little kids.  Besides, we ALL have baby oil sitting around that we don't use.  I finally used the baby oil that we've had sitting in the cabinet since Iris was born lol.

Day 9- Tissue paper, not just for gift wrapping

So, with the end of the holiday season, it leaves us with copious amounts of tissue paper, what better way to utilize the excess than by making a craft out of it??  Well, today's craft was Tissue Paper Wreaths.  How simple can we get???  Cut some squares of Tissue paper- I even took the short cut and used my paper cutter (again, thank you to my very thoughtful hubby!) and cut 4 inch squares.  I then used a Pyrex bowl and traced a wreath shape using the top and bottom of the bowl.  Finally, I handed the kids a glue stick and a stack of tissue paper.  I showed them both how to "fold" it around their fingers before sticking it to the wreath, but as you can see, Penny didn't quite get that part, but Iris did really well.

On a side note, I finally learned to "knit" basically, I can now cast on and off, and make a basic knit stitch.  YAY!  Hopefully, I will continue to improve :)
And, for a sneak preview of tomorrow's craft:  I have to thank Mike for staying up late to help me dye all this pasta.  The orange is my favorite color, it turned out sooo bright!

My goal was to make enough pasta to get us through numerous crafts!  My next plan is to get some rice and dye it too!  I am forever going to be multi colored!  Oh well, I bet by the end of this year, I will be very versed in the art of food coloring!

Day 5-Splat

It was bound to happen, I knew the day would come.  My only hope was, it wouldn't day be on the fifth day of this year long quest... We had a dud.  A big, slimy, sticky, purple, dud.  My aunt, uncle, and cousin were due in around noon, so after hurrying up and cleaning the house, I decided to get our "art" out of the way today.  I wanted to do something that didn't involve sitting around the table (the owl project yesterday has me tired of sitting in my seat at the table).  So, I started searching, and I found this really neat "slime" idea.  http://www.ourbestbites.com/2010/09/kids-in-the-kitchen-slime/
Huh, Slime, new, different, get the kids involved, let them mix, pour, and create, and it is something I can pull out on quiet days.  Or so I thought.  I got my water, I emptied our glue bottle- we had EXACTLY 1/2 cup left- I went downstairs and pulled the Borax out of the laundry room.  I was SET.  So, I measured everything out, called the kids in, and we started adding.  I was encouraged, it looked like the pictures.  The girls wanted purple, so I set to work making purple with blue and red food coloring.  Heck, it even turned PURPLE!  This was looking good!

And then, we got to the "You might think you messed up because it's so loose.  Just keep smooshing!" step. Oh, what a mess!  We smooshed, and we smooshed, we stirred, kneaded, smooshed some more.  And eventually, when I finally thought my arm would fall off from smooshing so much, it formed a ball!  Ahh, sweet relief!  Great, we have our "art" done, now we can play with it for awhile.  I put the ball back in the bowl for about 5 seconds, turn around to get a paper towel, look back, and it is liquid once again!  UGH!  So, by this point, my family is here.  My cousin starting trying to help me "doctor" this substance that is looking more and more like the You Can't Do That On Television slime by the minute, just purple.  No matter what we do, it is just liquid as soon as you stop kneading it.  So, I am left with a bag full of purple slime that will likely never see the light of day, a bowl that may be permanently crusted with a glue, borax, purple food color mix, and purple... all... over... the.... kitchen.  If I thought that mixing this stuff was hard, yeah, the scrubbing of the kitchen that came after was FAR worse.

Chalk one up to learning, I will NEVER make "slime" again.  But, the kids had a BLAST squishing it between their fingers, and getting to help make it, so I guess, all in all, it wasn't a total failure...   But, I think you can understand why I am NOT posting the recipe here.... 

 

Day 2- SUCCESS!

I am so excited!  Today's craft, water color Popsicles turned out to be a HUGE success.  Minimal preparation was required, as in, I took 10 minutes last night and filled an ice tray and dropped a few drops of different colored food color in each tray, stuck sticks in the trays and froze them overnight.

My 3yo paints at school almost every day.  They do this really cool technique where they wet both the paper and the brush, it turns into really beautiful paintings.  I was hoping that this would turn into something similar that she would enjoy just as much as she enjoys painting at school.

I must say, I was leery at best.  I was wondering if it would really work.  I thought it may not end up coloring on the paper at all, but I was presently surprised today when I got them out of the freezer, they worked SO well!  The kids had a blast, and I enjoyed them too.  Here are a few pictures of the finished products.  Quick, easy, and FUN, I will have to remember this one for summer time!
Still formulating tomorrow's craft, not sure what to do, but I am sure we will have fun.  I just want to give a prop to http://factorydirectcraft.com/factorydirectcraft_blog/ice-painting/ for the idea for today's craft.