Day 23- Party hats

Today, I stayed off of Pinterest, so I didn't get sidetracked, and I finally got to make party crowns.  I went between making them out of foam, out of construction paper, etc, and finally decided on a brown paper bag- not like I don't have 4 million of them!  So, I opened one up, cut 2 crowns out of it and let the girls go with markers.
What really surprised me today was that Penny was the most into the craft. She really enjoyed working on her hat. There were no fits, no screaming, no yelling, she just sat down and colored.  It could be because I actually FORCED her to nap today because she was SO exhausted.  She woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and by 1:10 she was STILL on the wrong side of the bed, so I put her down for a nap, she slept for 2.5 hours, woke up and was the happiest kid ever.  And since craft time was right after her nap, i think she came down in a good mood and well rested, and it made a world of difference.
Iris was very set on coloring the ENTIRE thing in, so she ended up getting bored not too far into it, but she had worked on it for close to 45 minutes when she told me she was done.  So, all in all, a successful craft day!  Sunday should be fun, we are definitely in the birthday spirit here!

 

Day 22- Birthday t-shirts

I woke up this morning hell bent on making party hats with the girls.  I didn't know if it was going to take the form of princess crowns, or big cone shaped party hats with ribbon coming out of the top.  But I was convinced I was making party hats for them.  Then, I came across this board on Pinterest and my entire YEAR changed course.  I think I was looking for something for my dad and stumbled upon, http://pinterest.com/joycelibal/kid-crafts/ and OMG the IDEAS!!!!  Well, one of the ideas was to use SANDPAPER and crayons to make Iron on transfers.  How fricking cute?????
So, I ask Mike if we have any sandpaper I could "destroy" and head downstairs to get sandpaper and my iron, which I had packed away MONTHS ago in hopes that we would be in a new house by now, and 2 white play shirts the girls have.  I grab the crayons and we set to work.

Supply list- easiest one yet, i think!

 White t-shirt(s)
Sandpaper- fine-ish grit.  I used 150... any thicker and it EATS your crayons
Crayons
Iron
I put a piece of white paper between the layers of the shirt, just in case something were to bleed, or stick, or something, I don't know if it is possible, but since these are once and done things, I decided to use an abundance of caution.

I took a little sandpaper and wrote "I'm 4" on it and made a cake and balloons to go on the back of Iris' shirt.  Word to the wise, remember that you have to write BACKWARD on the sandpaper if you want it to come out right on the shirt :-p  I didn't write backward on my "test" cloth, and now I have  a cheese cloth that says "sgitsuL ehT"  Oh well, at least it was on a cheese cloth and not Iris' shirt!

Penny wasn't really feeling it too much, she wanted to color on the back of the sandpaper, which probably didn't make my iron too happy tonight.  So I colored most of her sandpaper, and to be honest, I was REALLY happy with the way it turned out!  But, Iris did well with hers, and she colored quite a bit before finally becoming board, so I wrote "Birthday Girl" (not so easy when you are trying to mirror image every letter!) and ironed it on to her shirt.

Once everything is colored, and the more color the better, don't be afraid to press hard, flip the sand paper over and iron!  I set my iron to medium, and it only takes a few seconds for the image to transfer.  The shirts look SOOO much better than the ink jet iron-on templates you get at the craft stores, and these are so much more personalized.

I honestly cannot WAIT until Saturday at the Children's Museum to see the girls wear these.  Now my real question is, how well will they wash??? I guess we will find that out sometime next week!

Day 21- Birthday Wands

Day 2 of theme week was Birthday Wands.  I will admit, I just about threw the wands out, the girls were being PAINS today.  But that is neither here nor there.
Yesterday, we went to Jo-Anns and I let the kids pick out foam that they wanted.  Iris went straight for the gold glitter foam sheet, which surprised me because there were beautiful pinks, blues, purples, and more glitter sheets that were much more typical colors for Iris.  Penny then chose a bright red glitter sheet, that wasn't so surprising to me.  Then we bought a dowel rod to cut down for the wands.
So, back to the normal supply list:

Foam sheets
scissors
Glue
Pom-Poms
Thin ribbon

I made Iris' a princess crown, which the gold sparkles worked well for.  Then I asked Penny what shape she wanted.  I do believe the conversation went like this, "Penny, what shape do you want?  A crown, a star, a heart?" To which, Penny responds, "A night gown!".... "A nightgown???", "A Nightgown!"  So, a nightgown is what she got! lol

Once I got the foam pieces cut out, I let them choose ribbon they wanted and cut long strands to attach to their Birthday wands.  As the girls worked on coloring stars, and other things, I quickly hot glued the pieces to the wands and then glued the ribbons to the inside before attaching the front and back of the wands together.  Iris loves pom-poms and googly eyes, so we obviously decorated her crown with those.  Then i cut out a number 4 from the red for Iris and a gold P for Penny.  The point in which I almost threw the wands away was shortly after I sat there, drew a 4, cut it out, edited it, traced it, cut it out again, and Iris promptly took it while I was gluing a pom-pom onto her wand, and ripped the 4 in half.  I was NOT a happy camper.  I almost didn't re-make it, but I decided that since this was a 4th birthday theme week, we needed the 4, even though I had already made the 4 pointed crown.


Alright, I think I am too tired, I'm just rambling now, I need to go upstairs and get under the blankets and get warm, 11.3* out and dropping... brrrrrrr.  Stay warm everyone!

Day 20- Countdown to Birthday!

I saw the idea for today's craft MONTHS ago on Pinterest, and was saving it for a birthday week.  Well, Iris' birthday is the first birthday of the year, so we got to try it with her today.  These could be the EASIEST birthday cupcakes ever!  Someone with NO cooking skills at all could make these in no time at all.

Here is my supply list for today:

2 1/2 inch styrofoam balls

cupcake wrappers

hot glue

glitter glue (more on that later)

pom poms

So, first thing first: glue a styrofoam ball into the cupcake wrapper.  Iris chose fancy swirly ones @ Jo-Ann's today for $2.99.  And I still have 30 left over for REAL cupcakes!

Next, I mixed glitter glue using some basic Elmer's Glue and glitter.  I think ours was too thick, it was a little hard to paint on with paint brushes, but it worked.  I looked up a "recipe" for glitter glue tonight and it says to use Modge-Podge.  Maybe that would be a little easier, thinner, with Modge-Podge.  But, our way worked, it dried well, and you can see the glittery colors on the styrofoam, so i'll call that a success.

Then, we painted the "frosting" on the "cupcakes".  Once that part was done, we topped them with "cherries."  

 My goal is to attach a string/fishing line to them and hanging them from the holiday tree in the girls' room.  I can't figure out the best way to make them into ornaments, so I am still debating on that, but It was fun.  Mike even got to craft with us today and everyone really got to be creative and have fun with the cupcakes!

Day 19- Houses

Iris wanted to make a house today for craft, so I asked her what kind she wanted to make.  Of course, between a house on paper and a stand up house, she chose a stand up house.  So that left me to wonder how to make a stand up house.

Conveniently, I just bought 2 boxes of tea, so I emptied the tea bags into the drawer and used the boxes as a base for houses.  Then I pulled out my various sized wooden Popsicle sticks and glue and went to work.  Penny really got into it, but that didn't surprise me, she got to use glue.  She would put a stick on the box and have me move it into place and we repeated the process until the very last side when she got tired of it.  I thought that was pretty good.  Iris managed to decorate her whole house by herself.  She loves things that she can make lines with, so this was right up her alley.

I will admit, I had to use Mike for his mind to make the roof.  He came up with this idea to take a piece of paper, fold it in half, and glue the sticks to the paper, then fold the paper and voila, roof.  Then, apparently I was REALLY tired, I couldn't figure out how to affix the roof to the house, and he once again came up with hot gluing the roof to the tops.  It worked really well... hot glue is such an amazing thing!

(Do you like the nice mixed drink that Mike made me tonight? Hope the blog makes sense hahaha)

Tomorrow is 1 week until Iris' 4th birthday, and this will start our first "Theme" Week.  ALL birthday, all week!  Any suggestions will be great! I think i'm going to try to make cupcake ornaments tomorrow, given that time allows. Oh and wish us luck, we find out how much our house is worth tomorrow morning, I'm nervous!

Day 18- Rainbows

I asked Iris what she wanted to make today, and she immediately asked to make a rainbow.  How much easier could a craft be than rainbows?  Construction paper, cotton balls, and glue: check, check, and check. Better yet, I knew where EVERYTHING was! (Double check! haha)
Of course, nothing is every THAT simple when you're talking about a craft with a 2 1/2 and almost 4 year old.. I wanted to just rip pieces of construction paper, glue them down, stick some cotton balls, on the ends, and DONE.   But, little pieces of paper, glue, and penny just don't mix.  So, I ripped paper for Iris and I and cut various sized 1/2 circles for Penny.  Then all she had to do was take the glue stick, slap some glue on it, and stick it to the paper.  That would be easy right?  Except she wanted NOTHING to do with craft time today.

So, Iris and I sat at the table and glued little pieces of paper in the shape of a rainbow.  She was REALLY into it.  Once we had the paper glued, we stuck the pulled cotton balls on the ends of the rainbow.  Then, Iris decided that she had to have a cotton ball on the "head" of the rainbow, so this is what she was left with.  She was proud of her rainbow though, because as soon as +Mike Lustig walked in the door, she ran to show him.

Day 17- Snowmen!

I have to give a little shout out to the Admissions Director @ Spring Garden Waldorf School.   Penny and I were sitting in her office today and I happened to ask her what she wanted to do for craft today and Penny said "snowman!" So I started thinking about how to make one- we did a cotton ball snowman last month- and Amy mentioned "a sock snow man."  Well, that would be about the easiest thing EVER.  Honestly, how many mismatched socks are in this house?  I had batting with my sewing stuff, and everything else was in my craft supplies.

Here is our supply list for today:
1) Mike's white socks
2) scraps of fleece
3) googly eyes
4) hot glue
5) buttons
6) needle and thread
7) batting
8) tiny wooden stars and an orange marker
9) black marker

I gave each kid a huge pile of batting and told them to fill the sock up.  They filled the socks to up to the ankle.  I took them and turned the ankle to the inside and stitched them up.

Afterward, on Iris' snowman, I made three body parts by loosely sewing a circle around the sock and pulling it tight. I gave each girl a star and had them color it orange with a marker, then cut one of the tips off to make the nose, I glued the googly eyes on, had them tie a scarf around the necks, and pick out buttons.  I then hot glued all the pieces on to the snowmen with hot glue.

The girls loved the finished project.  Penny kept calling it her "baby" and they took them for a "walk" how flipping cute???