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.