Days 115/116

Sorry for the combined post with NO pictures!  Yesterday was one of the longest nights i can remember having!  I ended up driving around for over 3 hours to find a booster seat for Penny for her birthday.  I was so tired by the time I got home at 9:55, that I just didn't have it in me to blog!... the lack of pictures will be explained soon enough!

Lets start with Day 116:

Remember those beads I made last week?  The ones out of the crayola model magic?  Well, they turned out perfectly, so we made bracelets yesterday.  I let the kids use buttons, and beads, and the homemade beads. They sat at the table so nicely, stringing beads onto their craft thread, and they both turned out very nicely.

Iris was so proud of hers, that she wanted to take it to school today to show her teacher.  I allowed her to take it into the van, but made her leave it there, so that it wouldn't get lost.  Well, Penny found it and tore all the homemade beads into little shreds before I realized it.  I was so sad for Iris.  I cleaned up all the traces, and I hope that she just forgets about it, because I know that she will be upset if she finds out Penny broke it. :(

Day 117:

Today, you aren't getting pictures because Iris went CRAZY with glitter glue and every time i touch her craft, i get glitter glue all over me.  So I am going to let it dry first.. like maybe next week :-p

We made Doc McStuffins, Big Books of Boo-Boos today for craft.  It was a lot of fun.  They are REALLY into Doc McStuffins right now, and I've caught them both "writing" in their "big book of boo-boos" and I saw them at Toys R Us today for $7.  I thought that was a little ridiculously, so we came home and made our own.

We used foam for the front and back covers (about 6"x6"), and construction paper cut to the same size, for the pages.  I used a hole punch to poke holes in the covers and the pages so that once they are done, I can string them together and the kids can have a working book.

I put the "Big Book Of Boo-Boos" letters on the back, but they each got to pick their own inside paper color, as well as decorate the front cover.  Again, Iris went OVERBOARD on the glitter glue, i don't know if it will EVER dry at this point :/  Hopefully, pictures will be added to this one before too long!

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 113: Crafting After Dark

Ok, so 7:00 isn't really AFTER dark, but it is a solid 45 minutes after the girls' normal bedtime.  But, tonight was a special night, and it was just us girls home, so I made it a special craft.  To celebrate/commemorate (?) the meteor showers last night and tonight, we made our own constellations!

I came up with this idea because the girls have been FASCINATED with my telescope that we just found buried in the basement, and I decided that it would be cool to let them see stars, since they are always in bed before dark.  I laid out a big piece of polyester batting on the dining room table and gave the girls each a piece of construction paper.  I put an assortment of double pointed knitting needles on the table for them, and told them to poke holes in the paper with the needles.

We spent probably 15 or 20 minutes poking holes in the paper.  I wrote each one of their names and made shapes (even the big dipper!) on my piece of paper.  When we were done, we took our construction paper up to our closet (again, the only place in our house that doesn't have windows lol) and grabbed Mike's MagLite.  I turned off the lights, shut the door, and put the paper over the flashlight.  Instant constellations on the ceiling of our closet.  We spent some time finding the different shapes, their names, moving the paper up and down, back and forth, just to see what changed on the ceiling.  Then we put each of their pictures over the flashlight.  Of course, we couldn't do a craft about stars without singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  Honestly, I think it was probably one of the more special crafts, at least for me, that we have done to date.

I am sure there is a camera out there that could have taken a picture of the "stars" on our ceiling without totally washing everything out, but my camera is not one of them, so you will just have to use your imaginations to think of what our constellations looked like on our closet ceiling :)

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 111: Nature Rubbings

I remember in 3rd grade, we did a local history unit and went to the Old Worthington Cemetery and did gravestone rubbings with crayons.  It was a little creepy to me, even at 9 years old, that we were making impressions of tombstones in crayons.... but, it was a fun activity.  A few days ago, when we were outside coloring the driveway, I thought about how fun it would be to go outside and make rubbings of different objects with crayons.  Well, today, I thought it was warmer than it really was and the kids really wanted to go out, so I threw so coats on us and we went outside with paper and crayons.

First, it was sunny, and the wind was calm, so we started at the driveway and used our crayons to make an impression on the paper, then we went to the neighbors fence (hope she doesn't mind that it is a little browner now than before we started this project :-p), then went to the brick below our porch, then the house, then the neighbors tree since it is the only tree around us now!

Iris really got into it, she had a lot of fun and got the point.  I wanted to use some stepping stones, and kind of a take a walk and find more things to make impressions with, but Penny started to complain that she was cold, the wind was ripping, and Coraline's feet were just about frozen, and I was cold.... so, we came inside.  Here is what we ended up with:

Day 110: Mt. Dew Camp Lantern

So, who saw the picture go around Facebook a few months ago about making a glow lantern out of 1/4 bottle of Mt. Dew, a "tiny" bit of baking soda, and 3 cap fulls of peroxide?  Well, I just HAD to try it, i mean, come on, if it worked, it would be awesome, would never drink Mt. Dew again, but could be a lot of fun!  And if it didn't work, well, we had a failed science experiment.

Mike and the girls made Mt. Dew glow lanterns today for craft time after we got home from Lodi.  Well, guess what, it failed, and Snopes.com busted it too. They did not glow at ALL.  But, Mike was not to be deterred.  He was going to make those lanterns "glow" one way or another.  First, they put flashing LED lights in the bottles and ran up to our closet in our room to see them "flash" and "glow."  Then they came back down and found glow sticks that the girls got for Christmas and decided to break them and stick them in the lanterns.  Personally, I thought that they should have broken them open and poured the contents into the soda bottles, but mike thought that they would be too diluted.  But, they glowed, see?

After the kids went to bed, we decided to mix the blue and red glow sticks and see what happened if we added it to water.  So, we broke them (and in the process discovered that the thing you break to get glowsticks to glow is actually glass!) and poured the glow stuff into a bottle of water, shook it up, and ran up the steps.  We had the PRETTIEST purple glowing water for about 2 minutes until it totally died and no longer glowed.  But, I will still take a moment to say: I was right and you were wrong :-p

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!