Days 158 &159

Yesterday was an exciting day in our world.  Mike and his work friends ran something call National Challenge here in Cleveland, there were 300+ teams and over 1300 people running.  The top 25 teams get invited to the final race in Vegas in November, Mike's team came in 19th!  How exciting is that?!  If you know of any unique landmarks/statues/etc in Vegas, let me know, we are amassing a list of places and their locations for the Finals race!

Back to craft now.  We did Sculpy clay for the first time.  Iris LOVED it.  She started out making a person, then it got a "boo-boo" so it needed a band-aid.  The band-aid kept growing and growing.  Now it has a bandage on the back and front, and the top bandage has a belly button... don't ask me!  I made a rose that I am pretty darn proud of :)

So, that brings us to today, and of course, that also brings us to another side story... Fish died on Monday morning :(  It was a sad day in our house, but the kids took it very well.  They are still talking about us flushing fish lol.  Well, tuesday, we cleaned the tank really well, cleaned Fish's buddy (a cement turtle) off and put him on the memorial shelf with all our animals ashes, and threw away a few of the older plants.  Yesterday,  and Iris and I got the water tested to make sure that it was safe to add a new fish to and today, we went to pick out a new fish:

He is currently named "Fish 2", he got TWO new "friends": a pineapple hideaway and an ambulance, new red/orange/yellow rocks, and an orange/yellow plant.  He is SOOO active compared to Fish 1.  He is ALL over the tank up and down, side to side, he NEVER stops!  I guess that is the difference between a 5 year old fish and a young fish!!

And, now back to Craft again:  Iris and Penny wanted to make dolls.  I had no idea how to make a doll for craft, and mike decided to make felt cut-out dolls.  So, while Penny napped, Mike and I sat at the table for an hour and cut out two dolls, pants, shirts, skirts, dresses, shoes, shorts, a bathing suit, hair, etc etc etc... Iris even made a few "accessories" while we worked.  Then, Mike hot glued little pieces of velcroe to clothes.  The girls then got the "dress" them...and this is what was left!

Day 157: Marshmallow Art

Penny has been asking me to get Marshmallows for the last 2 weeks and I kept forgetting.  We were at Target today, and I was walking down the baking aisle and happened to glance at the Marshmallows and remembered that she wanted them.  So, we got a bag of marshmallows.  

Tonight, after dinner, Penny wanted to eat some marshmallows, and for some reason it reminded me of "building" with marshmallows when i was little.  A box of toothpicks and 1/2 a bag of mini marshmallows later, we had this:

Penny made barbells, Iris made a "Long doobie", I made a star, cube, pyramid, and "person" and mike made 2 , um, well, structures, i guess you could call it... Then the real fun part, we got to eat the marshmallows!!

On a side note: Good luck Team Codonics tomorrow in their 5k race thing that they are doing!

Day 156: At least it's not a leap year :/

Yeah, i'm burning out on the blog again.  It is just getting monotonus, so Mike spends a lot of the evening many nights going "blog" "Have you blogged?" "You need to blog" "It is getting late, blog" "BLOG"  "B.L.O.G.!"  Yup, tonight would be one of those nights.  I looked up at the clock to see what day my blog is and I realize, "Wow, I've only done 156 crafts... I still have 209 to go :/" And my husband, being the silver lining that he can be, says "Well, think of it this way, at least it's not a leap year."  Yes, at least it's not a leap year... but I have digressed, so let me get back on track, craft, right.

Well, today was Iris' last day of school for the year, my "baby" is not starting pre-k in the fall, and she asked to make princesses today.  Well, i had these grand ideas of making construction paper princess dresses/dolls/etc for her.  I got up to start getting craft ready, walked into the kitchen, and discovered that Coraline had peed all over the floor (She has a HORRIBLE diaper rash that we are trying to clear up, so we've been letting her crawl around with no diaper on whenever possible, we have hardwood floors mind you), and, not only had she peed on the floor, she had begun removing the CLEAN silverware from the dishwasher and dropping in the pee puddle that she left.  Well, I had to take care of ALL of that immediately, and ended up forgetting completely about craft.

Mike got home as I was finishing up the pee cleaning, and we left immediately for Menchies because, once a year, on the last day of school, we have ice cream for dinner.  As we were finishing our Fro-Yo, Mike says "You've done craft, right?" and I respond, "Um, no..." so then the conversation goes, "I totally thought you would have had craft done by now."  "Well honey, i got ready to do it, but Coraline decided to pee on our clean dishes- i got side tracked cleaning that up."  I should have told him that I left 1 spoon for him in the morning for his cereal ;-)

Thankfully for us, Menchies gives the kids a little "DIY" kit when they visit.  Tonight, they got cardboard "ice cream trucks"  I decided that those would be great crafts to do quickly when we got home.  So, we spent a good 15 minutes putting together our Menchies Ice Cream Trucks, adding skateboards, snowboards, and bikes to them, my question is this: What climate can you use ALL three of those items in a weekend???  And then, Penny decided to go to sleep with hers.  We warned her that it is cardboard, and if she rolls over on it, it will get crushed.  Well, guess what, 10 minutes ago, Penny tells me "Mommy, my van go crunched."  To which I replied, in my most sympathetic voice, "well honey, we told you that would happen if you went to bed with it, it is just cardboard" while thinking "SEE?!?!?!? and why are you up at 10pm?!?!?!?!"

So there it is, today's craft, and a story to go along with it... P.S. silverware got re-washed..

Day 155: Hand Print Butterflies

This is an idea i've had for awhile, but I haven't known exactly how well it would turn out.  Honestly, I think they turned out pretty well.  I used finger paint for the hand prints, just for ease of clean up, and painted their hands the colors they chose.  They, I had them place their hands on the paper lined up so they looked like "wings"  You can see the hand placement in the pic, i am not even going to begin to try to describe how I placed them, because I just don't know!

Once we had our butterfly wings, we glued an antenna and clothespin "body" to them, added googly eyes, and done!  This was a craft both girls were able to do almost completely by themselves start to finish.  They really enjoyed it, and it was quicker than I expected it to be!

Day 154: Finger painting by Glow Sticks

So call this a cop out of you want to, but I have been itching to do this with craft since the beginning of the year.  My biggest problem has been that I haven't been able to find a way to make glow sticks in the bathtub a craft.  Well today I decided that we were simply going finger paint by glow stick.


Well that led to a problem, we have a window in our bathroom, in the tub, and the sun sets outside the bathroom window.  So bath time is the time of day that the sun is the absolute brightest in the bathroom.  It took 2 attempts at covering the window but I finally found a large brown blanket that i hung from the curtain rod and tapped down to the wall with masking tape, that darkened the room enough.  


I don't really know that the finger paint ended up being nearly as exciting as the glow sticks.  Even Coraline enjoyed them, this was really the first time she had been able to be involved in a craft.  


Sorry, no pics tonight but as a rule of thumb we try keeping the kids pics off the blog and in a bath craft it is hard to take a pic and not have a kid in it.  Overall though, bath time was a huge hit!

Day 153: Christmas Tree Ornaments

Ok, so yes, I just said Christmas Tree, but they really aren't "Christmas" ornaments.  If you have been into the girls' room, you know that they have a little 3 foot christmas tree in their room that is on all year round.  It is their night light, and we TRY to decorate it with appropriately themed holiday ornaments.  Right now, it has things like beach balls, a crab, flowers, a sand bucket, etc.

Well, yesterday, Iris and I went to Jo-Ann's and picked out some "DIY" wooden ornaments. They were all cleranced, and i think i paid .50 cents each for the big ones and .10 cents for the small ones, not too, imo.  So, today, we decided to paint them.  Iris chose a spiral (she calls it a snail) and a flower, and picked a watering can and a turtle for Penny.  I chose the lighthouse, because I thought it was pretty.

We spent a good hour painting them today, and this is what we ended up with.  I am so blown away by how well Penny has started to paint lately!  She is very meticulous and careful with her strokes and knows exactly what she wants to do before she does it.  She is getting to be a big girl!

Day 151 and 152 Update #2

Day 151:  Home Depot Day

I love the first Saturday of the month now!  It is so nice to be able to go somewhere and get the kids so involved in working with their hands, and best of all, it is FREE!  No admission, no parking, no supply fees, nothing, go in, get a bag of parts, and let your kids go at it.  It is a special time for the kids and for us as parents.  We are getting to know the HD employees and they are getting to know the girls.

This month, the girls got to make lawnmowers.  They were super simple, just glue/nail a small wood block on top of a big block, add the tires which we realized after would have been better served have been put on AFTER painting, and then glue the handle into place.

Penny's painting is coming along VERY nicely, even from 2 months ago.  Iris' use of tools is improving, Mike only almost lost 1 finger while helping her!

Day 152: Fairies in a Jar

Ok, so, this is a craft idea my aunt sent me a few weeks/months ago (https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/530071_313660888760370_1776018872_n.jpg).  I thought it was super cute, and really wanted to try it, but then, as I thought about it, i couldn't figure out how it would work... The "Glow stick" is actually liquid... glitter is small and turns more into paste when it gets wet.  Now, i will admit, i have no idea what "diamond" glitter is, so maybe we used the wrong thing (i did use the biggest glitter i could find though!), but it definitely didn't "twinkle" it just coated the entire jar with a layer of stuck on glitter.  However, it glowed like nothing else!  Then, Iris' jar didn't have an water tight lid, so it ended up starting to leak... we noticed after she put it on her head.. thus the picture with a streak lol.   Oh well, they glowed like crazy, and the girls had a lot of fun.  In the end, that is all that really matters... but fairies in a jar, sort of a flop :/

Ok, so, Mike did some snooping, and this is what he found on CraftFail.com... http://craftfail.com/2013/03/fairy-jar-fake-out/  Check out how much better ours looks than the one there, I don't feel like such a miserable failure now.  I had a feeling this one was going to flop miserably.  I have to say, FB, you are 0 in 2 now!!

(Glowstick in Iris' hair and Iris' hand print on the wall... there is also some on the carpet..)