Day 190: "Team" Treasure chests

Where to begin:  Well, first, in the theme of Pirate week, we made treasure chests today.  The girls painted them, Mike and I built them.  It was definitely a process.  Penny's is the blue one, iris' is obviously the pink one... and yes, I will admit it, I put Iris' together and it does NOT look as good as the one Mike put together, therefore, I used Penny's as the main model.  It is pretty self explanitory how we put it all together, cut 5 Popsicle sticks in half to make the sides, then used a popsicle stick to glue the inside of the half ones.  We used partial popsicle sticks to make "strapping" on each of the boxes and then used the strapping to glue the sides together.  On the bottom, we just glued popsicle sticks.  And for a hinge, we used a piece of felt.  They are kind of crude, who knows how long they will hold up, but the girls insisted on going to bed with them tonight, and they have been calling them their "Team Treasure Chest"s all night.  They are also looking for Gold Doubloons to put inside of the treasure chests... i think we are making Gold Doubloons tomorrow, and possibly decorating the outsides of the chests tomorrow as well.  But, here's what they look like for now!

(PS, i ended up painting penny's treasure chest because she painted 2 sticks and was done lol)

Day 189: Pirate Parrots

Well, we are continuing with our "Pirate" theme... today, PARROTS! http://www.busybeekidscrafts.com/TP-Roll-Parrot.html I came up with this idea yesterday and we always have an abundance of TP rolls and construction paper, so, here we go!

First, I would be LOST without my paper cutter, that thing is a life saver.  Cut a strip of construction paper just over 4 inches wide and done!  The kids put glue on the paper then rolled it around the TP roll.  Next, I cut a triangle beak and the feathers and let the girls decorate their wings.  With a little direction, they got it all put together in a somewhat birdly appearance.  I added pipe cleaner feet and googly eyes and we were done.  Pirate Parrots... one pink one yellow :)

Day 188: Treasure Map Pizza

So, the kids are in love with Jake and the Never Land Pirates right now.  They can't get enough.  They want to make Bucky/ The Jolly Roger but I have told them that that will be a Daddy Craft.  So, I started looking for Pirate Crafts today on Pinterest.  This happened to pop up, and i was making pizza for dinner anyway tonight, so we made this: http://www.bettycrocker.com/menus-holidays-parties/mhplibrary/birthdays/pirate-party-foods?nicam4=SocialMedia&nichn4=Pinterest&niseg4=BettyCrocker&nicreatID4=Post

We ALWAYS make homemade pizza dough.  It tastes SO much better than the store bought stuff, and it bakes so much nicer.. especially on my amazing stoneware!  So, once we had our pizza made, i let it cool almost completely down because I didn't want the girls to burn themselves.  I did all the prep work by cutting the peppers, breaking the pretzels down to size, slicing the olives, etc.  I didn't want any lost fingers.  Of course, I didn't have Green peppers for the palm trees, and Mike's work didn't have pretzel sticks in the vending machine, so I had him get regular small pretzels and I just broke them.  There isn't much contrast, unfortunately, but the girls had a lot of fun.  You can see the little "path" and the X... the pineapples were supposed to be the treasure.  We don't eat pepperoni in our house, at least much, so we obviously didn't have little pepperoni pieces on hand.  The girls loved making it though.  Iris helped me make the entire pizza today while the other two napped, and then they both loved making the treasure map on top.  Actually, I got interrupted tonight by penny crying that she wanted to make "Another Treasure Map" after she had fallen asleep.  I'm telling you, obsessed! lol

Days 186/187

Well, craft this weekend theoretically should have been done in one day, but we were SO busy yesterday that it just wasn't going to happen.  If you are a regular reader, or just a huge Home Depot fan, you know by now that the first saturday of every month is a kids workshop.  Well, this month, it just so happened to fall on the same day as my High School reunion.  So, we made sure to get there at 9 a.m. so that we could leave straight from there and go to Columbus for my reunion.  We didn't get home until after the girls' bedtimes last night, so we finished it up today.

This month, the craft at home depot was a Despicable Me car... now, time for a confession, i've never seen either movie, I don't have a clue what either are about. but we built the cars then we painted them.  After previous experience, we realized that we were better off putting the wheels on AFTER the cars were painted, so, we took the wheels, axles, stickers, and wet cars to Columbus with us and enjoyed the day at the Linworth reunion.

Today, when we were finally awake and moving, Mike helped the girls hammer their tires into their cars and then tonight, the girls and I put their stickers on.  Iris did almost all of her sticker decorating by herself, i helped with the side panels.

I bet you can guess which one belongs to Iris!

Day 183, 184, 185

I really haven't been TRYING to slack the last few days, honestly, but we have been so busy that by the time we get home, i am ready to pass out!  We went out to dinner then bowling on Wednesday and didn't get home until after 10 p.m. (SOOOO late for us!) and then last night was fireworks.  The kids didn't get to bed until midnight!  omg, i thought I was going to die of exhaustion!

Iris has actually been taking charge of Craft recently.  On Wednesday, she got out paper and crayons and made an "Envelope" for her nana's card  (that we mailed 2 weeks ago.. apparently, she doesn't fully understand the concept of the US mail yet.)  I cannot find the silly paper right now to take a picture of it, but I will say this, it looks VERY inappropriate!  Even mike looked at it and went "ummm, is that what it looks like????"  Well, it wasn't, it was an envelope, that she was very proud of making lol.

On Thursday, we made patriotic pinwheels.  I found this really easy tutorial here: http://www.studyvillage.com/resources/ViewAttachment.aspx?AttachmentId=299  we cut 9x9 squares of construction paper, and the girls decorated them to be red, white, and blue.... I made a flag on mine :)  It has the right # of stripes AND the right # of stars!!! (very proud of myself lol).  Anyway, we put a foam sticker in the center once we folded the corners down, to keep everything in place.  I put a straight pin through it all and stuck them into beeswax candles.  I did add a small perler bead to the back side of the pinwheel too, it makes it spin MUCH nicer.  Theoretically, I should have used a pencil with an eraser to stick the straight pin into, but who uses #2 pencils anymore???  I had to make do with what we had.  (no pictures yet- Mike hasn't e-mailed them to me)

Today (friday) Iris told me in the car this morning that she wanted to make "trees" today, "snowmen" and "x" trees.. what exactly those were, I did not know, but hey, who am I to judge?  Well, we got home tonight, Penny is not feeling well at all, so we got her to bed early, and Iris and I came down to do craft.  I was getting ready to grab the balloons and Iris came out of the back room with scissors and a sheet of pink paper and told me she was making a "snowman tree"  So, i sat next to her and watched as she cut the paper very methodically and made sure that everything was exactly so before going back to the craft room, finding a pink (sparkly) crayon and proceeded to make ornaments.  To finish it off, she made sure to "connect" the ornaments so that they did not fall off.  She informed us both that it is a very fragile tree and we must be careful with it.

Day 182: Cell phone speaker boosters

So, this is a craft idea thought of by Mike this morning.  He saw somewhere that you could make a cutout in a toilet paper tube and slip your cell phone in it to make a super cheap amplifying device for your speakers.  Well, i googled it today to find a picture to show you all of what mike had found.  Well, this is what showed up: http://img.wonderhowto.com/img/original/84/41/63487976773702/0/634879767737028441.jpg yup... totally modeled today's craft out of a picture taken while someone played beer pong.  And, it really does work!  It really does make our cell phones louder!

The idea was simple enough, cut a hole in 2 plastic cups large enough to slip a toilet paper tube into... then, make a slit in the toilet paper tube big enough for your cell phone.

Iris is still working on hers, looks like we may have a craft part two for tomorrow, but Penny's is made and here is what it looks like.

Day 181: Parasol

I don't know about any of you, but we are HUGE Sofia the First fans in our house.  The girls LOVE her.  A few weeks ago, there was a new episode that was about the Tri-Kingdom Picnic and Amber taught a princess from another kingdom to decorate a parasol.  I have thought it would be an adorable craft to do with the girls since watching that.  Well, today, i found a parasol at Five Below and picked it up.

We honestly just used paint and stamps to make designs on the parasol, and then glue and glitter and feathers to decorate it.  Glitter + Penny= DISASTER.  As i had the parasol outside shaking the extra glitter off, penny opened a container of fine glitter and DUMPED it all over the floor.  On the bright side, we have the sparkliest floors in all of Cleveland right now.  The down side is, glitter is EVERYWHERE.. feet, hands, faces, hair, yeah, we are going to sparkle for a week at this rate.  Not only that, it has rained ALL day and is super humid in the house right now, so the glitter is just STUCK to the floor and table until you touch it with your body... then it is STUCK to you :/