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..)

Day 150: Play food- part 1

Tonight, I decided to begin the process of making play food with the kids.  I have been stock piling felt for just such an occasion, I have grand plans of making hamburgers, Buns, cheese, etc with them, but we started with 2 very simple foods: Ravioli and Eggs.

The process is really very simple.  All i did was take a rotary cutter and make cloud like shapes of white and then circles of yellow for over easy eggs.  Then I took a pair of pinking sheers and cut squares of tanish colored felt for ravioli.  The girls helped me roll balls of batting to stuff the eggs with, then they put glue around the edges and sealed the yolks onto the eggs.  I added straight pins to give it some extra sticking power while the glue is drying.  We did the same process with the raviolis too.  They are still drying, so you can see the pins in every thing.

Honestly, Iris was really into it.  She enjoyed gluing, and sticking and helping me hold the felt together so i could pin it in place.  I think she is at the right age for these type of projects, Penny is just a little young.  This will be a multi step process, and it will probably span the course of many months, but hey, it is a start!

Day 149: A Protected Castle is a Happy Castle

The Princess Dream Castle has returned yet again.  Mike joked last night that we needed to make weaponry for it.  Well, Iris picked right up on that and before Mike even made in home tonight was asking me if we could "build the stuff for the castle that Daddy was talking about."  So, after dinner, we brought the weaponry materials out and got to work.

The girls colored Popsicle sticks for a Ballista (sp?), Iris cut ruffled triangles for the ballista guidance system, we colored egg holders black for boiling oil, crumpled paper for rocks and boiling oil, and made a "murder hole" system, while Mike worked on making the ballista bolt (look at me, i learned stuff tonight!) and the catapult and trebuchet.  (as i am writing this, I am realizing that blogger is not familiar with medieval weaponry because there are a lot of red squiggles on my blog right now).

So, I learned a lot about weaponry tonight, like murder holes are holes drilled into a platform above the main entrance that boiling oil could be dropped through and onto invaders.

A catapult is a huge mounted sling shot (ok, that is a really dumed down explanation, but it works, i think)

The trebuchet is an above ground teeter totter that launches rocks/boulders/etc through the air.

And, the Ballista.. it looks like a huge arrow on a stationary bow system that when wracheted back, will launch the arrow (bolt according to my hubby) through the air.

So, you remember what our castle looked last last night and here is the new and improved castle!