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 :/

 

Days 178, 179, 180

Friday:

We were at Jo-Anns on Friday and Iris found the "free craft ideas" sheets at the front of the store.  She picked out two things that she really liked, 1 being Popsicle stick butterflies wrapped in yarn.  Well, if there are 2 things we have PLENTY of in our house, it is popsicle sticks and yarn!  What an easy craft too.  I glued the popsicle sticks into X shapes, then gave the girls the choice of yarn colors they wanted.  Once i started the center, they were easily able to wrap the yarn to the outside.  I glued the ends with hot glue and then we picked out antenna colors.  Iris was even able to wrap her antennas around a pencil to get them to be curly.  Penny needed help with it.  Here are the instructions and our finished products.

Saturday:

I have wanted to do this for a long time, but have always found a reason not to.  But finally, i bit the bullet, bought a canvas and a box of crayons and we sat down to make the melted crayon art.  It was definitely closer to an Iris aged project than a Penny aged project.  Iris helped me sort all the crayons into color families, then we worked together to put them in order lightest to darkest.  Iris really picked up on it quickly, and I feel that she learned quite a bit too.  Then, I hot glued the crayons to the canvas and Iris and I used my hair dryer to melt the crayons.  We worked until Iris told me it was "enough" and this is what we ended up with:

Sunday:

Today, we did "caterpillars" or, according to the craft sheet, they are actually bookworms.  I modified the craft slightly and instead of using all buttons, I used mainly beads and gave the girls a few buttons to spread out throughout.  I started ours by hot gluing a bead to the "tail" to keep all the rest of the beads in place, then the girls strung their beads and buttons on as they saw fit.  It was a great project for Penny and I think it really helped her hand-eye coordination.  We finished by hot gluing a big button with googly eyes to the "head" and here they are.  (Note: the blue one is mine... Penny has lost hers somewhere in the house, of course!):

On a side note, i've been giving myself a little break from blogging on the weekends, it is kind of nice to have mini vacations from this.

Day 177: Rainbow Cake

Alright, where to begin:  First and foremost- this craft was WAYYY too ambitious!  I started this at about 12:30 today and we finally got to eat it at 6 tonight.

First, I found a picture of a rainbow cake that I REALLY wanted to make, so I figured out how to make it... everything says "2 boxes of vanilla cake mix" but i didn't have vanilla cake mix, so I had to make a cake from scratch.. thankfully, i always have cake flour on hand... I found this recipe for the vanilla cake, and I will absolutely use it again: http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/buddy-valastros-vanilla-cake/  The only thing I will say is that to make a rainbow cake, you need to actually make THREE 9 inch round cakes, and the recipe only made 2... so I made 1.5x the recipe.  If i can multiply it and make it come out right, i am sure you can :)  After the first step, the cake mix looked like crumbles.  I was adding the 4th egg before it suddenly started looking like a cake mix.  So, don't get discouraged!  The kids love pouring everything in and helping with the mixer- love my Kitchen Aid mixer!!!

Then, i had to split the batter into 6 even amounts... i'll do the hard part for you, it is approximately 1.5 cups plus 1.5T per bowl... well, at least it worked.

Then we had to dye it.. i used gel food coloring.. the only color i wasn't happy with was the red.  Any bakers out there that can give me a suggestion on how to make the red brighter???  The girls were fascinated with the process, they fought over who would hand me the tooth picks to mix the food coloring in and Iris wanted to help blend it in.

Then the long part:  I baked 2 "cakes" at a time for approximately 13-14 minutes each at 350*.  Then, I had to let them cool for a little bit, turn them out, clean the pans, re butter and flour the pan and start all over again.

It took TWO cans of whipped icing to cover the cake, and that was a JUST BARELY covered.  But, we threw some rainbow sprinkles on the top and enjoyed.  It did turn out very pretty.

Day 176: DOMA/Prop 8 Celebration

Well, in order to celebrate the over turning of DOMA and Prop 8, the girls made rainbow hearts.  I didn't have a lot of bright rainbow colored beads, or paper, so, we made them with some of our previously dyed noodles.  I love the way they turned out.  Mike made hearts with 2 pipe cleaners and hot glued them to the paper and then they filled the heart with glue and covered the glue with noodles.