The girls and I took to the yard yesterday to work on some glass jars I’d been collecting. I’m sure I saw this idea on the Craft blog but now I can’t find the link anywhere. Anyways, the person used glow-in-the-dark star stickers and frosted glass spray paint to make some decorative lanterns out of glass jars. I borrowed heavily from this idea.
I used letter stickers on big spaghetti sauce jars (and one jelly jar) and let my little munchkins play around with the star stickers and little artichoke hearts jars. It was a gorgeous day and the girls enjoyed alternating between playing in the yard and sticking stickers on their jars.
Actually Charlotte had her own ideas about where the stars should go.
Later in the day I sprayed over them with the spray paint. Just a note for those interested in doing this project…get more paint than you think you’ll need. The jars look better with a few coats of spray paint. I only got one can and after seeing them with the candles lit inside, there is definitely a difference between the first jars I sprayed and the ones that got sprayed towards the end when I started running out of paint.
Also, you have to be very careful when lifting the stickers not to lift the paint off, too. I would suggest doing a practice jar to kind of get the hang of it.
Some of my stickers left a little residue behind, so I used a q-tip and some Goof Off to carefully remove it.
They look beautiful along our entryway leading up to our door. Plus, I got a nifty new banner out of it!
This morning we took the first ornament out of a pocket from our Advent calendar. I’ve been so excited about this thing but it’s taking me forever to complete…so, I’m posting it as a work-in-progress. As long as I can stay a day or two ahead with the ornaments, I figure I’ll be ok!
Here’s what the whole thing looks like (unfinished):
As you can see, it’s a Christmas tree with pockets at the bottom. The tree has little red buttons sewn on, which is where the ornaments will hang. When I’m finished, there will be 24 buttons all over the tree…one for each ornament.
Each day, we’ll take an ornament out and hang it on our little tree.
All of the ornaments have a different component of the story of Christ’s birth. I’m hoping the girls will be excited about seeing what will come next. At the very least, I know they’ll have fun hanging the ornaments. :) They’re are basically just little linen softies with an image stitched on.
I decided to make this Advent calendar without treats or toys after seeing the beginning of the holiday season showing up in stores. When we went to the mall…there was Santa. At the hardware store…there were huge inflatable scenes with Frosty and Santa and all other aspects of Christmas that are devoid religious connotations. So, I thought that an Advent calendar such as this would be a daily reminder about what Christmas is all about. Hopefully, by Christmas morning, there will be no confusion about what we are celebrating when we open gifts and visit family and friends. We’ll still have fun with the other stuff, but I want my girls to understand the difference between the fluff and the meat of Christmas.
Here’s another craft that I picked up from the Advent Fair. I just love this sweet little angel and it is soooo quick and easy to make. Little hands will have a hard time with this one so either be prepared to offer a lot of help, or stick with an older crowd (maybe 8 or 9 and up?).
You’ll need:
* 1 white chenille stem (aka pipe cleaner)
* 1 silver chenille stem
* one wooden bead
First feed the stem through the bead and leave about an inch on the end:
Wrap the end around your finger and secure:
Hello little angel, what a lovely halo you have!
Now bring the other end up just under head and twist it to secure around the neck
Form the body into a triangle shape::
At this point you can put the body down and form the wings with the silver stem. Start by making a bow-tie:
Twist the ends to secure them into place, but be sure to leave some untwisted as this is how you will secure it to the body:
Wrap your ends around the angel’s neck to attach the wings to the angel:
Ahhhh, one sweet little angel ready to add some sparkle to your gift-wrapping
After reading our Thanksgiving book a few times and talking about the Pilgrims, I thought it might be fun for the girls to play dress up and pretend to be Pilgrims. So, I did some searches (link, link, link), made some adjustments, and came up with these little hats made from craft felt.
Some things are better in theory.
They humored me by letting me take these pictures of them with their hats.
See this one?
I stalled the hat-pulling by offering a distracting leaf to Charlotte.
And this one?
She was too preoccupied by her intention of grabbing fistfuls of hay and throwing them to bother with the hat. As soon as I got a pic or two, I stopped the hay throwing and the hat came off.
Actually, Annabelle has played with her hat sporadically over the past couple days, which gives me hope that, in time, they’ll enjoy this type of dress up game.
I’ll be storing these in our Thanksgiving box in the hope that one day they’ll look forward to wearing their Pilgrim hats for Thanksgiving. I have this idyllic picture in my head of my two little squirts anxiously awaiting the opening of the holiday boxes so that they can don their hats and play Pilgrim again.
On Saturday I was blessed with the opportunity to facilitate one of the craft tables at our church’s Advent fair. There were several crafts being demonstrated and I’m so excited about sharing some of them with you over the next couple weeks!
I decided to post this one first because the Advent Season is fast approaching and some of you may want to create this wreath as a way to count down the weeks ’til Christmas with your kiddos.
In this picture, you’ll see the kids wreath in front of a beautiful olive leaf wreath.
To make the kids wreath, you’ll need the following:
*4 toilet paper rolls *a paper plate * yellow tissue paper or a yellow plastic bag * blue painter’s tape * glue stick or other adhesive * and cut-outs of green holly and red berries (I made a cardboard template of a holly shape similar to this one then traced it all over a sheet of green construction paper)
First glue all of the holly and berries onto the back side of the paper plate:
Then wrap the painter’s tape around the toilet paper rolls:
Stick some tape to the inside of the toilet paper roll:
Fold inward and press tape down onto the plate to adhere the rolls:
Use your yellow tissue to make "flames" coming out of the "candles."
Now, push all of the paper down into the tubes and, starting on the first Sunday after Thanksgiving, have your little one "light the candle" by pulling them back out again.
The Advent Wreath is just one of many ways we can teach our young ones about the meaning behind this season’s excitement. The wreath itself is a symbol of God’s eternal love while the candle’s represent the "light of the world" (aka Jesus). There is one candle for each week of the Advent Season, and blue is the color of hope. So much symbolism in one little craft!
I know that Thanksgiving is supposed to be about giving thanks and all…
but…
but…
turkeys are fun!
Especially when they talk!
We have been having so much fun with our latest project. I saw this turkey noisemaker on the Craftsanity blog and knew right away that we had to make it.
The instructions call for a soldering iron to puncture holes in the plastic cup, but I don’t recall seeing one of those around here so I used a lighter to heat up a nail and worked just fine!
This was one of those projects that both of my girls could get into, which makes it an instant success in my book. They both helped me tear the brown paper and glue it onto the cup.
Then we sponged some paint onto our feathers…just for fun!
I added the face once the paper had dried and then demonstrated to the girls what this little bird was capable of! The screeching ranges from gawd-aweful to chicken-like and tends to send house pets into a frenzy trying to figure out what’s going on.
For your viewing pleasure:
Everybody took turns making the turkey talk, but it takes a little practice to really get him going.
It’s a simple description of the Thanksgiving holiday that includes everything from the Pilgrims to hand-traced turkeys to cooking up a traditional Thanksgiving meal. Both of my girls have enjoyed reading it and Annabelle actually asked to read it twice last night. We have a couple of Tomie dePaola’s books and they always seem to go over well with our kiddos. So, if you’ve got some little ones and you’re looking for an “Intro to Thanksgiving” type of book, be sure to check this one out!
What you’ll need: party hat template plastic bags of different colors
iron
scissors
parchment paper
magazine/catalog cut into strips
glue gun
super glue
pins
twine
Prepare bag by cutting handles and bottom, then fold over until you have at least 4 layers (consult this video or this month’s Craft for detailed instructions). Lay on top of parchment paper. Do not fuse yet!
Cut contrasting colored bag into strips:
Then cut across strips using different angles to make confetti:
Gather confetti and sprinkle evenly all over the bag:
Carefully place another sheet of parchment paper on top:
With the iron set at a low to medium temp (depending on how thick your plastic is) iron evenly all over the plastic bag until it is fused together to form one piece. Allow the bag to cool before lifting the parchment paper so that it keeps its shape.
Once your bag is completely fused, turn it over and trace your template onto the back:
I added about an inch and a half to the template to make it a little bigger. You can adjust the size as needed:
Cut along your outline:
Now take your magazine strips:
and use your glue gun to glue around the strips about 4-5 inches into one side:
Use a helper or clothespins to help you keep the strips gathered tightly while gluing:
Cut the unused end and superglue into place on hat. Allow a few minutes for the strips to dry:
Dab more superglue along edge of hat where the ends will overlap and pin into place:
Push pins all the way through to hold the ends together tightly:
Allow to dry…and you’re done!
Now go out and have some fun!
If you’re also interested in the bunting you see in the background, simply fuse more bags, cut them into triangles and sew to ribbon or hang from twine!
Let me know if you try this, and please feel free to comment or email with questions if you have any!
As I was smack dab in the middle of learning the ins and outs of plastic fusing, Craft decided to have an upcycling contest! As a result, my attention has been diverted to coming up with upcycled party decorations….using fused plastic, of course! Here’s a glimpse.
I am endlessly amazed by what one can do with something as simple as an egg carton. After seeing these egg carton lights, I couldn’t stop thinking about what else I could do with that lovely shape: flowers, skirts for little chenille stem dolls, ghosts.
With the approach of Halloween, I seized on the ghost concept and decided to use the pieces of an egg carton as part of a diorama.
Below you can see where cuts should be made on the egg carton for the pumpkin and ghosts, respectively.
Pumpkin:
Ghosts:
And, through a bit of serendipity, I discovered that the following cuts will leave you with little bat shapes!
Speaking of Halloween, I’ve been working on the girls’ costumes over the past couple days (leaving me waaaay behind in my blog reading). I usually work on my own projects while the kids are napping or at night while they’re in bed, but since Annabelle woke up early from her nap yesterday I decided to go ahead and finish what I had started while she watched close by. As I sat down to stitch the pieces of Charlotte’s Princess Leia hat together, Annabelle astutely asked me, "Mommy, are you going to say "uh-oh?"" She kills me. Yes, I mess up. Alot. Don’t you just love the candor or children? Toddlers are like little mirrors showing us the good, bad, and the ugly of everything we do. Nothing like a little shot of humility, but at the same time, it’s nice to know she’s paying attention.
I went into planning this party thinking, “Fall Harvest.” You’ll see from the pictures, however, that my one-track mind kept bringing me back to pumpkins. Lots and lots of glorious pumpkins!
The favors: Pumpkin finger puppets
These little finger puppets were super easy, albeit somewhat time consuming, to create. I made about 10 of them and each one had a different face. I really had fun with them.
By the end of the party the kids were really getting into them, too. One of the kids decided he needed one for each hand!
The Games:
One of the games we played was a pumpkin roll. It was absolutely perfect for the little ones. We have a slope in the back of our yard and they had a blast rolling their pumpkin balls down the hill and then running down the hill after them to bring them back.
Not quite as popular was the pumpkin ring toss. Although a few of the kids gave it a go, it proved a bit too challenging to keep their interest for very long. Perhaps it would go over better with an older crowd. All you need is a pumpkin with a nice long stem and some rings. We made our rings by cutting some rope and attaching them using masking tape (which can be seen partially on towards the bottom of the photo).
The Cake:
For the cake I went out and bought a fancy pumpkin cake pan, which is really just two bundt cakes joined together. It was supposed to look like this:
I should know better than to try something fancy. It was doomed from the beginning. As I rushed around at the last minute trying to get everything together (as usual) I relinquished the task of putting the cake together to my mom. Who then passed it on to my dad. By the time I came back to check on it, my husband’s cousin was putting the finishing touches on it.
The cake was a excellent reminder that setting a picture-perfect, Martha Stewart-esque table is really not that important after all. Plus any attempt at something fancy would have been thrown out the window by all that debris left on the table. Good, grief… you’d think we would have cleared the table before setting out the cake, wouldn’t you? Just FYI, it was a pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese icing.
Decor:
We kept things simple by sprinkling pumpkins, gourds, and acorns throughout the tables and such, and picked up some hay bails for extra seating.
Lastly, we have the birthday girl’s dress. Which I made. Which we did not get one SINGLE good picture of. Which got icing all over it during the cake eating. Which completely fell apart when I washed it. I’ll paint a picture for you: dark green corduroy, a-line jumper, little felt squirrel applique on bottom right-hand side. Very cute. The end.
And of course I have to include a picture of the birthday girl eating her cake.
