For the past month or so I’ve perused the pages of Etsy, looking for a sturdy Nativity set that could stand up to two toddlers. I wanted something that they could play with, something that would be with us for many years, and something that would be nice to look at…oh…and it had to be affordable (that’s always the kicker, isn’t it?)
I am so thankful that I peaked over there again last Wednesday because I found the perfect set on reserve for another customer. It was made of wood (pine), simple in design, and very reasonably priced. Upon looking a little more into it, I found out that the seller would create custom orders upon request. Score!
Did I mention that was last Wednesday? Right before the Thanksgiving weekend? So guess what I found in the mailbox today?
Isn’t it just lovely? The set was made, mailed, and received all within a week’s time. I can’t even tell you how impressed I am with this seller. Not only are the pieces beautiful, but she was so pleasant to work with. And fast!
Well, I could go on and on, but I wanted to get a few pictures up and pass on the seller’s info in case anyone else was in the market for something like this.
The Etsy shop is called Sawdusted. If you don’t see the nativity set listed, go ahead and convo her and see if she’d be willing to do a custom order (that’s what I did!).
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!
We’ve been doing so much running around lately there hasn’t been much time for anything at home. I’ve had a few chances to peak over at The Crafty Crow and, my goodness, all of those Thanksgiving crafts are just making my head spin! Turkeys everywhere! So, with turkeys on the brain and straw painting on my never-ending list of things to do, we set forth to paint some turkeys!
I dropped the first small dollop of brown paint on the paper and demonstrated to Annabelle the proper straw-blowing technique. The hardest part for her in the beginning was not getting close enough with the straw.
I’ve had to hold off on doing this activity with her until I knew should could blow out through the straw and not suck in. As it turned out, she proved to me just how big of a girl she is getting to be. Not satisfied with simply picking out her own colors, she insisted on opening and pouring them herself. It blows my mind every time I see just how independent she can be.
I forgot to thin out our tempura paint, which made it a little harder to distribute the paint around, but I like the results. Although, it would be interesting to see how the turkey would come out with a runnier consistency. Let me know if you try it!
Added: I should have known better than to post something when I still had some lingering curiosity about it’s potential. So, I added some water to our paints and tried it again. Here are the results. I actually think I like this one better. I’m going to try it again with Annabelle and see how she does with it, but I wanted to go ahead and get this image up to show you the difference and let you decide which way you prefer.
Just to recap, all you do is drip some paint onto the paper, then point your straw at the paint and blow!
I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving that last photo up for very long, so I decided to get the “real” Halloween pictures posted tonight.
Last year we high-jacked a photo session that some friends of ours had set up for their son at the mall. The pictures came out so wonderfully cute that we decided to take our girls back again this year.
Annabelle made the very big-girl decision about what to dress up as this year. I had been throwing ideas out at her for weeks: a pirate, a bear, a bumblebee. Nothing interested her. Then, one day her daycare center sent her home with somebody else’s underwear because I had forgotten to replace her spare. They happened to be Tinkerbell underwear, and the rest is history.
Thankfully, I had more say regarding Charlotte’s costume. I was flip-flopping between Princess Leia and Little Red Riding Hood, and had even begun making a felt beanie with little buns attached. Ultimately, I decided that the cute factor was a somewhat higher for Red and, since I already had enough red felt for the cape, I went with it.
And here they are together, partners in crime.
I also have to say thank goodness for these wonderful internets. I had a great starting point for Annabelle’s costume after finding this skirt pattern (see the bottom), and this hooded cape (found via The Crafty Crow) was absolutely perfect for Little Red Riding Hood (and it was very easy to make). For the rest of Charlotte’s costume, I made a simple apron for her to wear over a dress she already had. I wish I had a better picture of the apron, because it really is adorable. I’m now determined to find a way to incorporate them into her wardrobe more.
