Play doh Fun

We celebrate all kinds of sensory things around here.

Including Mommy deciding that we would get out the play doh.

On a school night.

Whoa buddy.

Are my kids going to remember that they were in bed 'on time' every night?  Maybe

Are they going to remember special nights of playing play doh and creating masterpieces on a sheet in the living room?  I certainly hope so.

Ladies Craft Night

So our Sunday school ladies got together last week to make wreaths. The pictures of the wreaths they sent to get our creative juices flowing were way cute....

So with these ideas, I went in search of my perfect wreath to begin my backdrop.  Then I carefully selected my colors.  I then spent entirely too long trying to find just the right sprig to make it all come together. Then I did the same thing for the materials for the spring wreath I was making for my mother in law.

I was overjoyed to realized that my procrastination had payed off when I found out the wreaths were 50% off on the day I purchased them. SCORE one for procrastination!

Craft night came. I fiddled around with making the flowers, tossing aside the template because it seemed too complicated (and I'm a simple girl and like easy things).

And my flowers turned out something like this.

I only got through with a few of them and it seemed like I looked up and it was time for me to leave.  I was in no way, shape or form ready to be finished with the night.

But I went back home and let my fabulous in-laws go home (thank you!).  Then I proceeded to continue with my crafty streak.

And I finished with a wreath that looked like this.

So there you have it....my spring wreath for my door.  The very next night, I made another one for my mother in law....and although in this picture it appears crooked, imagine it hanging correctly...and her spring wreath turned out like this.

It has felt very good to be crafty!  I have realized how much I miss that aspect of my life.  I do have creative juices and apparently they do sometimes like to flow.  And I guess it's good to sometimes remember that!

My front door is thanking me.

Easter bunny...Craft time!

So I stumbled across this post where a tutorial is shown about making Easter bunnies from lonely socks. (The tutorial is fabulous...If I can make it from the tutorial, you know you're in good shape. Elsie Marley's bunny also looks way better than mine. That being said, I'll include some rudimentary instructions below with my pictures as well).

As I have already mentioned, I just purged socks and have more lonely socks that I know what to do with around here right now.

This is what the basket of lonely socks looks like...normally it is sitting on top of my dryer, waiting to try and find their partners as loads (and loads, and loads, and loads) of laundry come out of the dryer and get folded and put away (hahaha...so funny...like that happens immediately...but I digress). I took it and since I was home yesterday with both girls, I decided to make the 'pin' a reality.

Tatum picked out her color for her bunny, and while the girls were eating dinner and watching a movie, I tried to get all crafty.

Here goes:

Put your stuffing in the bottom of the sock, which will end up being the body of the bunny. I realized when I was finished that I probably didn't use enough stuffing...but you don't want to use too much...so just take your best guess. Slip stitch around where you want the body to end and draw it tight.

Around the toe of your body (what will be the tail) do another slip stitch in a circular pattern, and tie it off...this will be the tail.

Stuff the head (which is really the heel area of the sock) and perform the same slip stitch technique you have no doubt mastered by now (hopefully better than I seem to have done).

Then take the top of the sock and cut a V into it (you'll have just made the sections for the two ears). Then cut those 'ears' so that they have a point in the middle (so each ear is another V). Fold the edges of each ear in toward the center and stitch them.

Tatum decided that her bunny needed eyes, so I played with the thread and added eyes to her bunny. I also added a few quick stitches in various places to hold it together in something that resembled the shape of a bunny (and realized again that I didn't stuff the body with enough stuffing).

But there you have it!  A purple bunny...

SUPER Valentine

In my continued attempt (while home with a sick wee one) to not go crazy come up with cheap cute Valentine's Day ideas for the kids, I came across this idea both on Pinterest and also in my Family Fun magazine.

Sidenote: it's AMAZING what happens when you actually read the appropriate magazine in the appropriate month, huh?  See my Clutter Bustin' post for catching up on that particular problem in my house.

I scoured the house to see how many suckers we had....you know...to see if we had enough for a class set.  Luckily for me, we had that and more.  (Apparently I can no longer say, 'We don't really keep candy around the house....')

Then you make the cape and make templates and begin the cut out phase (after deciding on your caped crusaders color scheme, of course).

With carefully placed folds, you only need 2 sheets of construction paper for 24 capes.  And you need only 1 piece on construction paper for the masks.  Yup...very minimal supplies for this oh-so-cute project!

Then you get to cuttin'!

Decide on your SUPER saying.....

Then you make the eye portion of your masks (no quick way that I could think of on this one other than drawing in the eyes on each one of the masks).

With all of your materials compiled, you begin the 'construction' phase.  Get a hole punch (and in the absence of a single hole punch, one of the holes from a three hole punch works just fine).

And here you go!!

Valentine Sweetie

In trying to figure out what the kids were going to take for their Valentine's this year (you know, instead of my normal, last minute, Dollar Store cards), I have been pinning numerous cute items on Pinterest.

Apparently it got my creative juices flowing.

I came across some SweeTarts that we had at the house, and luckily for me, we had just enough for a class set for Jacey.

So, I designed a card, printed it out on regular printer paper (if you wanted to get fancier, you could always use card stock).

I glued the card to construction paper, then simply added the SweeTart with some tape in the space I had designed.

Easy as that and oh-so-cute (if I do say so myself).  And here is the whole stack of them, ready to go (in advance, I might add...go me - for once).

And I think it took me less time than signing names, folding, and sticking red hearts onto the Dollar Store valentines....and the best part....this project cost me nothing out of pocket...everything to do this was already in the house.

Whoop!

What do YOU do with Christmas cards after Christmas?

I have wondered this for years.

And for many years I have wanted to make a book of them, so that we could remember who sent us cards the previous year pray for the families during the year.

After making my hubby crazy too many years to count regarding this issue, I finally decided to DO SOMETHING with them this year.

I knew that there with this ring thingy's that could hold stuff together, but had NO IDEA what they were called...and that was oh-so-helpful as I was trying to explain them to the guy at Wal-Mart so I could find them.  {Just so you know, they're called book rings}

I finally found them ($1.50 for a package of 8, and they come with 2 sizes in the package), with the help of another female Wal-Mart employee {I'll leave those comments alone} and I was off and running.

When I made it home, I realized that I don't own a single hole hole-punch.  Or if I own one, I can't find it.  Or didn't look hard enough.  Or was too impatient to look very hard at all.

At any rate, I made do with two parts of my three hole hole-punch.

I gathered my Christmas cards....

Used the two holes from the hole punch and made my holes for my 'book'....then stacked and put them on the rings.

Easy peasy and oh-so-cute!!  So now I have contained and organized what was once my Christmas card clutter.

And I am curious....what DO you do with the Christmas cards you receive once Christmas is over?

Quick & cute weekly calendar

I knew that once I succumbed to pinterest I would be in trouble, but I think I've done a fairly good job at making some of my pins into reality. (This is not to say that I have even completed 1% of the projects I've pinned...not even 1%, but I've done some. Some is good).

I saw one yesterday that was so cute that I decided to take the plunge with it today. 

I saw this incredibly cute idea to make a weekly calendar using a collage photo frame, and knew that this would be a quick and easy way for the entire family to know who needed to be where for the week.  Depending on the space, I may decide to incorporate our weekly dinner menu onto this as well, but we'll see.

I picked up the frame at the Dollar Store ($8)

...then I rummaged through my paper scraps trying to find inspiration for the insides of the frames.

After some experimentation, I decided that I liked the thicker paper better, as it made the frames tight.  Considering that I was going to be writing on the glass with a dry erase marker, I decided I didn't want the glass to be 'wiggly'.  You decide what's best for you.  I played with the color scheme.

Then had what I was comfortable with for a finished product.

Add the days of the week and your calendar with a dry erase marker after you hang in the spot of your choosing and you're ready to go!

Family tree

Now that Christmas is over and the presents have been exchanged, I can share some of the items that I worked on for gifts.  They are largely the result of my new found pinterest site...and surprisingly,  some ideas became more than just ideas on a computer screen or pins on my many boards.

They made it creation and are hanging on my (and others!) walls. I made three of these from our hand prints and both sets of our parents got one, and of course I had to make one for us!

The original idea can be found here. Her writing looks so much more professional than mine, but hey...

I gathered my supplies, which included the following:

• Paint (assorted colors, which we already had from my maternity pictures with Jacey when the kids colored on my belly)
• Paint Pens (which I didn't have, but this was the same shopping trip as when I got them for the Reindeer ornaments and the Grinch ornaments, so I just needed them in brown and black, which were the same colors as for those two projects)
• Frames (this was the trickier one....I needed a large frame for this, and as you know, those can get pricey, even with coupons.  However, Big Lots had their collage frames on sale, and although I didn't need the collage frame, the size worked out perfectly.  So I snagged 3 frames for what 1 would have cost me at Hobby Lobby).
• Poster board (I was making 3 total family trees)
• Foam brushes for the paint (a package with assorted sizes was just a little less than $3)

I measured the size of the frame insert, then cut the poster board to the correct size.  Then I worked on drawing a tree that didn't look like a hand (like she writes, it really is harder than it sounds). I used a paint pen in brown and colored it in.

I then grabbed each kiddo individually, let them pick out their color, painted their hand with a foam brush, and we placed their hand print onto the poster board.  Let me just say, with each successive hand print, my perfectionist self got more and more nervous about something messing up.

I did the older two kids, then mine, grabbed my hubby (he's such a trooper!!) and did his, and we left the baby for last.

I let each of the hand prints dry, then penciled in the wording.  Once I was comfortable with the spacing of the words, I went over the words with the black paint pen.

Let everything dry really well....then framed the masterpieces!

I did end up taking these out of the frames and putting the year in the corner...didn't think about that at the time.

And they were BIG hits as gifts.

Gingerbread Houses

Our family tradition is to make gingerbread graham cracker houses every year.  

We use graham crackers and regular ole' icing as the 'glue', 

then decorate using a variety of sugary goodness.

The kids have a blast with this.  

And their architecture is very interesting sometimes, to say the least.

And when the houses aren't structurally sound and collapse, 

the kids get broken-hearted.

So then you recruit Daddy, and it makes it all better.

After the structure of the houses are finalized, 

you then decorate to your hearts content.

After the decorations prove to be too heavy for (almost) any of the structures built, 

enjoy the chaos and rubble.

Then enjoy the last house standing....and the beautiful architect who built it.