Snow Painting!

Life on the Prairies is never dull.  We went through a couple of weeks with -40 weather (sometimes including the windchill, sometimes not!!), and the kiddos were going NUTS being stuck in the house!!  I saw this idea on Pinterest from Really Quite Lucky, and as soon as the weather got nice, we just HAD to go out and try it!!

Supplies Needed

Water

Food Coloring

Squirty Bottles

SNOW!!

This project is really self-explanatory.  Mix water and food coloring in a squirty bottle (I used a ketchup/mustard bottle combo that I got for $1.25 at the dollar store!).  I think we used 4 good sized squirts of color per bottle.  Then shake them up and go explore!  We made sure to just do this on the snow and not on the patio, though, as we used a fairly big concentration of food coloring and I wasn't sure if it would stain!!

Exploring the colors

At one point, Jellybean just sat in the Cozy Coupe and squirted her bottle out the window to see what would happen :)

Baby J was just in awe!  He couldn't figure out where all of the pretty colors were coming from!!

HAVE FUN!!







Self-Led Crafts

Well, after a month-long hiatus, we are back!  We got so caught up in all of our Christmas crafting and the holiday season that our posts have fallen behind!

As is typical in our house, illness of various types have been running through our house.  My husband had a cold, my daughter had surgery on her ears before Christmas and came home with a skin infection called impetigo, I caught a stomach flu; we're done!!  Hopefully that will be the worst illness we'll have for 2012!!  After all of that illness, I wanted to find something fun for my daughter to do.  She had been stuck at home with her impetigo, so I wanted to try something different for her.  Instead of laying out a specific craft like I usually do, I wanted her to have a self-led craft day.  So I put out some of her favorite things:

Construction Paper, glue, finger paints (we use Melissa & Doug), pom-poms, stickers, foam shapes and some pictures cut out of magazines for collages. 

I laid everything out on the table the night before, and I didn't tell Jellybean that I had things laid out for her; I waited for her to discover the invitation.  When she did, I was in the living room, and I suddenly heard this giant giggle from the kitchen as she discovered the goodies that were out for her!  We sat down immediately and started with the finger paints.  At first, she didn't want to get dirty, so we used paint brushes to get the paint out.  Then, we discovered that you can paint with a pom-pom!

We had to try it with several pom-poms :)

So much fun!!

One of the coolest parts of our painting experience today was mixing the colors.  She mixed blue and red "WOW!! I got purple!!"  Then we mixed red and yellow "Look, Mama!  It's orange!"  Then we mixed everything together and it was "Look at the brown!!"  She did this all on her own without any guidance from me.  We had watched a show called "Special Agent OSO", and this particular episode was about mixing paint colors to make different colors.  I couldn't believe she remembered the different color combinations!!  SO COOL!!  We also discovered that using a pom-pom in the various colors made a fireworks effect :)



We then moved on to foam stickers.  Usually when we do foam stickers, we just stick them randomly all over the paper.  This time, however, we used princess foam stickers that I got at the dollar store.  She had scenes laid out in her mind, and she got very upset when I added stickers that didn't "fit"!  I ended up just sitting back and watching her. 

First, she took a unicorn sticker.  She started sticking a princess sticker to it, and my first thought was "Why are you sticking those all together?  That's not right!"  But then, as I watched her, I realized that she was using her imagination!





For every princess, there was a unicorn to ride.  Then the princesses got princess hats, and they each needed a castle.  It was so cool to watch!  She was using her imagination and creating these little scenes.  And then she would make the princesses talk to each other, and they were all friends, and she had a design and intent in mind for each and every sticker on that page.  My little girl is growing up!!

This was a great lesson not only for Jellybean, but for me as well.  I learned to let her do her own thing and not worry about the end results.  She had a great time, and it was fantastic for her to be able to create and explore without and parental interference.  I was so impressed with the things that she came up with, and how much fun she had!  We will definitely be doing this again!!!

Footprint Reindeer and Handprint Trees

One of the things I LOVE doing in crafts is documenting the kids' growth.  So these two crafts are a great way to do that!!  The first one is one that my daughter did at preschool, and the second one is one we did at home with BabyJ.


Reindeer Footprints

Supplies Needed

1 large piece of green construction paper

Brown craft paint

1 pair of googly eyes

1 circle of red paper

Clear craft glue

1.  Paint your child's foot (your choice, left or right!)

2.  Gently place your child's in the center of the green paper and have them step down.  (NOTE:  You will want to have either a wet cloth or a small washbin handy to wash the paint off right away!!)

3.  Do the same with your child's hands, and place them next to the toe-prints, as the antlers. 

4.  Using your craft glue, attach the google eyes and red circle (for the nose)

5.  Let dry and enjoy!  I always attach the kids' names/ages on the back of each one, and then I have a great time capsule of how big their hands/feet are each year!  You could also repeat a craft like this each year, and compare them each year!  If you get misty-eyed like I do, keep a box of tissues on hand to help with your nostalgia :)

Handprint Christmas Tree

Supplies Needed

1 piece of white heavy paper

Yellow, green & red paint

1.  Paint your child's hands green.  I did this one-at-a-time, and it made it easier.  Place one hand (open-palmed) onto your paper.  I did it at a bit of an angle. 

2.  Before you do the 2nd hand, make sure that you wash off the first one!  I had an old wash cloth on hand with warm water.  MAKE SURE YOUR PAINT IS WASHABLE!!!  Sometimes, even when your paint says that it is washable, IT WILL STAIN YOUR SKIN!! BabyJ has had green hands all day :)  It will come off in the tub, but make sure if you have a special event or family photos planned that you don't do this craft beforehand!!

3.  Paint and place your child's other hand at a bit of an angle opposite the first hand.  This should look like a tree shape.  I re-painted BabyJ's palm and placed it at the top to finish off the tree shape. 

4.  Use your yellow paint to paint a star at the top and your red paint to do small circle ornaments just beyond the fingertips.  I chose not to do "ornaments" on the handprints themselves, so you'd still be able to see them.

SO CUTE!!!



Christmas Crafties

Recently, I was introduced to Pinterest.com.  What a fun website!! I've been having a blast looking at other people's craft posts, and have had fun making up some of my own!

Going along with our debt-free Christmas theme, my hubby's office is having a decorating contest, and the winner gets a neat prize.  So of course, I started thinking up all kinds of crafts and things to put up!  And getting BabyJ and Jellybean in on the action was half the fun!!  We've decided that we're going to decorate his area of the office with homemade Christmas items and we're going to hang this quote from the Grinch:

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,

stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons.

It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.

And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.

What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.

What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.”

-Dr Seuss

So we started today making all kinds of crafts, and we're going to share them with you in a few different posts. 

The first thing we made were Christmas trees. Super fun and easy; G loved it!!

Supplies Needed

Green popsicle or craft sticks

Purple popsicle or craft sticks

Hot glue gun and glue sticks

Clear craft glue

Beads, doo-dads, sparkles, glitter

Imagination!!

1.  Take your popsicle/craft sticks.  You will use 3 per tree.  On the first one, place hot glue on each end.  Place your other popsicle sticks on the glue, and use one more dab of hot glue to adhere the final 2 ends.  We used 4 different kinds of sticks.  We used large and small popsicle sticks, small bumpy sticks and large popsicle sticks with holes in them.

2.  Cut your purple sticks into 3 pieces.  The cut edges may be a bit sharp; you may want to use some fine sandpaper to sand off the rough edges.  Adhere to the middle of the bottom stick with a dab of hot glue.

3.  Using the clear craft glue, start decorating!!  We used beads, pompoms, glitter and sparkles, sequins and glitter-glue. 

Some of our finished trees!!

We've got enough glitter and bling to make Elton John proud!!

When we go to hang them, I am going to use some thin ribbon at the top and adhere it with a dab of hot glue.  I find hot glue works better than the craft glue for that type of thing, as it will hold up under the weight of the popsicle sticks and various adornments when it comes time to hang!

Christmas is coming!

This Christmas, we are trying to do a debt-free Christmas.  This means that we are saving our pennies specifically for Christmas things, instead of using a credit card.  So far, so good!!  We are hand-making a lot of our own ornaments and decorations this year, so we are going to post some of the fun things that we are doing! 

The first craft we attempted is sun-catchers.  I saw this post on Play At Home Mom (LOVE THIS WEBSITE!!), and we had to try it!!

Supplies Needed

Picture frame (We got ours at the Dollar Store)

Clear glue

Clear, plastic gems (either colored or clear.  We got ours at the Dollar Store)

Hot glue gun and glue

Newspaper

1.  Remove the wrapping, paper and backing from your picture frame.  You can decide if you want your gems to be behind the glass or in front of it.  If the gems are thicker than the frame and you put them on the back, the sun catcher won't sit flat on the window.  We stuck ours on the back, and we actually ended up using a second framed attached to the back to give it extra depth.

2.  Using your glue gun, run a line around the inside of the frame where the glass sits.  Then insert your glass.  This will seal your frame, which will prevent the clear glue from leaking out of the frame.

3.  Spread your clear glue onto the glass.  Clear glue is key, as white glue will look a bit filmy. 

4.  Attach your gems!!  Remember, the thicker the layer of glue, the stronger the hold will be.  However, it also means that your project will take longer to dry.  Ours dried for about 2.5 days before it was finally ready! 

5.  Enjoy!  We used a large suction cup to attach it to the window that gets all of the light in the winter, and we'll move it in the spring.  





Pumpkin Decorating!

Last year, we decided that instead of carving our pumpkin, we would paint them.  This year, my Mother in law came to visit, and she and Jellybean decorated the pumpkins!  She had brought a kit that had all kinds of neat stuff in it, like pipe cleaners, googly eyes, foam shapes in the shape of mouths, eyes and noses, and of course, stickers!  If you don't have a kit, you can always use whatever craft supplies you have on hand!

Here's what the girls came up with :

Such a happy little guy!

Zorro pumpkin!



This one if my favorite!  I love how surprised he looks :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!



Pumpkins

I just had to post this one to show off our Pumpkin creation!!  We went onto a search engine online and typed in "Pumpkin Carving Templates" and found a whole bunch we could print off!  We let our daughter choose, and this is what she came up with:

Supplies Needed

SHARP knife

Pumpkin

Carving template

1.  Cut the lid off of your pumpkin in the shape of your choice.  We chose to do it in kind of a flower shape.  Make sure you cut your hole large enough to reach in to scoop the seeds and bits out, but also taper it so that the lid won't fall into your pumpkin like mine did :)  Just angle your knife a bit as you carve it inwards.

2.  Pick your template online and print it off. Make sure your design isn't too big for your pumpkin or it won't look right when you pop a candle in there.

3.  Using the tip of your knife or a pin, make a series of dots as the outline that you will cut. It's hard to see it in this picture, but that's what we did here.

4.  VERY carefully cut your shape.  By using your knife tip or a pin to outline your shape, it is WAY easier to cut that way instead of trying to do it freehand.  I used a larger knife for the bigger shapes, and I used a very small, thin paring knife for the fiddly bits.  There are a TON of kits that you can get at the Dollar Store or your local big Box store that have tiny little pumpkin carving knives in it.  When you are carving, be VERY careful that you don't cut over the lines that are there to hold things together.  Or, you will end up having to tape your pumpkin back together :)  When you use an intricate design, there will be bits that you cut around that will make the shape your are creating, and will also hold your shape together.  I tried to glue Minnie's jaw back on, but of course glue on a wet pumpkin just wasn't going to work.  So because we're using a battery-powered candle and not a real one, I used some clear tape to hold it back together :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!