A Winter Craft and a Snack

Paige and I have been talking about what to do for an upcoming playgroup we are hosting and this snowman snack was one of the activities we have been planning on doing.  When I was at the grocery store this morning and the little boxes of mini powdered donuts were on sale, I decided maybe we could have a spur of the moment test run for our crafty snack.  Paige was thrilled when I picked her up from pre-school and told her the good news of the donut sale.  The second we walked in the house the project had to begin.  She and Brynne and I all got to work and created our masterpieces.  It only took minutes, but the smiles and powdered sugar little faces were priceless!  So here are the supplies you need:

powdered donuts (regular, mini's, or even donut holes would work)
pretzel sticks
chocolate chips (we used the mini ones)

For the play group, we think we will suggest the girls lay they donuts flat because they don't stay together real well, but it doesn't matter if you are eating them immediately, or if you are doing this with older kids, you could use toothpicks to make them stick together better.

Kids Christmas Craft

My four year old is obsessed with crafts.  All day long she begs for crafts to make and if I don't help her come up with things she takes matters into her own hands.  I am all for creativity and I love crafting myself, but when I am not looking the supplies are left everywhere and lets just say crayons, markers, and scissors don't go terrifically with an 18 month old.  Lately I have been going to Hobby Lobby and Michaels and looking for their cheap-o kids craft kits because they require little supervision and any leftover supplies can be tossed in the trash with no guilt.  These beaded candy cane ornaments have been one of the better kits I have found.  I got them at Hobby Lobby, but you don't need the kit at all. 

Supplies:
pipe cleaners
red and white plastic beads (ones that have a similar size hole as the width of the pipe cleaners)
wire cutters (scissors will work, but it dulls them and is harder work)

Instructions:  Fold the bottom of your pipe cleaner so that the beads can't fall off.  String beads onto pipe cleaner in a pattern alternating between red and white.  Fill to almost the top and then bend last little piece of pipe cleaner to hold the beads on and twist into a candy cane shape.  Add to the Christmas tree!

Displaying Kids' Artwork

I have had several projects in various states of being done the last little while.  I finally finished this one the other day.  It was actually quick and easy once I had all the components, it just took me awhile to gather the parts.  I saw something similar to this on some blog sometime, I really have no idea when or where.  I have been saving some old cabinet doors for just such a project. Anyway, all it took was one coat of red spray paint and some leftover Ralph Lauren Faux Technique Glaze that is tinted with brown paint.  I used eye hooks to string the closeline across the bottom and got my sister-in-law to make me some vinyl lettering that said "masterpieces".  I'm really happy with how it turned out.  I wish you could see how awesome the glaze looks from the picture. 

Irony

This week I finally broke down and bought a new point and shoot camera.  You can see that I was finally able to take some pictures of the projects I have been working on lately.  I found a great little camera that I got for $69.99, it is a Kodak Easy Share M341.  It is teeny, tiny and will be great to take all those places that I don't want to have to worry about my big camera.  The irony is that I finally got it and got it working so I could take pictures today.  Immediately I got a call saying my lens was finally fixed and I could pick it up.  Now that I have missed nearly the entire summer of picture taking, I have two working cameras.  LOVELY!

In other news, these are pictures of two projects I have had a lot of fun with lately.  The first is a garland I made to use on my decorative shelf for the patriotic holidays.  It was super easy and turned out darling.  It took a little time, but was the perfect brainless activity to work on in front of the T.V.  I found the tutorial at  The Crafty Crow and they got it from Saltwater Kids.  I made my flags a little bit bigger, I used an index card as a guide and I also used my sewing machine to stitch the flags to the twine.  Other than that, I pretty much followed the tutorial. 

The second picture is a cedar chest I bought on KSL.com.  A few weeks ago I decided that I needed something to keep my shoes in because my closet is so small.  I thought a cedar chest would be perfect.  I have always wanted one, so I headed to KSL.com .  I quickly found the cheapest one I could find that was realtively close to my house.  The outside was a little beat up, but that didn't matter because I planned on painting it anyway.  I followed the tips found at http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/

I spray painted it with Kiltz spraypaint primer, then spraypainted it with Krylon aqua and used the tips for glazing and it turned out great!  It was so much easier than I expected and I am thrilled with the results!  I definitely see more furniture painting and glazing in my future.  It was fun and completely rewarding!

Flower Bracelet Tutorial

This was the easiest bracelet ever to make, but a little tricky to try and photograph on myself.  Sorry about the weird angle.  I made a bunch of these flowers awhile ago to use for a couple of different projects and I planned on getting some alligator clips and gluing them on for hairbows for my girls.  I keep forgetting to buy the clips and in the meantime came up with this.  I went to put some tights on Paige that were actually too small, but we needed white and that was what was clean, anyway, as we pulled them on, we discovered a huge hole and had to find something else.  I was thinking about trying to use the ruined tights to make some head bands, so I just cut across one of the legs and made a strip about 1/2 inch wide, to see if the size was right.  Evidently, when making baby or child headbands, you need to use adult size tights, this band didn't even come close to fitting Brynne's head (not that it matters because she hates anything on her head), but I noticed the itty-bitty headband was the perfect size for my wrist.  I grabbed one of the flowers I had made for hair bows and wip stitched it to the mini-headband and ta-da, perfect bracelet that for once cannot be ruined by small children.  Unfortunately, Paige has decided that she loves it and it has to be wrapped double around her tiny wrist and is now stretched out to the point it no longer fits me.  We decided we will be going through all the old t-shirts in the house and looking for fabric to make more colors.  The flower is just a strip cut from an old t-shirt, about 2 inches by 18 inches.  Then use a sewing machine set to the loosest stitch length and sew down the middle of your strip.  Then take the top string from one side and pull.  the strip will ruffle and you just fold it in half.  take a needle and thread and start rolling it in to itself until it looks like a rosebud then start whipstitching it together.  When it looks the way you want, you are done.  There are a million different types of flower tutorials online and any one would work for this type of bracelet.  I also think it would be cute with 3 different sized flowers all sewn onto the bracelet. 

My Latest Craft Project

My cute sister-in-law got this quote by President Monson for me in vinyl.  She has a friend who makes vinyl stuff.  I used a blank cavas I bought like 2 years ago, that I had intended to do something with.  I thinned out some acrylic paint and dry brushed it on the canvas.  Then I used some scrapbook paper, ribbons and embellishments from my stash and some Modge Podge I had and put together this wall hanging.  Total cost was free.  I love the reminder it is right as we walk out our front door.

Paper Dolls

This may be the cutest and easiest craft project I have ever done.  I found this great fabric panel of old fashioned paper dolls at the Mormon Handicraft in Deseret Book the other day.  I think it cost around $5.  I think I have seen the same panel in a fabric catalog before, so it must be available quite a few places.  Anyway, I went to JoAnn's and bought some extra thick fusible Pellon.  I didn't buy quite enough Pellon, so I had to loosely pre-cut the paper dolls and clothes out of the panel to fit them all on the Pellon, then I ironed them down and during General Conference I cut out all the dolls and clothes.  They are now heavy duty enough for playing will and my daughter thinks they are great.  She picked out some fabric she likes, pink of course and we made a drawstring bag to put them in.  I would show it to you, but she is currently not home and the paper dolls are with her.  I love how it turned out. 

A few tips.  I think if I were doing it again, I would buy regular pellon and then use wonder under to iron it all together.  The fusible pellon doesn't seem to stick quite as well.  I actually had to iron each piece again after I did the final cutting and there was some slight fraying around the edges that I think you would avoid by using the wonder under.

Sun Hat Re-fashion

This sun hat was Blake's when he was a baby.  He hardly ever wore it and it is a Gap one, so it is still in perfect shape.  We have a beach trip coming up and Brynne is the first child I have who is really fair-skinned.  I know she is going to be a real problem to keep from getting sun-burned.  This hat fits her perfectly and will be great for our trip, but nothing makes me more crazy than when people call my girls boys.  They don't have tons of hair, but I swear people are crazy when it comes to clothes and babies.  I took Brynne out to do errands with me the other day and she happened to have on jeans and a gray hooded jacket.  The jacket was a swing style jacket with pleats and big girly buttons and the fabric actually has some glittery sparkles in it, but I cannot tell you how many people complimented me on what a darling little boy I had.  Seriously, I was ready to scream by the end of my shopping trip.  Anyway, I decided if Brynne is going to be living in this hat on our trip, I needed to girl it up a bit, so here is the new and improved girl sun hat:

What do you think?  Will this keep her from being mistaken for a boy?  I just cut a little strip of some fabric I had in my stash.  I set my sewing machine to the largest length stitch and sewed a straight line along the edge of the fabric strip.  I pulled the top thread on one end to make it ruffle (I am attempting to learn how to make ruffles, they are pretty easy, but pulling the string to gather them is pretty time consuming).  Then I twisted it into a flower shape and hand sewed it together.  I added a button center and some twisted green gingham ribbon for leaves.  The whole project took me about half an hour.

Anniversary Quilt

I have been a little busy working on this quilt the last few weeks.  I have been so excited about the way it turned out that it has been hard to keep it a secret.  We celebrated my in-laws' 40th anniversary last night with a surprise party for them.  Kyle has one sister and she has been working on doing something for this special anniversary for almost 2 years.  She created this amazing slide show including pictures from their 40 years of marriage and then my sister-in-law hosted an amazing surprise party for them.  Unfortunately, I didn't come up with the idea for the quilt until the last month before the big party, so I have been scrambling a bit to finish it.  I had each of the grandchildren draw a 5 inch by 5 inch self portrait.  The 2 grandchildren who were too young to draw their own self portraits had theirs done by an older sibling.  I told them to try to keep the pictures fairly simple and most do outlining, rather than coloring in.  They all used crayola markers, so the colors were pretty similar.  There are 4 grandchildren that live out of state, so their mom just scanned their pictures and sent them to me.  I traced each child's picture onto a 7 1/2 inch by 7 1/2 inch piece of muslin.  Then I embroidered each picture to match their drawing.  I used fat quarters and more muslin to put the quilt blocks together.  I got the idea from the book The Creative Family by Amanda Soule.  In her book she suggests embroidering children's artwork and using it throughout your home.  My mother-in-law actually makes a similar quilt for each child using coloring book characters, so I thought it would be fun for her to have her own quilt with the kids' drawings on it.  At the last minute I was panicked about what to do about the actual quilting.  I have hand quilted a few quilts, but my skills are sorely lacking and my mother-in-law is a true artist when it comes to hand quilting.  I don't know what I would do without her sister, our wonderful Aunt Sherry.  She agreed to machine quilt it for me with only days left before the party.  She had never machine quilted before and used a brand new machine that she is still trying to figure out.  Amazingly, she finished the entire thing is less than 24 hours and it looks professional!  It was such a fun project to work on!  I hope to create some more quilts like this down the road, only hopefully next time will think a little more ahead and not leave myself such a short deadline.  I would love to create one for myself that shows my kids' artwork evolving over time.  That would just require a fair amount of planning, so we'll see if I can be that organized. 

Baptism Towel

My nephew got baptized today.  It was a wonderful baptism and we are all so proud of him.  I found directions for making this towel here, and I knew I had to make one for him.  It was such a simple project, plus it was quick!  The most time consuming part is cutting out the letters, but even that only takes a few minutes.

What I've Been Doing

My husband's extended family has a big Christmas party each year the day after Thanksgiving. One of Kyle's cousin's had these darling crocheted flowers in her girls' hair. She told me she had just made them on the drive to the party. AMAZING! Anyway, she told me where to find the directions at Little Birdie Secrets. I gave it a try Saturday night and this is what I came up with to match my daughter's Christmas dress. They didn't turn out near as cute as Kyle's counsin's, but I am hoping if I work on them a little, I can get them down a little better. I sewed on the buttons, because I was having trouble with changing yarn colors and getting it to look right. Then I just used embroidery floss to sew on some bobby pins. They looked really cute in my daughter's pigtails on Sunday.

Letterpress by Quickutz

I don't know if anyone has actually seen one of these. Evidently they are brand new, but I SOOO want one. They look like the coolest thing! I am kicking myself that I have already burned through all of my birthday money! I think letterpress prints are the classiest looking things ever! I guess in the past the equipment has been incredibly expensive, like in the thousands of dollars, so this is relatively inexpensive, unfortunatley, I don't have their die cutting machine that it says is required for it to work, so I would need the combo set, so it is still more money than I have to just go out and buy. Can you imagine all the Christmas card possibilities! If you want to read more about it, go here.

Perfect "keep the kids busy" Activity

I saw a post somewhere on the internet about doing this activity. I wish I could remember where I saw it because I would keep going to that blog, but this is the greatest activity to keep kids busy. My 7 year old son and his friends will work on building these creations for hours and my daughter, who is not quite three, is even entertained trying to figure out how her brother is doing this. All it takes is a bunch of toothpicks and marshmallows. Both things are cheap and easy to store. Show kids how to use them to make triangles and squares and let them go. If you are doing this activity with younger kids, you will need to supervise some because the toothpicks are kind of sharp.

Fantastic Thanksgiving Projects for Kids

You definitely need to check this out! So many great ideas all in one place!

Thankful Turkeys

For Family Home Evening last night we made "Thankful Turkeys". I got the idea from here. I loved her idea of a turkey you could use over and over, but I knew there was no way I would be able to do that project this year with a new baby, so I used her pattern as a starting place and made each family member his/her own turkey that could go in our scrapbook. I premade the turkeys after the kids were in bed Sunday night. I made 4 of them and it took maybe and hour or an hour and a half. Cutting out the feathers took the longest time. I traced a peanuts lid and cup overlapping to make the body and then used the Roots and Wings feather pattern for the "gobble" and tried to eyeball my own feather pattern in the size I needed by looking at the shape she used. I would have just used her pattern, but my printout of it was much smaller and I don't have a copier that I can enlarge it one, so I improvised. I got the pieces all glued onto the black cardstock and let them dry overnight (I just used elmer's glue because it was easy and I had tons of it). As we were leaving for school I showed the kids the turkeys and told them we would be writing things we were thankful for on them later ( I was hoping if I talked about it my daughter would start to understand, so she could come up with some things on her own). My daughter surprised me by immediately telling me she was thankful for lip gloss (you have no idea how much we go through lately!). Anyway, it really helped to talk about it through the day. By the time we got to Family Night, all they had to do was put the things they were thankful for on the feathers. My son was able to write his own and loved using a Sharpie. My daughter told me what to write and pointed to which color feather she wanted it written on.

Turkey Time

My almost 3 year old daughter loves art projects. Each time I decide to take the time to do one with her, I think why don't I do this more often. She could spend hours cutting and gluing, if I had the time to supervise it. Today we had some time, so I decided we would work on a Turkey. This was so simple to do and she loved it. Her favorite thing to do is glue and she loves to squeeze out tons of glue, so this was the perfect thing for her because you need quite a bit of glue to get the feathers to stick.

Here's a list of supplies you need:
glue
paper plate
feathers
2 orange pipe cleaners
colored construction paper
2 buttons

First we traced a cup onto brown paper. I cut it out and we glued a red feather for the "gobble" and an orange triangle for the beak. We glued on black buttons for the eyes. This makes the head. Set it aside to dry. Next have the child color the paper plate. Then let the child dump tons of glue on the plate in a horseshoe shape along the outside edges of the plate. Then let them go to town sticking feathers in the glue. They might have to add more glue as they go along. When they have as many feathers as they want, cut out a oval shape that will cover the rest of the paper plate and very ends of the feathers and glue it down on the plate. Glue the head so it overlaps the body and the feathers. Your plate will be sort of a wet mess at this point, but once it dries it will be fine. Use some wire cutters to cut the pipe cleaners in half (don't use scissors, I've done that before and it seriously messes up your scissors). Punch two holes in the bottom of the turkey where you want the feet. Fold one pipe cleaner over through the first hole and twist so it stays and hangs down. About halfway down twist another pipe cleaner so that you end up with a fork shape. This makes one foot. Do the same thing with the other 2 pipe cleaners for the second foot. You're left with a darling turkey! We added a bow in the end just for fun.

Create

Create I know this has been posted by tons of people, but I could watch it a million times. I think it provides the encouragement that every mother or teacher needs. Plus, it helps me realize why I enjoy things like crafting and cooking so much!