Category Archives: arts & crafts

Draw me a picture of something you LOVE.

Posted on by

It’s too cold to venture outdoors this morning so I had to get creative about how to fill our day today. I decided to do a quick little arts & crafts project with BB after breakfast. It’s been awhile since we’ve spent some time just coloring and drawing together and with today being the last day of January, I had the perfect project for her to work on.

I bought a 2013 calendar at a craft store that had a blank square on each month for kids to draw their own calendar picture. I knew my kids would love the idea but I also found out in January that I am lazy and I never did ask the kids to draw a picture for January. To break the cycle I had BB draw a picture for the month of February and I’m guessing that now that the trend has been established that the kids will be asking me to color future months so I won’t have to be the one to remember.

My direction for this was simply asking her if she’d please draw me a picture for our calendar. I suggested she draw a picture of something she loves, talking to her a little bit about Valentines Day. Then while she worked I brought out a little top secret Valentines Day project I’m working on for Dan. We were both armed with some makers and time for creativity. She was thrilled to watch me work on a project for daddy and I made sure to ask her about her work. She says it’s all about how she’s going to marry me and MM is going to marry daddy and then she and MM are both going to marry our next door neighbor’s kids. Of course.

It may not look like much of anything in particular but she put a LOT of work into this and a lot of time and thought. Each color was quite specifically chosen and there are lots of stories to go along with each little scribble. And I got to spend some quality time coloring / drawing with my little girl and nothing tops that. :O)

Tuesday Afternoon: January 8, 2013

Posted on by

I’ve been doing a lot of “2012 recaps” and “top photos of” posts lately and very little of my typical day to day blogging, so before the month gets away from me, here is some stuff that’s been going on lately.

MM lost his first tooth of 2013 last week while I was running my first board meeting as the president of my women’s social group. I came home to a son with a giant gap in his smile and a really cute note for the tooth fairy asking her if she was Santa’s grandma. Too cute.

ps: According to the Tooth Fairy, or TF as she’s sometimes called here, Santa is her third cousin (twice removed). In case you were curious.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done some crafting / Fun Mom activities with the kids so this weekend I pulled out an unfinished Kiwi Crate from November (let’s not talk about the fact that I still need to open December’s) and made jingle bell bracelets with the kids. Sometimes they are also anklets, shoulder bands and necklaces for BB’s baby dolls. Thank god for stretchy strings.

This went over really well and I liked that I felt like I was sharing a hobby since I’m all into beading and stuff these days and by these days I mean sometimes, when I find the time.

MM has been working with Dan on his first ever Pinewood Derby car for cub scouts and having soooo much fun. They designed it to look like Dan’s truck, even down to the 4×4 written on the side. Too cute. While the boys are doing boy stuff, BB and I have been having our own fun. This weekend we did a bit of watercolor painting. How cool are these pads by Melissa and Doug? Wet your paint brush and dab it on the colored rectangles on top and it turns into paint that you can apply to your picture. Relatively little mess involved and she had a blast.

  

Here are our finished paintings – can you tell who painted which one? ;O)

Other topics that have no pictures to go with them, stolen from my Facebook page:

Playing a martial arts game on PS3 with Dan – for about 10 minutes I was kicking his butt royally – then he learned the controls lol – I am a button mashing champion but that only gets me so far. :-)

There has been a lot of video game playing at our home since Dan and I got a PS3 for Christmas last month. The whole family has been obsessed with the Little Big Planet games (amazing) and Dan has been really into Uncharted (or maybe Unchartered? Or something else completely?). We recently picked up a used martial arts game that apparently has characters from lots of different games to make it more exciting. I had a lot of fun kicking his butt until he learned the controls. Then he discovered tutorials and I’m now too scared to play against him! j/k

Had one of those awesome grocery shopping trips filled with good decisions, fresh produce and healthy snacks. Obviously the kids weren’t with me lol

Took a walk before dinner tonight and made a game of jogging on all of the sidewalks NOT covered in snow or ice. Fun kind of “interval training” method and luckily for me, there was a lot of snow! :O)

What is it about the new year that makes us want to get back into shape again? All that delicious holiday food and our normal routines slipping by the wayside as we spend more days celebrating than not. And then when the festivities are over, we find ourselves a little heavier than we remembered and realize how long it’s been since we’ve worked out properly… In stereotypical fashion, Dan and I have both been feeling the push to make better choices lately and I have to say, there’s never a bad reason to listen to that inner voice telling you to behave, eat better and move more!

Movie night! Watching Secret of the Wings with the kids, then Moonrise Kingdom with hubby :-)

I want to make more of an effort to have a regular family movie night in 2013, at least once a month if not more often. This weekend we watched two really great movies, one for the whole family and one for the adults. I might alternate with movie night and game night. Lots of ideas :O) If you have been thinking about doing Family Movie Nights, this post at Design Mom today was very inspiring.

What have you been up to lately?

 

monday morning: december 17, 2012

Posted on by

Am I the only one who feels almost silly blogging today? My days and thoughts feel a little trivial now in the aftermath of what happened in Connecticut on Friday (I am choosing not to post links to articles on that awful tragedy here, you will find them everywhere else, my heart can’t take any more of it frankly). But this is my little carved out corner of the blogiverse for trivial or important things and one thing I came to realize Friday afternoon was that sometimes, even when your heart is breaking over the cruelty of the world, you find you still have to get up. Make dinner. Kiss your children. Count your blessings. Hold on to whatever you have that makes you smile and keeps you sane in this crazy world and don’t let go.

MM is home sick from school today (nothing serious, just being overly cautious so as not to potentially infect his classmates right before Christmas) and I have to say, I’m a little relieved to not spend the day worrying unnecessarily about him. We talked this morning about what happened in CT (vaguely) and what he should do in a scary situation like that. It breaks my heart to have to think about awful things like this – and to have to put thoughts like that in the mind of my children, but it’s our job as parents to teach our kids to live – to be safe and to protect themselves from the scary dangers of this world.

He handled the conversation well, it went better than I’d thought it would. I was so proud of his school when I learned that they have had a few drills this fall to prepare for these kinds of dangerous things. He told me all about “cold red drills” (code red I’m sure) and how the teacher locks the door, closes the blinds and they all hide in a corner and be very quiet, etc. I’m glad his school and many others I’m sure were already working to teach the kids how to deal with worst case scenarios. Mothering is a terrifying job, it’s nice to know that our school administrators and teachers take their task of watching over them during the day seriously.

We kept busy this weekend running errands on likely the busiest shopping days of the season. It was a very unfortunate time to find ourselves needing to go to several stores and even the mall (horrors!) not for Christmas presents, but just for life. Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Staples… crazy. We began the morning on Saturday at the Home Depot Kids Workshop where my daughter held a hammer for the first time (my husband is a brave man putting his fingers that close to her hammer!). From there we went on to several other stores for various purchases, bracing ourselves against ridiculous crowds everywhere. None crazier than the local mall where my son’s cub scout den was volunteering for the Salvation Army’s bell ringing station. We ended the evening at a bowling alley where MM’s cub scouts met afterwards for a fun night of bowling and pizza.

BB insisted on bowling, too, so the three of us (myself, dh and BB) got a lane of our own so we could bowl with her. Watching her pick up that seven pound ball and march over to the lane, set it on the floor and push it with all her might down the lane… waiting an eternity for it to finally get to the end and knock down a few pins while she shrieks and cheers and announces at the top of her lungs that “I WON MOMMY!” It was a lot of fun to watch. :O) Watching her slip and slide down that ultra slippery lane the one time she tried to follow the ball and instantly regretted it – that was pretty funny, too, in retrospect. A couple of times we ended up letting her “help” us during our turns, sacrificing a good score to see her smile. In the end, MOMMY WON by almost 20 points which I might have bragged about incessantly. Luckily my husband is a good sport. I think we might have to start doing this regularly. :O)

Yesterday the boys did some wood working while BB and I made cinnamon ornaments together. The recipe was very simple – just two ingredients, apple sauce and a bottle of cinnamon – but the dough was very sticky and gritty to work with which I didn’t love. BB loved picking out cookie cutters though and helping to make holes for the ribbon with a straw. They cooked for 2 1/2 hours at 200 degrees F, making the house smell like cinnamon pretty much all day.

Today we will decorate a few more ornaments, make a Christmas card for MM’s teacher and probably do a good bit of lounging about and watching movies together. I’ll steal a lot of extra snuggles and hold my children tightly. I hope you all have a wonderful week and a fantastic holiday!

DIY BLING: my birds nest necklace

Posted on by

New bling: a momma's nest necklace on 365 Project

I saw this tutorial at Sarah Ortega’s blog about how to make a birds nest necklace a while ago. It’s one of those things I’ve seen in etsy stores or similar small shops and thought, “Oh how pretty!” but because I don’t really buy myself jewelry, that’s as far as it got. But when I started learning how to bead my own jewelry last year, it was a quick jump to the realization that I could probably learn to do even more – and that with enough practice and time I could make myself my own bling.

This necklace promised to be simple to put together and I immediately wanted one of my own badly so I bought the supplies to make my own, then hummed and hawed for months because I’ve never done anything involving wire wrapping or chain before and I was weirdly intimidated by the whole thing but I finally made the necklace photographed above on Wednesday night.

Here are the supplies I used:

  • some 22 gauge wire – anything between 20 and 24 should work well – the thicker you get though the harder it is to bend
  • beads to represent the kid’s birthstones (cheap red and clear stones because rubies and diamonds are a bit out of my price bracket
  • and pearl to represent me (get it? mother of pearl). But you could use any kind of beads you want.
  • some chain and a jump ring

Like I said, this was a new jewelry making experience but it really was so easy to put together and came out great even with all my “winging it” improvisations and less than nimble fingers. I’m planning to make another one soon in a golden colored metal to look more like a real nest, but I am pretty smitten with how this one came out and have been rocking it with pride ever since!

We’ll make our own snow.

Posted on by

Even though it’s January and like 12 degrees outside, it still doesn’t really look like winter because each snow storm we’ve gotten has amounted to less than an inch and then it melts by the end of the week. Some yards still have GREEN grass, but most are brown and gross looking. Some trees are still shedding leaves, my yard still needs raking because it won’t stop raining and pretend snowing long enough to clean up all our late fallen leaves.

In short, it’s freezing and brown outside and I know I shouldn’t complain, but seriously? If it’s going to keep snowing, can’t we at least get a couple good inches to cover up our dead hot mess of a lawn? While I jinx my way to a blizzard, I’m trying to keep busy and pretend it’s a gorgeous winter wonderland outside by making our own snowflakes!

I’ve tried my hand at this in the past and failed miserably, largely on account of my not really knowing what I was doing and not bothering to be consistent or thorough. So this year, I looked up a template online and then even followed the directions. Monumental stuff, here, I know.

I followed this tutorial at Bon Temps Beignet which I found very useful and easy to follow. Plenty of pictures to check back to whenever I found myself scratching my head and saying, “Come again?”

After folding my paper to her specifications and then trimming off the excess (so that your flake will be circular and not a strange holey rectangle), you simply sketch out a design. I vaguely followed her designs but kind of made this part up as I went along just to see what different things I could do. MM and I each designed three flakes which I then cut out as the paper was too thick for his safety scissors.

And the result was six very successful, very pretty snowflakes. I had to modify MM’s designs a tad just so they wouldn’t fall apart. To quote Liz at Bon Temps:

 Try not to cut to far into the smallest angle (over there on the left in the picture below) because that will be the center of your flake. If you cut to far in, it will tend to fold in on itself. Keeping the center in tack will give you a strong flake. That’s an oxymoron… but it’s true.

But I held true to his creations as much as I could and it was fun to see all our different designs. I have them all taped up on our front window now so that people walking or driving by can enjoy our “Winter Wonderland” while we all wait for the real thing. Knock on wood?

A Simple Christmas Gift for his teachers.

Posted on by

I’ve been debating teacher’s gifts for a couple months now. Pinning things on pinterest, contemplating crafting, considering gift cards or office supplies. I couldn’t make up my mind and I also had no idea what the school’s policy is on presents and didn’t want to trust MM with bringing in anything expensive.

This afternoon I read this post at The Happiest Mom about taking the stress out of teacher gifts. The big picture idea in the post was about keeping in mind WHY you are giving them a gift – what the important part is.

And I realized that it wasn’t about me buying them some random object that would show them what a good mom I am – it was about MM having an opportunity to say thank you to them and show his appreciation – and that doesn’t have to cost a dime.

I immediately pulled out some construction paper and ribbon and put him to work making each of his three teachers a Christmas card – MM loves all things crafting and writing and he adores his teachers so he was all over this and painstakingly drew and colored and wrote out messages for each of his teachers.

On the inside of each card he drew a picture of that teacher and wrote a Christmas message to them. I thought this was a great opportunity for him to work on his writing and letter recognition.

He spent a good hour working on these cards – far more time than I would have spent buying a gift card or a pack of post-it notes – not that there is anything wrong with those gifts ; I am sure they’d be put to good use.

But for now, for us, this just felt right. I loved that MM was involved from beginning to end in this project and that it’s simple and heartfelt and frugal. Perfect.

Let’s just hope he remembers to take them out of his backpack to give to them!

DIY Bling: some recent creations

Posted on by

I’ve mentioned a few times recently that I’ve taken up beading. I’ve never been super crafty – scrapbooking, knitting, sewing, etc. They all sound neat to me but I’ve never enjoyed learning to do any of them – like my hands just didn’t want to do that and it was more frustrating than anything else.

I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, mostly because of expense, partly because of small children that like to hang on me and break my things – but when a friend offered to teach me how to bead my own jewelry, I was intrigued and said yes. I was almost immediately hooked. The first bracelet I made went so smoothly I was surprised – that’s it in the picture above. I wear it all the time now, mostly because I’m so proud that I made it myself!

I’ve always loved the idea of making “something from nothing” and envied my crafty friends (and spouse) and now I have finally found a hobby that gives me that feeling. Browsing the bead aisles at my local craft store or bead specialty shop and find colors and bead designs that appeal to me and then going home and turning them into an actual piece of jewelry that someone can wear – awesome. I love it. Even when it’s hard, it’s worth it to me to keep working to get it right.

I thought I’d share some of my recent creations that came out well.

This was bracelet #3 – number two was an epic failure at least in my book. It just didn’t go how I wanted it to go. I bought the wrong this and attempted the wrong that and restrung it three times and still wasn’t happy with it in the end. But I wasn’t so much discouraged so much as taking notes – that didn’t work. Remember that. Also, buy more supplies.

So the bracelet above was my next try – it was also a compromise when my original design didn’t pan out, but I like it’s simplicity and colors and I’m happy with it.

Then I made this one shortly after – very similar design to my first bracelet and I love it. I love how the beads kind of sparkle and the interest of shape. I love the seashells – and I’ve quickly become a big fan of the double strand bracelet. I love this.

And my first necklace – it’s nothing special but I like it. Necklaces seem more complicated to me just because there is more room to fill – I need to make more and I need to learn some new techniques so that all my designs aren’t the same three things rehashed. But I’m loving it.

Any other beaders out there? Any tips or favorite brands or techniques worth learning?

Our Advent Activity Box

Posted on by

Growing up, I always loved Advent Calendars. Opening up all the little pages to find a treat and count down to Christmas Day! It really doesn’t get much better than that.

Now as an adult, I want to continue the tradition of advent calendars with my kids, but being the quasi-crafty sometimes over achiever that I am, I decided I could do better than the two dollar boxes at the grocery store. Pinterest didn’t help.

I’ve been seeing beautiful Advent calendar ideas for months now and kept humming and hawing about which fun project to try. Like:

And many, many more. So many great ideas to choose from – some costing more money and time than others, but all of them fabulous and enviable, but in the end I decided to be my own drummer and make my own version entirely, mashing up various ideas from around the blogosphere and putting my own spin on it.

Here is our Advent Activity Box!

I literally just gift wrapped an old Amazon box with fun Christmas wrapping paper (and I didn’t do a great job either – fancy wrapping skills? Not required for this project. Just get it covered).

Then I took a leftover scrap of gift wrap and on the back wrote “Days Until Christmas” then taped it to the box. I folded it up so that it was fairly straight edged and somewhat nice looking. I’m not a complete slacker.

Inside the box I have 24 envelopes numbered 24 through 1, so one envelope for each day until Christmas. On December 1st we’ll open the Envelope that reads 24 and so on…

Inside each envelope is a fun activity to do that day to celebrate the holidays. Everything from make ornaments to drive through town and look at the lights, sing Christmas carols and celebrate mommy’s birthday on the 24th. I spent a lot of time going through the calendar to make the activities realistic and put each of said activities on my google calendar to give me a little notice for things that need more planning.

I decided to be dorky and festive and draw little illustrations on the cards, too. Some are better than others. I won’t embarrass myself by showing you my pictures of donuts or birthday cakes. But I’m pretty sure the kids will get a kick out of this craft that didn’t cost me a dime. MM is very into the concept now of “how many days until….” and he’s super into all things Christmas so this is just combining those two things into one month-long extravaganza of planned Holiday goodness.

I’ll let you know in a few weeks if I was way in over my head with this idea!

Learning to bead.

Posted on by

Last night I hosted a jewelry making party which might sound strange because I’ve never made jewelry before. I’ve always been intrigued but intimidated by the concept, so when a friend of mine through my meetup group, Anne, said, “I could show you how,” the conversation quickly turned into, “Maybe we should invite other people from our group if they are interested” and then that turned into a very popular event very quickly!

Twelve people came over last night to learn how to make a necklace, bracelet or earrings! Luckily my friend was not the only one who knew what she was doing and a few other people were able to pass along advice and help people out as we eventually broke into smaller groups working at different tables set up around my house.

I bought these pretty hearts at a beading store the day before while I helped Anne shop for supplies for the group. After looking through her collection of jewelry that she brought to show us things she’d made before, I got the idea to try making a double strand bracelet, and I was pretty thrilled with how it came together.

Not bad for my first time! Because I was going with a slightly complicated design for my first bracelet, I kept the pattern simple with just one strand of beads along with my pretty hearts, then used a fun clasp that should be easy to put on by myself. Also, I didn’t want to get too complicated and make the bracelet too busy or clashy.

Now I’ve officially got the beading bug and can’t wait to make some more pretties!

Gobble, Gobble.

Posted on by

MM stayed home sick for the first time on Monday with a cough he just couldn’t kick all weekend. He woke up and coughed his way through getting dressed and going  downstairs for breakfast and just didn’t sound good, so I made the Executive Momma Decision to keep the boy home and keep him from spreading those noisy germs to his classmates.

Daddy laid down the Daddy Law and said, “Don’t let that boy sit around watching tv all day just because he’s sick!” (Daddy’s are so mean) so I put together several crafty / colory / learny projects to do in between watching tv and napping and eating lunch.

First we did these fun Alphabet Mazes at 1+1+1=1. MM figured them out VERY quickly but was delighted with the concept of Not Your Ordinary Mazes and decided to spend some time making his very own maze, with help from mommy to spell START and FINISH:

Cute, huh? He also drew a picture on back informing me that he wants A Dog In The Summer.

He spelled everything except SUMMER all by himself. Clever boy.

Next up on the CraftTinerary was Turkey Doodles from Let’s Explore. First I hand traced some gourd-shaped turkey bodies on 4 sheets of paper (because I’m calling them placemats – what I wouldn’t do for a laminator). Then I showed MM and BB how you could turn the shapes into a turkey by adding in all the features of a turkey (or chicken or parakeet, you know, whatevs).

I maybe had a little too much fun with my Turkeys, giving them all very snazzy feather-dos and fun personalities: McTurkey, MaGog Turkey, Goolala Turkey, Buh Hum Gobble Turkey and Google. They make for a very interesting Thanksgiving.

Here are the kids’:

BB’s “Caught in a Tornado Turkeys” – very abstract, no?

MM hard at work perfecting his Turkey Placemats. He really ate this craft up, no pun intended (okay, fine, it was intended).

Gobble, gobble.