Easy Button Craft

This is a super easy craft I did a while back at my friend Shantel's house. You start with a canvas board. You can find them cheap and different sizes at Walmart.

You paint the background any color you wish.

Next you line up the buttons to make a letter, number or something else your creative mind leads you to. With a hot glue gun you paste the buttons on. I put smaller buttons on top of the bigger buttons for a neat design. You can do all sorts of designs with this project, it's super quick and easy. You can also use a mix of large and small buttons like I did.

Peppermint Tree Christmas Craft

So you know how I'm like all obsessed with peppermint and stuff? Well I made up this awesome craft that is easy, cheap and smells of lovely, lovely peppermint.

You will need those Styrofoam cones they sell at the dollar tree. They might sell them at Wal-Mart too. You can actually have any shape base of Styrofoam, a ball, a square, whatever be creative!

You will also need several bags of peppermints. They are $1 a bag at Dollar Tree and 1 and about 1/2 bags fully covers one cone.

Take a low temp glue gun and put a circle of glue on the back of a peppermint. Stick it on the cone, pressing a few seconds. Follow along in a line going all the way to the top.

If you come to a place where a whole peppermint doesn't fit, you can break it in half and stick it in the bare spot.

When you are done it should look something like this....

 

Make several of these for a centrepiece or put them around the house to smell it up like peppermint.

Kid's Handprint Keepsake Project

A few times a month I hold a craft club at my house. Moms and thier kids come over and do a themed craft and have playtime and snack. I have really enjoyed it, and had the opportunity to meet some awesome people. The girls get so excited when I tell them its craft day, its almost like a party for them. Today we had a Mother's Day theme.

We painted pots and each child got to take a packet of seeds home as well. (Makes a great gift for a mom or grandma)

We also did a fun keepsake project. I had the girls put thier handprints on paper and then I also wrote out this poem to hang in a frame beside it. The plan was to type and print it out but my printer decided to stop working. Pardon my slightly messy handwriting haha! Hey it's gotten a lot better, I failed penmanship in 1st grade. I mean come on who even gives a grade for penmanship in 1st grade?

Here is the poem, if any of you would like to do this project with your children also.

Handprints

Sometimes you get discouraged,

 Because I am so small

I always leave my handprints,

On the furniture and walls,

But everyday I’m growing,

 

I’ll be grown someday

Then all my little handprints,

 

Will slowly fade away

So, here’s a final handprint,

Just so that you can say

This is how my hand looked,

When I placed it here today.

And then of course you put the date. I'm thinking about doing this every year, changing out the pictures and saving the previous ones in a memory file. (I have a memory file for each of my girls where I keep thier special artwork and such.) There will be another post on how I organize that stuff coming soon.

Trip to Sunnyland

This week we were provided the opportunity to take a really fun field trip to Sunnyland Center and Gardens. This place was amazing, if you have time, click on the link and read up on it. If you are a reader of mine and live in the area, seriously consider visiting this place, you won't regret it.

Sunnylands teamed up with MCCS to provide military families with preschoolers a day at Sunnylands tailored just for them. As hard as military life is, I'm alway so grateful to businesses, organizations and people who donate thier time and talents to help military families. If you have ever helped out a military family in any way, I just want to say a big thank you! It is appreciated so much!

We woke up early and headed to base to sign in. Sunnyland sent luxury buses to pick us up, my girls were so giddy with excitement to ride on a big bus! Haley had to use the on bus bathroom like 3 times. I think she was impressed with the novelty of a bathroom in a vehicle. When we got Sunnyland we started to explore the gardens. There was a lot of wildlife and an excessive amount of lizards.

 

Our first stop was the Labyrinth garden. There were tubs of chalk for the children to draw all over the path.

We walked around and observed the flowers and hummingbirds in another section of the gardens. I'm pretty proud of my hummingbird shots, it took like 50 tries to get a good one. Those things move soooo fast!

 

Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

 

 

As you can tell from Serenity's grumpy face, it was getting hot so we headed inside for out next activity.

 

 

The girls got an artist smock and got to paint butterfly pictures. Its a little hard to see from this pic but Serenity (left) was very precise, in the lines with her picture. Haley just filled the whole thing up with color!

 

 

And if pictures weren't enough they even got thier own ceramic pots! Again you can see how detail-orientated Serenity is with her purple around the edges. Haley has to have creative freedom and cover every inch in paint haha! I love how different and unique they are!

 

We set the art on a table to dry and grabbed some lunch. They really outdid themselves with the catering. There were like 8 different types of sandwhices and subs, coleslaw, different types of potato salad and different fruit salads. Plus chips, tea, soda and water bottles. For dessert there was cookies and brownies. It was yummy! We took our food outside on the lawn and laid down our picnic blanket.

Me and cheeto face

 

Taking a nap after lunch!

 

After lunch we were given a cup full of ladybugs to release into the garden. Ladybugs eat the harmful bugs and help the delicate desert ecosystem run smoothly.

 

 



We toured some more of the gardens and played a little put put in the Performance Circle.

 

 

More beautiful plant life!

 

They had lots of books and educational toys out for the kids while we waited for the buses to come pick us back up.

 

 

It was pretty cool to see all the celebrities and diplomats who were or are frequent visitors. There was Queen Elizabeth, Bush Sr. and Jr. Margaret Thatcher, the Kennedys, Ronald Regan...and thats just one board!

Long day but a good one!







Shamrock hats

Here is another cute craft we did on craft day.

For each hat you will need two pipecleaners, 2 shamrocks cut out of construction paper and two long strips of construction paper.

Staple one end of the paper strips together, then wrap around child's head to get the correct measurement. Staple the other ends.

Next poke the pipe cleaner in one side of the base of the shamrock and out the other side. Repeat on the other shamrock. Staple the pipe cleaners to the base of the hat.

                                        The shamrocks are supposed to wiggle around.

Hehe so cute!

Texture Collage Shamrocks

I've started a "Craft Club" in my home once a week. Its pretty fun for the girls to have friends over to craft and play with them. It also gives other moms a chance to get thier kids out of the house and participate in an educational activity. We had our first craft day this week and made Texture collage shamrocks, shamrock hats and ate a rainbow fruit tray for snack.

This craft is great for toddlers and preschoolers!

 

Start by cutting a shamrock out of cardboard. I used cereal boxes. Next gather some green craft supplies of different textures. I used tissue paper, construction paper, pom poms, yarn and felt.

Let the child cut up the craft supplies using safety scissors. Then glue to the shamrock.

The finished product!

 

 

Little crafters hard at work!

Tape Valentine Hearts

So I missed posting yesterday eeek! O well I'll post it on the tail end of our 2 weeks of Valentine themes. This is a fun easy craft for the kiddos to do. Sorry for the lack of pics, my memory card died on me this morning. I had several days worth of photos on it too...bummer.

 

 

Take some construction or painting paper and tape a heart on it. I used electrical tape since its easy to remove and doesn't rip the paper. Next, color or paint all over the paper. After the paint dries remove the tape. Sweet!

Melted Crayon Hearts

Wow its February already! I'm pretty into Valentine's Day so for the next two weeks I'll be posting a Valentine's themed food, craft or beauty tip every day.

My girls really loved this craft. I think my youngest is a bit of pyromaniac. She kept saying "I need more fire!"

 

For this activity you will need crayons with the wrapper removed, a small candle and some construction paper.

Start by drawing a heart on a piece of construction paper.

Next, carefully hold the crayon in the flame for a split second. (Supervision is required during this step, I held the crayon and then passed it to my girls.) You want it to be softened but not so much that it drips onto the candle. Run the crayon along the paper.

You can use different shades of red, pinks and whites. For the prettiest effect make sure the outline is covered.

Lastly, cut out the heart. You can then paste it onto a contrasting colored paper or lace or whatever you want to experiment with. Be creative and have fun!

Simple Fall Kids Activity #4-Paper Candy Corns

Here is another fun, easy kids activity for fall. First cut or tear up a sheet of orange, yellow and white construction paper into dime sized pieces or smaller. Seperate the colors into different containers. My girls love that I actually let them use thier safety scissors for once!

 

Next, draw a triangle on a sheet of black or brown paper and divide the triangle into 3 sections.

 

 

Glue white pieces at the top, yellow in the middle and orange on the bottom.

(If you look closely in this pic you can see the sharpie on Haleys arm that her sister decorated her with :P)

 

Simple Fall Kids Activity #3-Footprint Ghosts

Today's craft was Footprint ghosts. I traced the girl's feet on a white sheet of paper and then cut them out. It was very difficult to keep Haley's feet still for this!

Next, we cut out eyes from black paper and glued them on. The girls colored thier ghosts and we hung them up in the window to scare their dad when he got home :o

Simple Fall Kids Activity #2-Hand Bats

The girls made handprint bats today. First we traced thier hands on black paper and cut them out.

Haley couldn't keep her hands still!

 

 

Then we drew circles on orange paper for the body.

 

 

Next we cut out the circles and glued the hands behind the circles for wings.

 

 

Then the girls glued on googly eyes and colored mouths and teeth.

 

 

 

You can also cut out triangles for ears!