Entertaining Kids at the Grocery - scavenger cards

If you're like me, the thought of inviting kids along on a shopping trip can set your nerves on edge! If someone had told my 16 year old self that sneaking out of the house for a solo grocery trip would be a rare chance for some alone time, I would have thought they were crazy. With EmDee's work schedule, the girls and I do most everything together and that solo trip really IS a rare one. I've found that involving the girls in our errands always makes things go more smoothly. So does avoiding meal and nap time, but that's a post for another day! ;)

Tis the season for seed catalogs, and we always seem to receive more of them each year. I've started crafting with them, and this is one of my favorites yet. I had the girls search for their favorite fruits and vegetables, along with some that I picked for them. Once the produce had been located, Sweetpea and I cut them out and Sweetpea and Sugar Plum glued them onto squares of cardboard from a cereal box we'd finished.

Once the cards were dry, the girls hole punched a corner, and we added the cards to one of our Dandelion teething key rings! Aren't these adorable? We can add or subtract to include produce that is actually on the grocery list, and the girls each get a ring. They are responsible for locating their produce, and if the trip is going well they get to help load their items into the cart as well.

I'm thinking of upcycling a grocery ad or two to include some more items from our shopping list.

What tricks do you use to make shopping with kids go more smoothly?

*disclaimer* Dandelion sent me several of their corn based teething rings to compost, and a few extras for the girls to play with. (isn't it cool that their corn based bioplastics will compost?!) I'll keep you posted as to how the composting is going, and in the meantime, the girls love their keys and grocery cards!

Need some quick hearts? Easy Valentine's Decorations

Need a bunch of Valentine's decorations? These pipe cleaner hearts are about 5 seconds to make...

Take a pipe cleaner and fold it in half.

Twist the ends together carefully and fold the twist into itself toward the folded edge.

If needed, adjust to get that perfect heart shape. This is one my four year old made, so it's a fun craft even for little ones!

Alternatives to the Advent Calendar - Planning our Christmas Traditions

Each year we make a countdown chain for the month of December, a fun decoration/craft that serves several purposes. The chain is fun to make - we practice cutting, gluing, and patience! Each link gets assigned a fun activity or craft from our activity list for the month. This helps ensure we make time for the fun family activities and traditions we want to enjoy, and that they don't get lost in the busy-ness of the season.

Here is our activity list for this year - with the first activity (for today) being the making of the chain. :) I'll post our chain, hung with care next to the stockings later this week. After making the links and writing an activity on each one, I cross reference our calendar to see whether we have time for a big or a little activity - this helps order the links!

December Activity List
Create our countdown to Christmas activity chain
Hang the chain and the stockings by the fire with care
Make a tree craft
Make hot chocolate and drink it by the fire
Drive around the neighborhood in our pajamas, enjoying the lights
Make a Santa hand craft
Make dough ornaments and bake them
Decorate dough ornaments
Bake cookies
Decorate cookies
Take treats to the fire station
Make Rudolf hand craft
Make snowflake crown craft
Bath time Santa beards
Watch the Year Without A Santa Claus together in our pajamas
Make red and green swirl cake
Make a gingerbread house
Make an angel hand and foot print craft
Make snowmen crafts with cotton balls
Take a winter hike at the park
Make a tree paper plate craft
Pick out Christmas books from the library, to supplement our collection*
Visit Santa Claus
Buy toys or clothes for a Christmas charity
Buy food and donate it to our local food pantry

* When we find a holiday book that we really like, we add it to our collection. We go to the library and check out enough holiday books so that between the library books and the ones in our collection there are 25, and read a different holiday book each night at bedtime.

Do you use an advent calendar, or an alternative way to count the days until Christmas? I'd love to hear about your traditions! What are your favorite holiday activities?

Make your own art smock in less than 5 minutes! {my 1st vlog!}

Does your child love to do art projects and crafts? Cook in the kitchen? Get messy indoors or out? Then this super simple upcycled art smock is the perfect 5 minute project for you! I tried several different things to keep my 3 year old clean while she was crafting (or even just digging in the dirt) but nothing seemed to be quite right. Then I realized the solution was in my t shirt drawer. It's quick and easy to make your own art smock from a t shirt, and I'll show you how.

If you're like me, you have a big stack of t shirts you rarely ever wear. I love to take shirts from that stack and upcycle them into something I will actually use. One of my favorite new t shirt projects is this child's art smock - and since you're using an adult t shirt, this project can work for your littlest artist through the early teen years. This is my first vlog, so please be kind ;) And since the camera view isn't up close enough to really see where I'm making the cuts, I've included some sketches below for added clarity. If you have any questions, please ask!

Here is a sketch of the template. Make your cuts along the red lines, starting with the vertical red line. The pink areas will be cut away, leaving four straps that are sized specifically for your little artist.

And here is a rough sketch of the finished product!

Mail Time! Make your own mailbox...

Sweetpea has a little ride on toy that she loves to play with. It has a little compartment in the front and lately she stuffs it with her drawings and "delivers the mail". I saw this cute mailbox craft idea at No Time for Flashcards and thought she would enjoy it.

First we found a box that was the perfect size. I remember when I received this amazing and sweet gift from Sheri at Earth Mama Angel Baby that I knew this box would come in handy for a craft some day. (more on what was inside soon, one of these days when I'm a little more coherent)

I cut a slot in the lid and we used the box to measure the size of brown wrapping paper we needed to cover our mailbox.


Once we had the size about right there was much coloring and sticker application.

We then carefully wrapped the box in the paper and wrapped the lid as well.

Are you as fascinated with the process as Sugar Plum was?

Turned out our paper wasn't quite wide enough to wrap all the way around the box. Oops - there is a definite "back" to this mailbox. Interestingly enough I took pictures of this entire process and forgot to take a good picture of the finished product...

Here Sweetpea is "delivering" mail from the little compartment in her ride on toy to the mail box.

And now it's time to ride off into the sunset!

Repurposed spyglass

Does your little one like pirates, exploring, or Diego? Then chances are they know what a spyglass is and they would like to play with one! We decided to repurpose the core from a toilet paper roll into a spyglass, complete with markers and stickers.

Step 1: use toilet paper roll up and save core. (no pictures of that part!)

Step 2: decorate your toilet roll core. A paper towel roll will also work well here. (this step is optional, of course!)

Doesn't that look like a proper pirate spyglass? ;)

Step 3: Play with your new spyglass!

Ahoy, matey! Who goes there?!?

What do you use toilet paper rolls for in your house?

Countdown to Christmas: Activity garland

Last year's garland hung up on the mantle

Last year's Christmas activity garland was such a success I imagine we'll be doing it for many years to come. We come up with a list of 24 things we want to do to celebrate the holiday season. Since this time of year is so hectic, I assign each activity to a specific day when I think we'll have the time to enjoy it.

This year's list is a bit more basic since we have a baby in the house - I didn't think we could count on any outside activities. If the weather is nice enough or we decide to have Sugar Plum stay with someone then these will be bonus activities. Below is our list. Each one will be written on a paper chain and made into a garland we use to count down to Christmas. We will hang the garland on our mantle with the stockings. Sweetpea is going to help make the garland this year as part of our first activity!

make Christmas chain
put up Christmas tree
decorate Christmas tree
paint pine cone ornaments
decorate mantle with pine cone ornaments and stockings
make dough ornaments
Santa coloring pages
hot chocolate and Christmas music by the tree
gingerbread house
bake cookies
drive around looking at neighborhood lights
decorate cookies
make grandparent gifts
deliver cookies to friends
family handprint wreath
make & decorate felt trees
visit Santa
handprint reindeer
write letter to Santa
caroling at grandparent's houses
handprint Santa
cookies to firemen
angel craft
family over for dinner

How do you count down to Christmas and organize your holiday activities? What are your favorite traditions?

10 uses for a big cardboard box - the best toy ever!

We've all come down with some pesky colds and have stayed home this week keeping our germs to ourselves. Thankfully, we have the best toy ever on hand to help keep Sweetpea entertained throughout the day. What is the best toy ever, you ask? Why a huge cardboard box, of course. Here are a few things we've been doing with said box this week:

1. Playing store
2. Playing house
3. Decorating said house inside and out with markers and stickers
4. Playing hide and seek
5. Pretending to be a Jill in the box
6. Pretending the box is a boat and sailing the high seas
7. Putting chairs in the box and pretending it is a bus or train
8. Putting a sleeping bag and pillow in the box and pretending to camp under the stars
9. Getting in the box with a flashlight and making silly faces
10. Pretending the box is a library and "checking out" books to read

What kinds of things do you do with the big boxes that occasionally show up at your door?

Planning our fun from summer into fall

As the weather is turning cooler, we've started planning our fall list and reviewed our summer fun list. We had a lot of fun with this year's summer list, completing all items except the backyard barbecue and redecorating Sweetpea's bedroom. I'm going to bump the bonfire to our fall list (we were rained out each time this summer) and the bedroom redecoration will happen after I finish a bit more decluttering.

Here are our items for this year's fall list:

go on a hayride
pick pumpkins
get pictures taken at the pumpkin patch
make pumpkin pie ice cream
make a family handprint wreath
decorate pumpkins
make a fall fingerprint tree
decorate halloween color pages
make pumpkin spiced lattes, deliver some to friends
take a nature walk
make leaf rubbings
backyard bonfire
make handprint spiders

Craftiness

What does a tired mama do when her super energetic preschooler is looking for something entertaining to get into? Luckily Sweetpea is a huge fan of crafts - starting the month or so before Sugar Plum was born, we switched high energy outdoor activities for dining room table craftiness. This plan is still working well as I recover from my c-section.

There is a link list of some of our favorite craft ideas at the bottom of this post, but for the most part I've been selecting 4 or 5 things from our craft box and there has been a lot of winging it. I love watching Sweetpea create "freestyle" with no expectations or instructions. Her favorite supplies right now are glue, stickers and markers, with some more glue...and could you pass the glue, please?

For this particular experiment, we used the cardboard cores out of toilet paper rolls, and my intention at first was to make something resembling a napkin holder. We glued tissue paper to the cardboard and then added stickers and decorated them some more with markers.

I love how this kind of activity helps build hand/eye coordination and creative thinking at the same time.
Here are a couple of the finished products - they turned out more like little statues of people than napkin holders, though I suppose they would have been cute to use for a child's party as napkin holders.

Back to the needles - a sweet and simple bootie pattern

I've had this quick and super simple pattern for baby booties bookmarked for quite a while, and finally took some time to get started on them. I plan to make a pair for a few friends that are expecting and eventually some to donate - the pattern really does live up to the 1 hour promise, even though I did make several modifications to get the size where I wanted it. I saw in the comments that these knitted up small, and apparently I was knitting even more tightly. If you're interested in exactly the pattern I used, let me know and I'd be happy to share.

I think this will become a go to pattern for me. What are your favorite things to knit up for the sweet babies in your life?

30 second magic wand tutorial

Sweetpea is such a fun combination of girly girl and tomboy so far...her favorite place to play is outside, either in the water basin we use as a staging station for watering the garden or in the dirt of our front flower bed. That said, she's equally at ease twirling in her princess dress and hop skipping around in a pair of fairy wings. I've been working on her dress up wardrobe little by little at garage sales and the dollar store and even from my closet!

What other accessory does the budding princess need, aside from a tutu, a pair of wings, a twirly dress and a crown? A magic wand, you say? But of course! For those of us with little ones that are still pretty rough on their toys, I give you super simple instructions for a 30 second magic wand:

1 colorful straw
2 equal sized stickers
Place stickers at the top of straw opposite each other, sticky sides together.

Sweetpea spent an hour running around the house with her twirly dress saying "Ta Da!" and waving her little wand this evening. If it gets mangled, just whip up a new one. I've seen some fantastic tutorials for making intricate magic wands, and someday we'll get there, but for now, this is doing the trick!

Problem Solvin Favorites - Everything you need for your little fairy princess

Since I'll be away taking a mini vacation, I thought I'd dust off this post for today - does it not satisfy your sweet tooth just looking at it? :) And while I'm re-reading this post, I feel the need to confess that crafty posts do totally inspire me, I obviously hadn't discovered many when I wrote that intro!

*Originally posted on October 22, 2008*

There are certain posts that are just so exciting or meaningful that you want to share them with as many people as possible. Rarely does a crafty post inspire me, but this one at Juicy Bits captured my imagination and got me excited - just look at these pictures:

photo by Juicy Bits

photo by Juicy Bits

What a fabulous idea for a little girl's birthday party, and the fairy wands are just magical!

Then I stumbled across this DIY fairy wing tutorial at ThreadBanger totally adorable and looks super easy.

Now there was definitely an idea forming in my head...I'd been thinking about making tutus for Sweetpea and 2 of her nieces that love dress up. Wouldn't a tutu and these fairy wings, along with the requisite magical wand make the perfect fairy princess costume? Then Sweetpea could imagine herself a fairy princess anytime!

For those of you that don't consider yourselves crafty, Jess at Juicy Bits tells me she bought the fairy wings in the top picture at Party City. You can also find adorable tutus at Sassy Pink Boutique.

More fun with the "magic crayon" in your Easter coloring kit

Ever wonder what else you can do with that magic crayon that comes in your Easter egg decorating kit? Here is another fun activity that your kids might enjoy - making magic pictures or secret messages!
*apologies for this poor photo, I can't tell you the ridiculous amount of time I spent trying to make it look more clear and crisp - I obviously need help!*

Take a blank piece of paper and carefully create your image or message on the paper. Then have your child color the paper with markers or paint and watch your image magically appear!

This activity is fun for beginner painters because they can create fancy images with just simple brush strokes. It's fun for older children because they can trade secret messages with friends or they might find a secret message from mom in their lunch...

Do you have any fun ideas for the magic crayon? I'd love to hear them!

Friday Freebies - play along with me!

I was lucky enough to win some of Marva's homemade goodness when she played along with this fun tag. I thought it was a great idea, am in a bit of craft withdrawal anyway, and thought it was time for a tutorial!

First things first - the freebies! Leave a comment on this post letting me know your favorite colors and I'll randomly draw 5 winners on Monday night. Winners will receive a scrunchy similar to the one pictured above, and I'll try and keep your color choices in mind when making them. The one above is from Christmas and includes bells. I'd be happy to include bells if you'd like, just let me know! US residents only, unfortunately.

Now, in case you'd like to make some of your own, these are super simple!

Start with your favorite sized elastic ponytail holder. Cut several pieces of ribbon (2 or 3 contrasting colors work well) about 3 inches long. Tie your ribbons in double or slip knots (or a combination of both types of knots looks nice) along the ponytail holder. If you're adding bells, you can tie them right into your ribbons. Larger craft beads work as well as an accent.

Put your hair up and show off your craftiness! I will post the finished results of this giveaway next week so you can see some more. If you'd like photos of the process steps, let me know and I'll post those next week as well.

Valentine Fun!

I am excited to celebrate Valentine's day with Sweetpea this year, as I've always preferred handmade and heartfelt gifts to grand gestures or chocolate. (unless it's Godiva, honey, I'm always willing to cut some calories elsewhere for Godiva...) We are planning a sweet/heart themed dinner for the occasion and have been working on some fun crafts.

Here are some of the crafts we have planned, and a few of my favorite ideas from around the blogosphere.

Sweetpea has a Valentine's party at daycare on Friday, and she will be coloring these cute printables to give to her daycare buddies at the party.

We are going to break out the markers and glue and let her go to town with heart shaped construction paper of all sizes. More to follow on how this turns out...

I found some neat cookie stencils on clearance after Valentine's day last year for $0.19, we will be using these to decorate sugar cookies to take to the Valentine's party, and we may take a few to some family friends as well.

I love these ideas from Jen @ Sabbatical Mom for celebrating Valentine's Day all week long! (and I am totally in agreement with her decorating rule...)

Marie from Make and Takes always has fun crafts for any occasion.

I'm definitely going to break out the heart shaped cookie cutters and duplicate this adorable breakfast from Handmade Homeschool.

Jenn from Frugal Upstate has some great frugal craft links in this post.

What are you planning for Valentine's day this year? Are you a fan, or do you think this is just another Hallmark holiday?

Edible Playdoh!

I've seen lots of amazing recipes for homemade playdough around the blogosphere, but the one that really caught my eye was one I saw on Jon&Kate+8 about a year ago. This recipe includes peanut butter and honey, so at the time I wrote it down and filed it away for future use - Sweetpea wasn't able to eat either of those things at the time.

I made this as a Christmas gift for a few friends and saved some back for Sweetpea. We finally got it out last night, and she had so much fun with it! The first thing she did was eat it, which I figured might be the case...hence the need for edible playdough! After a few minutes she got the hang of squishing and smashing it, and by the end of our play session, she'd made a car and a teddy bear! Neither of these actually looked like much more than a blob, but she told me what they were and played with them as such, so fun!

The original recipe called for:
equal parts peanut butter, powdered milk and honey. Kate added some flour for consistency. I ended up modifying my recipe to this:

1C peanut butter
2C powdered milk
1C honey
1/2-3/4C flour at the end of consistency
I had trouble getting the lumps out of the dough, so next time I might heat the honey up and mix in the milk in an attempt to make it smoother. This dough actually tastes pretty good, and just a little sweet. I've heard that Disney sells a variation of this as a dessert!

Looking back and looking forward

I love this time of year, full of both reflection and planning! In the spirit of looking back, I'll be compiling my favorite blog posts from this year and starting a "favorites" section. I'm also working on a 100 things post to celebrate my 200th post, which went up this week.

On the planning front, I'm guest posting today at Mom's Marbles about New Year's Resolutions and what I have in mind for this year - I'd love it if you'd click over and visit! I'll wait for you to get back and check out the adorable Santa photos below... Okay, on to Santa!

Sweetpea might have been scared to visit Santa at the HolidayFest this year, but there is one Santa she is buds with - my famous grandparent's 58 year old Santa that comes to visit Sweetpea on Christmas Eve! I love the history that goes along with this Santa, and I love documenting how much Sweetpea has grown each year with these adorable photos! Here she is this year:

Sweetpea and Santa 2008

And last year:

Sweetpea and Santa 2007

Just like Sweetpea, Santa also likes to dance:

I hope we continue this tradition of the Santa photo for many years to come!

While we're looking back, I thought I'd include an update on how the Handmade Christmas Challenge turned out.
Here is the scarf I knitted for Sweetpea, my first *actually completed* knitting project. My mom would love for me to tell you about the sweater I've been knitting for some 12 years now...but that's a post for another day.
Here is one of the quick and easy tutus I made for Sweetpea, her cousin, and two of my friend's kiddos.
And here's a glimpse of one of the no sew hat projects from the Crafty Mama book you can find on my lower left sidebar - I made a few slight adjustments to the pattern and added a quick new sew scarf to match! I'll post about this project in more detail soon. There are 2 more adorable hats that I'm planning to make from this fantastic book!

If you haven't already, please visit me at Mom's Marbles! I'm excited to be a part of the weekly Mom with Marbles feature. Mom's Marbles features loads of great ideas to keep your little ones having fun, as well as ideas for helping mom stay sane.

I'd love to hear what you're planning for 2009!

Coloring pages - a last minute unique personalized Christmas gift

Originally posted October 9, 2008.
*updated with some pages I'm giving for gifts*

I keep a gift list for friends and family throughout the year. This list gets pulled out as a birthday or Christmas approaches so I can be on the lookout for something my loved ones will really enjoy. I shop throughout the year so that I don't miss out on that perfect gift, and so that I can find the best price. This year I've been keeping a list of craft ideas that I think will work well as gifts. I saw a post recently at lifehacker that stepped through how to turn photos into coloring pages - what a great idea!

I scribbled the idea down in my crafts list...and then last night when I was laying in bed wishing I was asleep, I had an idea - I could take that idea a step further to make personalized coloring pages! I think Sweetpea is still a bit young to really understand and appreciate this idea, but my niece, who is seven, would totally love it. She loves to dress up and has a fabulous imagination. She also loves to draw. I think she would totally adore seeing her own face integrated into various coloring pages, sort of like coloring a version of herself playing dress up!

So I got to work - First, choose a photo that has a face you think will fit well into a coloring page.
This is one of Sweetpea getting her first haircut! She is facing the camera but not quite straight on, which seems to match well with a lot of the coloring pages I was finding.
Next, find a coloring page you like. I found this one at the Crayola site - they have a great selection of free printables!
Next I took my original photo and made it into an ink sketch. You might also try a pencil sketch. Play around with the various setting options to get the look that best blends with your coloring page. Here is what I came up with.
Next use the freehand select option to trace your subject's face out of the original photo. Copy and paste it into the coloring page (in my software that is paste as new layer). Then I integrated the layers by flattening them. I repeated the ink sketch option to further integrate the face into the coloring page and erased the edges of the face. Here is what I came up with:
Little Sweetpea turned astronaut! I plan to make several of these as part of my niece's Christmas gift. I will likely also include some additional art supplies to go along with it.

Here are some pages I've created so far for Christmas!

My niece as a princess

My nephew as Batman

Happy Coloring!

Handprint Angels

One of the crafts for this season from the Christmas activity garland was an angel handprint craft. I love seasonal handprint crafts, because they are such a great way to document your child's growth from year to year! Since Sweetpea is a bit young to really help me with these kinds of crafts, I put them together and then let her color them. I think this one turned out so well I'm going to do this again and make an ornament out of it for our tree.
For some reason, after coloring, she enjoyed making a crayon burrito with the picture...
roll it up, roll it up...Perfect - our little angel...
and her picture!