A Girly Weekend

A few weeks ago, my husband took our boys on a father-son overnight camping trip.  They had tons of fun and while they were away, my daughters and I had some awesome girl time.

First on the agenda was a tea party dinner that we ate on the good china, followed by a girly movie.  There was also some fingernail painting and I taught them how to make pom-poms out of yarn.

After we'd made several, we used some baker's twine threaded through a large needle and sewed right through the center of each pom-pom to make a garland.

The girls were super excited to hang the garland in in their room!

Checkout this website for great pom-pom making instructions.

We had so much fun that the girls were a little sad to see the boys come home!

Our 4th time to do the Turkey Disguise Project

I have to admit that I was less than enthusiastic when the info. sheet came home from school with my kindergarten daughter about the "Family Turkey Disguise Project" where you are given a cardstock turkey and are to work with your kindergarten child to disguise the turkey.  Then the projects will be displayed in the halls outside the classrooms (you know, so the overachieving parents can show off their elaborate displays -- sorry, that was tacky of me).

This is my 4th child to go through kindergarten at this school and thus my 4th time to be assigned the Turkey Disguise Project.  I pasted on a happy face and forced a "Oh, how fun, the Turkey Disguise Project!" reaction for my kindergartener's benefit but inside I groaning, "Not this again!  It was kinda fun the first 2 times, but by the 3rd time I was over it and now a 4th time!"

It was a lovely attitude as I'm sure you can tell.

But, then I remembered that while having 4 children does require me to be assigned the Turkey Disguise 4 different times, having 4 children also means, I have 3 other children who can help/do this project instead of me!!

I wheeled out my cart o' craft supplies.  It really is on wheels, I should take a picture of it some time!

The 11 year old did not need much encouragement to fire up the glue gun.

He struggled a bit, though on just how to make the 6 year old's idea to disguise the turkey as a teacher into a reality.

But, then we got the idea to disguise the turkey as Queen Elsa from the movie Frozen.

Then the whole thing came together!  I had some shiny blue fabric.  We had some discussion on exactly what color Elsa's hair was but in the end we used what we had, which was grey yarn for her hair.  Add a gold pipe cleaner crown and some snowflake stickers and voila!  We had ourselves a Queen Elsa Turkey!

And even I had to admit it was kinda fun, the family Turkey Disguise Project!  Gosh, maybe we should even have a 5th kid so we can do this project again!!  Ha!

Elephant Pumpkins and Doll Discrimination, It's All Here!

There are some weeks that go by and I am so busy but at the end of it there is nothing tangible to show for all the work.

But, not this week, folks!  This week I have this:

 

Yes, I helped my 7 year old turn a pumpkin into an elephant for his school project where they were to decorate a pumpkin to look like a book character.  He chose Horton from Horton Hatches the Egg as his character. Let it be known that I typically do not assist quite so much with my children's school projects, but seriously, for this one?  What 7 year old can turn a pumpkin into a book character by themselves??  And my little guy and I did have fun doing this project together.

Grab a glue gun, some grey spray paint, an old grey sock stuffed with stuffing and a wire coat hangar, some construction paper ears, googly eyes, and a felt cut out mouth and you too could have a pumpkin elephant!  What better thing to add to your Halloween decor?!!

This is another item I've added to my arsenal of Mommy-skills, the ability to turn a pumpkin into an elephant!  Cinderella's fairy godmother's got nothing on me!

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We have every other year friend birthday parties for our kids and on the off years they can choose a special activity with a parent or our family, like attending a professional sports event, visiting an amusement park, or the hotel overnight I recently did with my older daughter.  To celebrate Little Girl's birthday this past week, I took her and my 9 year old daughter to the American Girl store.  

We had lunch with their dolls, the dolls are given their own seat and dishes!  

Then we had the dolls hair done, which Little Girl's doll REALLY needed as she had done her own "styles" on her poor doll and it was looking really ratted and messy.  For a bargain $10 (and hear me on this, NOTHING else is a bargain at that store, but getting her old doll's hair fixed back to nice for only $10 was a steal!) Daisy the doll even got to sit in a salon chair with a cape and get her hair styled.  Little Girl loved watching her doll's hair get fixed.  (The look on the stylist's face is hilarious, the doll's hair really was that bad!)

But, that sweet lady was able to work wonders and Daisy the doll is back to cute curly pigtails!

We had such a fun afternoon, I really should have just ended it there, but I'd told Little Girl that as part of her birthday gift from us she could pick out a new doll from the store.  Oh sweet mercy, I cannot tell you how many times my older daughter and I walked around that store with Little Girl looking at all the choices!  Little Girl would enthusiastically fall in love with a doll, settle on it, only to change her mind to a different doll one display over!  Then she'd pick a doll because she liked the outfit it was dressed in and we had a time explaining that the doll was not dressed in the outfit she came in, so she should not pick the doll based on the dress the doll was wearing, that dress was sold separately for $40!!

And don't even get me started on the little episode where my 9 year old daughter tried to convince her little sister to get "Addie", the doll with "brown skin, like yours".  We broke down all kinds of cultural and racial barriers right there in the American Girl store and Little Girl left with a fair skinned, blonde-haired doll, proving to the world that you don't have to look like your doll to love her!

Here she is with her old and new dolls:

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Happy Friday, Friends!!

Easy DIY Valentines, Ideas for boys and girls

I wrote on Friday that Valentines was stressing me out what with 4 kids to supply with Valentines to hand out to all their classmates, not to mention the things to do for their various classroom parties. 

I visited the Valentine aisle in Target during a shopping trip and didn't really like any Valentines I could get store bought.

Not to mention, I really could not find anything that seemed appropriate for my 5th grade son to hand out.

Well, it turns out that Pinterest really IS my friend because just a bit of looking and I found a cute and easy make-it-at-home option for each of my kids.

For the 10 year old boy who has lately enjoyed using his video game time to play Minecraft, I found these free printable Minecraft valentines.  They are very cute with little creeper wrappers that you wrap around mini Hershey bars and attach the to the cards.  I printed the cards on thick cardstock paper and the wrappers on regular paper.  And the best part was that my 10 year was able to use our paper cutter to cut out all the cards and wrappers himself!

For the 8 and 5 year old daughters who love frozen, I found these cute Frozen movie Valentines that feature the beloved Olaf with the line "Hey Valentine!  Do you want to build a snowman?"  and you attach the card to a baggie that you fill with marshmallows, pretzel sticks and chocolate chips to build a snowman.  My girls were super excited about this idea and having them both do the same will make it very economical as they can share the supplies to go in the baggies.

For my 6 year old son, I found another Frozen themed Valentine that seemed fun for him, these where Olaf has been impaled by a lollipop stick.

Aside from figuring out valentines for all 4 of my children to give, I'm feeling a lot happier about Valentine's Day today as I learned that we have FREE BABYSITTING for all 4 of our kids for Valentine's evening!  Let's just say we go to a really awesome church!  I'm certainly looking forward to a dinner I don't have to serve and can eat without telling someone to "sit flat" or cleaning up a milk spill!

What do you think of Valentine's Day, is it sweet and fun or just something that requires work?

My Christmas Elves

My elves have been hard at work!

Adding address labels to Christmas cards:

Making wrapping paper:

A certain 6 year old boy learned how to make paper snowflakes:

The mess of little bits of paper all over the floor, chair, and table did not make me rue the day his first grade teacher taught him this skill, not at all!

And my furry elf was very busy this weekend, too:

Clearly the dog is exhausted from all the work unstuffing her new duck!  But we are enjoying the fake snow effect of the stuffing all over the house.  It adds to the holiday ambiance for sure!

The Eve of Halloween

'Twas the night before Halloween, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, 

Except the sewing machine whirring!

Why, oh why, did I agree to make one of my children's Halloween costumes again this year?

Didn't I learn my lesson with the Dorothy costume a couple years ago?  Store-bought costumes are GOOD.  Store-bought costumes are my friends!

Why did I put off so much of the project until the last minute?

And why was I so overconfident that I could easily sew together a Laura Ingalls costume?  Turns out those Little House on the Prairie dresses are not as simple as they appear!

Also, there's the little issue that we have no Halloween candy!

The fair-trade, no child-slaves were used in the making of them, chocolates I ordered over the Internet have not yet arrived!  So, it's looking like we'll be the lame-o house giving out raisins and pencils!

Those Little House on the Prairie women did have it easier without Halloween to worry about.  No rain for the crops and fires in the barn seem like much more preferable worries at the moment!

Cloth Napkins for Kids

We made the switch away from paper napkins a couple years ago and I have really liked it.  It is not hard to throw dirty napkins in with a load of wash I'm already doing every day or every other day.  And I like not having to buy paper napkins at the store; one less thing for my grocery list makes me happy!  Also, it's something small our family can do to better care for the world God gave us.

For dinner we use cloth napkins, and for lunch I was using old baby washcloths for the kids to wipe their hands and faces.  Several of the washcloths had gotten holes, but instead of spending money on new ones, I thought of an idea while cleaning out.  We had several soft flannel baby blankets around the house, but no babies anymore (sigh, that phase leaves so quickly, doesn't it?).  So, I cut the blankets up into small cloth napkins just the perfect size for the kids to use!

I love how soft they are!

I could have/should have gone the extra mile and sewed up a hem around the edge, but I knew adding that step would likely mean the blankets would never turn into cloth napkins, so I just cut around the edges with pinking shears.  Good enough!

Find more Works for Me Wednesday here.

Teaching My 10 Year Old Son to Use The Glue Gun

I've been thinking as I strive to have less clutter that maybe I should par down my crafting supplies, but days like today when I was helping my 4th grader create a 3-D flower complete with all the different parts (do you remember -- the whole stamen, stigma, sepal, etc.?) that he must be able to identify to his teacher, it comes in handy.  

This is the same child who NEVER did crafts in preschool, always chose any other activity station besides art, except when very strongly persuaded by his teachers.  His younger sister created more artwork in one 3 hour day of preschool than he did the entire school year.  But tonight as a 10 year old with a project assignment?  He was super impressed with my craft stash!  And we really, truly had fun working on his 3 dimensional flower!  

 

Look, I even taught him how to use the glue gun:

He crafts!  He will now take with him the VERY handy glue-gunning skill into the rest of his life! Can you see how excited I was about all of it?  I told my son, "Finally a school project that's actually fun!!"  

My husband walked in and said to our son, "I've never in my whole life used a glue gun."  And I said, "See, Son?  At the age of 10 your abilities now surpass your dad's!"

Easy DIY Valentine's Shirt

It's not too late to whip up an easy Valentine's Day shirt for your little darlings.  

All you need is a plain t-shirt, iron-on adhesive (like HeatnBond), a small amount of fabric, and a heart template (I just free-hand drew mine).

1.  Iron the adhesive onto the fabric scrap.

2.  Cut out the heart from the adhesive-backed fabric.

3.  Pull the paper backing off the heart, position it on your t-shirt and iron it on.

4.  Use a sewing machine to sew just inside the edge of the heart all the way around.  (Set your machine on the slowest speed and you can turn the fabric as you sew to follow the outline of your shape.)

Ta-da!  A super easy, cheap, and fast custom Valentine's shirt for your little one!

 

Did I mention I taught myself how to sew using the Internet?  Trust me, if I can do this, you can too!  You can also check out this tutorial for more detailed instructions on applique.

Find more Works For Me Wednesday here.

How to Display Christmas Cards

The Christmas cards have started to come in and I just love it! (We even got ours out over the past couple days - amazing!  But, the price is that my house is messy and I'm tired!)  I have been using the same card display system for the past 4 years and it still works great; the whole family likes seeing the photos of friends and family hanging in our house!  Here's what I do:
 
Repost from November 3, 2009:

I love displaying the Christmas cards that we get, especially since so many of our friends have little kids and send cards with pictures. It is really fun to have all the cards up in the house, marvel at how much all the kids have grown and changed, and just enjoy all the cute little faces!

But until last year I didn't have a system I really liked for displaying the cards. But then I figured out this system to hang the cards onto 2 doors we have between our living room and breakfast room that we leave open all the time. I bought cheap over-the-door plastic hooks, tied thick ribbon I had on hand around the hook, made a bow and left a long tail hanging down. Then as I got cards in the mail I simply stapled them down the length of the ribbons.
It was so easy to put up initially, easy to add to as more cards came in, not to mention cheap! And we enjoyed looking at it so much it was the last Christmas decoration to come down (possibly even waiting until early February)!

Find more Works for Me Wednesday tips here.

Butterfly Cupcakes

It's been a few weeks, but before I forget altogether, I thought I'd share the cupcakes I made for Little Girl's birthday.

She wanted chocolate cupcakes with pink icing.  Thankfully she is not yet Americanized enough to request a theme beyond that!

I was really tempted to order her cupcakes from a bakery because we'd been so busy, but I also like to have cake to offer the parents at the party, so getting the number needed plus extras to be sure I had enough started to add up the price.  And ever since Africa took hold of our hearts, and children living in poverty, children dying of poverty, there are just many things I have a hard time spending money on these days, especially when I could just put in a little work and make cupcakes for a fraction of the cost of the bakery ones.


But, I wanted the cupcakes to be cute and had a hard time figuring out what to do to make them more special than just icing and sprinkles. 

Finally I got a great idea for decorating the cupcakes here.  And it happened to go perfectly with the theme I'd gone with for the goody bags because it was what I happened to find at the Dollar Store  - butterflies!

These turned out pretty cute and were yummy, too -- I'm a sucker for sweet and salty so the mixture of chocolate, icing and candy, with pretzels thrown in was really good!

The pretzels are store-bought white chocolate coated pretzels, then blue icing is piped down the body of the butterfly, a raspberry m&m is the head, and I couldn't find thin enough licorice for the antennae, so that is made from some candy fruit rope stuff I found and then cut into short strips.

And I say it again, HOW did people mother before The Internet?  Really!  No way could I have thought up those cupcakes on my own, but copy someone else's idea?  Yeah, I can do that!

Not the Turkey Disguise Project!

My kindergarten son had the project to decorate a turkey picture the teacher handed out.  The prompt was something about helping Tom Turkey come up with a disguise so he could hide from the hunters.

The prompt also said that parents could help with the project but not do it for their child.  That it was to be the child's work.  Whatever, I seem to be the ONLY parent that actually follows the teacher's instructions because once the projects are posted on the wall every one of them except my kid's will look professionally done!

Anyway, because this is my 3rd child to go through this kindergarten and get this assignment, my enthusiasm about the project was a bit lacking (I know poor 3rd child).  I wanted to be done with my part "helping" as quick as possible (also we may have waited until the day before it was due to start working on it), so I suggested that Tom Turkey could hide in a big pile of leaves!

 "Yay!  Look how well hidden he is, Buddy!  Now you just glue those leaves on while I make dinner."

No, my 5 year old would have none of that!  He wanted to make a Spiderman disguise for his turkey.  That went about as well as you might expect.

At least no one will accuse me of doing the project for my kid!

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Little Girl has told me every day for the past week that she is going to be Princess Belle for NEXT Halloween.  And she says it just like that as if to emphasize that she realizes THIS Halloween has past.  Planning ahead, that girl is!

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Speaking of Little Girl, I posted yesterday about her scraping up her face, but you know what I wondered every single day for a whole week while I had to keep the scrape covered?  WHY don't they make band-aids in HER skin color? 

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My oldest has been out of school sick this week.  And he's totally been regretting the fact that I've emailed with his teacher daily and picked up make-up work from his classroom each day when I pick up his younger siblings from school.  

Him:  "Mom, I'm not supposed to have to do work while I'm sick!"

Me:  "It's 4th grade, you will get too behind and never get caught up if you wait until you go back to school next week to get your assignments."

Here's his super-happy-to-be-doing-make-up-work-while-home-sick face:

"Yay!  It's division!  Who doesn't love estimating quotients?!!"

I really have enjoyed having him home!  But I'm thankful he's nearly well, so Little Girl and I are just going to have to miss him when he goes back to school on Monday.

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Happy Friday, Friends!

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iPhone Halloween Costume Complete!

Update:  Here are my 4 costume-clad little people at 7:45 this morning!

 

I finished it!  I made this iPhone Halloween Costume for my 9 year old son using the idea from here.

So the picture is not great with a shadow and all, but maybe tomorrow I can get a better one of the 9 year old actually wearing it!  LOVED the printable template for 6 of the app icons from the link I mentioned.  They made things super easy to cut out with my felt.  But since I was making a larger size costume, I added 3 more apps for a larger screen area.  Those were considerably harder to create (the 3 on the far left of your screen)!  My husband and kids love the "Plants Versus Zombies" game, so my husband helped me create an icon to match the one from the game to surprise the 9 year old.  He drafted, I cut out and glued on.  It turned out pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

How do you explain trick-or-treating?

One day this week I tried to explain trick-or-treating to our little girl adopted from Ethiopia 10 months ago.

Me:  "You dress up in a costume, go to the neighbor's house, knock on the door, when they open the door you say, 'Trick-or-treat!', then they give you candy, and you say, 'Thank you!'"

She laughed and laughed, thought that seemed like the most hilarious thing she'd ever heard!

So, yes, Lil' Pumpkin as you've figured out a million times over, Americans are weird!

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In other Halloween related news, for some reason that I can't remember right now, I showed my 9 year old this idea for making an iphone Halloween costume.  He was completely sold and excited about it!  So guess what we'll be making over the weekend (only not for a baby, but for a 9 year old)?

 

                                    Source: eatsleepmake.com 

I hope it's not too disastrous and of course we had to wait until the last minute!

At least I had the huge win of talking my 7 year old daughter into wearing the Dorothy costume again this year, (The one I sewed from scratch last year, and purposely made big because it was so much trouble I wanted years of wear out of it!).  She just needed some bigger ruby slippers and she was set.   Like last year, it was the allure of getting to take a stuffed dog "Toto" to school in a little basket on the Halloween parade day that won her over!

And the younger kids were happy to pick out a costume we already had from our costume bin!

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We will not be giving out the typical snack-sized chocolate candy bars this Halloween.  Now that we've learned more about the issue, the tie between candy bar makers and child slavery in Africa is just too horrific.  And it seems all the big names in candy are suspect or guilty.  So, it's small, organic, fair-trade chocolates for our trick-or-treaters.  If you'd like more info. about the tie between chocolate and forced child labor,  this post from Kristen Howerton is excellent.

I am ashamed that it took us having a daughter from Africa before we became more interested in issues like these.  It should have mattered before, too!

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Happy Friday, Friends!

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The recovered patio furniture is still going strong!

Could you ever guess what one of the most popular posts is from this blog?  Popular based on number of times someone has clicked onto it after doing an internet search.  It's the post How an Uncrafty Person Recovers Patio Furniture from May 9, 2010.

I laugh about this because my method of recovering that outdoor furniture is well, comical to say the least!  Not exactly a Martha Stewart approved method. 

But, y'all it worked!  And what I'm here to say today as an update is that it still works!

The furniture still looks great now, over 2 years later!  I haven't had to repair or recover any of the cushions!  They've stayed on even under heavy kid use!  The fabric I bought was the kind they make the reusable grocery bags out of and it has really stayed very nice for being on outdoor furniture (granted our patio is covered by a roof)!

I never expected the recovering job to hold up this well, I would have predicted back then that it would only be a matter of time before we'd need to buy new cushions!

So, uncrafty friends, take heart, if I can do it, you can too!


Original post from May 2010:

** Disclaimer I had no idea what I was doing. I just made up a process as I went along. I am happy with the outcome but have no guarantee it will hold up to the test of time! **

So here you go.

How I, an uncrafty person, recovered my patio furniture cushions:

Before my cushions (2 chair cushions and 1 bench cushion) were terribly stained. Too many times hosting kid birthday parties, too many nights of our neighbor's cats sleeping on them, too many coatings with yellow pollen that blows through the air freely for a couple months every spring all contributed to the ugliness.

I went to the fabric store and because I am cheap I limited my choices to the discount fabric. I found some great fabric for around $2.00 per yard. The material is not technically outdoor fabric, but the furniture is under a roof and the material is rough textured and stiff so it seems like moisture would not absorb too easily and some debris would brush off.

I am uncrafty so I didn't really closely measure and pretty much just guessed and got 5 yards (I ended up with a bunch extra but I'm glad to have spare in case a cushion needs to be recovered in the future.)

I cut the fabric to wrap around each cushion and then pretended like I was wrapping a present.Only instead of using tape, I hand stitched the fabric to the cushion in a few different spots using heavy-duty thread. The heavy-duty thread I had on hand was a beige type color and it would have been much better to use a color that exactly blended with my fabric, but I was worried that adding another trip to the store for this project just may have been enough to put it over the edge into the land-of-projects-I-plan-but-never-accomplish, so I foraged ahead with the mismatched thread, knowing the goal was not perfection!

I folded over the edges that would end up showing on the outside before I stitched them to the cushion to get a clean edge without hemming.

And the finished product:

And here's what they look like on the furniture:

I did the bench cushion first. I wanted to tackled the hardest part first because I thought once I got it over with then I'd surely be motivated to finish the other cushions because I'd just have the easy chair ones left. But, in hindsight, I wish I'd done the bench last because I learned so much during the process and got better with each cushion. For the bench I actually used a combination of stapling the fabric and sewing it, but I realized the staples didn't work very well and hated the areas where I could see staples showing. I ended up adding a ribbon trim to 2 ends to cover staples, but that step would have been unnecessary if I'd just stitched it all to begin with!

I really love the way it turned out. I hope it holds up over time. But if not, I'm only out about $10 and a few hours of my time (the bench took me a couple hours and the chairs about 45 min. each) and for now it looks so much better than the stained fabric!!

If I can do it, you can too! From a girl who actually managed to poke herself in the lip with a needle during this process, trust me on that one, and also trust me that you should not attempt to hold the needle with your mouth while you position fabric!

This idea will not be pinned.

I love getting ideas from blogs or Pinterest.  Really the number of recipes, sewing tutorials, advice, kid activity suggestions, etc. I've gotten from the Internet over the past few years have made me a better homemaker.

BUT,

There is also such thing as too much of a good thing.  These days the number of elaborate ideas out there displayed with stunning, professional-quality photos can lead one to believe that everything must be an event!  While I love the "Go big or go home" theory at times, most of the time life is just too busy and with young children expecting elaborate ideas to come together is typically setting everyone up for frustration.

And kids actually LOVE simple.

Here are my two youngest painting shoe boxes:

No, not boxes that we'll turn into bird-feeders or elaborate little houses for small dolls we'll make out of clothes pins.

Just boxes that they loved stuffing full of various treasures (read junk) once they were dry!

Did I worry about the fact that the kid-friendly paint was not thick enough to cover up all the printing that was already on the boxes?  No!  Because my kids seemed to care less!

And not only did they really like this craft, but it took nearly zero preparations on my part -- pull some smocks on my kids (and not cutesy custom-made smocks, but my husband's old t-shirts), line the outdoor kid table with newspaper, and give them the 3 supplies (paint, paintbrush, box)!

Nobody's going to pin this idea, and that's okay with me.  Just trying to throw out some real life perspective!