ABC-board thingy ... with tutorial

As promised finally a proper post again. I am sorry for so much quietness. After my last proper post first my little one was sick. Then there was so much to do that there was hardly any time for blogging at all. And then the Japan-thing happened ... and I felt so weird. Whenever I sat down to write a post I could not ... somehow whatever I was going to write felt so unimportant ... I guess I was just in a very strange mood.

I actually got a few things that I wanted to share already for a while. I war not quite sure where to start ...

So first I show you something that I made for my daughter. 

She is 5 and she know all the letters already for a while. She just started to read properly a bit ago. But even though she knew all the letters she could never remember the alphabet. I was not too worried about that - but still I figured if I could make something where she could SEE the alphabet that might help. She has an alphabet poster ... but I wanted something that would show the alphabet in a row. So I made this quick and fun project

I made an ABC -board

Or what would you call it?

A rail? Or ... I am a bit lost about a name.

Anyway, it was fun. And quick. And you do not need much. And - it worked. Ever since I hung up that thing in her room she knows the whole alphabet. In order! :-)

Am so proud!

And happy!

So if you happen to have a kiddo that is about to learn the ABC and want your own ABC board thingy ... I wrote down how I did it.

This is what you need:

- wooden letters

- acrylic paint

- a long wooden board

- glue

And this is what I did:

1. I used really cheap self-adhesive wooden letters that I scored in the 1Euro section of one discounter. But you can of course use really fancy ones, too. 

If you use big letters I would recommend sanding them. But to be honest - I did not do that. Do not tell on me! 

2. After you did - or did not - sand your letters ;-) you paint them. Easy! And fun!

After you put a coat of paint on them let them dry. 

3. If you like your letters that way you can already hop on to step 4. But I wanted to make mine a bit more colorful so I added some more paint and ended up with this:

That was SO MUCH FUN!

Let dry again.

4. Get your wooden board and - depending on what it looks like - you might want to put some paint on it, too. After it is dry you glue the letters in place. 

And that is it! 

DONE!

Admire your work a bit more .... ;-)

By the way, this project is really easy to customize.

You could hang the letters pretty much any other way you can think of. 

I actually had this idea that you could make letters and put them into colorful circles to the wall. Kinda randomly scattered around. It would of course not help with learning the alphabet - but it would sure be a really cute decoration! If you like letters that is. 

I do! :-)

And you could play "I spy" with letters ... I figure that would be fun ...

Oh, and here is another treat for you. I found this a while ago and thought it was cute. 

Printable ABC-Poster

To me it is not much use yet as my daughter is not learning English yet. 

But once she is I think I will print it. So cute!

Hope you enjoyed this!

Have a lovely day!!!

I am sharing this here:

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Homemade Snowglobes

Yes, you guys were right! 

A penguin snowglobe!!! 

I love it! 

This is the one I made. It is teeny tiny. I will show you again when it is finished. Have to harden it ... and put it all together ...

But wanna see what my daughter made?

Remember, she is only 5 years old!

 I think it is completely amazing!!!

And I swear - I did not touch her stuff once!!!

She did ask me how to do things and I would say stuff like "Try to make a ball first and then make an oval" ... or stuff like that. But other than that - she did it ALL BY HERSELF!

I love the bird she made!

And the sweetest thing ever:

She told me that she wants to give it to her little brother as a Christmas present!

She is such a darling!

Well, back to frantic sewing. Finished a skirt! Hooded scarf almost done. Stickhorse still to be made. Think am going to skip the owl mobile ...

Now I KNOW why it always sais "Santa and HIS LITTLE HELPERS ..." 

How on earth did I think I could pull off making presents withouth them????

Also still baking and cleaning to do. 

Note to self: Stop thinking!!!! You are just gonna freak! SEW!!!!!

Snow, snow, snow ... snowflakes

We have SO MUCH snow at the moment - it is unbelievable!

So here comes a snowy activitiy ....

Yesterday my daughter's Advent calendar said that we would be making paper snowflakes. And just in time I saw this post on how to make perfect paper snowflakes the day before.

Great!

You gotta check out that post if you want to make some. I have never before made such cute snowflakes! And she recommends using coffee filters.

I actually even had a package of coffee filters from some previous - well, VERY previous - crafting lying around and was VERY happy to use that one. 

I am always happy when I can use something up that I already have around. Especially if I do not need it anymore anyways.

There is another tutorial - for square paper - on Martha Stewart.

We did not make quite as many as I would have liked ... but I would really LOVE to attempt this snowflake curtain. It looks awesome!

Ours looks more like this ...

Btw, you would not believe how hard it is to photograph these little suckers!

I hope to add more during the next days. 

Once I hung the snowflakes little bear seemed to get much more excited than in the beginning. :-) 

At first she was kinda like "Oh no, I don't wanna do this. This is boring." 

Well ... and I thought I would hear stuff like that when she is 14 ...

Welcome to the real world! ;-)

 Btw, you can also use these paper snowflakes to decorate your gifts! They would look awesome on some solid colored gift wrap or even some brown paper packaging ...

Making little ghosts

One of the projects that I did with my daughter during the last week was to make these little ghosts:

Please excuse the dust on the shelve.

Those guys are made out of plaster of paris. I really enjoyed making them. It does become kinda addictive. I still have some plaster left ... I am toying with the idea of making a mobile or something ... 

The only downside of this project is as you are modelling the ghosts on your finger for a bit you are left with only one hand. Really not a good project to do while being in charge of a busy and active baby ... ;-)

If you want to try making them yourself - or save the idea for next Halloween - you can find the tutorial on Art Mind.

Cardboard cookies

 

So in a very very desperate attempt to keep my little man from getting sick again I have decided to let little bear stay at home for 2-3 weeks ...

Our pediatrician thinks that she brings the bacteria or whatever home from kindergarten but does not get sick herself ... So I am hoping when she stays home, that maybe little man will get a little rest from getting infected ... Well, that IS the theory at least. 

Btw, by kindergarten I basically mean daycare. I think kindergarten in the US means something else. It is not a school-type of thing but rather a place where the kids play with other kids.

Well, it is quite challenging being home all day with two kids! :-)

So I am trying to find activities for little bear to enjoy. The problem is of course that little man ALWAYS wants to have his fun too. 

So basically right now I have a 1year old with glitter in his hair, felt tip pen paint on his hands, and plasticine under his fingernails. Wonder what the pediatrician will say tomorrow when she sees that ... *sigh*

So I am trying to find activities that little bear can mostly do herself - so I can watch hold down little man.

When I saw these fun cardboard cookies on IKAT BAG I knew they were a great project.

You have to check out her post - ours are really not as cute. But that is alright ... I was not too worried about cute. My goal was "keep my sanity"! ;-)

I did not use such great supplies as Lier on IKAT BAG did. All we used were cardboard, felt tip pens, water colors, and 

*drum roll please*

glitter glue!

Yes, to my daughter glitter glue seems to be pretty much heaven on earth! 

She was delighted! 

She wants to keep the cookies for her play store. 

Guess I will have to try to come up with other projects that utilize glitter glue ...

Any ideas?

Watch out for more project ideas to come ... however, they might sometimes just be with links to other sites without photos from me ... 

For some reason photo editing just takes so long ...

Pippi Longstocking party invitations

I was wrecking my brain how I could make some cute invitations with my daughter for her Pippi Longstocking party. I did not want to spend much money on it and not too much time. It should preferably be easy enough to get my daughter involved as well. But I simply could not get myself to send out some regular cards.

At the end we made some shoes - as Pippi wears HUGE shoes (to have enough room to wiggle her toes) - with stockings. 

And I am actually quite pleased with how they turned out - even if it does not say "Pippi Longstocking" right away when you see them. They are cute and different. And my daughter loved them!

In order to read the invitation you have to undo the shoes laces and read what is written on the stocking. When it is closed - like in the photo above - you can only read "Einladung", which means "Invitation".

Of course my daughter helped writing ... ;-)

We made black shoes and brown shoes.

And here is the tutorial - in case you want to make some, too. They are really easy to make!

What you need:

-black or brown construction paper

-paper for the stockings (I just used colored printer paper)

-pens in desired colors

-some ribbon, yarn, or thread to use as shoe laces

-hole punch

-scissors

1. Download the template or make your own. You need a pattern for a shoe and a stocking.

(If you use my pattern - I made it such a size that you can make two invites out of an A4 sheet of paper. You just have to fold the paper lengthwise. Sorry for the people using letter-size. But is should be easily adaptable by just printing it slightly smaller or larger.)

2. Fold your paper and transfer your shoe template on the paper. The fold of the paper should be at the back side of the shoe (so that you can untie the laces lateron and open the shoe up).

When you have it cut out you should be able to open it up like this:

3. With the hole punch put three or more holes in the shoe where your laces are supposed to go.

4. Cut out the stocking. Use colored paper. You can add stripes if you want to.

Make sure that the stocking fits into the shoe!

5. Now you can write your message on the stocking. We wrote "invitation" at the top - so you could still read that when the shoe-card was closed. 

My daughter drew some colorful stripes unterneath.

Under the stripes I wrote the actual invitation with all the necessary information like where and when the party is.

6. Now you just have to add your "shoe laces" and tie your shoes up.

DONE!

Hoot! Pinecone owls

I made these with little bear. I love them. When I was a kid my parents used to have such owls in their place. Well, they actually did not have googely eyes ... :-) But the principle was the same. Just gotta find the right spot for the twig ... guess I will hang it somewhere ...

For some reason the owls look ALOT better in reality than in the photos ... :-(

Look who is peeping ...

This little guy was made around Groundhog Day. So it is ... YES, a groundhog! And I was afraid you might not notice! ;-)


He was not made by me but by my daughter. She stitched all the way around the felt and I think she did a pretty good job! *very proud mom* Okay, I did the ears. But still ... she is only four. I think when I was four I did not even know what a needle looks like ...

I actually wanted to write this post back then but after we had made the little guy and it's grass burrow ... it went for a nap. At least that's what my daughter told me. And never returned! My daughter had - as so often - forgotten where she had put that little guy to nap! GREAT! So this morning I spent searching her room to finally find the poor thing and take some photos. It was quite happy to see the sunlight again. It had spent all that time in a drawer sleeping.

This was not my idea however. I saw a groundhog finger puppet at Skip to my Lou and just adapted it. I found that it was a really easy project for kids. Oh, and fun of course. And the kids do not have to sew. Either you can do that beforehand and they "decorate" or you just glue the whole thing together. You could of course also make other animals. The basic shape can just be a rectangle and you add different ears and stuff.
To make the grassy hiding place we just glued felt around a toilet paper tube and cut it to look grassy.

Just have fun!


Oh, by the way ... the little guy is wide enough to be an actual finger puppet. It was put on a stick just for photography purposes. Way easier than sticking your finger in it and trying to take a photo ...

Cardboard play town tutorial

If you have some big piece of cardboard packaging - don't throw it away! Look how much fun your kids can have with it! All you need is:

-big piece of cardboard (the bigger, the better!)
-markers - preferably water proof
-water colors and paint brushes
-optional: smaller cardboard boxes
-wooden blocks, toy animals, cars ... 

On a huge piece of cardboard I drew some streets with a permanent marker. That can actually be done by the kids as well but my daughter wanted me to do it. I just drew a very basic layout and added a store ("Kaufladen").

Then I gave my daughter her water colors and brushes ... and she was busy for a LONG time! :-)


After she was done (you can never be really done - the next day she continued to paint on it) she added her plastic animals, toy cars, building blocks, and cardboard boxes to it and played with it.

Apparently there must be some big sale or something at the store ... the parking lot is pretty packed. Maybe we should send the police over ... that kind of parking is not allowed! We added the blue cardboard box on the upper right hand corner as a garage ... but obviously there are either too many cars ... or it's just too far to walk from the garage to the store ...
I LOVE the red house she painted on the lower right hand corner! So cute!
And that big brownish thing on the left side at the bottom is a lake! I asked her why she would color the lake brown and not blue? Well ... "Because the ducks made poo-poo into it!" Why did I have to ask ...