Kid's Craft-Paper Plate Snowmen

 It has been a while since we have done a craft.  Life has really been so crazy busy lately.  Last week we had early out and were finally able to do a little family craft time.

 I just stapled some cheapy paper plates together and let the boys go to town. 

 They have been very into mustaches lately.  I think they turned out cute. 

We need to do some Valentine crafts now :)

Doorway Puppet Theater

This morning we woke up to the magic of the first snow fall.  Last night before going to bed Josh and I watched it silently fall for a little bit.  I know I may be in the minority, but I LOVE snow!  Alas we were out of hot chocolate mix (lame), but we had pumpkin waffles with cinnamon syrup for breakfast which was all very cozy and festive.  The boys are currently zipping through their "stuff" so they can go outside and play snow football.  This is the BEST time of year!


Lincoln has something called "Fairy Tale Friday" in his class (so cute!) It is where one of the parents signs up to come and read the kids a Fairy Tale and then they do an activity. Part of the exercise is for the kids to be able to tell the story back. I made this little puppet theater for my Fairy Tale Friday. I was inspired by this one I saw on "Skip to My Lou".

First I read the kids this version of "Little Red Riding hood," and then the kids retold the story with a narrator and puppets. I bought the images on etsy from this vendor and then mounted them on large craft sticks (I am going to laminate them).
Basic instructions for the theater (for more detailed instructions go to the link above) are that I bought some fabric (striped from IKEA, polka dot from Walmart), measured the door and cut the fabric with a little bit of extra to sew around. I sewed a pocked at the top for a shower curtain rod to go through to hang it up. I cut out a window (seriously I just eyed everything and I am not a seamstress, though I hope to be someday....this really wasn't hard), cut some curtains out and sewed around them and sewed some ribbons into the window to tie them back with.

Under the window I had to sew some fabric to put a dowel into because the window will droop if you don't. Alright...that was about as clear as mud.
I am looking forward to all sorts of puppet shows in the future! McKay thought this one was pretty great :)

Applique "Tutorial"

I made the boys these very simple shirts for the 4th of July. This was the first time I had ever done applique, but I thought I would still show you what I did in case you wanted to do it yourself. It really was pretty easy and fun to do. It is also fun to design your own shirts.
You need this "Heat N' Bond" first off. I bought mine at Michaels. There is the kind that you can sew on top of as well as a "no sew" kind. I already had the navy blue shirts and some fabric I thought would work from this party (I have SO MUCH of that fabric, you will see it a million more times :)
I found a template of a star I liked online and actually traced my computer screen (probably not the best idea). I traced the star onto the back of the fabric and cut it out. Then I placed the star on the "Heat N' Bond," and cut it out.
I left and edge, but not too big.
Then I followed the instructions on the package and got them ironed onto the t-shirts.
I thought it looked a little unfinished so I went around the stars with a blanket stitch. It definitely isn't perfect, but if you cross you eyes a little bit, it looks much better :)
All done. It was fun to do it myself, even if I started too late in the day and had to stay up until 1:00 am to finish them...
The boys woke up in the morning to them waiting on the couch for them. They were so excited. I love to do little morning surprises for them (I didn't do one for McKay because I already had something for him).
They LOVED wearing them and after our Pancake Breakfast they were COVERED in gunk from the party. They had to take them off to be washed and were so bummed. They immediately wore them again the next day. Total satisfaction on my part :)

Teacher Appreciation Idea-Ice Cream Cupcakes

Looks like an ice cream sundae doesn't it?  Crazy enough, it is a cupcake and frosting!

We tried to do something little each day of the week this year for our teachers during Teacher Appreciation week. On the first day my boys drew pictures for their teachers. Palmer's was so funny. It was of him and his teacher climbing a pyramid. Tuesday got away from us...but the rest of the week we just did something small each day. Hunter has 3 teachers at preschool so it is a little expensive to get all of the teachers really big things. I was so excited about this idea because I could include our Preschool teachers in the Teacher Appreciation festivities, and they are phenomenal teachers.
I got this amazing idea from this site. I ordered my ice cream cups from here, but if you live in Utah they actually carry them at Orson Gygi, So glad I found that out AFTER I ordered them online and paid shipping...lame.
You will need ice cream cups and spoons, cupcakes, frosting (recipe below), chocolate melts, sprinkles, red gumballs, printout (found here). Don't forget that we are now thinking of my poor table as "rustic" instead of beat up.  Serious refinishing project as soon as it is warm and I have time!

Frosting:

• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 Tablespoons milk
• a few drops of ivory gel food color

1. In the bowl of a mixer, mix butter, vanilla and milk until well blended and smooth. Slowly add powdered sugar and mix on low until just combined. Increase speed to medium and beat for a minute or two, until fully combined and fluffy. Place frosting in the refrigerator for an hour to chill.
2. Remove the frosting from the refrigerator and spoon it on top of cupcakes. It looks just like ice cream!

Bake cupcakes and cool. Place in cups. After frosting has chilled 1 hour spoon over cupcakes. Melt chocolate at 20 second intervals and stir. When melted spoon over icing, sprinkle the sprinkles and place gumball "cherry" on top while chocolate is still wet. I glued the printouts on the front of the cup and on the wooden spoon that came with the cups.

Wrap with cellophane with ribbon.

Scouts Blue and Gold Banquet Centerpieces

For our Blue and Gold Banquet for scouts this year, one of the things that I was assigned to do was to make the centerpieces. I figured this wouldn't be to big of deal, because I am best buddies with the internet. I was SURE there would be something great that I could do fast and easily. Ya know just copy some extremely crafty woman. Apparently the extremely crafty women aren't posting their Blue and Gold centerpieces because there were mighty slim pickins out there in cyberspace. I decided that I would go out on a limb and come up with my own idea. Now I was a little nervous because I don't do this very often.
I ended up going to The Wood Connection and buying some dowels, dowel stands and some 5X5 square blocks (If you had a way to drill a hole in the blocks of wood, you could do this yourself). I had them drill a hole in one corner of the block turning the shape into a diamond. I then printed off some clip art from here, and Mod Podged it onto a blue painted square.
Right in the middle of my project, Josh came home from a business trip so I interrupt this serious scout centerpiece tutorial for some serious cuteness. Josh always brings us home a treat when he is out of town. Usually it is just something small, but it keeps the boys okay with the fact that he is gone, because it is extra fun when he gets home. Just something he likes to do, and I LOVE it.
He went to Phoenix and brought them home gummy cactus'. He brought me home chocolate. McKay and I shared (and Josh :) and McKay has found a new love.
Well, after the diamonds were all dried I put them together with a couple of pieces of ribbon. The centerpieces cost about $5 a piece and I love the fact that we didn't throw them away after the banquet was over, we will use them every year.
So even though a lot of Blue and Gold banquets are over, hopefully someone will find this useful and have a pretty easy idea for centerpieces next year.

To display them on the tables I just punched out yellow polka dots for the blue tables and blue polka dots for the yellow tables and scattered them around.

Valentine Cards with Crepe Paper Flowers

I made these cute rosette cards to go a long with our sundaes that we gave the boys' teachers this year. They were so fun and not hard at all. The flowers are made out of crepe paper. I thought I would pass this idea along in case you needed a last minute Valentine card.
I just gave the boys some white strips of paper to color a Valentine's message on and then I glued them in after.
This is what we ended up giving our boys' teachers.
Here is a close up picture of the crepe paper rosette. So cute! I am going to be using this a lot in the future. Tutorial on how to make these is right here (meaning click on the word here...)

Today I Made...

Teacher Valentine gifts!!!!! It was so much fun. I found this tutorial here and decided that I HAD to make them for our wonderful teachers (Nicole I hope you aren't reading this! If you are I just ruined the surprise!)
Even McKay and my niece Emmalyn wanted a taste of these. They were a blast to make. Oh how I love projects!
P.S. I need to redo my poor table...a project for another day!

Valentine Idea-10 Things I Love About You!

Before I was married I WAS NOT a huge fan of Valentine's Day. Maybe it was because when I was in sixth grade Sean asked me to go with him to the Valentine's Dance, but he also asked my friend Laura to go with him and we BOTH SAID YES! In true guy fashion he decided that there was nothing wrong with having two girls to dance with. Well, I found out and was done with him! Okay I promise I am not scarred (I hooked up with Brandon at the dance and he gave me a New Kids on the Block pin, so you see all's well that ends well. And I have forgive Sean-mostly.) Or maybe it is because I was never into the whole boyfriend thing and never had any reason to like it (although there was the time at USU where my roommates and I went with 12 guys to a comedy club, that was kind of awesome). I digress, Valentine's day has always in the past just been annoying to me. Well now that I am married (to a man who puts Brandon, Sean and ALL TWELVE of those studly men from the comedy club Valentine's Day TO SHAME!), and have an eternal Valentine, I am no longer a hater. In fact I am very much a lover. It is fun to have a day to tell your spouse/significant other/kids/friends/family that you think they rock. Yes, we should do it all year round, but Valentine's Day is ANOTHER chance to do it!

I have a seriously talented friend name Kirsten. As evidence of her crafting/photography talent check this site out. She is a contributor to the site and they have amazing stuff. Well, a few years back I got this "10 Things I Love About You" book idea from her. She had done it for her husband the year before. So as I am a total good idea copier I did one for Josh. It was so fun to put together.
It would be so much easier now days to do this with digital scrapbooking or Shutterfly books (that I am a huge fan of). Here are the pages I did that you can use for some ideas, but the beauty of it is that every book will be original. It was also a fun chance to get to tell Josh all of the things I love about him.
I think it is a total pick me up on a bad day, so it could be a good idea for kids too. I will be doing these one year for my kids, but not this year...






I promise I was not trying to snub my other kids. I did this 6 years ago so most of our pictures had only Palmer in them as Lincoln was only 6 months old.



This was my 11th page that I threw in there, because I could. Josh has told me that he loves the book and reads it every now and again. It was a total success, now if I could find such a good idea every year...

The Boys' Valentine Cards

I have been DYING to do this idea for a while now. I first saw it two years ago and stored it away in my little "to do" file. Well, this was the year. I think they are the funniest thing and the boys think they are very cool.



If anyone wants to do these, just take a picture of your child like this, develop it and then you cut little slits on the top and bottom of the hand and then thread a sucker stick through it. If you would like to do all of the embellishments, I just did them in Photoshop and they aren't that hard. If anyone wants to just take their child's picture themselves and then email it to me, I would be willing to do the stuff on Photoshop for you.