Backpack Buddies and more kids crafts and activities

The kids have been making these Backpack Buddies lately. Z found them in his Highlights magazine (Feb 2009) and loves clipping things to his backpack. So he made himself the alligator (the clip with the big white teeth). On a roll, he helped K make the butterfly (I supplied the coffee filter) and Micah the blue ladybug. This morning when I got up (the kids get up before me...6am) he showed me this Dora one he made for his littlest sister (this 2 year old LOVES Dora....we don't have regular cable and don't have Nick Jr, but some old videos she watches over and over). Then he made the Boots too upon her request. This is what I absolutely LOVE about having organized the kids craft materials. Every morning that is what they are doing when I get up. Drawing, coloring, cutting, crafting.

But speaking of crafting with kids, I have a whole list of projects and activities I'd like to do with them this summer. Wonderful tutorials and inspiration in blogland. Here's what's on our list so far:

*a kid version of these cardboard horses which we'll probably add a horn to make unicorns and much use of glitter probably...K will love these!
*Black opal mining
*clay geckos
*more of these totes for gifts
*my kids would get a kick out making a bunch of these Weepuls
*clothspin windchimes

We might make a roly poly terrarium again too...just for the summer (or til the kids get bored with it).

And I want to make this awesome Family Yahtzee game. The kids would get a kick out of having their faces on a game. Extremely awesome idea!!

I also have a few ideas of my own. Will share when we do them! And more sewing tutorials coming up and parties!

For now I'm headed to COSTA RICA in the morning! Seven days with just hubby. My awesome MIL is watching the kids...they will be totally spoiled I'm sure!

See you guys in a week!

The countdown begins!

Micah has been anxiously awaiting his next birthday. Especially since Maressa's birthday passed back in Feb. We have a big no-birthday lull this time of year (least in our immediate family) and waiting for the summer time birthdays are hard. Especially for a 3 year old who doesn't get the 'it's 4 months away!' answer. So now that we are closer I made him a calendar to mark down the days since his birthday is at the end of June. I made this calendar in Microsoft Publisher using their clipart online. I put a picture on the date of his party and on his actual birthday. Then I made paw print stickers to put daily on his calendar to mark each day and hung it all up on the fridge. Now he can see how many days left easily and will hopefully deter more 'how many more days mom?'

Got his invites done (I'm leaving for 7 days this Friday, so wanted to get a head start so I can mail these when I get back). I used clip art and pictures from this site for the paw print template and bones.

And we've got all the supplies. Super cute plates and napkins. Big headed dogs, candy bones and squishy balls from Target dollar section (got these when they had all the Easter basket stuff there and they reminded me of dog toys) that I will put in brown paper 'doggy bags' for the favors. And dog bone bandannas from Hobby Lobby for table decoration. Just need to collect some large dog bowls from the Dollar Tree to put all the snacks in (if you use dog bowls for your party of course always use new and clean, when you are done donate them to your local animal shelter!). I plan to make puppy ears and dog 'collars' for each kid to wear too and a fun dog obstacle course...more on that later. I am super excited about this party. The theme is fun and perfect for my little dog loving boy! Hopefully it won't rain like last year!

Way out of my comfort zone

I'm not sure how it happened. I can't recall when exactly I lost my mind and agreed to make this bridesmaid dress. I wanted to help. I learned a great big lesson. This dress is McCall's 5804.

Ok, I sew a lot. And til now thought myself pretty good. Boy was this humbling and I have a great respect for you guys who truly know how to do this and do it well. I make TODDLER clothes and I need to not forget that next time. Granted I have a whole pile of me clothes I want to make (Weekend Sewing) but nothing like this fitted zipped up the back dress. With lots of additions to the original pattern. Piping, trim along the bottom hem and then full lining and a big fat zipper up the back (I've never done a zipper before, or piping for that matter!)

LOTS of blood, sweat and TEARS. Can't tell you how many hours went into this dress. I ripped up most every section at least once and did the zipper about 8 times. I don't even want to touch my machine right now...or the seam ripper!

Learned lots of stuff. But NEVER again. I'll just stick to cute little ruffle pants and twirly skirts thank you very much.

Just Because

Well, I feel I barely survived this week! But I managed to make some rice krispie treats to console my stressed self. Not a great idea on my part. ;)

But all is back to normal (if you call it that). K has bounced back, hubby is home and that dress is just about done. I am really really struggling putting in the zipper. This dress has a full lining and piping across the middle. I can't get it in straight or without some puckering (mind you I've never done this before) so I've called in some reinforcements to help. Should get done this afternoon.

Z has half day of school today and we are going to the awards ceremony where he should get 2 awards, one for reading 100+ books in the Reading Olympics and one for straight A's.

We have a pretty unscheduled weekend ahead (aside from daddy taking K on a date tonight and a cub scout hike tomorrow if it doesn't rain) and I hope to get hubby to help me with some house projects. We leave for Costa Rica a week from today! So I need to get the house ship shape for MIL who will be staying here with the kids. :)

Have a great Memorial Day weekend everyone!

Swinging into Spring

It's been a long spring here in the deep south. Normally we go from high in 50's in early March straight to upper 80's/90's. Instead this year we have had so much rain! and many 'cold fronts'. Right now it's a whole 57F outside and windy (but sunny at least)!
In between all the rain we've spent time getting in some fun warm weather activities in.LOVE this seesaw rocker from HearthSong. Perfect for rocking action from 1 to 3 kids! It was a grandma gift for one of the kids one year.

And trips to Brewster's for ice cream.

And picking 'beautiful flowers'. I love this picture of my sweet girl in all her 5 year old glory. :)

And we've spent a lot of time at the ballpark!

Bringing along our favorite toys of course.

Today however, is blah. We are less one Daddy (business trip), sweet K is sick with fever for the 4th day. And I have an impending deadline for a bridesmaid dress I've been asked to make. We have baseball this evening...and edited here of previously posted plans.....so I'm looking for someone to take Z man to his game. Poor Kalla has now spiked to 104.5 and feels really terrible. We have a doc appt at 3:30. Please pray we don't have the flu.........

On a brighter note, my 2 and 3 yera old just cleaned the playroom all by themselves of their own idea!

Need a sweet and salty fix??

White Chocolate Popcorn

This stuff is dangerous but convenient for a fast fix since I always have the ingredients in the house. To make your own, microwave a bag of popcorn and pour in large bowl. Melt a couple of white chocolate bark squares in a bowl in the microwave. Drizzle over popcorn and toss. Enjoy!

Happ Weekend!

Making a Toad House

A couple of weeks ago, Zachary made this toad house at cub scouts. It was a fun project that all the boys loved. First they painted a terracotta pot in camouflage colors. When they dried and we took them home, you then dig a small hole in your yard and put the pot in the ground on it's side. You put a leaf in it and a small shallow plastic dish close by with water. It should attract toads. This project was from the book Wildlife Gardening. It had many many kid type projects for making habitats for all sorts of creatures that are beneficial to gardens. I want to get this book soon and do some with the kids this summer. Next we are making the ladybug habitat with a 2-liter bottle and some corrugated cardboard. :)

Speaking of things to do this summer. I would love to hear your creative ideas on how to entertain the kiddos in the summer (esp when it's really hot all the time). Now that my kids are getting a little older, and enjoy/are used to the routine of school and all the activities involved, I want to be prepared to keep them from getting bored/killing each other. So I'm brainstorming now. Some givens are the children's museum which we have membership and the play water fountain outside, Chickfila play breakfasts (when the play area is empty and before it gets too hot), going to the duck pond downtown with an aresenal of stale bread and the library.
So what are your plans/projects for the summer (aside from the pool--we don't have a membership--I'm not ready to take 4 little ones by myself esp since none of them can swim yet--we're working on that)? Just day to day ideas if you have any! Thanks! Oh and I'm talking about 7/5/4/2 year olds. :)

Teacher Gifts done!

We've finished and given out all our teacher's gifts now. The above is for my 2 middle kid's preschool teachers. We did mini stamped cubes and notepad covers as mentioned in this post. I let Kalla draw a picture of her and her teacher on the outside of the covers and she wrote a note on the top page of the pad. Micah stamped his covers and cubes.

We put all the gifts in gift bags and included these homemade chocolate candy apple molds. I found the molds at a local candy/cake decorating shop. They are flavored almond and super yummy (if you flavor your chocolate be sure to use the oil based flavors and use just a teeny tiny bit!)

Next year I want to make one of these personalized initial hand sanitizer. I love the way these look and practical too!

End of the Year School Parties

I had 2 today for both my preschoolers (boy was that something to juggle, but hubby was there to help/trade parties half way through). Micah's 3 year old class had a Luau themed party. In this particular class I swear that every mom brings gifts/party favors and the kids totally rack up. I am no different, so I brought little sand pails, beach balls and wind up water toys for all the kids. Everything is from Target. The beach balls in the dollar section, and the pails ($.99 each) and wind up toys (came 2 to a package so I split them up, one per kid) on the back wall behind the toy section. I used paint markers to put the kids names on them (that's Micah's fav part!).
I brought dessert and made large hula bear cookies for the kids (their class is the 'Busy Bears'). Faces are done with melted chocolate, snowflake sprinkles make their lei and royal icing for short, skirt and flipflops.

Now we are home, all partied out and napping. Good but hectic morning.

:)

Make a 3-D flower applique

I'm going to show you how I made this flower on my tshirt dress (see previous post).

First, take a strip of fabric you want it made from and draw 5 (or 6) 'U' shapes with a fabric disappearing marker to make petals. The longer the petals, the bigger the flower, these are about 2.5" long.

Now sew along all your lines, securing the threads at each send of the 'U's.

Now cut carefully around the petals leaving a small amount of fabric around seam.Turn them all inside out and then pleat the ends and sew to secure.

For the middle of the flower, cut a piece of thin cardboard the size circle you want. Now cut the fabric bigger than the cardboard, enough to turn the edges under. Now very carefully with a hot iron, iron the edges all over the cardboard circle. This might take a bit of patience and be careful not to burn your fingers. Once all ends are ironed down, slip the cardboard out and iron again reinforcing the edges and turn over and iron flat. You should have a fairly neat circle now with all edges tucked under. Put aside.Now secure all the petals to your dress/shirt/skirt/pants that you are sewing it to either by hand stitching or a couple of machine stitches. You will want the ends to overlap to be sure they will hide under your middle circle you just made.

Now topstitch your circle center on the middle of the petals and you are done!

These would look so cute on so many things...even purses and totes! If you want to make it into a pin, simply sew it down to a piece of coordinating felt and trim the felt on the back around the circle stitch. Then hand sew onto a craft pin.

Make a simple tshirt dress with a ruffle hem

Here's a tshirt dress I just whipped up for little Maressa. Tshirt dresses are the first thing I started making when I had my first girl (now almost 6 years). They are so simple and you can do them in all sorts of fun fabrics.

To make your own, you start with a tshirt and length of fabric.

I cut my tshirts 2" below the bottom arm seam for toddler sizes (for sizes 5T and up I'd add an inch or 2 depending on taste. I like a princess seam across the dress hitting right under the child's chest. For the skirt I usually take a dress my daughter is wearing that I like the length on. I measure the side seam of the dress from armpit to hem. If you do not plan on adding a ruffle, use that exact measurement (the 'extra' 2" will

go into the bottom hem and the seam of the tshirt and skirt.) For toddlers I use just the width of my fabric as is. Or you can measure the tshirt and do 2X the width of your shirt. If you want more fullness/gathers add more to your liking. Ok, does that make sense?

Once you've figured out how big to make the skirt fabric piece, sew together the side(s) and finish seams to your liking. French seams work nice if you don't have a serger. Now you are ready to do your hem. Following is a ruffle hem, but rick rack and contrasting fabric and bias trim like in this tutorial is nice too.

To make a standard folded ruffle hem, first cut strips and sew all seams together so they are all connected. To figure out how to cut your strips, the length is 2X the width of your skirt. Depending on how big you want your ruffles is how you cut the width of your strip. I made 2" ruffles so my strips were 5" wide. So you should do double the length you want them to be plus 1" for the seams. You still following?? :)

Once all seams are sewn (no need to worry about finishing these seams) fold them in half wrong sides facing.

Now sew a gathering stitch. Start and reverse your stitch then change your stitch length to your highest number (longest stitch length). I like to go seam to seam then make another separate gathering stitch. So I have 2 total gathering stitches and I gather each 'side' separately.

Pull your stitches gently to gather.
If you are like me and have only 1 seam in the skirt I personally put the seam on the side, so I mark the other 'side' and I fit the ruffle to the seam and mark.
Once gathered to fit the skirt, pin and sew.

On front of dress, topstitch the ruffle down.

Now follow previous directions for gathering to gather the whole skirt.

Now you want to pin and sew the skirt to the shirt. Here's how I put them together. Turn tee wrong side out and keep skirt right side out. Pull the top of the skirt gently through the neck to the inside edge of the tee.

Gently fit the skirt to the tee being careful to not stretch the tee. Pin and gently sew. Finish your seam and it's ready to wear!

I will post the tutorial to make the 3-D flower applique on Mon!

Also, I had said I wanted to do a giveaway when I reached 50 followers. Well, I want to do a surprise custom type giveaway and life has gotten to be extremely busy and stressful this month. So look for that the 2nd week of June when I get back from my much needed vacation (sans kids!!)

PS. The fabrics are from Hobby Lobby and also seen in this post. :)

Bring in the Sunshine and some more glitter playdough!

These are supposed to be rainbow cupcakes. Not how I envisioned, but I still like them. I made these for my daughter's Everybody's Birthday Party at her preschool. It is namely to celebrate all the kids who have summer birthdays. It has been so yucky and rainy here I thought I'd cheer everybody up with some rainbows and sunshine.
To make your own colorfully frosted cupcakes simply make your frosting (the recipe I used to follow) and divide into separate bowls and color different colors. To get bold colors use the paste food colorings.
Now take your pastry bag (I like to stand mine in a tall glass when filling it) and glob the different colors in your bag and then pipe onto your cupcakes. You'll find that your cupcakes won't likely get all the colors on each one. These cupcakes would be great tie dye cupcakes and a smiley toothpick for a 60's themed party (how to do custom toothpicks at bottom of post).

Now just a little warning for those of you have 2 year olds who are effective with a stool...
and tempting chocolate cupcakes cooling on the counter....

don't leave them too close to the edge! Notice my little stinker didn't eat just one, but dug her little fingers into 3 before she was caught!

Here's the recipe I used to generously frost 24 cupcakes:

Almond Buttercream Frosting

2 sticks of butter, softened

6 C powdered sugar

4 tbsp milk

2 tsp almond extract (or substitute vanilla for vanilla flavored)

Also to make sunshine toothpicks I used clipart online (Microsoft) and copy and pasted to a document the amount I needed and printed on cardstock. Then I used a 1" hole punch to punch them out and then used double sided tape to attach them to both sides of a toothpick.

And lastly, glitter playdough can be for boys too.I made up some glitter playdough for the kids in Kalla's class and made the pink for the girls and blue for the boys. :)

Things to do when you are stuck inside avoiding the flu!

Ok, so we have cases of swine flu in our area. Little kids at that. So Wed night we receive a call that the schools were all closed Thurs and Fri. And guess what. Everything kid related was closed. No ball games, no music, museums closed, libraries closed, etc etc. Thursday was nice and the kids played outside. Friday, the flood rains came. And Daddy is working long hours and the weekend. So one tired mommy and four stir crazy kids and lots and lots of rain.

So, here's what we came up with so no one got hurt. ;)

To avoid cabin fever we went to a local coffee house in between the severe storms. Smoothie and muffin was shared among the kids. Books were read and some checkers were played.

Then we came home.
And built a giant fort (Micah kept us amused calling it a 'pork'...guess it kinda fit our situation at the time though!).

After we played in that a while, the girls totally wrecked it (and wreckage still sits in the front living room as I type). Then we played hide n seek. Love this game with the kids. I can load the dishwasher or fold laundry when it's my turn to count and nothing like a little quiet time for mommy while hiding in my 'super hard spots' then scaring them when they get close.

Saturday we played some legos.

Then we turned the kiddie music up loud and danced.

Then made our own pizzas for lunch...they are pretty boring with that though as they only like cheese on them.

After naps (3 of mine still nap regularly, yes I know...it's totally awesome!) we crafted some of our teacher's gifts. And worked on the Mother's day books.

That night Daddy was home and I took Micah to a friend's bday party while the others were couch potatoes watching the Derby and some Nascar. (The Derby was for Kalla and Nascar on for the boys).

Then Sunday Zachary had a thing at church and a friend brought him home who stayed to play some Wii and indoor basketball.

We survived. They are back to school today...for now at least. And the sun found it's way back. And there's baseball tonight. Holding my breath to just get the next 3 weeks done and then summer break!