I Spy Favors

Again Micah's preschool. They are always doing fun hand on activities for the kids (he's in the 4's class). Tomorrow they are having a little 'Five Senses Fair' where a parent sets up a 'booth' (table) for each of the senses with the taste sense for lunch. I got assigned the sight booth. So I've been racking my brain for some fun stuff for that. Yesterday I came up with a mini I Spy bag idea that I could make 14 of. Here is what I came up with.

To make you own I Spy mini bags you need:

*mini cellophane favor bags (I found the size above in the party section of Hobby Lobby)

*dry rice

*assorted shape plastic pony beads (I used colorful trains, airplanes, bears, stars, hearts and butterflies)

*I also put a penny and googly eye in these

*clear packaging tape

I simply printed up "What Do You Spy?" on yellow card stock paper and cut them out. Place a handful of mini objects in each bag. Then add 4 tablespoons of rice. Squeeze out the air and fold down the top 2 times. Place card stock on top and first secure the sides with scotch tape. Then tear a 2" strip of packaging tape and put tape on the front and over the top to the back. Use 2 strips to secure the entire top of the bag. And that's it!

A few of my [fall] favorite things

Getting into our fall groove here. The weather is finally cooperating and it's gorgeous! I'm working on my fall mantel and kinda going a different angle this year. A little whimsy and more colorful. These sparkly orange letters came from the Target dollar spot (along with the twine they are sticking too--they have a sticky back).

Here's one corner that's almost done. I tweak and tweak my mantels for a few days til I'm satisfied. Plus I'm working on making one of these in a fallish print (the owl one) to possibly go up there. The colorful mums are silk from Hobby Lobby and I wrapped twine around a glass vase to put them in. If you want to temporarily wrap twine around a vase (in other words, not gluing it permanently down) simply tape the end to the bottom back of the vase and tightly wind around and tape the top end in an inconspicuous spot.

Anyway, here are a few links to some of my previous years fall posts and fav recipes to make this time of year. :)

Fall decor craftiness

Fall/apple themed gift

Fav fall type recipes:

Brunswick stew and chicken tortilla soup

Apple spice muffins

Pumpkin bread and instant chai tea mix

THE best chili

Autumn leaf pie pockets

Sip an Apple Pie and visit to an apple orchard

This is my favorite way to enjoy a hot apple cider. Steaming hot, topped with whipped cream and a sprinkle of nutmeg. If you can get your hands on fresh, non pasteurized, straight from the orchard cider you are in for a treat. We just took a trip with Zachary's cub scout den to a local apple orchard and I took home some yummy cider. It tastes like someone just squeezed a sweet apple into your glass. The kids are gulping it up at breakfast. And for a special treat put some in a pot and heat with a couple of cinnamon sticks and pour into your fav mug and top with the whipped cream. It really tastes like liquid apple pie. Course if you are in a hurry and want to make just a mug for you while say, cleaning the kitchen on a lovely fall morning, just pour some into a mug and microwave for 2 mins. YUM!

Speaking of yum, while we were at the orchard, they didn't have any fresh pies on hand (least not that weren't sugar free--blech!), but they did have some fresh jarred apple pie filling. I'm so going to make some autumn leaf pocket pies with it!

And here's some pics of my cutie patooties picking apples:

Johnny Appleseed Weepuls

Micah's preschool class is having a Johnny Appleseed party tomorrow and I decided to make a little something for each of the kids. Totally inspired by Zakka Life's weepul craft I made these little apple pom pom weepuls.


You just need a few things to make these little apples. Red pom poms, scraps of green felt, googly eyes, brown pipe cleaners and stiff black felt.

Use the template for the feet on the aforementioned post. I used a ball point pen to trace on my black felt, it's hard to see, but in good light you can see where to cut. Then I used a 2" piece of chenille pipe cleaner and folded in half and twisted to make stem. Scrap of green felt for leaf. Glue all pieces on with craft glue. Glue eyes last. :)

Micah is very excited to hand these out to his friends tomorrow.

Happy Johnny Appleseed day!

Eight is Great

It's official he's now 8. I have an eight year old. When did this happen??!?
I drew a special card for his lunch box since I couldn't be there today. It's supposed to be a leopard gecko. lol

Oh and he got these fun guys for his bday. It's a pretty cool toy...they have baseball and soccer guys too. And a Peanuts video. So we'll be chilling out with pizza, leftover chocolate cupcakes and Snoopy tonight. Gotta love birthdays! :)

The Football Birthday Party~Go Team!

My oldest will be 8 tomorrow and we celebrated with a football themed party this past Saturday. He got his new jersey and all the boys and dads played flag football. It was planned to be at the park down the street and I had all these romantic ideas in my head of pictures of him playing in the green grass and the lovely trees changing colors framing the background. But alas, it rained cats and dogs all day...all week actually...and still going. So the back up was to have the party in the gym and kitchen area at our church building. It still worked out really nice and everyone had a super great time. Here's the details:

The invites~football scrap book papers and 'turf' green with the details.

Decorations~
*felt pennant garland (how to here)
*Happy Birthday sign: green poster board with painted (used a white paint pen) yard lines and used this font to print and cut the letters on orange card stock
*jersey shaped sign: cut poster board (of which I know is not the 'right' orange, but you only have so many choices in poster board) and used actual jersey laid on top as template, then used paint pens to mark stripes and paw print and used this font to print the numbers

The food~ hotdogs (bday boy's request) and grilled brats for the adults, football shaped pretzels found at Walmart, sun chips, giant dill pickles, veggies and ranch and fresh sliced oranges, apples and grapes. Of course the plates and napkins were our college colors and I covered all the tables in 'turf' green table cloths.
For the condiments I used a disposable muffin tin and those are take n toss baby spoons to dish them out.

Course lots of beverages for all those sweaty football playing boys!

Football cupcakes~toothpicks from Hobby Lobby. I made chocolate with chocolate frosting (bday boy's request again) and dabbed on a little green for 'grass'. The cool cardboard football stadium trays came from Hobby Lobby as well.

YUM!

The activities~I got 2 dozen football flags at oriental trading and the boys played a couple of games of flag football (hubby organized this part though...there were 4 teams and the dads were the quarterbacks).

Zachary made a touchdown and had a BLAST!

To entertain the sisters and younger brothers I brought our small bouncy (it was said that the younger brothers pretended to play football and took turns tackling each other lol).

And I brought a stash of crafts...loads of construction paper, crayons, printer paper, scissors, glue and stamps. When this was going to be at the park it was going to be no big deal since there was a playground. Since it got moved indoors I had to come up with something since the big boys were going to be occupying the whole gym with their games. This table seemed to be a hit.

And the party favors...I posted about already, but thought I'd contain all the details in this party post. These were plastic popcorn containers each containing a mini bag of microwave popcorn, mini candy bars, mini football missiles and mini #1 fingers. Sources can be found in this post.

I also made each boy a key chain with football beads and their name and a little hook that I forgot to take a pic of. Z just loves hanging things on his book bag. We'll probably be making some of these for Christmas gifts so I'll post on them soon. :)

Make a felt pennant garland for your next tailgating party

I've been working on decorations for our last birthday bash this Saturday. It's of course a sports theme for my almost 8 year old. Course since I am not capable of doing anything plain and simple, I am making some decorations to take down to the park (and hopefully it won't rain!!) I made a couple of these pennant garlands to hang at the picnic pavilion. They were super simple and here's how I made them:

I got those super stiff pieces of felt at Hobby Lobby in colors of all his favorite teams (not all are football, but I figured they would be colorful for the party and I will hang them in his room when it's over). They are bigger than the softer floppy kind. I started by cutting the pieces in half length wise.

Then I measured to cut the triangles. Mine are 4" wide across the top. Then I made a mark on the other side at 2" and drew my lines on both sides with a water soluble pen and cut out.

After your first one is cut you can use it as a pattern.

Then I had a big stack of triangles.

Then I used an inexpensive roll of skinny satin ribbon and pinned the triangles along the ribbon and sewed down. Then it is ready to hang!

These would make fun decorations for any tailgating party or your super bowl party in the new year!

G is for Gus the guinea pig [cookies]

It's letter snack week for me again. This time I have the letter 'G'. So I am making these cutie guinea pig cookies. I saw them in Family Fun magazine while at a kid's dentist appointment this past summer. We had just got Gus Gus the guinea pig for Kalla's birthday and we got a kick out of making these cookies. Nothing fancy, just peanut butter cookies with peanut ears and mini chocolate chips for eyes. They are fun for the kids to help make.

To make you take peanuts and cut the halves into another half for the ears.

I used the peanut butter cookie recipe on my jar of JIF. For the recipe scroll down. Form little oval blobs with your hands and space out on your cookie sheet (normally I cram a bunch of drop dough cookies on my sheets and don't care if they bake into each other, but for these pigs it would ruin their shape). Now press 2 peanut ears and 2 choc chip eyes into the dough and bake.

Variations:

Make chocolate drop dough cookies and use a licorice lace for a tail and make mouse cookies.

For an allergy free guinea pig, make sugar drop cookies (fav recipe in this post), add a smidge of brown food coloring to make tan and substitute cheerios for ears.

Peanut Butter Cookies

3/4 C peanut butter
1/2 C vegetable shortening

1-1/4 C firmly packed brown sugar

3 tbsp milk

1 tbsp vanilla

1 egg

1-3/4 C all purpose flour

3/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp baking soda

Mix dry ingredients in medium bowl, set aside. In large bowl, mix pbutter, shortening, brown sugar, milk and vanilla til combined. Add egg and mix til combined. Add dry ingredients and mix. Form balls (or oval blobs for guinea pigs) and place on cookie sheet. Bake 7-8 mins (mine actually took 10) at 375F.

And here's the star of our cookies. Gus Gus.

He's very popular around here. Six year old drags him all over. Everyone loves to hold him and feed him leafy celery.

And he's going to show and share tomorrow with Micah. :)

Here are some other letter snacks we've done:

X is for x-ray cookies

E is for elephants and egg salad

Make an easy quick cover for your old ironing board

This is the before. I think this is the same ironing board I bought when I got my very own first apartment. Kinda yucky now. So I figured I'd make a quick cover for it.

Here it is now.

Yummy flea market fabric and matches my sewing/craft room!

And here's the low down on how I made it:

First you need a large piece of fabric. I used mine on the bias to use less length of fabric (I used fabric I already had and to get it to just barely fit I had to lay the ironing board diagonally...but I think the bias would make it fit better anyway.) You also need a long piece of 1/4" wide elastic. I used a new package as I wasn't sure how long I would need.

First I put my fabric on the floor and put the ironing board right on top. I roughly cut around the edges leaving several inches around.

First I serged all along the edge. If you don't have a serger you can simply zigzag stitch to prevent fraying or sew down a tiny hem. Once edge is done, fold over and pin about an inch in. Because there are curves I found that I had to gather or pinch the fabric you are folding over to make it go around if that makes sense. Then you just sew it all along leaving a casing for the elastic to go through.

Leave a small opening at the end to pull the elastic. Attach a safety pin on the end of your elastic through all the way around back out the opening.

Now attach your safety pin to the fabric on the outside temporarily and slip your cover over the top of your ironing board.
Pull all sides of your cover around to the bottom of the ironing board and adjust til it is snug. Now pull the elastic that is hanging freely out the opening tight until the cover fits tight under the board. Carefully undo your safety pin attached to the fabric leaving the elastic on it and pin it to the other elastic as you pull it tightly and pin them together very close to the opening. Now pull your cover off.
Cut the extra elastic off and sew the two pieces together securing with several back and forth stitches.

Tuck in the opening and sew the opening down. Now place on your ironing board. Now you may be inclined to not be too hasty to put away that ironing board! Enjoy! :)

Oh and a little tip. To clean all that gunk off your iron use a Magic Eraser (LOVE this product!!). A little elbow grease and that eraser and your iron will shine again! :)

Last birthday bash for the year

My oldest who will be 8 is having a big football themed party at the park in a couple of weeks. I have dozens of football flags and pom poms for game playing. Making pennants and other decorations. Serving hotdogs and brats. And favors are these plastic popcorn holders from Target dollar spot with a mini microwave popcorn, bite sized candy bars, mini #1 foam fingers and mini football missiles. Go Team!

A chair before and after

This step stool chair is as old as I am, if not more. This used to live at my grandma's house. It was the favorite seat at the breakfast table when me and my sisters were kids. We'd fight over who got to sit in it. It is part of my fond memories of my grandma's kitchen in the mornings when my paw paw made mountains of waffles and bacon and the home of the squeeze butter I was so fond of. So when they passed away a few years back, I had to have this chair. But it needed a makeover.

So I cleaned it up and painted it white and recovered the top in oilcloth. It sits in my sewing room where my kids come in and enjoy sitting in it often. :)

A kitty shirt

When I buy clothes for Kalla I tend to just get pieces and not whole outfits because I usually suppliment with homemade stuff. There was this skirt that I got her this summer that would be more of a pain (lots of tiers) to make and worth it to buy. It was her very favorite piece of clothing. So when the catalog (Mini Boden) advertised clearance I found another in a different color. So we got it, but no shirt to match. So I made her an applique shirt to wear with it. She asked for a cat. So I searched 'cat coloring pages' and found this one to use.To make your own cute kitty tee you need wonder under lite or something similar, a tshirt, scrap of fabric and some buttons and embroidery thread. First print the coloring page. Flip the page over and trace the image with a marker or dark pen. Now lay your fusible on top with the paper side up (glue side down) and trace your reversed image. Cut out your fusible around the cat, but not on the lines yet. Iron the cat down on the wrong side of your fabric. NOW cut out the fabric and paper along the outside lines. When cooled peel the paper off. Now place your cat on the tee and iron down. I topstitched mine, but you can satin stitch if it's your preference. If you satin stitch you need to place a tear away stabilizer on the inside of your tshirt. Once sewn down you can add eyes and nose by sewing on buttons. Then I used embroidery thread to sew on a mouth. I used a back stitch. If you've never hand embroidered before, then check here for some basic stitch tutorials.