Sunday, November 21, 2010

Kid's Craft - Handprint Turkeys

I have been watching our chiropractor's little boy on Fridays since February in exchange for our monthly family adjustments and a sweet discount on supplements :) I didn't really need to but being the frugal person I am it is REALLY hard for me to turn down such a great deal! Besides, Kyan, the little boy I watch is just 3 days older than Evie so its good for both of them to have that play date for practicing socialization - especially since they are so opposite in some respects. Anyhow, I have been meaning to do more "crafts" and learning activities with them but truthfully I am either too wiped out to bother by the time Friday hits and just take advantage of the playmate or I am running late (always! one of my worst character traits - I'm working on it) and don't have time to grab the stuff I need before we rush out the door. But FINALLY, this Friday, I had an idea that came to me as I laid in bed the night before that didn't take much for supplies so even though I was running a few minutes late (again) I ran and grabbed the stuff. And I was sooooo glad I did too! Poor Ky was really not wanting dad to leave him (they have been really busy working on a new office space they will be opening and he of course wants to see him instead of us)... To try to calm him down, I brought out some big paper and E's safety scissors and markers and after refusing them for a few minutes, Evie got him interested and he tried out the scissors and after a bit he was just telling his dad bye with no anxiety yay!
ha, just a cute drawing by Evie on our way over to Ky's - its been really neat to see her starting to have the control to draw actual shapes. of course she can't very often draw what she wants, but she is drawing stuff that resembles something :)

Okay, so on to the craft...
You will need:
paper - I used brown paper that had come in a package but white would
scissors
markers or crayons
glue stick or tape would work
child's hand

-Start by tracing your kiddo's handprints (one or both) on a sheet of paper. With my not quite 3 year old subjects, I found that lightly holding their fingers in place as I traced to keep them from moving them and creating a fugly turkey shape.
-So, then once you have the "turkey" handprint traced, you can either just cut it out or you could let beforementioned kiddo color it. I just cut them out since they were on brown paper.
-Then give the remaining paper (or a new sheet of paper if you don't have much left) to them with a bunch of crayons or markers or whatever coloring medium you prefer and let them just go to town! I tried to get them to do some orange spots for the beak and red for the "gobbler" (the part that hangs from their chin) but mostly just let them go. It was funny to see how they each chose different colors. Evie used a lot of purple and Ky was more into the orange with zero purple :)



 Then I just drew a "feather" template and retraced it on the colored paper. I made it a very basic leaf type shape and used 8 for each hand print. I didn't want to cover up the handprint shape so I glued the tail feathers behind the fingers and then I used the other four and overlapped them to make a wing.
This is one of Ky's, I put his up for decoration on a big mirror hanging in their family room. Also, I apologize for the photo quality for the above pictures, I brought my sls but left the memory card in the computer at home. Oops. So I used my phone camera.


See all of the purple in Evie's? :)
So, there you have it. I thought afterwards that it would be cute to make them into "puppets" with a popsicle stick too.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

What I'm Listening To...

Okay, so I am going to have to admit in this post that I really like the Twilight series... mostly the books (I like the movies as a visual version but always come away frustrated with all that they change or have to leave out because they can't make a 6 hour movie). Anyhow, to try to defend myself :) I have to say that I like that they are PG-13 type books and Stephenie Meyer does a great job of writing to make you feel the emotion of the characters and they are great love stories. I don't care that its vampires - meaning that I am not going to go read/watch anything related to vampires because I enjoy this series, thats not why I gravitate to them. After reading them, I have gone through a classical literature phase (still in it actually). I read Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park all by Jane Austen; Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Evelina by Fanny Burney, and now I am just starting Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. I really liked most of the Austen novels because they had a happy love story ending, I was really torn while reading Wuthering Heights because it is so dark and tragic, I liked Jane Eyre and Evelina. After reading a lot of these older novels, I see a lot of similarity themes in the Twilight books.
So back to the title and reason I started this post. I have been listening to the music scores from the movies and it has reminded me of how music can be such an emotional thing even when there are no words. I have often wondered if we "learn" the emotion of certain types of music or if we are born with that ability. Like, say I grew up on a desert island with no exposure to music, would I have the same reaction to a piece that I do now? Just wondering...

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Cute baby gift set from tie dyed t-shirt

I actually started this project back in.... hmmm, I don't remember when. I'm pretty sure it was last winter... or fall... sometime. Anywho, I had come across this cute tutorial for refasioning a t-shirt into a newborn baby gown at This Mama Makes Stuff (go check out her blog - she is really talented and a really neat gal!). Okay, so I mostly had the gown completed (just sans elastic) and then hung it with all my onsies and toddler t-shirts waiting for some embellishment.... and it just hung there. Fast forward to this fall... my friend Katrina (her blog is Pics, Pages, & Purls) was due at the end of October with a little girl, so in my quest to make her a unique baby gift I brought out that gown in waiting.

since I used the existing hem on the t-shirt I couldn't just thread elastic through the bottom so I decided to give shirring a whack and this is what I came up with (btw I would never have figured it out if I hadn't found a shirring how-to specifically for drop in bobbins on newer machines here)

shirred the sleeves too

the newborn cap was made from one of the t-shirt sleeves so I could use the existing hem again :) I just traced a hat I had on hand and serged it up - then I made a fabric flower and hand sewed it on
*to make the flower I just used a scrap of t-shirt that I twisted and handstitched together as I wound it in a circle

these mittens were actually my second attempt, the first ones I tried using 1/8 in elastic and somehow they just didn't work and were way too big, the shirring worked much better
then I made a bigger twisted fabric flower and sewed a safety pin to the back for a removeable fabric flower

baby Aspen modeling the cap

Evie "holding" baby Aspen - I can't believe that Evie was that small (well a couple inches longer and a few ounces more)

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Fall Leaf Crown by EviesGrandma

So, we had been having a rough week with Evie before Halloween weekend. I don't know what the deal was, but she had hit some crazy, cranky, ornery stage and I was short on patience. Sooooo, my sweet mother took me up on coming to get her Saturday to stay overnight with them and we would come over Sunday after church and leave after she did her annual candy handing out (and when we went to get her I forgot my camera so I don't have any pictures till I can steal them from my mom's camera). D had to work on Saturday and Grandpa and Grandma didn't get on the road with her till 6:30pm (ish) so we didn't have tons of time but we did get to go see a movie Life As We Know It (cute but don't forget there has to be a sad part for the guardians to need to take care of the child - just sayin'). Anyhow, while Evie was at Grandma's she made her this leaf "crown". She had made one for my niece Violet too and it started out as a necklace but then she ended up being happier making it into a headband type crown.
can you tell Evie was super excited to model it for me

supplied needed:
*faux leaves
*elastic cording (the kind used for jewelry type crafts - much thicker than elastic thread)
*big hand-sewing needle

Meeasure around your child's head, multiply by 2 (the added bulk of the leaves keeps it snug), then all you do is thread your elastic cording on your needle and sew on as many leaves as you like, then sew back through them all a second time and tie off the cord! Thats it!

Sunday, November 7, 2010

It was a good day! (and a recipe for sidewalk paint)

Saturday started by D getting up with Evie and letting me sleep in! Then Evie was sent up to tell me to come down for breakfast and they had coffee for me (which meant a venti white chocolate mocha from Starbucks). When I came downstairs D got me breakfast (biscuits and gravy to go) and my coffee treat. Needless to say it wasn't super healthy, but it sure was yummy! Then we headed down to Costco to purchase our Christmas lights for the outside of the house - first year we will have them up since we have been married!
So proud of D! He got it all done, we even have it hooked up to a fancy schmancy timer!

Evie wanted to paint and I wanted to be outside so we made some sidewalk paint!
(super easy 1/4 c cornstarch, 1/4 c water and 6-8 drops food coloring)
bathtime, then some Nemo Go Fish with daddy (she requested to wear a shirt like daddy's which she said was her favorite shirt in the whole world)

sooooo pretty! now the hard part will be waiting to turn them on for a week or two... we'll see how that goes :)

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Fun Homemade Window Stickies!

Over the last year I have accumulated quite a bit of dimensional fabric paint (which I will refer to hereafter as "puffy paint" - come on people, lets call a spade a spade). Almost all of it was hand me downs! Yay for free stuff! Some was from people who had gotten it for a specific craft and didn't want to keep it "just in case" and a big chunk was from my sis in law who had gotten it from her grandma who has been trying to purge her stash of sewing/craft stuff. I started out thinking I would use it for freezer stencil shirts, but I have hardly used any of it and the other day an idea just popped in my brain! It was actually something I did for the first time a long, long... long time ago when I was in high school. We had to carry around these little organizer notebooks for school that had our schedule, assignments and other stuff written in them. Well, they were laminated and so I used some of my momma's puffy paint (hey this was the early 90s) and drew some stuff on the cover. Fast forward to when it had dried and I found that it peeled off and would restick just the same. I had some more that I put on my mirror in my bedroom too.
So, I have not thought any more about them for 15 ish years and it was such a fun idea! I am also currently testing one of the ones I made on the painted wall in a bathroom that I want to repaint anyways. Just in case. They stick to walls great too, like those vinyl wall appliques, but I don't know if they would yuck them up in any way. I did seek D's paint expertise to see what he thought and he said his main concern would be if the paint was loose or peeling on the wall they could peel that off, but if that's not a concern then he didn't think it would stain or leave any sort of residue. Nevertheless I am doing a test case :) UPDATE: after only a couple of hours on the paint wall, the owl had REALLY adhered and was very difficult to remove. It also had tiny specs of the wall paint on it. So, I guess that is not a good option :( oh, well. I will let you know if I come up with any more ideas on that front.

Okay, on to the how-to part of this. Really its pretty simple so let me know if you have any questions that I didn't cover.

Supplies List:
~ puffy paint in desired color(s)
~ non porous surface to paint on (I used an 8x10 picture frame from the dollar store - this worked great for printing text to trace), you could do this directly on a mirror or window just make sure its clean first
~ tissue or rag to wipe the tip of your paint bottle
~ scrap paper to do a test "squiggle" on so you don't start writing/drawing with the clear liquid that separates out or a big clot




Once you have all of your supplies lined up, get started! As you will see in the pics of the owls, I used a layering technique with the different colors and to give it some depth but you could also do a color by number approach that would be like you were coloring a picture in a coloring book. This is something I am going to try for my next window stickers because then they would look good from both sides. Also, make sure that you make it thick enough so that when dry it doesn't tear easily.

layer one - a bit bumpy but its the first one - I've wondered if there would be some way you could "iron" these to press them smoother


after about 2 hours of dry time - you just want the surface to be set so it doesn't mix with the new color, so you could probably do more like 30 minutes but I wanted to be safe

finished and waiting to completely dry - I just followed the bottle directions of waiting 24 hours after I finished it before peeling off the glass
*to peel off the paint surface, I used my fingernail, but you can use a razorblade or other thin object to slide between the paint and the surface, then just gently pull up at an angle across the sticker (ex: I started with the owl's ear and pulled towards myself, not straight up)
 
I printed out Evie's name in a cute font and put it in the picture frame then just painted over the letters

another cute little guy, Evie requested a purple one

stickies in action - she spent most of the first day moving them all over and they held up really well, no tears yet!

 Let me know if you try this! I would love to see what you come up with!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Night Eyes at the Zoo

We went with D's mom and dad and younger brother to the zoo for Night Eyes.