Kindergarten Valentines

I was so excited when I found this cute idea HERE for my son to bring his class for valentines day!

I took these………….

And some paper and pipe cleaners and made……

And the backs looked like this….

And of course I couldn’t wait to see what my son thought and he said “it’s cute but the eyelashes look like a girl” lol leave it to my son.

I also made a few more gifts out of those amazing caramels for some more deserving people for Valentines day. Enjoy!

 

Now go tell someone that you love them!!

Car City

My friend Erin asked me to take a picture of this fun play mat and I thought what the heck maybe my bloggy fiends would like to see it as well. It was one of my husbands very favorite things to play with as a kid and is now one of my sons very favorite things in the world :)

This is on a giant piece of canvas and is covered in great shops, stores, and houses made of felt. And what do you need with a big car city…..

yep a giant bucket of cars.

Summer Painting Project

We decided to paint outside the other day and the rules were that we could only use things we found in nature to use as our paint brushes :0) Sticks, leaves, weeds, grass….you get the idea!!!

I thought he would love this, and I think he did for the entire ten minutes that it held his attention until a grasshopper came by and he HAD to chase after it lol.  That didn’t stop me from having fun ha ha.

Zip lock baggie Ice cream

It is finally getting warm enough around here to make a cold treat. So I decided to make my son work for it lol. Have you ever done this? I was shocked at how well it turned out.

You will need a large zip lock and a smaller one. First in the small one mix:      

1/2 cup milk (I used 2%)

1 Tbs sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla

Seal the small bag well…..Now fill the large zip lock 3/4 of the way with ice and 6 Tbs of rock salt then place the smaller zip lock on top of the ice. Next seal the large bag and get your kid to start shaking the bag.

 

 

After about 15 minutes we had this and guess what it actually tasted really good! I am sure you could add all sorts of flavoring and toppings but this time around we kept it simple :)

 

 

I Linked up here!

Inside BruCrew Life

Extra Sugary Sugar Cookies

I saw this amazing idea for adding color to regular sugar at Homemade Mamas and I couldn’t wait for an excuse to mix some up.

You use regular sugar and put it in a zip lock then add a few drops of food coloring…..

Next shake it and squish it around to disperse the color…….

After the color is mixed well dump the sugar out on parchment paper to dry out….. (Did you know you could do this? I love it)

But the fun can’t end here right?! Now you have to make sugar cookies and use the sugar to decorate them.

Do you have big plans for the 4th? Well tomorrow is my birthday so I have a good excuse to eat a bunch of these cookies and be lazy lol. And then Sunday we plan to have a BBQ with our own little fire works display. Have a fun and safe weekend!

Summer Bubbles

Hey friends! Well it stopped raining just long enough to have a little summer fun. I found this amazing idea for bubbles at How does she..... It is one of my favorite sites filled with crafts, activities, recipes and all sorts of useful tidbits. 

All you have to do is cut off the bottom of a plastic bottle and cover that large hole with a cloth or an old sock. Make sure it’s tight to the bottle, we used a rubber band to hold it up. Then you dip it in dish soap (I added a little water to make it last longer) and blow some killer bubbles.

My son did this forever and had a blast, and yep we had a bunch of extra neighbor kids in the yard wanting to check it out lol.  Do your kids love bubbles? Do you have a favorite brand or way to blow them?

The best homemade play dough and an apology

I have to start with an apology to anyone who has left me a comment and waited for a response. The entire time that I am been blogging I thought that when a comment was posted and the notification was sent to my email that I could simply hit reply and shoot a comment back to you….guess what? It doesn’t work that way :)

When a comment comes to my email it is just a notification and has a “noreply-comment” address (most of the time). I am so embarrassed that I didn’t know this sooner. So I guess what I am saying is that I always try to reply or visit the blog of every comment I get and I thought I was doing so good. If you have a question or comment that I have never got back to you about please please resend it and I promise to reply properly :) (I know I am such a dork)

Now moving on to the best play dough we have ever made……We took out our play dough the other day and it looked like this

It was hard and crunchy and yep all mixed together. So I searched some of my favorite bloggers and found This Amazing Recipe from The Idea Room.

We mixed it up and it is not only the softest best homemade play dough ever but it smells soooo good. Ours was cherry flavored yummmy!!

  Now go get the recipe and make it because you will not be sorry!

Last but not least I am wondering How do you reply to comments on your blog?

Nesting

I know that I promised an Easter gift idea and I swear it’s still coming…….. but I can’t seem to get the decorative tag just right, so when I do it’s all yours. In the mean time I couldn’t wait to show off my latest obsession.

It started with a  home made paper mache  mixture, tissue paper, and a few plastic eggs super glued together.

My son doesn’t love to have his hands super messy (I know he’s a boy what’s up with that right?) but he still had fun creating his own eggs.

I let them dry for about 24 hours. Then with some sticks, twigs, a tumbleweed, and yep that’s right hot glue I made some nests for these little guys.

Put it all together and you’ve got…….

 

And here is my Son’s version (he refused to leave out any eggs lol)

I’m linked up here:

Marbled Paper Project

I know much of the country is dealing with record snow but here where you would expect to find it, here in Montana, we are trudging through slush. As you can imagine my five year old thinks this is torture he wants it to either stay snowy so he can plan in it or dry off and warm up a touch so he can ride his bike. Anyway the point to this long boring  entertaining  story is that we have been in need of some rainy day crafts. We did this one together the other day and my son loooooved it. I got the idea HERE from a blog I can’t get enough of called Homemade Mamas.

All you need is white shaving cream, a straight edge of some kind, food coloring and the paper to transfer your art to.  Mix it around a little and press your paper on top of your colored shaving cream then remove the paper and scrape the excess cream with a straight edge like this 

Or this……

And you get really cool results like this (drum roll please lol)

This was super easy and a really good time filler. If you make your own show us how they turn out!!

Fishy Fun

I am teaching my son all about fish this week. He is completely baffled by the fact that they can breath underwater lol.

The first project I had him do was to learn about fish scales and fins….

 

The second project took a little more time and preparation but he looooved making it…..

We cut out two giant fish and then cut shapes and circles out of old magazines and glued them on like scales

Then we stapled the two together and balled up magazine pages to stuff him with.

 

and this is how he turned out!

The Best Snowman Dough (and a little bragging lol)

My son had a blast making this dough and I think it makes the prettiest snowmen because the salt makes it a little sparkly.

The recipe makes this much dough so if you want more than this make sure to double it :)

 

What you need:

1 cup salt
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup cold water
Food coloring or tempera paints (optional)

Directions:

Heat the salt and 1/3 cup of water over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. (An adult should prepare this mixture, which gets quite hot and bubbly.) Remove from heat and add the cornstarch and 1/4 cup cold water. The mixture should now look like thick mashed potatoes; stir until it thickens, then let cool for a few minutes before kneading. If the dough feels too sticky at first, your child can work in some extra cornstarch as she kneads. Add food coloring, if desired.

This dough will dry and harden in one to four days depending how thick the project is.

It will keep unrefrigerated for up to 2 weeks when stored with a small bit of wet sponge in a plastic bag or sealed container.

Here are his snowmen, cute huh?

We are going to save them and let him use them as decoration in his gingerbread house landscaping!!

 

 

Ok and now for a little begging bragging.

My Christmas card was featured on Tip Junkie and is now part of their annual contest. So if you want to vote for me they make it super easy.

Halloween Kids Projects

Are you trying to figure out what to do with your little ones all day today? I have some ideas…….

I made a promise to myself that I would post the good, bad, and ugly. To me that means I have to confess the attempts that I make that just plain flop ha ha. This was one of them. It started out as a great idea but did not end well.

I let my son cut all out several different colors of paper with punches and scissors and we made our own pile of confetti.

 

Then I wrote the words BOO in block letters on two pieces of paper (one for him and one for me woot woot). Then we painted inside the letters with white Elmer’s glue. I know you see where this is going right? The plan was to cover the glue with confetti then let it dry.

When the paper is dry you are supposed to be able to tap off the excess confetti and see the word boo. We still aren’t sure where we went wrong exactly lol. I think we will try again and make it bigger? Does anyone have suggestions on a way to make this work better???

 

One project that did work out was this cute little pumpkin we made using 1/2 inch strips of paper wrapped around a pencil (to get the circle shape) and glue dots to hold it all together!!

Happy Halloween!!