Stained Glass Kite

While S was napping today, A and I made a "stained glass kite." I saw the idea posted on Google + from Make and Takes. I followed their link which had step-by-step instructions. We pretty much followed it to a "T."

Rainbow Wreath

I had been wanting to make a new Spring wreath for awhile. I wanted to make something that the kids could help with, was made from things we already had on hand, and that was colorful for Spring. A couple ideas had come to mind, but none that really grabbed me. I did see some that I really loved (and still do), but they weren't ones easily made with the girls' help. Then I came across this post from the Nurture Store blog. It was just the idea we needed for our wreath! S did the red, yellow, and blue handprints, and A did the orange, green, and violet handprints.

I put the paint on the lids to glad-ware containers.

The girls each had a side of the paper to do their handprints. 

I used hot glue to attach the handprints to a cardboard circle. Then, I sprayed it with an acrylic sealer. It wouldn't normally have done this, but since we hung it outside I thought (hoped?) that it would help it last longer. It is after all still paper. 

The completed wreath on our door. I explained to the girls that it is paper, and that paper isn't really meant for outdoors. Our porch does have an overhang to keep it mostly dry, but it isn't completely blocked from the elements. We decided to still take a chance. We are about five days out now, including some days with wind and rain, and it is still looking good! Hopefully it will last awhile!

Family Dinner Book Club - The Day The Crayons Quit

I discovered a great idea of doing a family dinner book club on the blog, Growing Book By Book. I decided to try it out for the month of February. It was so much fun!

The basic idea is each month Growing Book By Book will choose a book (alternating each month between a picture book and a chapter book). In February the book was "The Day The Crayons Quit" by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers. I thought this was a cute and funny book! The girls seemed to like it, too. Mid-month, dinner ideas and decorating ideas are provided by Daisy At Home and Enchanted Homeschooling Mom (respectively), and questions are provided through Growing Book by Book. You can choose to do as much or as little as you want to make it work for your family. We followed the general ideas for the decorations and the dinner (some minor adaptations), and we used most of the questions this time around.

Here are pictures of our table decorations/setting:

Here are pictures of the making of our homemade pasta noodles (first time ever making our own noodles)! We chose to only do the green-dyed pasta instead of the orange and the red/purple as well. We wanted to keep it simple since it was our first time. Sadly, while we got many pictures of the process of making them, we did not get any after it was done. We made the alfredo sauce from the same site. It turned out delicious! We had colorful fruit, a salad, and some french bread to go along with it.

 #throughglass

 #throughglass

 #throughglass

 #throughglass

 #throughglass

 #throughglass

 #throughglass

#throughglass

Here we are at the dinner table:

#familydinnerbookclub #fdbc #growingbookbybook 

A "Dinomite" Valentine's Day

I came across this list at one of my favorite blogs I follow, Fun At Home With Kids. A creative, candy-free list of Valentine's ideas. I showed the list to A, and she chose to do the dinosaur and volcano one (I was excited myself to do that one, too). A is in two classes at school, so this meant 2x the number of valentine's required. This meant we needed to start early - I am SO glad that I did! All of the cutting and printing and volcano-mix making didn't seem too bad spread over a few weeks. 

Our supplies and printouts. 

Storming army of dinosaurs.

A pouch of volcano mix. 

Heart-Shaped Crayons

I saw this great list of candy-free Valentine's cards for kids on a blog that I follow on Google+. Within this list was an idea to make your own heart-shaped crayons. While we did not choose to do this for our Valentine's this year, I still really wanted to make them - what a great way to repurpose the broken crayons we have everywhere! After a trip to the local hobby store to buy a heart-shaped silicone mold we were able to try it out. S and I collected our broken crayons, peeled off any remaining labels, and then I cut them into smaller pieces. We distributed them between each heart of the mold. We put them in the oven at 200 degrees for five minutes (which was the lower temp setting and time that the person who's post I link to used). For our oven, we ended up doing another 10 minutes or so. I increased in 5-minute increments. You definitely need to watch closely - it goes from not quite melted to liquid in a flash. After letting them cool, we peeled them out of the pan and voila - we had heart crayons!

Before we put into the oven.

Our finished project. 

 

Heart Sun Catcher

S and I did a really simple, yet fun craft the other day - we made tissue paper sun catchers! I saw various posts around of how to make these (from snowmen to circles to other shapes).

We simply took clear contact paper, cut into the shape of a heart, peeled off the backing, and then applied small pieces of tissue paper to the sticky side until covered.

Ta-da!

I asked her to hold it up for the camera. It cracks me up every time - she literally holds it up. :-)

Her one lil' eye peeking through.

I used a hole punch to put some ribbon through so that we could hang them up in the window.