Countdown to Thanksgiving

I love crafts. Always have. When I pictured myself as a mom I pictured lots of hands on crafts with my kids. So when my oldest boys were big enough to sit at the table I started planning all of these fun projects to do. I quickly realized just how hard it is to complete a project with two toddlers! Needless to say, it started to be fewer and further between that I let my boys in on my crafts because it just felt more like work then fun. But now that they are 4 and 5 I really want to make more of an effort to get hands on with them. And thanks to Pinterest, I have a LOT of ideas to choose from!

The holiday season is a great time for crafts. There is so much inspiration to draw from. We decided to start with a Countdown To Thanksgiving craft (thanks to Make and Takes for the inspiration) that will help us get excited for the big feast as well as remember what we are thankful for each day. This was a great project to do with my kids because it only involved a handful of supplies and they were able to help with each step.

I started by cutting out the body, the head, the facial features and the strips for the feathers. Jordan got to draw on the eyes and glue on the beak, waddle, and legs.

Nathan got to write Happy Thanksgiving on the body.

They both got to trim the strips of paper into feathers.

 Now I have seen this project where you start with all of the feathers and then take one off for each day as a countdown to Thanksgiving. I liked the idea of adding a feather a day so that you end with a full bird so we are going to do it that way. Each day I am going to ask each of my boys what they are thankful for and write it on the feather before adding it to the body. At the end we will have a nice keepsake to look back on:)

Since we didn't start this until November 5th, we had 5 feathers to catch up on. It was sweet listening to my 4 year old say first that he was thankful that God and Jesus loved him and my 5 year old list his brothers as what he is most thankful for. I look forward to the next 19 days not only because that means Thanksgiving is here and we get to celebrate with loved ones, but also to hear each day what my little guys are thankful for in their life.

Pretty Pasta

This last weekend our internet was out for 48 hours which ended up being a total blessing. I am well aware that too much of my "down time" is spent on the internet but having absolutely no access to it reminded me just how much time it can steal in my day. The blessing in it all was that I took full advantage of my time and did things like prep food for the upcoming week, tackle some projects I had been meaning to get around to, as well as creating some fun crafts with my kids.

I had recently snagged a free subscription to FamilyFun magazine which is put out by Disney. If you have the opportunity to get this, you should! I wasn't sure what to expect but when my first issue came I was instantly hooked. There are lots of great craft ideas for kids that are easy, inexpensive and totally fun.

One of the craft projects we did this last weekend was from the August issue and it was called Pretty Pasta. It involved dyeing pasta and then using it to make colorful necklaces. My oldest son helped my dye the noodles while my middle son napped and when he woke they were dry and ready to be strung on necklaces. It was lots of fun and they are already asking if we can do it again and create new colors. I think next time we are going to glue the pasta together to make animal sculptures.

Here is what you need:
dried pasta (I used rigatoni, it would be fun to use different shapes and sizes)
vinegar
food coloring

That's it! For each color you want to create use a Ziploc bag to mix 2 tsps vinegar with 10-12 drops of food coloring. Then add 1/2 cup of pasta and shake to cover. Let these sit for 5 minutes, shaking occasionally.

We tried green, blue, and red

Adding the pasta

All shook up

This is what it looks like during the 5 minutes. Don't worry, it gets brighter when it drys.

Next you want to remove the pasta from the bags and let them dry on paper towels. After 15 minutes, turn the pieces over and leave them until completely dry.

Once they are dry you are ready to string them. Take your first piece of pasta and tie it onto one end of the string and then let your little one string the rest on in any order they please. This is such great work for little hands and older kids will have fun playing with different shapes and colors to make patterns.

See how bright the colors got once they dried?

The finished product - don't mind the outfit, we had a pajama day (but the shirt does match the necklace!)

I am excited because my September issue of the magazine arrived today so I am sure there will be more kids crafts in our near future. What kinds of crafty projects have you been doing with your kids lately?

"Hands Down Best Dad" project

This weekend is my husband's birthday and on top of the coveted XBOX 360 game I got him, I also wanted to give him a more meaningful gift from the boys . After some brainstorming and browsing through the stuff I had laying around I came up with this project I have titled the "Hands Down Best Dad" project. Simple, cheap (or free in my case since I had all the supplies!) and thoughtful...my 3 favorite qualities in a gift.

 Here's how I did it:

Supplies:
*Picture frame (any size will work...pick something that will fit your project)
*Ribbon
*Paint
*Lettering - I used my Cricut for this. You could just as easily use stickers, vinyl letters, stenciled letters, etc.
*Hot glue and a glue stick
*Paper - Something to put it all on. I recently ordered a huge roll of pattern paper for making sewing patterns. It is kind of see through so I also used some cute wrapping paper behind it that slightly show through. You could use card stock, wrapping paper, etc. I also used construction paper for the lettering.

Get Started:
1. Cut whatever paper you are using to fit the frame. This is the wrapping paper I used behind the pattern paper:

2. Paint your kids hands and press down onto paper (Can I tell you how hard it was doing the 8 month old's?):

3. I did a strip of ribbon above and below the hand prints to frame them. Cut two even strips and use hot glue to adhere to the paper (I only glued the ends, I would recommend a dot in the middle of each strip also to keep it in place):

4. Now to do the names by the hand prints. Be creative here! I wanted to match the polka dot theme I already had going to I used red, green and blue construction paper along with my Cricut and cartridge punch set to create the boys' names:

Used my Cricut to create perfect circles

Punched the boys names into the green and red circles using my cartridge punch set

Glued the red and green circles onto the blue ones for this multi-color look

Their names applied to the paper with a glue stick

5. Using my Cricut, I cut out the phrase Hands Down Best Dad and applied to my project:

6. Finally, I put it into my frame (polka dot wrapping paper first, hand print paper on top):

I am really pleased with all of the color in this project. So much more fun than a basic hand print. We couldn't wait to share this with daddy so we opened presents earlier this week and he loved it!!