Valentine's Play Date Ideas

With Valentine's Day around the corner, my girls are asking for a fun themed play date with friends. They both have different interests but I rounded up some fun ideas that would work for either, and better yet, any kiddo!

I went to none other than Pinterest for ideas!


Heart Shaped String Art

Valentine's Day Gingerbread House

Valentine's Day Slime

Heart Puppets

Heart Suncatcher 

I can't wait to have their friends over and see what they decide to do!

Marble Run Fun!!

Part of  our Summer Fun bucket list was to make a marble run. I originally saw the idea on where other than Pinterest

This is quite possibly the easiest thing we've ever made and SO cheap! I'm talking like this cost me $1 to make!! Yes, it's not as perfect as the one I found on Pinterest, but that's besides the point. Main point here is that it cost me $1 to create hours of fun! Did you hear that? Hours of fun this has brought us so far!! When you find something like that with kids, you know you've hit the jackpot.


To make this all you need is the following:

• Large piece of cardboard or some kind of thick board (we used a piece of cardboard fromt he box our new dishwasher came in)
• popsicle sticks (found mine at the dollar store)
• Glue gun & glue sticks
• Cups

First, we cut some popsicle sticks up to smaller pieces, from there I just kind of eye balled where to put the popscile sticks on the cardboard. Using the glue gun, I would glue lines and the big kids would put the sticks on.

Seriously, this took all but 5 minutes! Once we were done with gluing the sticks, we grabbed some paper cups we had on hand and glued them to the bottom.

We worked on this when Avery was napping but made sure to include her as soon as she woke up!

 

The kids came up with the numbers to write down and every time someone gets in the 1,000,000 cup, they scream so loud, it's so cute.


And there you have it, cheap, easy and FUN!!

I hope you try this - your kids will love it!

*linking up with Jessi's Deisgn

{DIY} Pot of Gold

I'm all about making holidays extra fun for my kiddos. I enjoy giving them something special and with St. Patrick's Day right around the corner, I started thinking of what their something special would be this year.

While I was walking the isles at the dollar store I saw these tiny clay pots that came 3 in pack (perfect!) so the idea came to make them each their own little pot of gold.  I plan on setting these out for them Friday morning.

These were so simple to make, which was good because I did it last week while I was still recovering and a nice easy craft was just what I needed. Anything more complicated than this and I probably wouldn't have had the energy.

Here's what you need:

• Small clay pot (as I said, I found 3 mini ones at my dollar store. They are probably 3")
• Black paint
• Gold glitter
• Gold chocolate coins (or whatever candy you want to fill it with)

I just painted the entire pot black, let it dry, then used glue around the edge and poured the glitter over. SO EASY! I filled each one with some chocolate coins and done!! I can't wait to see their little faces when they see these Friday.

Do you do anything "extra" for your kids during St. Patrick's Day? 

*linking up with Jessi's Design & Going the Distance

Lego Travel Box {DIY}

Happy Hump Day!

A few years ago I made a lego travel box for Brayden and then with our move it got lost (aka my husband probably threw it out). For Christmas I knew I wanted to make him another one as well as one for Ella. The plan is to keep the boxes in the car so they can have something to do while we're driving.

Making these travel boxes is so easy, today I'm going to show you how

First you need an unfinished wood box - I found mine at Hobby Lobby and bought the medium size ones. (don't forget to use their 40% coupon!)

Next step is to paint whatever color you would like

I purchased these lego baseplates and cut them using regular scissors to fit on the top of the box (tip: regular legos and lego duplos work on standard baseplates)

I used superglue to secure the baseplates.

For a little extra, I used stickers I had on hand to put my kids' names on the back of the boxes.

Grab some legos and have at it! So easy, right!?

I hope you give this a try, my kids LOVED them when they opened them on Christmas and have been using them since.

*linking up with Jessi's Design

Turkey Handprint Plate {DIY}

Hello there Tuesday! I don't know about all of you, but I am in the best mood this week! The holidays are here and we have so much fun stuff coming up!

Today I'm sharing an adorable turkey handprint plate the kids and I made over the weekend. Well, technically it's a handprint and a footprint plate.

I love making these plates, you can see the one we made for Christmas 2 years ago here.  I plan on doing one for each upcoming holiday, I need to get them done before Brayden's  hands/feet don't fit anymore!




Here's what you need:

• White plate (I found mine at the Dollar store)
• Gloss enamel paint (must be the gloss enamel kind)

For this plate, I did Ella's footprint first, let it dry, then did Brayden's handprints, let those dry, and finally Avery's handprints.  Once the handprints were dry, I went back over the turkey with brown paint to fill it in. The reason I did the foot first is because I actually tried this before and did the handprints first, then the footprint and the turkey looked more like a peacock - the feathers were not coming right out the sides. It was pretty comical looking and I figured since the plates are only $1, we would try again.  I'm so glad we did!

Once the brown paint was dry, I painted on eyes and a nose. Then I went around the plate and made dots. 

Then it was time to bake at 325 degrees for 30 minutes. The back of the paint bottles actually says to wait 4 days to bake, but I've never done that and my plates have held up just fine (I have one of just Brayden and Ella from a few years ago and it's still in perfect condition)

And there you have it, a super easy and adorable momento to celebrate the holiday and also remember how little your kids hands/feet are!

*linking up with Our Pretty Little Girls

Turkey Leaf Craft

Happy Wednesday! We've been having a great week so far and I hope it continues. 

Our weather has still been amazing and the leaves are still falling off the trees. This made me think that we needed to do a craft with them which also could go with Thanksgiving. That's when I decided to make turkeys with the leaves.

Ella and I did this craft yesterday afternoon while Brayden was at a friends house (no school for election day) and Avery was napping. It was so fun and super easy and held Ella's attention very well.





Here's all you need for this craft:

• White cardstock, brown, orange and red paper
• googly eyes
• glue sticks
• leaves

We had everything on hand so this was not only a fun project, but a free one too.

First, I gave Ella the job of cutting off all the stems on the leaves.  Next, we cut out our turkey heads (I just traced a cup upside down to get a perfect circle)

Then we cut out our beaks and wattles (totally had to google what the red dangly part is officially called) We glued the turkeys head on our white card stock along with the eyes, beak and wattle.

Next it was time to grab some leaves and start gluing. Ella had so much fun with this and she did it all herself. She was quite funny though, she would not use a red leaf on her turkey, or any leaves that had brown spots on them.

When we were all done gluing our leaves for the feathers, we used a sharpie and added legs.

Here are our turkeys! This was such a fun project to do with my special girl!

If you have some leaves still hanging around, I encourage you to try this! 

*linking up with Jessi's Design

Special Dates ~ Penny Art

I finally did something crafty and thought I would share with blogland :)

A while ago, I saw this pin and knew this was something I had to make! I am working on a gallery wall for our master bedroom and this is going to go perfectly.

This was super easy to make - and literally cost me only the frame, so about $10 from Hobby Lobby. I could have used a frame I already had but I wanted a rustic looking one. For the pennies, it didn't take as long as I thought it would to find the years I needed, but I did spend some time looking for pennies of different shades.  I just wrote up everything else on word and printed on white cardstock. I used super glue to attach the pennies to the paper. Like I said, super easy.

So here it is - our new penny art highlighting some special dates in our lives

It's kind of hard to see the writing so here is a close up

This was something I put together in less than an hour on a Friday night. I can't wait to hang it up with everything else!

*linking up with Jessi

Ella & Avery's Ice Cream Social Birthday Party

Today is Brayden's first day of 1st grade and I really can't believe summer is over for him! I am going to miss being with him everyday so much, but it will be so good for him to get back into a routine (me too!)

Today I'm sharing our gals combo birthday party we had on Saturday.

We decided a while ago we would do a combo family party for the girls since they aren't in school yet and don't really have their own friends. Their birthdays are a month apart so I decided on August 20th, a little after Avery's and a little before Ella's.  Poor Ella though, she keeps thinking she is 4 now...

Anyway, I knew an ice cream themed party would be so cute because they both love ice cream so much! (I mean what kid doesn't!?)  This wasn't a huge party by any means and I didn't go over the top decorating, but what I did do turned out pretty cute if I must say :)

I made the invitations by using my silhouette to cut 3.5" circles in purple and pink cardstock, that was for the back of the ice cream.  I just typed up the wording in Word, printed on white cardstock then used a 3" circle punch to punch them out.  I glued the white cardstock inside the pink and purple and also used my silhouette to cut the cones. Easy peasy!

The only other DIY stuff I did was make the banners, which were a little more intricate that I usually do but still pretty easy thanks again to my silhouette!

As soon as we hung the banners Rick said I should have used black letters - yep, I totally should have! I didn't even think about them being hung up against our white blinds! Oh well, they were still cute, but next time, black letters

Using a giant cupcake stand to hold all the cups/cones was the perfect idea! Thanks Pinterest and Aunt Nancy :)

I bought these little wooden spoons to make it seem like a vintage ice cream social - I still have about 80 of them left, ha ha

I used a veggie tray from the dollar store to hold all the toppings and it worked perfect! Except that I left it out during the party before the ice cream was ready because we were serving food first and there were probably more little grabby hands in here than I could count, but hey, what kid could resist all this!? I barely could :)

I snapped a couple pics of the girls before the party because I knew they would not sit still once it started and would probably get very dirty! (I was right about both of those)

              

My aunt once again made the most amazing cakes!!! Seriously these might be favorite!  I made the 4 and 2 by just drawing free hand and cutting out on glitter cardstock and hot gluing to toothpicks. 

 

Some party pictures - I was kind of bad and didn't take too many!

See - little hands grabbing the candy, and I told you she would be dirty! Ha!

The weather was perfect until about 2 hours into the party it started raining and a huge gust of wind came through taking our tents with them. Everyone helped to grab everything and we moved the party inside.  I would have loved to sing and do cake outside but Mother Nature had other plans!

I love Avery's face in this picture! Both girls sure knew how special they were on their party day!

After singing and cake cutting, it was time for the ice cream social! The hubby said he wanted to be the scooper after shutting down my idea of prescooping and freezing them so they would just be ready. I must say, he makes a cute ice cream scooper :)

       

 Sisters :)

Thankfully the rain only lasted 10 minutes and after ice cream we all headed back outside.

We played pin the cherry on the ice cream and pretty much every kid cheated - made me realize I need to have a blindfold next time!

I made another pinata for the girls' party and it was so cute! Each kid got 2-3 turns and then it broke open.  This one was way less chaotic than the one at Brayden's party :)

Ella and her bestie Ava!

Best attempt at a family picture :)

It was a great, low key, low stress party and most importantly the girls had a great time! 

Source List:

Pink/White Polka Dot Ice Cream Cups 

Wooden Ice Cream Spoons

3" Circle Punch

Girls Ice Cream Tanks

Pin the Cherry on the Ice Cream Cone Game

*linking up with B Loved Boston for Weekending