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

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

Handprint American Flag

The other day we made a giant handprint American Flag and I LOVE how it turned out.

I am all about the handmade/homemade cheesy decorations - they are what I love to fill our home with.  I'm so happy we now have this to add :)

With 4th of July around the corner, this is fitting perfectly in our house!


All we did to make this was buy a giant foam board at Hobby Lobby (I think it was around 2$ with a coupon) - we already had the paint at home so literally all I spent on this project was a couple bucks!

I first painted out a corner where the stars (aka Avery's hands) would go - after that dried, Avery went first, then Ella did the top and 3rd row of the stripes and Brayden did the 2nd and 4th - the whole thing took us less than 15-20 minutes to complete and we did it outside to avoid paint everywhere :)

My kids loved making this!

getting our craft on

Last week when Miss A was sleeping, Ella and I got our craft on.


I thought it would be fun to make a St. Patrick's Day & Easter craft using paint and marshmallows.


The first thing we made was a rainbow and literally just dipped giant marshmallows into paint and went around the paper.

Give this girl paint, and she is in Heaven! 

Next up, I took some white cardstock and hand drew an egg shape then added lines from top to bottom.  We filled in each line using the marshmallows and paint. 

Once Avery woke up I decided to make a shamrock with her handprints because I have one of the other kids' at a similar age. She was SO excited to have the paint on her hand and obliged so well when we put it to paper. (I think Brayden cried when I painted his hands for crafts until he was 3 LOL)

The new artwork is now displayed on our new artwork holder (just a shower rod from Ikea!)

And here's a sweet picture Brayden made for me.  The long green stuff coming out of each end are the leprechaun's ears :)

Happy Crafting!

Valentine's Day {DIY} picture frame

If you know me at all, you know I have a love for crafting, and I try with all my might to pass this down to my kiddos.  They are pretty into it so I think it's working so far :)

Each holiday I try and have them make something for their grandparents - just a little something, nothing crazy.

This year I had them make these adorable puzzle picture frames.  How cute are they!?! They were so cute I needed one for our house too!

Brayden painted the red pieces and Ella painted the pink ones and Brayden wrote the saying. Even though I wanted to, I did not help the kids one bit and I think they turned out perfect!

I wish I could take credit for something so creative, but I cannot.  If you want to see how these are made, check it out here


** a couple of things to note - I went to Hobby Lobby and Michaels and couldn't find this white unfinished puzzle and ended up finding them at Walmart.com and did site to store pick up.  I also used smaller popsicle sticks rather than the big ones, I liked how the smaller ones looked.


Happy Crafting!

Kid {DIY} Ornaments

We've been whipping up Christmas crafts over here like it's our jobs, but one of our favorites is making ornaments.

This year Brayden and Ella could help and do more of their own ornament and it was so fun to make theirs with them!

Little Avery just supplied me with her handprint and I painted and decorated the rest - now she has her own little reindeer handprint to go on the tree



Brayden made snowmen ornaments - look how cute they turned out!!

I drew the outline of a snowman on white felt and Brayden cut them out - then I cut the hats out of black felt.  Brayden added buttons and pipe cleaners for the arms and we glued a picture of him on the head.

Ella made snowflakes - so easy and so so cute!

She first painted all of her Popsicle sticks white, once they were dry, I super glued them together to make the snowflake.  Ella then picked out the buttons and we glued them on together.  I then added a cute picture of her in the middle.

And Avery's reindeer handprint is definitely one of my faves! I just love preserving little hands so I can see them again year after year!

I discovered an awesome way to make handprint/footprint ornaments a few years back after my homemade recipe was always cracking.  Crayola Model Magic is my little secret - you just roll out how much you need and press their hand/foot into it and let it dry overnight. It works great!

Happy Wednesday!