Our Crafty Corner...

 

 The kids and I have been tucked away inside a lot this past week with the cold weather and rain oh and even some SNOW....is this really April or is this an elaborate April Fool's joke? While we have kept up with our reading and board game playing, we have still needed something to keep our hands busy and I figured we would try something out with what we had on hand. I grabbed a couple corks, a knife, eye screws, old magazines and some mod podge, then we were ready to create.

I cut the cork into 7 pieces (depends on how thick you want the pieces) and then let the kids screw in the eye screws into each cork and search through magazines for whatever they wanted on their corks. Optional items are markers and a circle hole punch to color the cork and make cutting easier but they are not necessary.

Some were colored and some were left blank but once the pictures were ready to be put on, they just needed a little modpodge first and then place the photo and then another coat over that. So simple and so fun! We had a blast trying to find pictures small enough and we had a few mistakes, which made the whole process even more fun! All in all, this could be done in no time or you can drag it out even longer! We had so much fun that the kids keep asking me to have some more wine so we can have some more corks! Hahaha! 

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Book Page Table Runner

It's FRIDAY! It's FEBRUARY! Time to get my act together. Here is another Free Book Project! We made a book page table runner as decor for our book exchange party. This one was so easy and has the most impact. It's wonderful. We plan on tea staining it in the near future but for now, it's beautiful. 

As I stated last, a free book goes a long way! This book was old and already had lost pages and many loose pages hanging out. As much as it hurts to do this to a book, I knew this one was destined for the trash as it was missing too much but I knew this would extend its life a little more. 

This project is so easy, even the Littles got involved. All we needed was a roll of craft paper cut to length, torn pages and a glue stick! Once your Kraft paper is all cut out, just have the kids start gluing. The reason this is so perfect for children is that they do not have to be glued on in any order or direction AT ALL! Just glue and pat down. 

When we were finished I laid it all out on the floor and had the children walk all over it, hop all over it and even sit on it to make sure the pages laid flat and stayed secure on the paper. 

We put it on our dining room table to see how it looks and it's perfect!!! I cannot wait to see it out as decoration for our party. So much fun and excitement with all these new projects that one little book can make.

I still have more projects to post, I have just had a sick Little at home and he is passing it through the family. One day, I hope we will all be healthy at the same time!!!

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Delightful December day 6! Caps Caps Caps

Hello friends! I trust your weekend went well. It was busy as always but still fun. I cannot believe how chilly the weather is getting here in the midwest, I just may have to break out my Winter coat soon! After our Thanksgiving getaway, we put up our Christmas decorations and got ourselves into the Holiday Spirit! The children each have their own Christmas tree and we decided to let them make their own this year! We have quite the cap collection from all of our crafts, that i decided we would create ornaments with caps!

We gathered stickers, glitter, markers, mod podge, my hand drill, paper clips or pipe cleaners (for the ornament hook) and covered our work spaces with mats (I bought several packs of flexible cutting boards at the dollar store!)

Drill a hole at the top and then place your pipe cleaner or paper clip at the top for your hook and get ready to decorate! Use markers to draw your design, stickers as the centerpiece and then mod podge over them! Add the glitter into the mod podge to make your ornaments sparkly!

They dry super fast and are so much fun!!! Enjoy your week everyone!

Delightful December day 5! Wordy Ornaments

Another day in December is here and we are having so much fun exploring our craftiness together as a family. As many of you all know, I love to make even the smallest of activities a lesson in learning! There are so many ways to have fun and still educate yourself all at the same time! This small ornamental project was going to be a lesson in spelling! I wrote lists of Christmas Words on index cards and gave 1 to each child. They also had bowls of Scrabble Tiles on their tray.

The idea was to spell out each word on your index card and place them on your tray in any order you would like, so long as it still spelled the word properly. This part seemed the most fun to them as they explored their letter bowls, matched up tiles and then went on to spell words that were not on their cards.

They then searched my charm collection to match up charms for their ornaments and we glued away happily! We listened to Christmas Music and talked all about what the CHRISTmas Season means to us and how excited we are for our Lord's birth! We made many ornaments that can double as gift tags and even some that will be given to teachers and coaches!

Making Snakes and Carnaval Masks!

 While studying Brazil, we also learned about the many animals living in the Amazon! One of the creatures the kids fell in love with was the Anaconda! We set out to make some awesome snakes from HERE, we just made our own spin on it! We went with keychains instead of pins and used the colors of the Brazilian flag, so that they would be able to keep those colors in their heads with the pattern repeating itself.

The kids had so much fun making them, that instead of just clipping them to their backpacks, they had a little fun first!! We ended up making 6 of these and they already gave away their extras. I hope you get a chance to make them, they were so fun and easy too!!

Making Masks for Carnavale was easily the BEST time for the little ones! We used straws and paper plates. We didn't use a template, I just explained to them what we were doing and I did mine first. Afterwards, I gave them safety scissors and let them do it all themselves! While uneven, they still did a great job!

Yes, I can buy already made masks for fairly cheap that allow the kids to glue and paint them, but I figured they would get more out of making the entire thing! 

Next step was to paint the masks in an array of colors, I told them the brighter the better! Everyone had fun with this part! Including me! haha! I love getting involved with the crafting.

After letting them dry for 24 hours, we started on the feathers! WOOHOO!! There were feather bits everywhere in the playroom for quite awhile afterwards! hahaha. We just used regular school glue and adhered them.

Now it was pose down time! See the Rainforest leaves in the background?! They didn't want to sit still for this photo! They were ready to dance and play!

Hope you enjoyed this peak into our Virtual Vacation!

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A told B and B told C....

Today the kids and I hit the pool, but as the temperatures sky rocketed to the high 90s, I knew they had to get inside. I was hoping to push a nap, so I started reading a book. As they began to recite everything I read, I knew they were not going down. My gears got turning and a few foam pieces later, we had a working storyboard to go with our favorite book! Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! 

The older two loved taking turns reading the book, while the youngest would act it out with the letters! Everything is made of foam and completely removable, so that they can  anything they want to it! Best part is that it all stores in a freezer bag!

*HOBBY LOBBY happens to have Craft Foam on Sale at 40% off this week!*

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Our Summer Bucket List!!

Our Summer Bucket List!

This Summer is going to be one to remember! We have so much planned and even more unplanned! I found a blog that was talking about doing a bucket list of things that you would like to accomplish this Summer and I figured this was right up our alley! We have 93 days of Summer, so I will have a list of 93 items, even though some are ongoing and we can do multiples in one day. I just like the thought of 1 fun thing for every day of Summer Break!
1. Go Around The World!
2. Go to the Children’s Museum of Rockford
3. Children’s Museum of Chicago
4. The Zoo
5. Science and Industry
6. Petting Zoo
7. Small Town Carnival
8. Have a beachside picnic
9. Take a train ride somewhere new
10. Camp under the stars
11. Go to the Mall of America
12. Have a yard sale
13. Make a new friend
14. Field Museum
15. Planetarium
16. Spend a lazy day on a pontoon boat
17. Build a robot
18. Make a wishing tree in a local park
19. Volunteer
20. Go to the Aquarium
21. Be Super Heroes!
22. Make Smore’s over an open flame
22. Catch fireflies late at night
23. Go to the drive in
24. Make our own ice cream
25. Have a lemonade stand
26. Go on a date downtown with my husband
27. Purge each of our rooms of 50 things!
28. Go on a scavenger hunt
29. Have a huge water gun fight
30. Go Berry Picking
31. Go to a large Farmers Market
32. Make Wind Chimes
33. Join the Library Summer Reading Club
34. Take a Trolley Ride
35. Spend a day at the arboretum
36. Go Bowling
37. Play Miniature Golf
38. Go to the Children’s Theatre
39. Lego Land
40. Listen to a professional Outdoor Music Concert (ravinia)
41. Fly a kite
42. Go puddle jumping in the rain
43. Let the kids plan a full days meals
44. Make Jewelry to give to someone else
45. Fall in Love
46. Take one photo every day of our activity
47. Train Museum
48. Jelly Bean Factory Tour
49. Camp out in the living room
50. Make Soap
51. Go to an Amusement Park
52. Do a LARGE puzzle throughout the summer
53. Find Chic-Fil-A near my dads house
54. Eat every single meal outside in 1 day
55. Family Game Night
56. Make a 100 link paper chain to be ready for the first 100 days of school countdown!
57. Play with ice in a wading pool on a hot hot hot day
58. Create an entire outfit from thrift store finds (everyone picks their own)
59. Take after dinner walks
60. Go to the water park
61. Go to the splash park
62. Go to an outdoor movie at the park (not the same as drive in)
63. Go on a nature hike
64. Write letters to friends and family (at least 8)
65. Have a movie marathon on a rainy day
66. Get REAL Italian Lemonade
67. Go to the SEARS TOWER (I will always call it that)
68. Go to a baseball game
69. See a civil war re enactment
70. Play with paint
71. Play with clay
72. Bake Cupcakes and give them away! (Take to Daddy’s work)
73. Go to church every Sunday
74. Go to the Butterfly House
75. Go to a farm
76. Take a class
77. Meet friends for ice cream
78. Go for sushi
79. Read books outside
80. Play in the pool!
81. See my grandma
82. Go on a road trip
83. Watch the sunset
84. Go on a boat tour
85. Roller Skate
86. Race Go Karts
87. Race Remote Control Cars
88. Play at a new-never-been-to play ground
89. Visit the Japanese Gardens
90. Kidnap Nana and hang out with her for a day
91. Kidnap Grandpa and hang out with him for a day
92. Build a fort
93. Go on a bike ride


That’s it! We did it! I have so many more ideas! hahaha!!!
Do you have a bucket list? If so link up in the comments! I would love to read everyones!

ETA:
Okay, I just can't stop! I want to do more!
94. Build a Giant Sandcastle
95. Make Lollipops
96. Make hotdogs over a fire!
97. Have a YES DAY!
98. Make a hummingbird feeder

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~Michelle!~

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Car Ride!

As I shared in my EASTER post, I like to have car kits for the kids, since we are in the vehicle a lot! Waiting in parking lots, driving out of town for the weekends and so on and so forth. Today, we are headed back from our long weekend getaway (left Thursday) up to Northern Wisconsin and several other stops along the way. I found all of these great books UNUSED at charity shops and garage sales and never paid more than .59 for them! The kids saw me putting them in a car basket and already can't wait to get their hands on them!

What do you have in the car for kids?

~Michelle!~

For the Birds!

My youngest and I read books about birds and then we took our binoculars outside and watched for some as we lay on our backs and stared in the sky! We wondered what it would be like to fly and where we would go, Disney World (me!) and McDonald's (him!). We marveled at all the colors that could be found on birds and even visited a pet shop to look at birds that could be kept as pets! Upon coming home we started our craft of the day!

We dug around in our bucket of CAPS, CAPS, CAPS and found one that belonged to a trail mix bucket and we were ready to roll! We were going to make a bird feeder! We waited until the big kids got home from school, so that all could be involved in putting in the seed and hanging it up!  Let's hope we get some birds!

Share a link to your homemade bird feeders in the comment section please!!

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Craft in a Minute! Easter Crosses

 Today we made a quick craft to go with our Stations of the Cross readings and also as something for Easter. How simple is this??? Clothespins and glue and paint! That's it!! Just make sure that an adult takes the clothespins apart, just in case the springs are a bit difficult. It will take 4 clothespins for 1 cross.

Do you have any quick crafts to share????


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Craft in a Minute!

 

You Need:

Scissors, Crayons, BLACK Duct Tape, Box

I am forever getting packages in the mail and looking for creative ways to use the boxes. Today after Roman and I gave the water table a good scrub down and waited for it to dry, I decided to start something new! I am putting together a busy bag to keep handy everywhere we go and I like practical everyday things for our bags that can easily be replaced if lost or broken!

I took 1small box and scissors, BLACK duct tape, white crayon and got to work!

First I cut the box apart at all the creases and then put tape on the pieces anywhere we wanted, then I handed Roman the white crayon and he dotted the roads! ALL SET! A match box road that can easily be moved and switched around, since there are so many pieces!!

Roman having a blast with just one part!!

He played for an hour when I first finished and after school when he showed Gabriel, they played for HOURS!! On cardboard and tape! Best part? If it gets broken it's no big deal we can make more!! I love sharing crafts with the kids that cost next to nothing to make and showing them just how much they can enjoy them!

Gabriel joins in on the fun!!

I am hoping to do one of these in a shoe box, with velcro sides that fold down and then they can add the extensions still the box can hold the cars, some houses and trees and signs and the extension pieces! I will then add a handle to make it portable. This is our next project when we get a bigger box around! My supplies always comes in tiny boxes.

Tape can be found at Michaels for under 4.00, go to ww.mycraftcoupons.com and get a 40% off coupon for the tape! Save more!!

*NOTE* We tried chalk, but it just wore off with use, which is why we went with crayon!

Easter Alphabet Game!

This fun Easter craft was an easy project for my 3 kids and I to do together in 1 afternoon! It's a fun game that can be used multiple ways!

You will need:

~Scissors

~Alphabet Stickers (or really neat handwriting!)

~Card Stock

First, I printed out eggs on card stock (3 different sheets) and handed the scissors to my 6 and 5 year olds so they could get to work cutting them out (great practice for cutting on the lines).

As they were being cut out, my 3 year old and I stuck the letter stickers on them in a pattern. First I had him create the pattern using the 3 different papers and then we played eye-spy in order to find the letters we needed (I spy a P) and stuck them on! All Done!!

Games We Can Play:

1. Pattern Practice! We can organize the eggs by patterns, ignoring the letters on them.

2. Alphabet order! We can put them in alphabetical order.

3. Word Play! We can spell easy sight words

4. Clothespin Match Up! We made these eggs with lower case letters, so that they could be matched up to our upper case letter clothespin game!

Enjoy and link to your Easter Crafts!

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