Merry Christmas in July

Merry Christmas in July! Im hoping to climb up in the attic to grab a couple of strands of Christmas lights to decorate the playroom for a couple of days, but since we have had nothing but 100+ degree weather for a couple of weeks, Im not sure I can brave it… We’ll see.

Ive been pining away for fall weather, so celebrating Christmas in July seemed about right. Especially since weather is usually pretty mild around here at Christmastime. I like to dream of cooler weather, even with crafts.

So to celebrate Christmas in July, Iris and I made a little village and some Christmas ornaments.

For the village, I used a paper plate, white tissue paper, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, scrapbook paper, green construction paper, craft snow, thin wire garland (kind of like pipe cleaners) and a couple of sparkly foam decorations (we used a candy cane, a gingerbread man and a stocking). All of this was leftover from Christmas last year!

I glued some crinkled tissue paper to the paper plate as “snow”. Then I glued scrapbook paper to toilet paper and paper towel rolls, turning them into buildings for our village. We drew doors and windows on, and glued them down on the “snow”. Then we strung the wire garland across two of our little buildings, and glued the foam Christmas decorations across it. Then I took some craft snow (wet in the bottle, but dries hard) and spread it across our little buildings. Cute, right?!

For the ornaments, I just pulled out some wood cutouts from last year and let Iris color them with her markers.

Now…. to brave the attic or not…..

Watermelon Party!

Iris asked me this morning if we could have a “watermelon party” and who wouldnt LOVE to do that?!

I started brainstorming ideas, and I found out that Ausust 3 is “Watermelon Day” so feel free to host your own watermelon party in just a few weeks!

You would think that part of a watermelon party would include eating watermelon, right? Well, thats where I like to keep you on your toes, because no, we didnt eat watermelon. Ours was sour. BOOOO!!!!

But here are the activities we did this morning:
Watermelon tambourine with a paper plate
Potato paint prints in watermelon shapes
Watermelon magnet
Felt watermelon seed game
Sang a watermelon song

First, I had Iris color the outside of a paper plate while I cut a potato and prepared her paints. She filled the inside of the plate with dry elbow noodles and beans, and we hot glued it shut. Then, of course, I drew on the cute little black seeds with a Sharpie.

Here she is trying to take a bite out of it. a “pretend bite”.

She has only done potato prints once, and it wasnt successful, but this one turned out better. She printed the watermelon pieces using the potato and red finger paint. Then she drew a green line underneath for the rind. I havent gotten to draw the seeds on yet because its still pretty wet.

Then I used some red and green craft foam! I cut them in the shape of a watermelon and rind, drew on the seeds, and let Iris put a magnet on the back. She was pretty thrilled.

This was our favorite- the seed game. I had a piece of cardboard that I glued red felt onto. I had to change it up a bit, so theres a huge bit mark at the top. Ha! Then I cut out 10 little black felt seeds for her to count, take off, put on, line up, whatever! I plan on doing more felt pieces like this and turning them into a book for car rides.

*ahem* notice the upside down plate and all the crums. She and Legend shared some banana nut bread in my room apparently…

Then we sung a watermelon song. It goes like this (sing to the toon of “Are You Sleeping?”).
Watermelon, watermelon,
On the vine, on the vine.
Green and ripe and juicy,
Green and ripe and juicy,
Please be mine!
Please be mine!

Enjoy your watermelon party!!

Easter craft for my church kids!

 

They call me “The Craft Lady” at church, and I wear this title proudly. I prepare crafts for kids 4 and under. Usually this is done on Saturday nights with “Everybody Loves Raymond” reruns and a cup of tea.

Thats not a joke. Ask my husband.

Because this Sunday is Easter, and we are having 2 services, I needed to come up with a super cute craft idea for about 50 little ones. My crafts are always really simple, since the kids dont have a very long attention span and because there are only a couple of teachers in each class. I never want teachers to get stressed out with crafts- they should be fun!

So when I went in search of a cute, uber simple Easter craft, I knew I wanted it to be playful but also give the kids a hands-on lesson in the true meaning of Easter.

Since I am teaching this Sunday, I wanted to try using Resurrection eggs for my lesson, and I found an idea on how to make my own here.

(I’ll post them when theyre done.)

But my craft idea stemmed from the Resurrection Eggs. I wanted each child to take home a reminder of our lesson, so I came up with a mini version of their own Resurrection eggs.

If you were to do this, you will need:
construction paper to print the verses and poem on
1 plastic egg per child
1 rock per egg
1 cross made out of toothpicks or pop sicle sticks per egg
1 penny or coin per egg
1 scrap of purple cloth per egg

I came up with a little poem to cut out and put in each egg.
“Jesus died, but on day three
He rose to life to be with me!”

Then for each of the items to go in the eggs, I printed the corresponding Bible verse and explanation.

Matthew 26:15- They betrayed Jesus for small coins.
Mark 15:17- They covered Jesus in a purple cloth. (I know thats a typo on my paper. I fixed it. lol)
John 19:17- Jesus carried his cross.
Matthew 27:60- The rock was rolled away. He is alive!

I put them all inside and closed the egg. It all fit perfectly, thank goodness.

This will be perfect this Sunday since there will be so many kiddos- and no glue or glitter or cutting. My co-teachers will be happy about that.

Scuba eggs, egg magnets, boiled eggs, tie eggs…

I just HAD to try dying eggs with silk ties from Martha Stewart. I got some unique ties at a garage sale for $.10, and they both had a “Cajun” theme. They had tabasco sauce, crabs, alligators, and lakes on them. That theme didnt match anything Ive ever done in my entire house ever. Thats probably why I loved them. Turned out pretty good!

 

Then I boiled some eggs for Iris to dye and glitter. This may have been a little too much for her- she lost interest halfway through. In fact, I think her exact words of exassperation were “*sigh* shiver me timbers….. Im done…”

 

I found this idea in my Disney Family Magazine, and I couldnt find it online to show, but here are ours. They are little SCUBA DIVING EGGS!!!!!!!!! Arent they the most adorabale things youve ever seen?!?! I squeeled a little. They are my favorites. I may just keep them out forever.

 

I think the magazine said they used boiled eggs. But we blew ours out so we could keep them longer. I stuck the bottom (skinny) half in egg dye, and glued a piece of stiff felt on the bottom in the shape of flippers. Then I glued a hair tie around the top, and glued little googly eyes onto a water bottle lid. I glued that to the hair tie.  Finally, I shortened a straw and glued it on the left side of the hair tie. Super easy. You could probably find anything around your house to substitute for things you dont have. In fact, we didnt have everything the original craft called for. We like to improvise.

Oh and I couldnt help myself- I used the last of the paint chip eggs to make magnets. We love.

Paint chip Easter egg garland

No posts this week! BOO! Ive been UBER sick with some nausea  that knocked me off my feet. No, Im not pregnant. (*phew*) Glad that mess is over. Now I can get back to enjoying my babies! By the way, Iris was THE biggest helper this week. She played well with her baby brother, listened well, always asked if I needed something, and even brought me a pillow, blanket and stuffed animal when I was laying on the bathroom floor. Sweet angel.

Anyway, I was finally able to sit up this afternoon, so I did a small craft. It only involved cutting paper, so I got through it.

My uncle sent me a link to a blog that had paint chip Easter egg garland, but I didnt bookmark it. When I went searching for it, I found several bloggers who had already done it, so I dont feel TOO bad for not giving credit… In the examples I saw, there were no paint names on the paint chips, but on mine there were. I dont mind it though. I kind of like the quirkiness of it.

I also saw a post on Serving Pink Lemonade where they passed on a free download for a Jesus sillouette. I didnt feel like going upstairs to the printer, so I just found an image of Jesus, enlarged it, put a piece of paper up to the computer and traced it. Then I cut out the words “He is risen” from the same piece of paper. I put them all on a piece of scrapbook paper and set it in a frame I got (and spray painted) from the Dollar Store.

Im usually not one for having pictures/images of Jesus around our house; I guess I feel that all our interpretations of what he looked like are inaccurate, and I like for people to have their own face of Jesus in their lives. But this is just a silhouette, and its a good little reminder for the beautiful holiday we will be celebrating next weekend.

Eggs, eggs everywhere!

Our church is having a helicopter Easter egg drop the day before Easter, and there will be 20,000 eggs droppd from the sky! We were all asked to fill some of the eggs (10,000 to be exact) and I LOVE filling Easter eggs, so we took some.

This morning, Legend and Iris helped me fill 144 eggs with candy. Matching candy, Iris said. She would only put orange candy in orange eggs, pink candy in pink eggs, etc. It took a good long while. But they had so much fun.

Easter Eggs in the Grass {cookies}

I GASPED when I saw this recipe over at Made and I couldnt wait to try it! Iris and I spent yesterday morning baking 6 batches of these delicious cookies, and though mine didnt turn out as green as I hoped, you get the idea. Plus, now it resembles Texas grass a little better.

I put these in some Easter baskets with a fun little tag, and delivered them to some very special ladies this morning. Eat up!!

They traveled well in the car too. No meltage. Iris snuck a couple, but other than that, they all made it in one piece.

Easter Egg Nests

I got an idea from the April issue of “Disney Family Fun” magazine, but we made our own adjustments, and came up with our own nests.

We used 3 paper lunch bags, hot glue, twigs and branches from outside, 6 eggs, paint, Elmer’s glue, and tissue paper with polka dots on it.

Iris helped me blow the eggs out. The magazine said to use hard boiled eggs, but we cant let them sit out that long!

Then I gave her the egg carton with the eggs situated inside and filled the empty places with paint. She LOVES to paint!

Then we crunched down 3 paper sacks and glued twigs and leaves around the top. I found some Easter basket grass from last year that I put in the bottom of our nests, and when the eggs dried, we set them inside!

For two of the eggs, I mixed Elmer’s  glue and water in a bowl and rolled the eggs in it. Then I tore strips of tissue paper and stuc them on. When they dried, I put them in the 3rd nest.

Oh, and with the eggs that we blew out, we scrambled them, put food coloring in them until they turned purple and ate them as a snack while we crafted.

St. Patty’s Play Do!

…or Play Dough.

Today, we went to the park with a friend, swung on swings, ate some PB&J, and played with our Gazillion Bubble, bubble making machine! Poor little Legend is feeling a bit under the weather on this green day, so he didnt care to much to be at the park.

When we got home, his fever returned, and Im HOPING its just teething. But he sat so patiently and played in his high chair while Iris and I made some play do! He even played with some for a minute, before he had a meltdown and went to bed. Poor guy. 

Here is the recipe we used:

1 cup flour
1 cup warm water
1/2 cup salt
1 Tablespoons vegetable oil (well, we were out so we used olive oil)

Heat all the ingredients on low heat, and when it all seems to resemble mashed potatoes, its done! It took all of 5 minutes. (Actually, I forgot to put the flour in until the end, so we mixed it all together in a bowl.) Then we let it cool, whipped out some cookie cutters (the Christmas ones are Iris’ favorite) and had fun!

Here is the bow we won on a Facebook Auction!

Here is Legend laughing- you can see all 4 teeth. At least he wasnt ACTING sick! For the time being…

I let him play too, but I had to plug him up so he wouldnt eat it!

Happy St. Patty’s Day!! And happy 9 month birthday to my little man!

Happy Earth Day!

I love Earth Day!

I wrote a blog for the company I work for here in honor of today, so check it out!

This morning, Brandi and I took the girls to the Outlet Mall.

We wanted to take them to the Disney store for 2 reasons. One, kids get a free hat today when they recycle 6 cans or bottles. And two, it is my FAVORITE STORE EVER!!!! I turn into a little kid and get more excited over the fun stuff there than most other people. Nathan always laughs at me because I twirl through the store singing the fairy tale songs along with the tv in there. *sigh* I love it.

Anyway, Iris recycled her water bottles and got a hat!

Then I bought THE cutest reusable tote bag normally $20. I got it for $5.

And I used it to get all my baking stuff today because our big bake sale for March of Dimes- Team Hippies for Healthy Babies is this Saturday at the Sam’s Club in Round Rock!!! On the list to bake: chocolate chip cookies, double fudge brownies, peanut butter cookies, sugar cookies, popcorn monster bags (cutest ever!) and homemade fruit rollups!

Let me just say, I have been working on these fruit rollups for over an hour and it seems like they are going to take much longer than the recipe said. Actual cook time is 8-10 hours, but I cant get the consistency I need! I’ll post the site that I got the recipe from after Ive made them and I know they work. lol

We also have a recycling pick up service in our neighborhood, but my problem has been that the big 30-something gallon recycling bin is in the front yard, and I dont like walking out there everytime I have a water bottle to recycle… I also have 3 smaller recycling bins in the garage, but I dont like walking to the garage either. I even started leaving all my recyclables on the counter top until the end of the day, but it just turned intoa  cluttered mess. I needed something convenient so it would be easier for me! So I cleaned out underneath our sink. One side has my cleaning products and the other has a recycling bin. And it is already half full for the day. By the way, I just started using more GREEN cleaning products with hesitation because Ive always been skeptical of whether or not they clean better than the “other stuff”. From my own experience, anything Greenworks is AWESOME. And I just started using Seventh Generation dish detergent, and I loooooove it! It doesnt leave soap stains on my dishes. And its pretty inexpensive!

Before:

After:

While my fruit rollups are trying to cook, Ive also been going through our PILE of paper and mail, getting ready to put it all in my convenient little  recycle bin, and I have a TON of plastic shopping bags. Ill save some of them for dirty diapers and turn in the rest!

Its a nice day today, so we arent running the AC- just fresh air and open windows!

I love the earth. I love its beauty. I love its Creator. How are you celebrating today?