Photo Candle for Mother's Day

I've been away, and have just realized that Sunday is Mother's Day!  Luckily I found this super easy project on the web last night via bhg - personalized photo candles - and whipped it out in no time...the perfect solution for a Last Minute Mother's Day gift.

You don't need much for this project and I had everything on hand, so it didn't cost anything.  Gotta love heartfelt gifts that are thrifty, too.  :)

  All you need is:
Candle (I had a vanilla one, which smells heavenly)
White Tissue Paper
Printer
Glue/Hot Gun

Directions:
1. Find a photo you want to use.  I converted mine to sepia tone, and dragged it onto a Word Document to print.
2. Tape a single layer of tissue paper onto a piece of printer paper.  See below.  Make sure the tissue paper stretches tightly across the paper so you don't run into printing issues.  I just taped a large piece onto the paper, and then made sure that the photo was lined up on the page on my computer so that it printed onto the patch of tissue paper.
3. Print
4. Cut out carefully
5. Because I wanted to play around with the positioning of the photo on the candle, I used a glue stick to glue the photo onto the candle.  BHG recommends using a heat gun.  I will probably do this later as I am now happy with my placement of the photo.  I am going to use a hairdryer.  The heat is supposed to melt the wax enough to adhere the photo to the candle.  Pretty Cool.

And here is the end result:  

Below, I added some raffia

 linking here

x0x

Mel

Painting with Bob The Builder

My little guy loves Bob the Builder and is always playing with his "Bob and the team" toys.  He either spends hours playing with all the vehicles (especially in the dirt outside) or he dons his Bob toolbelt and destroys fixes the house for me... such a helpful little chap ;)

So I thought he would really enjoy painting with Dizzy, Muck, Scoop and Rolly

The great thing about this project is that it uses supplies on hand:

*Paper (I have a jumbo roll which I am always using for kid related fun)
*Paint
*Apron
*Paper Plates
*Bob the Builder's Team

(I just used paint colors I had on hand, but if I had had yellow and green paint, I would have co-ordinated the paint with the vehicles.)

He really had a lot of fun with this, but I think the funnest part was cleaning up...

(which is always a good thing for us mothers)

Surprisingly, this project did not make a lot of mess...maybe due to the large roll of paper...we will definitely do this again.


update:  linking here

Easter chick cookies

Inspired by the very talented Maki Ogawa's cute little chick cookies, I decided to make my own version, and we all know how that goes....

While searching for a ball shaped cookie recipe, I found a recipe for Snowball Cookies at The Baker Who Cooks and thought the kids would love the surprise of the chocolate inside.  However, I wanted to make mini-cookies, so I exchanged the Hershey Kiss for butterscotch chips.
(I also made some non-chick cookies with white and milk chocolate chips inside).
 
Some notes on the process:
* As I was rolling the dough into balls, I realized that I could use the pointed end of the butterscotch chip as the chicks beak.

* For the eyes, I melted some semi-sweet chocolate chips in a bowl, and used a ziplock bag as a pastry bag to dot on the eyes...not the greatest method, but it worked okay.

* To make the nest, I just used the left over melted chocolate to scribble onto the plate in a nest shape.  I then put it in the freezer for a half hour or so to harden.  Very easy!

* Maki used chocolate pens to decorate the eyes and beaks...but I had never heard of such a thing...so I looked on Amazon and found this cool product - Cuisipro Food Decorating Pen,  which looked like it could be very useful.

*  The cookie recipe calls for nuts, which I didn't have, so I just omitted them. (I don't get too hung up on the details when baking, but luckily it worked out this time.) 

* The recipe also does not use eggs, which makes it a good one to remember late at night when you have a sudden craving for something sweet but don't have any eggs...and let's be honest, how often does a lack of eggs in the house thwart all plans of making a decadent midnight treat.

The kids loved the little chicks, and devoured the entire batch in about an hour.  I think it was partly because I obviously wasn't monitoring them too closely and partly because the cookies were so small it made them very more-ish and hard to keep track of how many you had actually eaten.  
Oh well, that just means no cookies for me for breakfast tomorrow ;)

Below is the step-by-step process:

1. Divide up the cookie dough

2. Roll into ball shape

3. Push butterscotch chip into the center

4. Roll the dough around the chip

5. Make sure the top end of the chip sticks out slightly to form the beak

I made some plain ones, too, with chocolate chips and white chocolate chips

update: linking here

Lego Ski Resort Fun

Like most kids, my children are crazy about Lego, and like most homes across the country, there is Lego lurking in every nook and cranny of my house.  I try to designate specific areas of the house to Lego playing, but I guess it is just not part of the nature of Lego for it to be confined to a specific space (or I guess, neither is it part of the nature of children to be confined to a specific space in the house!) ...and so Lego has just become part of the decor in our house.  And to be quite honest, I don't know what I will do with myself when part of the vacuuming experience doesn't involve emptying out the canister and fishing out tens of the tiniest pieces of Lego.   But it is all worth it when you see how Lego sparks their imaginations and that the kids can spend hours totally immersed in putting together new and different creations.

Last weekend they had grand visions of transforming our living room into a ski resort, with Lego Ski Guys and chair lifts and gondolas strung across the living room.  When their vision included large sheets of cardboard and vast paper backgrounds,  I we decided that it would be a much better idea to make the ski resort in their bedroom, where they could make their resort as large as they wanted to, and could keep it up as long as they wanted.  And it is always a bonus when one can enter the living room without unsuspectingly being half decapitated by barely visible string hanging from wall to wall to wall!


It was a very easy project - all you need is:
Cardboard
Tape
Large roll of paper
Paint
String

We had all the supplies on hand, except for cardboard, which required a quick trip to the recycle center.   We cut the cardboard into two ski runs and covered them in the paper - since ski runs are white, that was all that needed to be done.  Except, of course both ski runs had to have ski jumps, which were playmobile bike ramps that the kids taped on.

Then we rolled out the paper and painted a mountain landscape for the background.  We taped this to the shelving in the kid's bedroom and left a little shelf space for the catwalk!  Lastly, we hung the string across the mountain peak background for the gondola  and chair lifts to move along.

The kids spent hours making the gondola and chair lifts and putting together the skiers and snowboarders, which is always a good thing for a mother of four :)

update: Linking up here

Make Your Own Lego Mini-Figures

A little while ago AshleyAnn did a post about making lego mini figures with her kids... and since my boys are equally as lego-obsessed, I thought that they would love to do this too.

The boys had so much fun deciding on what characters to make.  However, we used modeling clay instead of salt dough, and I just assumed that all modeling clay hardenend, but apparently we had the non-hardening kind, and so ours never hardened completely.  Next time we will try modeling clay that hardens, but the softer counterparts have held up remarkably well.

Anyway, this is a great project to have in your back pocket for a rainy day.

All you need is:
Salt dough
Lego Mini-figure tray
Sharpie (to draw faces and details)

Felt Flower Headband Tutorial

After having a house full of boys,  I am having so much fun having a little daughter to share my girlygirl-ness with.  My little baby girl has been unwittingly immersed into a world of pink, pink, pink.  I am constantly dressing her in pink girly outfits and there is absolutely no mistaking that this baby is a girl...

And if all this pink isn't enough to clearly identify my child as female, then these pink headbands ought to do the trick!

For the dark pink headband, I followed this tutorial here but as I was hotglueing it all together, mine got a bit out of hand and I ended up with this instead. I do still want to go back at some point and try to get the same effect as icandy's very cute one.

The light pink headband was very simple and only required a hot gluegun, needle and thread, and some felt. I had a pearl bead in my craft drawer which I sewed on at the end.

1. Cut out your small petals (9) and large petals (9) - my diagram has a different amount for both, but I ended up using 9 each!
2. Pinch the ends, and then hot glue together as shown.
3. Cut out a small circle of felt (not shown) to use as a base to hot glue the large petals together in a circle. Hot glue the smaller petals together (not on a circular base, though).
4. Hot glue the smaller petals (now one piece) onto the larger petals (which are also now one piece).

Lastly, either hot glue or sew the flower onto an alligator clip or a headband.
The whole project took me less than 10 minutes!

She didn't mind having her photo taken with the first headband, but was totally over it when I tried to put the second one on!!!
The color of the second flower is a bright pink, but it looks red in this picture for some reason.

Valentine's Day pirate ship treat box

This year we decided on pirate ship treat boxes for the kids to take to school for their school Valentine's Day party. The kids had so much fun putting them together and decorating them. The great thing about this project was that they have been playing with the pirate ships ever since, so it is not a lot of effort for just one day!

I wasn't feeling very creative in the card department, and come to think of it, we should probably have made pirate themed cards to go with the pirate ship treat boxes (duh!) but we I decided on these cute cards instead...inspiration via eighteen25. 

For pirate ship tutorial click here.

How to Make a Cardboard Pirate Ship

This year we were very late with our Valentine's Day preparations.  No big surprise there!  Fortunately, since Valentine's Day fell on a Monday this year, we had the weekend to come up with a fun idea for the Valentine's Day Treat Boxes.  We wanted to come up with something a little different as our Monster Valentine's Day boxes from last year were such a hit. 

The kids love pirates, and have both had pirate parties in the past, and so the consensus was to make pirate ship boxes.  They were really easy to make.  Below is a picture tutorial of the process I used...it may very well be the internet's worst tutorial to date...but after trying a few different approaches, this is the one that worked for us.  And the kid's were able to put them together themselves with a little bit of guidance. 

*these would also work great as party favor boxes for a Pirate Party*


All you need is:
A piece of cardboard (hello, recycle center!)
Scissors
Duct tape
A thin stick or a food skewer for the mast
One sheet of printer paper
Markers and stamps to decorate

1. Cut the following 4 pieces out of the cardboard (see below for enlarged measurements)

2.  Start to assemble the box by bringing up the sides and then bringing the front 2 flaps of the ship together (see hand below).  Make sure the tab is on the inside of the pirate ship and duct tape the seams on the inside and outside of the ship.

3. Once the front is secured with duct tape, place piece C in position.  Duct tape underneath as well as around the top edges.  (I cut my duct tape length wise to make a smaller seam on top.)
As you can see, there will be a rectangular shaped hole at the bottom - you may want to try and address this before you start....we didn't end up losing any candy so it didn't matter too much to us!!
Did I mention that this tutorial leaves a lot to be desired ;)

4.  Next, position piece D as shown.  Secure with Duct tape underneath.
5.  Attach piece B.  Fold in the tabs and duct tape underneath as well as along the outer seams.

6.  Lastly, place a long twig or food skewer through the hole punched in the middle of piece D. 

Now it is time to decorate your pirate ship as well as the sail.
Finish by punching two holes in the paper, one near the top, in the center and another near the bottom in the center of the page.  Thread through the mast, and ye pirate ship is ready to sail over to yer Valentine's Day party to collect lots of Booty, me Hearties.

Ode to President's Day

Well, more of a picture ode than anything else...

Inspired by this fun powdered wig craft, we decided to celebrate President's Day in between heated rounds of Indiana Jones Wii, by dressing up like two of our favorite presidents, namely George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (and I think they are the ones whom the holiday is for...)  Although we only got as far as the head gear.  Abe's bushy eyebrows and beard are pretty horrible replicas, and while the wig looked cute on the Bubs, it didn't really fit the oldest child and it looks more like a big marshmallow hat than anything else ...I will gladly admit that craftiness is not my strong point.  But the kids did have fun wearing the hats for a grand total of 25 seconds - and thats what really matters, right.