Painting squash and ourselves

Beware: If you do not like messes, quit reading now.

I don't mind messes too much. Crafting with the girls is okay and I expect there to be HUGE messes.

Brian just stays away, messy isn't his kind of thing.

I had seen online lots of tutorials about painting pumpkins, which for this stage in life seemed much more doable than carving them. The pumpkins were pricey at the grocery store so I bought about 8 little different squash and let the girls go crazy on them.

How do you feel about messy? yay or nay?

Butterflies for preschoolers

I think this craft is pretty self-explanatory, but just in case, here goes:

Coffee filters (we didn't have any, so we just cut round circles out of a crumpled piece of packing paper I found in one of my unpacked boxes. Yes, still a lot of unpacked boxes here.)

Watercolors

Clothes pins

Paint the circles with watercolors, allow to dry, then clip in the middle with a clothes pin. I used scotch tape to tape them to our playroom door, but I think these would make a cute mobile too. Hm....

Watercolor heart doilies

I realize it has come and gone...Valentines Day was nice around here. Our wedding anniversary, (7 years, wow!), I made a few heart things with the girls to hang around the house.

Crayon Hearts

Watercolor doilies

How was your Valentine's Day?

Watercolors on Newspaper

Months ago I stumbled upon this idea on the internet: Newspaper Bunting.

I forgot all about it till one rainy, cooped up day. I didn't follow her instructions exactly, I folded over the newspaper and cut out triangles so that the crease was at the top.

Then I gave the girls some watercolors and let them go crazy.

After they dried I rubbed a glue stick on the crease of the triangle, folded them over some string and hung it from my mantle.

Clearly, I should have been folding laundry instead of painting, but...I wasn't. So who cares?

It is a well known fact that I decorate my home with my kids artwork. I think it makes the place look happy, don't you?

Hangy Thingies...?

It's Tuesday.

Which means I blog about the latest simple craft the girls and I have made. Hopefully these fairly simple ideas will help your days be a little easier, simpler, more fun and memorable. It's so important to keep those littler fingers busy, isn't it?

We took paper plates and cut them in half. We each got two halves to paint with watercolors. Then we took long strips of tissue paper (we had yellow and pink on hand), glued them between the two paper plates, and then hung them from the ceiling on our patio.

A little splotch of color and we like watching the ribbons flutter on breezy days.

Making these was better than spending the afternoon watching cartoons.

(Which is what my girls are doing right now while I type this. Ha!)

Making Crowns

What is there to do in that one hour between supper and bedtime? That hour is usually pretty awful around here what with a tired mommy, hyper kids, messy kitchen, blah blah blah.

Sometimes I read aloud to them but lately our very active ten month old has not allowed for that.

So...crafting came to the rescue this day.

A simple crown made out of aluminum foil.

We decorated them with crayons to keep messiness to a minimum.

Tell me: What do you do during the last (and maybe hardest/longest) hours of the day?

Any ideas that will hopefully not make the messy house any messier, the tired mommy any more tired, the hyper children any more hyper, would be greatly appreciated.

Or maybe I'm just dreaming?

Getting our craft on

Flower Fairies made with construction paper, glue, and leaves, petals, grass from the yard.

Cute, huh?

Idea found here.

Christmas craft...a little late.

I realize we're past Christmas and some of you mommies out there wish I had posted this, you know, before Christmas.

Sorry.

I have three kids.

(I use that excuse a lot these days. For laundry, for late meals, for skipping out on things...)

Anyway, it's the Eve of Christmas Eve and I didn't know what to do so we decided to craft. I would like plan on doing one every year, a tradition! I am the matriarch of traditions and that's feeling good right now.

On to the craft...I took three empty artist canvas' that I had laying around and we used them to make christmas trees out of handprints.

Lexi's hands are tiny, chubby, cute, and hard to keep still.

Then we took small circles made out scrapbook paper and glued them on, like ornaments.

Walah! Cuteness that can be pulled out ever Christmas season.

And before you congratulate me on my great crafting creativity...head over Meg's blog and see where I got the idea from. (love her blog!!)