Celebrating Thanksgiving with Preschoolers

On Tuesday at Munchkin Academy we celebrated Thanksgiving with...

The first Thanksgiving story acted out with puppets, Thanksgiving decorations, Barbies, toy horses and play food.

Colored "I am thankful for..." pictures

Apple Turkeys

The Chipmunk Thanksgiving Clip on You Tube

and a fun Activity Page

I also loved these ideas, but didn't have time for them...

Dinnerwear

Leaf Stamping

Enjoy!

Name that movie...

"Am I to understand my children are running around in old drapes?"

I have caught a terrible case of the DIY redecorating bug. It's bad I tell you. This last week I poured over color wheels, compared paint swatches, read flipping houses blogs, kept HGTV on 24/7, watched DIY flooring installation videos, priced flooring, and bought fabric for new pillows and French door curtains. Kyle just rolled his eyes at me when I presented my redecorating plan (I know, I now realize my timing was terrible. Yes, it was mean of me to unveil my plans the week before finals.) BUT, his involvement will be kept at a minimum. I decided to start small and simply make a few new pillows for the couches and French door curtains. It's pathetic, but we've had these horrid paper blinds up over the French doors in the entry way for ummm....nearly 6 years. It's terribly embarrassing. In fact, I think that's what caused the infectious re-do bug in the first place. I was fed up with them. On Friday I took the initiative, made the curtains, bought the hardware this morning and then Kyle helped me hang them tonight. They look amazing. I'm super pleased with how they turned out! I haven't finished the pillows for the couches yet, but the fabric flowers for them are all made...I'll post pictures of them when I'm done. Here are the French doors.



I forgot to buy new knobs to replace the "classy" gold ones. But that will be an easy fix!




Before I hung the curtains I had them draped over the couch. I was changing Ally's clothes (for the second time that day) and realized I had the perfect backdrop for a naked baby! I grabbed the camera and tried to snap a few pics, but she would NOT sit still. So I ran and grabbed a lollipop (that just happened to be blue) and she gave me a total of 1 minute for a few shots.





Along comes Spencer, eyes Ally's lolly and says, "You can take my picture and give me a lollipop after I'm good!" (Are my kids trained or what?) Haha! Okay Spence.



I had two out of three, guess I'd better pull the third one out for a quick shot before the curtains are up on the doors forever. ;)



So there you have it...the kids' photo shoot with curtains. What can I say? I'm thrifty.

Crafting

Here are my latest crafty achievements...

Last September I was nesting like cuh-RAZY and decided to make Ally's crib bedding. The crib bedding I had with Janelle was a hand-me-down and I didn't keep it when we moved to Texas. I bought new crib bedding for Spencer but it was blue and white. This time I didn't want to spend the money on another new set, so my options were to use Spencer's or make it. I opted to make it. I finished the bumper pads, crib skirt and pieced the quilt together before Ally was born...but I never got around to finishing the actual quilting. Fast forward 5 months...I was all ready to try and quilt it myself about a month ago when at the last second I decided to just let my mom's friend quilt it for me (she has one of those huge quilting machines). I got it back this week and it turned out beautifully!! I LOVE it! I still might make one more decorative pillow, but here's the mostly finished product...finally!

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A couple of months ago Janelle's art projects and papers from school were out of control. She likes to keep EVERYTHING. I actually have to go in her room while she's at school and clean out all her millions of drawings, creations, spelling tests, reading assignments, etc. and throw them away. Because her room was such a crazy paper mess, her homework would get lost. I got so sick and tired of it that I decided to buy her a bulletin board so we could organize things a little. She's allowed to keep as many art projects as can fit on her bulletin board. She also pins her spelling and math assignments (that she does throughout the week and are due on Fridays) up there so they don't get lost. I wasn't a huge fan of the ugly brown cork board...so I painted the frame white and then modpodged scrapbook paper on it. Janelle loved it!

4th of July Decor

Janelle had a friend over all afternoon, so Spencer needed something to do. I'd seen this cute handprint flag idea at Her Cup Overfloweth, and knew it would be the perfect project for Spence.

Hand painting.

Hand stamping...with tongue sticking out of course, because it was such hard work holding still long enough for Mommy to take a picture!

(Excuse the undies shot...he spilled grape jelly all over his clothes during lunch and I thought it was just stupid to put clothes on him for a painting project.)

Add a dowel and a little ribbon, and oila!
Handprint Flags!

I thought they turned out adorable, and now we're proudly displaying them in our living room!

Kiddie Crafts

The fact that I can't get out and do anything, or even get around my house and clean has kind of in a way been a blessing...kind of. I honestly didn't think about it that way until just this morning. Instead of getting out or cleaning, I've been spending my mornings with Spencer reading books, building train tracks, coloring, doing little crafts with him, and yes, watching tv with him. (And not all those things in the same morning...like one or two of them at the most!) Last week I ordered a math and language (not foreign, just spelling and reading stuff) book for Janelle to do over the summer and was browsing the preschool stuff and found two cute books for Spencer. One is an art book and the other is a numbers book. I was going to wait until the summer to start them, but he was so excited about them when they came in the mail that I decided to let him try them out. They're really basic, like coloring 2 ducks for the number two, or gluing beans on a letter A. But they are perfect for his level, and he loves them! So we've been doing some pages here and there throughout the week. He can now recognize the numbers, 1, 2, 3 and sometimes 4. My friend, Crystal also found this really cute blog that has fun art projects and meal ideas for preschoolers, so we tried a few of them as well.

(The following pictures are from my phone, so they're not the best, but you get the idea.)

This is a garbage truck we made on trash day. Spencer is obsessed with trucks, so this was the perfect project for him! We even ended up making two of them!

Spencer's little friend Hayden came over this morning, and we glued multi-colored eggs onto big letter E's. I'm pretty sure neither of them remember that it's the letter E now, but they had fun doing it!

And this was the BEST art project! The boys loved it! You dip half of a plastic Easter egg in paint and then stamp it on some construction paper. I used small, medium and large sized eggs. They spent a good 45 minutes carefully stamping their papers!

Laura update: I feel quite a bit better this morning. I went to bed at 9:30 last night then took my anti-nauseous medication this morning, so my day is going much better than it was yesterday!

Crafting

Over the last month, my house hasn't exactly been the cleanest it's ever been...but I don't care. I got some fun little crafts done instead!

Within the last 4 months a LOT of my friends have had, or are about to have babies. So I decided to give my sewing machine another go and came up with these hooded towels as baby gifts. I think they turned out pretty cute! And I totally made them all by myself, a HUGE feat for the sewing-impaired. :)

This is my new bookshelf...not exactly a craft, but I think it was fun putting the books on it!

About a week ago, I came across a blog called Little Birdie Secrets. It had the cutest Valentine treat ideas! I absolutely loved the idea for chocolate dipped marshmallows, and made 20 of them for Janelle's Valentine's party at school today.
Finally, my friend, Emily invited me over this week for a little craft class. She runs an online store called Piccadilly Peddlers that sells the cutest vinyl lettering crafts. She supplied the materials and showed us how to make these sweet Valentine's blocks.

Pay It Forward

A LONG LONG time ago, okay so it was like April, I won a "Pay it forward" prize off of Crystal's blog. Three people that commented on her "Pay it forward" post would receive a special gift from her and in return those three people would have to do something similar. So I posted on hers and received an adorable personalized little animal book for Spencer. I thought and thought and thought about what I could give away and finally found a super cute idea for a laminated menu to go on your fridge (thanks Sarah & Crystal for your creative genius!). Now it's my turn to pay it forward.

Here are the rules:

1. Leave a comment on this post by Saturday (Sept. 20th). On Sunday I'll number the comments and randomly draw three names. Then I'll post the winners on Sunday. The winners will receive a laminated copy of the two-week menu below (magnets & shipping included!).
2. If you're one of the lucky winners, it's your turn to pay it forward!
   

Happy Commenting!

Credits: Golden Girls "Ride 'em Cowboy" kit

Humble Scraps Old Books Alpha

Pumpkins Rock!

I think Halloween might be my second most favorite holiday. Next to Christmas, Halloween is the next holiday I have the most decorative stuff for. I usually put it up the first week of September and am sad when I have to take it down in November. When Erin posted these, I was itching to try them out myself!

Of course I proceeded with the project without thoroughly reading the instructions first and used acrylic paint instead of spray paint, which took forever. I had to give each rock about 4-5 coats of paint. Spray paint would have been WAY easier. Oh well. I was able to use two shades of orange this way!

I had thoroughly intended on having Janelle help me with this project, but I got started on it after bedtime. I got them all painted and then was going to set aside a few for her to color faces on. However, I got so into my little project I forgot to set some aside for her until I only had three left. Oops!

Fortunately she didn't mind too much. She even shared one of them with Spencer for him to color. What a sweet big sister!

I think they turned out cute!

*For complete instructions, head on over to Erin's blog!!!

Blue!

Monday was the day to add a new color of the rainbow to my paint shirt. It's already got brown from our living room (peanut butter to be exact), green (from our playroom), red (kitchen), yellow and purple (Janelle's room). Last Thursday night my mom called and said she wanted to come over and stay with the kids while I went out.

I knew exactly where I wanted to go...Home Depot to look at paint cards! I love looking at them all, comparing shades and colors, playing with the room sampler. It's just as exciting as going to the mall! I'd been saying that I was going to paint Spencer's room since...well...since I found out I was having a boy when I was pregnant with him. 2 years later I finally got around to it. I chose a sky blue. I'd originally planned on making his room themed with airplanes (which is where the blue came from). But it has now expanded to a "Things that go" theme - cars, trucks, planes, trains. I still need to find some little nick knacks to add to that theme, so it's an ongoing process.

Having those two paint cans in my garage all weekend made me incredibly itchy to get started. So despite Kyle's wishes to not start it until the desk in our playroom (another story, another time) was finished, I went at it on Monday - kids home and all! (Yes, it was a very long day of "Thomas," "Hannah Montana," and chicken nuggets for dinner. But I've made up for it the rest of the week and all but forbidden 30 minutes a day of tv.)

Ta da!

We also finally put up those little blue shelves that I bought probably a year ago that were clearanced at Target for I think $6 each. Again, I'm still lacking in the knick knacks area, but we sure have PLENTY of stuffed animals...stuffed animals to display, stuffed animals to keep in his bed, stuffed animals to play with, stuffed animals to put in a little basket that hold Spencer's door open, and even more stuffed animals in Janelle's room!

This is the beginning of my "Things that go" theme. I found it at Hobby Lobby for $6, I couldn't pass it up!

Here is his valance that matches his crib bedding. I'm going to be sad when he outgrows it because it's so cute!
This is his little toys/diaper supplies/bookshelf. The frames above it are his initials. I'm going to change them a little eventually to add somemore cars/trains, etc. They're just baby themed right now.

Attempt Numero Uno

Okay, please do not laugh. This is my very first attempt at truly digital scrapbooking. Yeah, I know it's plain but I've been a plain scrapbooker to begin with even with stickers and markers and glue. Just my style I guess. I'm also still in the market for a new photo editing program (mine is corrupt). I think I'm leaning towards the new version of Photoshop Elements, I just need to go get it. So feel free to leave any constructive criticism, helpful hints, or opinions on photo editing programs!

Credits: Background Paper from ShabbyPrincessdotcom SS Kit, Embellishments from Shabby Princess Promise Kit

Now that Christmas is over...

For some reason, the Christmas spirit creates a crafty itch in my fingers. For me Christmas means bringing on the glue gun and sewing machine. I love making Christmas gifts and crafts. This is a good thing because in most cases it ends up saving us money on gifts. However, it's also a bad thing, because once I start a project I get stressed because there's a Christmas day deadline...or in this year's case our flight to Utah was the deadline - a whole week before Christmas. For instance, last year for Christmas I made Kyle, Janelle, and Spencer quilts - something I had never done before. And if I recall correctly my mom and I were madly tying those darn quilts right up until Christmas Eve. Fortunately they have had a lot of use this year, so it was worth the Christmas rush! This year, I didn't take on anything quite so large-scale, but did a few small things here and there for gifts. Now that presents have been exchanged I can show you why most of you didn't hear from me very much during the first half of December. :)

For my two baby nieces I made them bibs and bows. Of course I forgot to take a picture of the finished bibs I actually made, but here is a picture of the bib that I used as my inspiration. One of my mother-in-law's friends made this bib for Spencer and it is my absolute favorite one because it's hard for him to get off and it actually absorbs spilled stuff (the back is terry cloth). So just imagine this bib but one in pink and one in brown and turquoise. I have to say, I'm a little proud of myself. I've done quite a bit of sewing this past year, and I'm happy to report that I am finally comfortable with a sewing machine!

Here are the bows I made...inspired by my friend, Ashley. She's made Janelle some adorable bows, and I kept thinking to myself, how hard could it be? So I finally sat down one evening and studied bow after bow and finally came up with some cute ones. I admit, some of them did not turn out so cute, but after a few trials and errors I'd come up with enough good ones to give away as gifts.

For my co-op preschool moms, I wanted to give them something cute but preschool-related, and I came up with a little picture ornament. I made the ornament on the left in first grade, and decided to do the same thing with my preschool kids. I took their pictures the first day I had them, then printed them out and glued them to the wreaths then added a little ribbon at the top for a "hook." I looked everywhere for a little wreathe like mine was in, but I couldn't find them anywhere so finally I found these little "candle rings" and figured they'd work out just as well. I thought they turned out cute.

Along with Kyle's famous marshmallows, I made these ribboned glass ornaments to give to our neighbors and friends. I saw the idea in Family Circle magazine, and they were incredibly easy. All you need is a few different types of ribbon, clear glass balls, and double sided tape. They were the perfect project while enjoying "While You Were Sleeping."

This pillow I made for myself. For an Enrichment night we had a class on how to make cute little pillows out of place mats. My friend, Erin came up with the idea and also taught the class. Of course I was majorly scatterbrained the night of the class and completely forgot to go even after I'd paid for the materials, but Erin gave me the stuff and she'd put instructions on her blog, so it was easy enough for me to finish on my own. Basically you just buy a place mat (easily $3-$5), carefully cut open a small section of the seam, stuff it with pillow filling, restitch the seam, and oila! A majorly cute accent pillow!

This idea came from a Pottery Barn magazine. They had three frames that each contained the letters "B" "O" "O" (for Halloween). I can't remember how much it was, but the three frames with the letters were ridiculously expensive. The it dawned on me, I could easily do that! I already had the frames and needed some kind of Thanksgiving themed decoration, so I came up with this. I just made the letters on the computer and printed them out to be the size of the frames. I'm going to change it out soon to spell out "LOVE" for Valentine's day.

My amazingly crafty friend, Erin, also came up with this idea: cute boxes. She had the template on her blog for a square box, I needed a little bigger sized boxes, so I just printed out the template and played around with it 'til I got it the right size. They were fun to make and another great craft to do while watching a movie!

I made this one for my sister - it contained bows and an iTunes gift card.

This one was a birthday box for my niece, Celeste. It contained bows and a baby bracelet.

Cakes, Cakes, Cakes

Tonight my friend Ashley and I threw a surprise baby diaper shower for our friend, Becki. It was so much fun, and we had a great turnout! I was in charge of the shower cake and diaper cake. Here's the finished products:




My baby carriage cake - inspired by my mom


The diaper cake


Kyle and Janelle's cake (the piece cut out from the carriage cake) Can you tell my hand was tired by the time I got around to this one?

My Newest Art Project
(Inspired by Mindy!)







W is for William S is for Spencer B is for Ballantyne M is for Mammen

As soon as we moved in to our house, my first home improvement project was Janelle's room. I painted it, put up chair rail, put up a border and some pictures. Since Spencer was born, I really haven't done much with his room. So feeling guilty, I decided to frame his initials. NOW, I'm ready to paint his room and get them hung up!

Project cost: About $25 - you can't beat $5 frames from Hobby Lobby! (They were 50% off)

Supplies: Cute acid-free paper, cardstock, ribbon, those cardboard letter punchouts, stickers, LOTS of glue, ink pad, and frames