Paint Chip Animal Friends

I trust all US readers had an excellent 4th of July. Ours was hot, hot, hot! We spent most of the day in my parents pool (here in Colorado - where the fires are finally starting to calm down and be contained. Hopefully no new ones will pop up!). We had a great time though.

And if you are looking for a new, fun and super easy (not to mention practically free!) craft for your little ones to do (perhaps indoors while avoiding the hot summer heat), look no further than our fun little paint chip animal friends. Head over the Handmade Charlotte for the full DIY.
I know your little ones will love these new little animal amigos just as much as mine did! I think we'll be sharing this fun craft with all of our cousins later today. Perhaps that will give us moms some time to sit, sew and chat together.
 Enjoy!

Summer Fun Jars

I have to give full credit to my cousin Crystal for this summer fun idea. For the Mudpuppy giveaway she commented:

"So this summer me and the kids made a summer fun jar so I don't have to be as creative everyday. Each week they pick out an outing, a food to make, and an activity to do at home and we make sure we do all three that week. "

Crystal I LOVE, love, love your idea! So of course we had to implement it here in our home as well.

 This approach to summer fun works really well for us. I often get super busy with work while it seems like our friends are gallivanting off to swim parks, camping trips and more. I've been feeling really bad for my little guys and have worried that their summer just isn't turning out as fun and exploratory as I'd hoped it would be. So when Crystal mentioned this idea, I thought, "Hey! I can do that!" This simple approach satisfies my little ones need for structure and planned events (especially my oldest who has been ansty non-stop ever since school let out) and also allows me the freedom to chose when the events/projects work best in my schedule. I don't have as much pressure to do something extravagant every day and the littles love looking at our calendar, looking forward to what is coming up next!

To make our summer fun jars we used old pickle jars (we are pickle fanatics here), covered the lids with decorative paper and affixed a label for each summer fun item, reading "LET'S GO, LET'S MAKE, and LET'S EAT." 

If you'd like to do the same, I've made some jar labels for you to download here.
Each Monday evening, during family night, we have our kids draw out one slip of paper from each jar. The kids then love looking at and discussing what types of things we have in store for us that week. In our "LET'S GO" jar I've put in outings to local hot spots as well as things we can do closer to home such as "have a BBQ with friends." In our "LET'S MAKE" (which could also be called "LET'S DO") I've placed a number of prompts for us to get creative such as "make a summer scrapbook" or "learn a new skill".Our "LET'S EAT" jar has been a huge hit (notice the explosive amount of papers in the jar). I decided that I'd finally do something with all the delicious food pins I've been collecting on Pinterest. So I printed out several pages of pins, cut them up and then placed them in our "LET'S EAT" jar. This is so popular we actually ended up pulling out two food items, one sweet and one savory each week (I ended up making another savory jar, not shown here).

*(You could also use this Pinterest approach for your "LET'S MAKE" jar. Just print out all the DIY's you've been saving up and start doing them! If you need motivation to get started, take a look at a few of the pins from Mer Mag).
The kids love looking at what we have in store to make and eat. Somehow it's so much more exciting than just reading it. For example, take these delicious Mint Brownies from Brooke of Inchmark. I've been dying to make these ever since she posted about them! And now they have been drawn and placed on the calendar. We will be making them today!
So when we draw a food item from the jar, we then go to back to Pinterest to get the recipe. All the ingredients to make that item then goes on our shopping list for that week. The kids loving doing this and I love that they are learning a bit about shopping and cooking (and if I'm really ambitious I can give a little lesson about money on our shopping trip).
And it may be a bit late in the season (unless you are in Cali where school just let out for the summer) but we finally made our summer calendar. My mother would do this for us each summer and we loved visually looking forward to trips, events and fun summer activities. It really made summer SO much fun. To make ours I simply took a piece of black poster board and divided up the space into squares with decorative washi tape. I then used white oil pastel to write in all the dates and days of the week. From there we simply taped it to the wall with more washi tape.

And when the boys draw something out of our summer fun jars, we choose a day of the week and then have them tape up the paper right to the calendar. They love it!
 
And now we need to prepare for our big summer fun activity... our annual trip to Colorado for the 4th of July! We are so excited! To see some of the great summer reunion fun we've had in the past, take a lookly lou here, here, here and here. This summer we are going with a traditional 1776 white wig, Betsy Ross type of gala. No fireworks though, due to all the fires in Colorado :( but I know we'll come up with something just as fun. Apparently my mother is making little white wigs for all the kiddos and I just can't wait!

Time for Tee's!

It's that time of year again. School is almost out for the summer and A is growing out of practically every shirt he owns. We needed to think fast (and thrifty) so off to the store to get $1 shirts (we found ours at the Dollar Tree) and then back to the craft lab to create some one of a kind tees.

I knew I wanted these to be graphic and simple (design wise at and to make). First we started with a simple little octopus illustration for the navy blue T-shirt. This little guy is hinting at us all kinds of exciting summer water adventures in store for us. I'm really craving the ocean as of late and we're hoping this guy can lead the way.
For our second heather grey tee, we simplified things even more and went with a large house graphic of sorts. You could take this in a million different directions if you were making your own (add a chimney, front door, windows, etc.) but we decided to keep things super simple, and we love it.
And for our final black T-shirt we went freestyle and created a connect-the-dots geometric design with white fabric paint. (Sorry the photo is blurry but I liked how this pic showed his shirt, and personality, the best). This is a fun one to do with your Littles. You could paint on the large circles and then have them  connect them with lines. My boys loved this and pronounced it to be a "kite" when it was complete.
If you are interested in making some of these shirts yourself, I've included our little octopus friend in stencil form to make things easy for you. You can download the pdf of him here:

As for the others, I'm thinking they are pretty straight forward. For the house, you can create your own freezer paper stencil house however you like best. And for our geometric "kite"...well the doors wide open for what you could do on your own with this.

Enjoy and happy last few weeks of school!

Speaking of which, are you are already making big summer travel plans? What about summer classes for the Littles? Do you go with sports? arts and crafts? music? or all of the above? How does one decide? I'd LOVE to hear your tips as I'm trying to figure this out now for my little guys and I'm all in a tizzy!

Mother's Day Stationary with Free Envelope Download

Mom's are the best, right? And although we should be celebrating them on a daily basis, I'm so glad we have a specific day set aside to show the mother's in our lives just how much we really appreciate all that they do for us. Well, Mother's Day is just 3 days away which leaves just enough time for last minute gift ideas. In fact, this idea was so last minute last year (yes, I said last year) that I didn't have time to blog about it in time for Mother's Day 2011. But for 2012, I've got you covered (I'm just really on the ball for this year, right? Which is a good thing because I've been swamped drawing so many little darlings due to the large amount of Mother's Day portrait orders from the Daily Candy Kids coverage...Way to think ahead, that's what I say).
With my free downloadable herringbone patterned envelopes and some custom stamped monogram cards (easily made by you with a stamp or sponge using letter stencils - perhaps with some help from the kiddos?), you have the perfect gift to let the mother's in your life know how much you love them.
To download the hand painted green herringbone envelope, just click here.
And to download the hand painted peach herringbone envelope, just click here.


Wishing you all the most wonderful Mother's Day weekend! And happy Mother's Day to all you beautiful mothers out there!

xo
Mer

Easter Stickers Download!

Are you running around crazy realizing that you have yet to purchase Easter candy, egg dye and various other Easter hunt amenities, and have absolutely no idea what your Littles will be wearing on Easter Sunday? If so, you're not alone. I'm right there with you. But I can help...at least just a little bit. Forget some of that candy and fill up those plastic eggs with some free downloadable Easter stickers that I illustrated. Your kids will love it and you'll enjoy forgoing some of that after-sugar shock.

To get started you just download the free printable stickers and print them out on full sheet label paper (found at your local office supply store).

DOWNLOAD EASTER STICKERS HERE

You can then cut them up and place them in plastic eggs or have fun with it and hide them in a crepe paper surprise ball! (or surprise "lemon" as mine turned out to be).

A group of us got together last night to make some of these for our Littles and it was so fun! Read more about it here on Sarah Jane's darling blog (and be sure to download her adorable little bunny puppet while you're at it). Surprise balls are so fun and not as much work as I would have originally thought. It's an endeavor I'd highly recommend (especially amongst friends).


And as for the stickers, well my Littles have really enjoyed playing with them and have created identities for each character. I just gave them some paper, crayons and the stickers and let them go at it. And for about 15-20 min they were happily self-entertained. I'd say that's a success.

Make your Valentine turn red in the face...

I love my mother. She is an infinite well of creative, clever and slightly outrageous ideas. And Valentines Day is her time to shine. You wouldn't believe the things she would do for my dad - we're talking pouring bright red tempera paint on freshly fallen Colorado snow to spell out "I LOVE YOU!" for my dad to see when he drove up after getting home from work on Valentines Day. And then there was the daily proclamation of how much she loved my dad - which was done at the top of her lungs (I'm pretty sure the neighbors could here it). And the smooching my parents would do after my dad came home from work...well I won't even get into that. Yeah, she is a passionate mom and I love her for it. So this year, I decided to take a page out of her book and create a Valentine's Day card for Jon based on one she did for my dad a number of years ago.

Basically the front of the card reads: "This Valentine's Day card is sure to turn your face RED." With plenty of fun innuendos implied, your Valentine might shyly open the card...only to find...

...that you have placed a photo of them inside...and with bright red lipstick kisses...

..you have covered their face...making it indeed turn RED!

I thought it was the cutest idea and had to do it for Jon this year.

And if you want to make one too, I have created the card for you which you can download by clicking the text below.


Hope you and your cupid enjoy!! XO

[fingerprint Christmas tree cards]

We like to do handmade Christmas cards for the teachers, etc. during the season and apparently we've hit on a tree theme that we just can't shake.

This year we had a lot of fun "finger painting"...but not in typical sense of the craft.

I made a simple tree graphic and printed it out on Recollections 5" x 6.5" white blank cards (found at our local Michaels). We then we pulled out our fingerprint ink pad (from Lakeshore) and went to town.

It was so much fun to see what the boys came up with. There is really no way you can go wrong. Little O did one with a lot of brown and I was worried it would look a little muddy but it ended up looking beautiful to me. I love how they sort of end up looking like a medley of out-of-focus Christmas lights.

And Jon couldn't help but get in on the fun as well which thrilled the boys.

But Little A was the one who really went to town on this. He had a handful of friends from our old haunt, So. Pas, that he wanted to make cards for.

He got really into it and I love that he can write his own cards now. It's very empowing for him and so fulfilling for me to see. My favorite was when he desperately wanted to send one to a particular little girl. He was very serious about this and wanted me to make sure she gets it. I told him I would.

This made him very happy.


If you are interested in doing a few of these cards yourself (you'll get hooked if you do!) then you can download a temple of the simple tree design by clicking here.

Happy finger printing!

[gifted mag...]

If you haven't yet been over to Creature Comforts to check out EZ's fabulous online holiday guide, Gifted, you should do so now. It's a fantastically curated guide chock-full of unique and of-the-moment gift items. EZ was so sweet to ask me to create some free downloadable gift tags for the guide and I couldn't be more happy to share them all with you. You can find them on page 136. I can't wait to get all my Christmas shopping complete so that I can get to wrapping, wrapping, wrapping!


But before the wrapping, there is the shopping, shopping, shopping. And that's where EZ's guide hits a home run. I'm especially impressed with her round up of gifts for the guys (which, trust me, is not always easy). I would seriously get everything from pages, 20, 27 and 28 for Jon if I could. And after showing Jon, he wholeheartedly agreed. And I think Little A needs the ridiculously cute real tool kit by Romp on page 71 and Little O would love to dress up in the darling Kalon Studios masks on page 72.

And if you want to know how I stay in the spirit of things and somewhat on top of it all during the bustling season, take a look at my interview in last years Gifted guide on pages 15 and 16. And as far as favorite holiday jingles go, I simply must add the dreamy vocals of Zoe Deschanel in A Very She and Him Christmas. I've been waiting for this ever since I first heard her smoky voice in ELF and rest assured I haven't stopped listening to it since I nabbed it at Barnes and Noble last week!

So now to that shopping, shopping, shopping....