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Happy Happy New Year Friends! I don't know about you but I'm ready to clean the slate and start this new year off on the right foot! Don't get me wrong, 2012 was great, full of wonderful opportunities and new additions (such as our very favorite, this little bug shown here) but I just love me some time to reevaluate, make some changes and get pumped to start up again. Don't you? And to do so we always choose a theme as a family for the year. I like to do this so that if some of my specific goals fall through the cracks, say oh about a couple weeks after I make them, then I always have a simple theme to fall back on...one that is easy to remember the entire year through...and one that will hopefully guide us through until the end of December.
I'm also big on alliteration. I find this helps me remember my theme even when it's July and starting fresh and goal making is not so much at the forefront of my mind.
Some past favorite themes have been:
- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Relax (remember this one?! still a fond favorite)
- Creation and Compassion (tried to focus on creating more and consuming less and then reaching beyond myself and showing compassion to those around me)
- Friends, Family & Fun! (this one might seem like a no brainer but for a workaholic, creative hermit like myself I needed the reminder that the most important things in life are bonds you form with those around me. I needed the push to put my relationships in life first. And to have FUN doing it! Turned out really great.).
- Last year was all about Thriving...thinking this year might be a bit along those lines as well. Can't wait to nail it down!
What about you? Any resolutions? And what do you do to try to keep up on them after the will power to make it out the door to the gym subsides?
School is out for winter break and if you are like me, you need fun activities to keep little hands busy, busy, busy. Well expert figure skaters, Sebastian and Sadie, are here and ready to help with that!
To get started, purchase the download here for only $3.99, complete with both figure skaters and three tree shapes. Print out the figure skaters (I recommend using fine art heavy card stock or taking the file to your local print shop for the best quality of print) and cut them out. Cut out support tabs and glue long vertical strip to back of skater for support. (I find it's also helpful to add a piece of thick foam or cardboard for additional support).
Now using hot glue, adhere magnet to the bottom of the flap of skater
Once the glue is dry you are ready to try out your new skater on the "ice"!
To create your ice rink, take a large discarded cereal box and place it on it's side. You may cover it in white butcher paper before hand if you like, leaving one end open. Create slits in the box where you'd like your trees to go. Print out tree shapes. (You can keep them as is or cover them in black duct tape as we did here). Place large tongue depressors to the backs of the trees. Now you are set to place your trees within the slits you created in your large box.
Place your skater a top the box and than place a corresponding magnet
within the cereal box and directly below the skater. Magnets should meet
up. You are now ready to move your skater around on the ice! So fun!!
These make a great stocking stuffer or craft/toy to play an create with friends and family members during these winter months! Hop on over to the shop to get started on your very own skaters now!
(download will be emailed to you after purchase)
Good morning friends. It's snowing outside of my window as I type and it's looking like it just might be a white Christmas indeed. Yippee! Which means, after the snowball fights and snowman building, it is the perfect time to come inside, sit snugly indoors and create with my Littles.
I don't know about you but this time of year often brings about a case of the sniffles. Which means we have have number of tissue boxes lying around the house. Well the Littles and I discovered just the thing to do with them. Make a little Christmas village, using glitter and duct tape of course! So that is just what we did.
To make the structure of the roof tops, we just cut up a few other tissue boxes (or any other discarded cereal box, etc.) and created the roof shapes atop the tissue boxes. We then proceeded to cover them with the duct tape and then had lots of fun decorating them!
We were so excited to find this gold and silver glitter tape, from Martha Stewart, at Michaels, and knew right away that it needed to be used in our little village. I love how it makes the shingles sparkle and come to life (and an extra bonus - it's really easy to cut).
I also played around with our hole punch a bit and was able to create polka dots with the gold duct tape by spreading out the tape onto parchment paper prior to punching. With a little finesse, they turned out great! (In fact we have updated our duct tape cutting methods altogether. If you lay it out on the parchment, you can get a really nice clean cut with scissors and create just about any shape your heart desires! Best thing about it: the Littles can be more involved in the cutting stage now! Yippee! I'll have to do a tutorial of this new cutting method on the blog soon).
And our little vintage wooden angel is just the perfect friend to inhabit our little village. Makes me want to create a few more wooden friends for her to carol to.
And how cute would it be to cut out the window and door shapes and then add a few battery operated tea lights or even a strand of white Christmas lights on the inside? I just might have to do this variation in the next day or so. Would be so magical indeed!
Have you guys heard of the new kids show, Ruby's Studio?! If not you are in for a real treat! It's a great kids show that is perfect blend of fun, helpful, endearing, playful and, thank goodness, not too cheesy. Oh, and best test of all - Little O loves it.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was when one of the founding mom's, Samantha Kurtzman-Counter, contacted me and asked if I would be interested in creating crafts for the kids to do on the show. After familiarizing myself with the company and the show, I felt like it was a perfect fit and couldn't have been more on board. And now I'm over the moon about sharing this show, and our crafts, with all of you!
Out now is a delightful episode about friendship, which you can watch now by purchasing here. In it you will see just what you need to create our friendship tree.
And as is always a thrill, I love seeing these little ones take this craft and make it their own. Seriously so great. Oh and can I just say that I want Ruby's studio. I mean isn't it the coolest? Perfectly designed to inspire creativity. Makes me want to get my craft on right now!
If you think you might be interested in this great show (and I know you will be!) take a look here. The premiere Feelings show is really great too. And stay tuned because both Ruby and I have a lot more episodes full of fun crafts for your little ones!
I love Thanksgiving. Really I do. But I have to confess that I wasn't planning on doing much with it this year as I have been rather overwhelmed with work and the new baby. I actually like how Thanksgiving melts into Christmas as I feel like the spirit of thanks should be felt during the Christmas season so to me they naturally go together. I don't even mind the Christmas decorations everywhere and holiday music playing on the air mid November.
Well this got me thinking. I may feel this way but how are my kids going to appreciate gratitude if I don't do something to foster the spirit of giving thanks? So I decided to come up with this simple last minute place mat designed to give them a way to express their thanks on this special holiday.
You might notice that this resembles my gift to Jon I made a few years back. It's such a fun and simple idea I decided to apply it to the upcoming holiday. To make this I simply stitched together two sheets of brown packing paper. I then cut out a number of white paper flags in varying sizes. These were then straight stitched onto the mat.
And that's it! Give your guests some pens and let them express their
thanks while you are finishing up those mashed potatoes and that pumpkin
pie!
And you'll get a kick out of seeing what your kids come up with. Mario, among many other things, of course made the list for this little guy. Love it.
And if you are looking for another last minute Thanksgiving craft, our turkey feather headbands are a great, easy craft to do as well!
This year, because of our sweet new little babe, Halloween in our home has been on the back burner a bit. So when mid Oct. rolled around, A asked "Mom, when are we going to decorate for Halloween?!" So after promising them in the morning that I would indeed pull out the Halloween decor, at about 7 pm (right before bedtime) I did finally manage to make it to the back shed and unearth our box of frightful delights.
A set out creating his own snowflake pumpkins (a family favorite tradition of ours) right away and then got to work on some goulish puzzles and mazes.
While Little O, well he pretty much consumed every last minute of it. I casually began placing items here an there around the house, such as fun little spider window clings that found themselves on windows and the glass of unsuspecting framed works of art.
While doing this, Little O asked, "Mom, are you making our house haunted?". I just love his perspective. So I replied, "Why, yes. That is one way we like to celebrate Halloween." He just smiled his mischeivious smile. I think we have ourselves new "haunting the house" convert.
And now to just finish (or start?) those costumes...
And what about you? Do you go all out with Halloween decorations? Do you do up the yard more or go full steam indoors? Or both?! Any favorite decor stories from years gone by?
My friend Meta, of One More Mushroom, recently threw her son the cutest super hero party. She had this idea for a darling super hero photo booth, and she asked me if I would help by creating cereal box/duct tape buildings to imply a cityscape of sorts for the little vigilantes to fly over. Being a big lover of re-purposing discarded goods with duct tape, we of course said yes! We created four buildings, each with a different bright popping color and then adorned them all with black tape, adding just a few pops of contrasting color here and there. And I just love how they look with little masked crusaders flying over them. Head over to One More Mushroom, and Babyccino kids, for more great photos of the party and to learn how to set up the rest of the photo both.
My friend, Susan, of Freshly Picked, also created a great leather mask craft for the super hero's to paint and decorate. Take a look at how you can make your own here on her guest post for Martha Stewart!
Photos by Ashley Thalman
Have you had a chance to peruse the November issue of Family Fun that recently hit the news stands? If so you might have seen our Tea Box Circus Train in it! A couple of months ago Family Fun asked us to share our circus train idea with their readers and we were thrilled. Have you made one yet? It's really a load of fun. Could be a fun Christmas craft for around the bottom of the tree, yes? Which could carry a few little gifts for good girls and boys. So many fun ideas!!
Hi friends! I wanted to pop in with another Halloween Flashback for this week. But before I get into that, I wanted to let you know that our baby girl arrived on Monday, Oct. 1st at 8:15 AM! We are so in love and are trying to quietly settle into life with this new little angel. I'll try to share pics of her next week!
And as for our next Halloween Flashback installment, I wanted to share with you the template for this simple and fun black cat paper mask!
Simply print out the template and then trace it on a folded sheet of black card stock (or any color you chose). Just be sure to place the center part of the mask on the fold. Follow along the cutting lines to create your eyes, whiskers and slots for the ribbon. I used a 1/8" hole punch for the dots surrounding the whiskers.
For the ribbon, simply measure how large you need it and then slip it through the slots and stitch ribbon together. And there you have it! One simple but striking black cat mask. To see the original post, along with A's fox paper mask, go here.
Enjoy!
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