Building with Egg Cartons

My sweet Brother-in-law brought me a HUGE armload of egg cartons a while ago.  Love it!  We will be using them to house our fresh eggs when we give them away.  However at the rate our chickens are laying we will never run out of cartons:)

Bree counted 83 egg cartons!  Time for a project.

There are so many fun things to do with egg cartons.  We often use them as our painting pallets and they are perfect for creating fun crafts.  However since this was the first time that we had such a large quantity of them we decided to build a big fort.

They even built a cute little window.

I love how much they love playing together.  There was lots of fun giggles as we were creating.  They had to cut a few of the cartons in half in order to keep everything stable.  I love watching them problem solve.

 

Our inspiration came from this amazing house and tank made out of egg cartons!  You should go check them out they are amazing!

I would love to hear how you like to up-cycle your egg cartons.

March 27, 2012 | | Tags: , | 2 Comments »

Happy Birthday Barbie

I grew up playing with Barbies, but mostly just when friends came over.  I remember my mom spending hours sewing special outfits for my dolls.  The sad thing was, I never really played with them.  Now with two young girls in my house, you would think that I would be sewing the special outfits and tripping over well loved barbies.  It must be genetic because the girls play with them some, but like me only occasionally.  Today was a good day to dig out the Barbie collection and play.  Sometimes you just need a holiday to celebrate:)  On March 9, 1959, Barbie (Barbra Millicent Roberts) debuted at the American Toy Fair in New York City.  Who knew Barbie had a full name.  Happy Birthday Barbie.

As you can tell from this poor girls hair, the barbies in our house are in need of some love.  After some quick research on line about how to care for barbie hair, we set up a little salon.

The first step is to brush barbies hair the best that you can.  Then simply “dunk” her hair in really hot water for about 30 seconds and towel dry.

Brush and style your barbies hair.  Once the hair is dry the frizz and snarls will be gone.  OK, it’s not that magical but it will leave your barbies hair looking much, much better.

Much better!

I love how they are all lined up.  Bree is learning how to braid, and a captive audience like this is the perfect time to practice her budding skills.

The barbies look so cute all dressed up and hair done.  Nothing like a trip to the salon to make a birthday special.

March 10, 2012 | | Tags: , | 27 Comments »

Racing Balloon Leprechauns

I’m sure you have seen all the fun balloon rockets all over Pinterest.  Science Bob has a great tutorial on how and why these little rockets work so well.  Since St. Patrick’s Day is right around the corner, we decided to race leprechauns instead of rockets.  We used nylon kite string, wide straws (the kind that are wrapped in paper from restaurants), green electrical tape and some leprechaun coloring sheets printed off the internet.

The leprechauns were taped to the straw then the straw was taped to the balloon.  The kids were so excited to try out their flying leprechauns.  They giggled that the leprechaun would go faster if they had a rainbow and a pot of gold to race to.  Sounds good to me.

I love the racing leprechauns.  They looked so funny floating through the air.

The regular round balloons worked great.  However the kids wanted to try some special balloons that their grandma sent in a package.  These balloons are hilarious.  It took a bit of patience to blow them up, but it was worth the wait.  The longer shape made the balloons fly faster more like a rocket.

Now that is one fast leprechaun!

Have fun racing your Leprechauns!

 

March 2, 2012 | | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments »

Sewn Valentines

When searching through Pinterest for fun Valentines card ideas, I came across these little cute love notes.  The cards are adorable and we just had to make some for my family.

We had a family card making night that I wish I would have taken pictures of.  It was adorable and involved the entire dining room table and the whole family.  Chuck and Kaleb cut out all the hearts out of scrap booking scraps.  Bree used the sewing machine to stitch all the hearts on, and Annika wrote the cute little XOX’s and cut all the strings.  She loved that  she got 2 jobs, and could finish her part faster than the rest of us.

They turned out so cute!  I love that the kids used pinks and purples for the hearts and red stitching.

Everyone loves receiving handmade cards, especially when they are made with love from kiddos.  These little cards take no time at all to make and are perfect for the last moment gift.

Here are a few tips that helped our 7 year old budding seamstress when sewing.  If your sewing machine has a speed control turn it to a reasonable speed they can handle.  This is one of my favorite features of my machine, one less thing for little ones to think about when sewing.  I also love that at a controlled speed little fingers are less likely to get somewhere they shouldn’t and there are no crazy speed pulsating.  I also use blue tape on my sewing machine to act as a guide for where the edge of the card should be lined up.  This helped keep the hearts in the center of the card and also kept the stitches in a straight line.

February 3, 2012 | | Tags: , | No Comments »

Cleaning with Shaving Cream

Our poor IKEA art trays were in need of a major cleaning.  They were covered with paint, glue, glitter, markers and most any other art medium you can think of.  I have the cleaning bug, which does not visit our house often so I am taking full advantage of it!

A while ago, my sister-in-law taught me this simple trick.  Shaving cream is a fun medium to play with.  It is a great sensory medium, plus it has the added bonus of cleaning power.  Love that!

The kiddos had fun smearing, building towers and drawing pictures.  I thought about making some cute marbled artwork, but we will save that for another day since the main goal today was to clean.

We used a can of shaving cream that has been in the back of our cupboard for a long time.  However, if I was purchasing a new can I would buy a sent free variety.  The smell can be quiet strong.  Annika asked me if it was OK that she smelled like Grandpa Bruce.  So funny!

The kids enjoyed playing numerous games of tic-tac-toe.  The loved “erasing” each game.

Once they tired of drawing, I gave the kiddos some scrub brushes to get the last of the grime off the trays.  It worked like a charm.  With a simple rinse, the trays are now perfectly clean and ready for the next creative project.

Hmmmm…I wounder how many cans of shaving cream it would take to clean our shower;)

January 8, 2012 | | Tags: , | 5 Comments »
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