rocket party

Back in February my mother asked M what kind of birthday cake he was going to have when he turned 3.  He told her a rocket cake and stuck to it for the next four months.  It was a surprise to me because I would have guessed my truck-loving boy would have wanted some kind of elaborate truck cake (think street sweeper).  Anyway, it was through that request that M had a rocket-themed 3rd birthday party.

My favorite part of the party was the rocket invitations, a modified idea from Martha Stewart's website.  I'd like to eventually post the PDF so others can use the template.

Most of my decorations came from Oriental Trading and we loved their inflatable planets (hung over the table).  My favorite place to shop, the Target dollar aisle, provided rocket-like bubble favors.

watercolor snowflakes

Disclaimer: If you try this activity, do it with coffee filters.  M's mom didn't have them on hand, and was not lugging the two-year and two-month olds to CVS to get them, so ours are made on regular white printer paper. They're still very pretty and if your child uses as much water as M does, it won't matter anyway. 

This is a "fun" activity I did a few times in first grade back before the Common Core sucked all the fun out of first grade. I would even hang them on the classroom windows before the fire department sucked all the fun out of that. But it works well as an at-home activity where we can still have fun and still hang things on our windows. 

I gave M only blue and purple paint for this because if I didn't we would have brown snowflakes. An old ice cube tray worked well for holding the paint. 

I cut out some snowflakes for us and M painted them. 

If we had coffee filters they would have sucked up the watercolor and allowed it to spread, making some cool designs and more evenly colored flakes. Like I said though, this worked too. 

I also used to do something similar to this for Earth Day with coffee filters and blue and green watercolors. It makes a very neat looking swirly Earth.  If you don't have watercolors on hand you can also try washable markers on the coffee filters then use a spray bottles to wet the filter, the colors should spread. 

cinnamon ornaments

We've needed lots to keep us busy the past few weeks because it's been cold and snowy.  While M would like nothing more than to be out in the snow all day everyday, we can't do that with baby G hanging out with us now.  So due to G's laid-back nature we've gotten to try out lots of Christmas projects from gingerbread houses to homemade gifts to these fun ideas...

I think these cinnamon ornaments are one of my favorite holiday activities because they're easy to make and always come out cute. They look baked but they're not. In fact, I made them in school one year because it's that easy. 

1/2 cup cinnamon

1/2 cup applesauce

Mix them to make a dough. Roll it out to about 1/4 inch thickness. I rolled it between a piece of parchment paper and a piece of Saran Wrap. Then use cookie cutters to cut shapes. 

Use a straw to poke holes for hanging then let the shapes dry for at least 24 hours. I kept them uncovered on parchment paper and flipped them halfway through. 

Once they're dry they can be decorated and strung to hang. We broke out the glitter glue and puffy paint for this...

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While we have lots of time for crafts, I have limited blog-writing time, so I'm including a few other Christmas decorations we've made at the tail end of this blog. 

First, the self-explanatory Christmas tree feet:

And a hand tree. Trace their hands, fold the paper and cut 6 or so out at a time. M loved decorating this with stickers. If I had been more on the ball I would have gotten cute ornament stickers.

Merry Christmas from me, M and G!

sibling handprints

A few weeks ago, while we were waiting for Baby G to arrive, we started this project. I mentioned it in this post.  Two weeks ago G joined us and since then we've finished it. 

I've said before that newborn handprints are pretty elusive. Back when M was a newborn I changed this idea from hands to feet because (at least my) newborns aren't especially cooperative when it comes to painting hands.  We had to get a handprint for this one though because a hand and a foot would have looked a little funny. Therefore, you'll notice G's handprints are a little smudgy. We got the best we could. 

Here they are; small canvases from any craft store, I think they were BOGO when I bought them at Michael's.  A handprint from M and a handprint from G.  They now each have one hanging in their bedrooms.  G's first art project....

Valentines

M doesn't go to daycare so we didn't have any little friends to make Valentines for this year.  Instead, we made some for a few of our relatives.  These were fairly easy to do and M had a pretty good role in helping to make them, which is always my goal.

We started by gathering a bunch of our pink and red construction paper sheets and painting them.

Next I traced M's hands on cardboard and cut out several of each hand from the paintings he made:

 Last, I cut out some hearts and glued a left and right hand onto the heart.  We had extra hearts so I made a decoration for the door to our basement as well.  We tend to hang a lot of M's art there:

On the back of each I wrote them out and then M "signed" them with crayon.  There's always something I don't get a picture of!

toddler turkey

Back at Thanksgiving M and I made a few decorations to hang in our kitchen since we were hosting our first Thanksgiving.  M loves to use his paints so I gave him a piece of white construction paper and brush to paint with.  It came out looking like this:

Then I took it and cut it into feather-shaped pieces.  We created a turkey with his painted feathers:

We also did a handprint turkey that came out cute.  This was a Pinterest idea that I found.  When I saw it it was part of a handprint calendar that I'd love to try (each month is a handprint made into something different).  The hardest part was keeping him still while painting each finger a new color.  

My favorite part of these activities is a story I have to share because as much as this blog is for sharing ideas with others, it's also for me to be able to back at.  Before we started this activity I asked M if he wanted to paint.  He said, "paint, paint, paint."  I started getting everything out - his smock, his brush, the paint, etc. and setting it all up.  I lifted him into his seat (he was still saying, "paint, paint, paint") and he looked up at me and said, "happy."  Me too :)

Very Hungry Caterpillar birthday party

M turned one on Sunday and his party had the theme of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  I made a bunch of decorations, most of which I found online through Google searches or Pinterest.  I thought I'd put them all here for people like me who wish they could have found everything in one spot.  I'll also link to the original source, if there is one.

My favorite decoration was the giant tissue paper caterpillar we hung over the dessert table.  I think it was M's favorite too- he'd point to it while he ate his breakfast every morning as it hung in our kitchen before we moved it to Nonni's house for the party.  This was the most intricate of all of the decorations but after making one or two balls you get the hang of it.  I started with the head but I'd recommend starting with one of the green ones, because I think they got better as I went.  The original tissue paper caterpillar is here and the instructions for making the balls are here.  I love how fun he is and would totally hang this in my classroom down the road...even though there will probably be fun-sucking fire rules against it.

Another of my favorites were these flower pots for the utensils.  We traced quarters for the caterpillar circles then painted them.  I almost wrote "Happy Birthday M" on them but I decided against it since I figured I'd end up either using them at school or putting flowers in them.  M's Nonni gets the credit for this idea.

We didn't do goody bags but gave the kids who came bubbles instead.  These bubbles are from the dollar store (they blow great bubbles too).  We took the labels off and made our own.

The next caterpillar was made of construction paper circles and had different photos of M on each circle.  The original decoration is here.  We made ours crawl around the doorframe.

These were construction paper circles linked with ribbon.  They hung a little funny by themselves so I used double sided tape to keep them straight.  I'm thinking if you used a stronger material than construction paper they might hang better.

This sign was for the front of M's high chair...obviously try to position so that antenna doesn't get ripped off, oops.

I found my cake idea here.  It's a sheet cake on the bottom and the caterpillar is a bundt cake cut into pieces.  That was the trickiest part.  I cut it into thirds but had to do some filling of spaces with frosting. I'm still not sure exactly how you're supposed to cut the bundt cake but I was really happy with how it came out.  Dots and eyes are M&Ms.  Feet are Hershey kisses cut in half.

 M also had a "smash cake" - two 8-inch round cakes cut smaller (maybe 4 inches?).  Here are the before and after shots:

And these were our invitations.  Made with Photoshop....