easter art

I am very behind on this blog and I know there were some things I missed over the past few months.  Truth is, I'm happy to get this post up before Easter is actually over.  M and I have done a few little projects to get in the Easter spirit, which seemed to be a little overshadowed getting ready for G's baptism.

I love this bunny project because M loved it so much.  Of everything we've ever done, he was so proud of this bunny and asked me to take his picture with it when we were done.  The bunny head is a paper plate, covered in cotton balls.  M loved it because he spread the glue and stuck the cotton on with no help.  The ears are footprints and his bow tie is handprints.  Ideally we would have used googly eyes but drawn on did the trick this year -

Our second bunny is made out of a baby food jar, which we currently have a surplus of (any good baby food jar craft ideas?).  M filled it with cotton and we hot glued on some ears made of felt and pipe cleaners.  M has perched this guy up on our entertainment center so he can watch him.  

All M needs now are some colored eggs and he'll be ready for the real bunny...

october art

Last week I realized that last October our kitchen was full of fun fall art and this October all we had hanging up was a half-finished water colored coloring book page of Ernie trick-or-treating.  I suppose I could blame that on our countdown to baby G and the fact that baby prep has come before toddler art but that excuse makes me sad so over the long weekend we did a few projects to make our house a little more seasonal looking.

We did my most favorite Halloween project last year but this year's were cute too.  A few months ago we needed cotton balls for one of our many dog ailments of the year.  I don't think M had ever really seen them and he took to playing with them and calling them "bunnies."  I knew he'd like this project because it included cotton balls and ghosts, a new favorite since a neighbor hung a big ghost in the tree outside their house.  We used about 10 cotton balls (spread apart) and black construction paper cut into a ghost shape.  

I spread glue over the ghost first but if M were older I would have had him handle the glue.  He had to take the cotton and stick it on.  Being the efficient two-year old he is, he took all the cotton at once and dumped it on the ghost so we then had to work on spreading out the pieces.  

We also did a paper plate pumpkin that M enjoyed painting.  He loved using the big foam brush.  We've been playing with pumpkin faces lately so once he finished painting and the paint was still wet I let him stick on the face pieces by himself and then I glued them as he had left them.  He did a pretty good job and I love the crooked-ness of it.  

We also started a special project over the weekend that I've been looking forward to.  We can't finish without baby G so this is a "to be continued" part of the post for a few weeks from now.  About a month ago I bought two small canvases especially for this project.  While we had the paint and smocks out for our pumpkin I figured we should get M's piece done because I clearly remember how hard it is to get a newborn handprint on anything.  

On each canvas will be an M handprint and a G handprint.  One will hang in his room and one will hang in her room.  To be continued....

Santa ornaments

These ornaments might be one of my favorite crafts we've done so far.  This is kind of a mom-activity since M really didn't have much of a part except for lending his hand for tracing.  However, I bet older kids could try the painting or at least mix the dough.

This is another salt dough activity.  We used salt dough once before.  You basically need one part salt to two parts flour and then about the same amount of water as salt.  For example:
2 cups flour
1 cups salt
1 cup water*
I ad the asterisk because I usually add the water gradually based on the consistency.  For this I only used a 1/2 cup of flour to a 1/4 cup of salt.  We ended up with three ornaments.

The first step is to trace your child's hand and then cut it out.

Mix the ingredients for the salt dough then knead it until it's mixed.  Roll it out flat and use a sharp knife to cut hands using the traced handprint.  I added the holes using a plastic straw:

Let them bake at a low temperature (we baked them at the lowest temperature our oven would go which was around 200 degrees) for one hour.  I flipped ours once so they baked for 30 minutes on each side.

After they come out paint them so that the four fingers are Santa's beard and the thumb is the long part of his hat.  Add a string to hang it:

I wrote M's name and the year on the back of each.  I want to put something on them to preserve them a bit better but I haven't yet.  This is a super cute gift that doesn't cost much to make.  You could even add little tags to the string.  

tape paint

It seems that with our new schedule Friday has become our activity day.  Today we tried tape painting. It was one of our most successful activities so far based on the amount of time we spent doing it and M's sadness at having to clean up.

To tape paint you need tape, paint, and paper.  When I first read about it they suggested using finger paint.  We used a brush and it still came out well.  To start make a tape design on the paper.  Letters are easy.  Things with straight lines are easiest.  We did an M.

We used painter's tape and construction paper which turned out to not be the best combination but more on that later.  Once the tape is on you can start painting.  M loved painting today.  He painted the paper...

And I realized this child has had his hand painted for handprints too many times...

We talked a lot about colors while we painted.  M knows the words blue, green, and purple but isn't always right on when matching the words to the colors.  We did one color at a time and I let M choose which ones he wanted to use.  We set up the bottles and he either said what he wanted or pointed.  He was really into it.  Here's what it looked like when he finished:

After a while I peeled off the tape.  This is where the combination of painter's tape and construction paper kind of messed us up.  The painter's tape kind of stuck too much and pulled off some paper with it (if that makes sense).  I think next time Id either use masking tape with the construction paper or a stronger paper with the painter's tape.  It did come out cute though:

I've mentioned these paints before and I have to say how much I love them once again.  They were fabulous for this and wiped right off of M, his socks, his booster seat, and the plastic table cloth on our table.  Love them.

footprint step stool

This post is a little different from our normal posts because M had little to do with this project.  I wanted to share it though because I think it came out really cute and it was easy to do.  Like a lot of other things, I found the idea on Pinterest.  I was searching for ideas for painting a step stool to put in M's bathroom.  M's bathroom has a monkey theme so originally I was looking for a monkey themed step stool but ended up deciding my freehand monkey painting skills were not quite up to par for that kind of project.  That led me to this idea:

It may not fit the monkey theme but it does match the colors in his bathroom.  Here is how I did it...

I started with an old step stool that has been around at my grandmother's house for a long time.  It was dark blue when we started.  Here is the before picture...

First step was painting it white.  I did two coats of white since it had started pretty dark and I didn't want the dark blue to show through the light blue I was planning to paint it.

The nice thing was that I did the whole project on our deck.  After each coat I let it sit in the sun, which allowed it to dry really quickly.  I was able to space the coats of white out during M's two naps yesterday.  Then later on at night I added the first coat of blue.  I did the second coat of blue this morning.

After lunch we added M's footprints and his name and the year.  I love how it came out and it looks great in his monkey bathroom.  It will end up being perfect for reaching the sink.

Animal sounds

This is my first post from my iPhone. We'll see how it goes...

After we visited Davis Farmland M went through a cow phase. He moo'ed for a week and would wave to the cow on our milk delivery box in the driveway. This week he moved on from cows to sheep. He bahs instead of moos and likes finding sheep in his animal books. There are signs the sheep phase is almost ready to be replaced with a duck phase so this morning we made the most of sheep while we still like them.
This morning we made a sheep. I cut pieces out of black and white construction paper. The body looked like the cutout of a puffy white cloud. I covered it with a glue stick and showed M how to stick on cotton balls.

We had to stop to play with the cotton balls (he had never seen them before).  He did well sticking them on.  With the exception of the initial cotton ball that I put on, he put them all on.  Then I added the legs and head.  We added some googly eyes that we have been saving for a project we're going to try in a few weeks when we get home from our beach vacation.  He's not the fuzziest sheep but we like him.  

We hung him up and M likes pointing to him and bahing.  Maybe we've prolonged the sheep phase for a few days.