christmas ornaments 2014

When our kids are grown up it's my hope that we'll have some kind of child-made ornament on our tree from each year they were little.  Until they're in school and they (hopefully) have teachers who will help me with this, I'm on my own.  Miles has this ornament from his first year.  It doubled as the favor from his Baptism.  We made this one (one of my favorites) last year.  I found lots of fun ideas on Pinterest this year but we ended up doing our own thing...

I used Model Magic this year, basically because I have a newborn and I'm not about to mix salt dough. I have to include the disclaimer that I have never used Model Magic for anything that I wanted to last for a long period of time.  I have no idea how this ornament will hold up long term but I did coat it so hopefully it works out.  This ornament is Model Magic rolled into a ball, flattened, and cut into an oval. M then pushed his hand into it to make a hand indentation.  Then I did the same with G's hand over M's.  As I've mentioned here and here and probably various other places, baby handprints are the bane of my crafting existence.  Her hands were not painted.  They made the indentations then I painted over them on the ornament.  No handprints involved in the making of this ornament:

As you can see we also attempted a footprint, that I haven't decided what to do with yet, and M made a red moon in the process.  I also ended up writing "2013" at the bottom of M's hand in gold.  

I also did a ball ornament for G similar to M's from his first year that is linked above.  Quick and easy footprint on a ball with her name and the year written on the other side.  Tip- roll the baby's foot not the ball.  I love that we have two of these now:

Pinterest and Facebook have made late night feedings more fun and I did end up pinning a number of other ornament ideas you might want to check out.  You can find most of them on this board. 

fun with turkeys

Well, I have successfully posted our turkey blog before Thanksgiving.  I wasn't sure we were going to make it!  We've done two crafts in the past week or so that have helped us decorate and get ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow.  M's favorite was the apple turkey....

M doesn't always have the patience for activities that require a lot of fine motor work but this kept his attention (I think because it used marshmallows).  For this project you need an apple, toothpicks, something for a turkey face, and small food pieces that can be put on the toothpicks.  We used marshmallows and Cheerios.  If you're health-conscious you could do blueberries or small grapes.  Anything works as long as it goes on a toothpick.  

Here is M filling his toothpicks.  It took a bit longer because he enjoyed putting them on then biting them off....

Here is our finished turkey....

We also did a toilet paper roll turkey that included my favorite- handprints. We made our handprints on thicker cardstock.  M painted them with yellow, orange, and red paint then I cut them out and glued them to the paper roll, which makes the turkey's body.  Unfortunately I can't find the pictures I took while we did this so we only have an "after" picture.  This poor turkey has been a little man-handled and also survived one dog attack so he's a little worn but he's made it to Thanksgiving!

Hopefully we have a few more blog posts coming soon.  We've done a few keep-busy projects since little G has arrived but haven't had time to post about them.  Hoping to get caught up soon!

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!

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.  

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 :)

baby autographed baseball

A quick post about the birthday gift M recently gave to his Papa. Papa is a big sports fan and has a number of autographed baseballs. M loves baseballs and likes seeing Papa's collection so for Papa's birthday M gave him a new ball to add to the collection.

The ball has his handprint on it in ink and his name and the year in ballpoint pen. Tip: do not try to use sharpie on a baseball. The ball came with a plastic case so it made a cute gift (and Papa loved it).

fall art

This morning M and I got into the Halloween spirit with this ghost handprint.

We made two, one to hang up and one to bring to M's great-grandmother.  I don't have any pictures of the process because I had one hand on the paint and the other on M's painted hand.  It's fairly simple.  You need white paint (we used our favorite very washable Crayola paint), black construction paper, and a black marker.  We used googly eyes but you could draw the eyes on.  M is getting good at handprints but if I was doing this with an older child I would tell them to keep their thumb down so it's closer to the other fingers.

Last week we did another fall picture that M loved (I haven't had a chance to post it).  I made a brown tree on construction paper:

M filled in the autumn leaves.  We used what I call "paint dotters" (bingo daubers, poster paint, felt tip paints, etc).  M loved these.  They were super easy for him to hold and use...

The downside was that they weren't very easy to clean off of his hands.  We needed SOS but it did come off.  Finished product...

christening favors

Every holiday season in first grade we make snowman ornaments with the kids' handprints.  

When I was thinking of what to do as favors for M's baptism reception party I thought of these ornaments (minus the snowmen).  After a few attempts of making one handprint with a tiny fisted-up hand I decided making 30 would be impossible so I shifted gears and painted M's foot.  I found that mess-ups were easily wiped off the balls with a wet wipe.  We were able to get 30 nice footprints and our guests loved the finished products!