May 14th, 2013 · No Comments
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Looking for a unique and memorable teacher’s gift to make for your school art or preschool teacher? How about a fun wreath to decorate the door or classroom? My daughter and I had fun putting this wreath together for an art themed party we had but the wreath turned out so nice we gave it to one of her teachers as a gift.
You’ll Need:
- A grapevine wreath
- Colorful ribbon
- Twist tie or floral wire
- Art supplies like crayons, colored pencils, paintbrushes, colorful scissors, and maybe a tiny wooden art easel
- Glue gun
Most of the decorative art supplies were gathered from our own stash so I really only needed to buy the wreath and ribbon.
To assemble:
1. Tie and knot the ribbon around the wreath to start off. Then keep wrapping the ribbon all the way around the wreath to make a diagonal pattern. Cut the ribbon and tie the loose end to the original knot where you started.
2. Create a big bow out of the same ribbon with several ends hanging down. Here’s a great video on how to tie a big, beautiful ribbon bow. Attach it to the wreath with the floral wire. (Or you could use the glue gun to glue it. However you might see the glue if your ribbon is sheer.)
3. Now start decorating with the art supplies. I was able to attach most of the art supplies by inserting them directly into the twisted grapevines or tucking them under the ribbon. For heavier or flatter items we used the glue gun.
Viola! A pretty wreath to give as a homemade end-of-year appreciation gift for your favorite teacher.
Need some more Teacher’s Gift Ideas? Check out:
What gift are you planning to give your child’s teacher this year?
Tags: Back to School Tips · Mom's Corner
May 12th, 2013 · No Comments
Happy Mother’s Day everyone! I wish you all a special day filled with plenty of “Chocolate Cake Moments” where you are smiling, relaxed, indulged, and most of all appreciated.
Go Moms!
For more Mother’s Day fun:
Is a Mother’s Day Card Really a Performance Review?
5 Life Lessons My Mother Taught Me
My Mother’s Day Traditions
For homemade gift ideas the kids could make you or Grandma, check out my Mother’s Day Gift Ideas Board on Pinterest.
While I believe that every day should be Mother’s Day, this is our day so go have some fun with your family.
Tags: Family Fun Ideas · Mom's Corner
April 30th, 2013 · No Comments
Now that the torrential Spring rains have eased up, it’s a great time to get the family outside to enjoy the weather and soak up some much needed sunshine. (Us Midwestern folks get a little pasty after a long winter.) For some fun in the sun, every year my daughter and I plant flowers together. We look forward to our Spring Gardening adventures.
However, this year we’re going to fuel up at breakfast before we head out this year because our gardening activities turned into quite the adventure last year. We started by planting flowers but ended up creating Fairy Village in the neighborhood.
As part of Quaker Oats’ Epic Adventures blogger outreach program, they sent us a sample of their Quaker® Perfect Portions oatmeal to try. My daughter loved it. She’s quite the oatmeal connoisseur and she liked the new Perfect Portions oatmeal because she could choose how much she wanted to eat for the day and control the amount of sweetness. There’s no sugar addeds and as a Type 1 Diabetic, that’s so important for her (and her Mom!)
But, back to our adventure! After we were done planting flowers, my daughter decided to create a Fairy House in the little island in the cul-de-sac at the end of our street to use up some leftover flowers from our garden. She loves to use her imagination and felt that if she built a pretty enough fairy house it would attract a fairy and bring good luck. Soon she had all of the neighbor girls helping to make a whole Fairy Village. I have to say it was beautiful! Any fairy would have been proud to move in.
The best part was the fun that ensued over the next few days. We started seeing “notes” from the Fairies. Some of the neighbor Moms and older girls would write notes thanking the kids for their houses. The kids loved it! Candy appeared one night and some of the younger kids were so thrilled that the fairies were leaving them gifts. Needless to say everyone seemed to add a little touch of magic that kept everyone wondering if it was real or not. FUN!
If you have boys who might not be that interested in fairy houses, no problem. My son would build a cave to attract trolls or create a secret space for his action figures, as a fun way to spend time outside. No matter what you and your kids decide to build, here’s everything you need to know on how to build a fairy house.
If you need some tips on how to garden with your kids or grand kids, check this post. For you experts, you might like 4 Fun Kids Summer Gardening Projects.
Spring is the perfect time to get outside and dig in the dirt with your kids or grand kids. However, you better fuel up at breakfast because a simple plan to plant some flowers could turn into an adventure creating a neighborhood fairy village. Read how!
Every day is an adventure and with Quaker® Perfect Portions I know I am providing my family with the fuel they need for their epic adventures.
Share how you make everyday an adventure and see other storieson Everyday Health.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Quaker®. The opinions and text are all mine.
Tags: Spring Family Fun Activities
April 25th, 2013 · No Comments
We were on a roll crafting and baking this past Easter and we were able to make and put our own spin on 5 different ideas we found on Pinterest. (If you didn’t see my previous two posts on how to make an Easter Egg Bouquet or Mustache Easter Eggs, which we found on Pinterest, check them out.)
So, for our third piece of craftiness, we decided to make Easter Bunny Butt-Up Candy Cups to give to the little nieces and nephews at Easter. These would be so cute to set as placeholders on the Easter dinner table or as favors at an Easter party.
My inspiration came from this idea from the Delightfully Noted blog. She explains how she made them on her site and her photography is so much better than mine, so definitely check it out. I deviated just a little from her instructions and I couldn’t find the cups she used at Target, so I improvised.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- Small paper or plastic cups (Easter themed or pastel colors)
- Styrofoam balls
- White foam sheet (one sheet will get you 24 bunny feet)
- Pink foam sheet or Pink sharpie marker
- Glue gun or craft glue
- White pom poms
- Candy – jelly beans, Robin’s Eggs, M&Ms
- Green Easter grass
Important Tip: Buy your cups first! Styrofoam balls come in so many sizes so I found it incredibly helpful to find the cups first and then take one with me to the craft store to see which size ball fit the best. You don’t want it too big so it looks like a muffin top and you don’t want it too small that it falls in the cup.
To start I took a plain piece of white paper and drew an oval that I thought would be the right size for the feet. They need to be about 3/4 of the size of the ball so they can hang over and flop. Once you have the right size on the paper use that as your pattern to cut feet out of the white foam sheet.
Now for Delightfully Noted’s version, she cut the little pads for the feet out of a pink foam sheet. My daughter and I decided to cut the work time in half by just drawing the pads onto the feet with a pink sharpie marker. (I’m all about cutting crafting corners.)
You are ready for the glue. We used a glue gun because it sticks better and dries faster but you could use regular glue, no prob! Glue the feet on facing down. (I glued them facing up first and my daughter thought I was a nub. Don’t do the same thing and look lame in front of your child.) Then glue the white pom pom on the top center of the butt.
Now you are ready to fill your cup with candy, put some Easter grass on top of that and center your bunny butt on top. Viola! Easy-peasy. Took us 20 minutes.
So what do you think? Here’s the version from Delightfully Noted and then ours. I like her cups better and we should have made the pink feet pads a little bigger but overall, still pretty cute.
Did you make anything you saw on Pinterest this Easter? I’d love to hear about it so please leave me a comment below.
For more Holiday fun ideas, check out the Easter craft and recipe section of my blog or my Easter Ideas board on Pinterest. Feel free to pin this idea to your craft and Holiday boards.
Tags: Easter Crafts, Recipes and Ideas · Easter Recipes & Activities
April 12th, 2013 · No Comments
As the second installment in our Pinteresting Easter activities this year, the kids really wanted to color eggs. So we colored them using the traditional purchased dye method. You know dropping the dye tablet into a mixture of vinegar and water. However, We did use muffin tins to dye the eggs, which was a very helpful tip I saw on Pinterest last year from ParentHacks.com
To jazz them up, I remembered a pin I had seen where they put mustaches on the eggs - because after all, mustaches are all the rage this year. While I'm not typically into trends, I do love a good mustache. My Pinspiration came from the Number-2-Pencil.com blog. She used black adhesive vinyl sheets and a Silhouette cutter to create the mustaches for her Easter Eggs. Since we were at Grandma’s house visiting for Easter, I didn’t have any crafting supplies with me so we improvised and used a Sharpie marker to draw mustaches on our eggs. It was beyond Easy-Peasy and came out oh-so-cute, as well.
Here’s how Melissa at the Number-2-Pencil blog made them and then our version. Hers are a little cleaner and have more of a minimalist style. Ours seem to be more whimsical or just plain goofy. What do you think?
We eventually got more creative and moved on from just mustaches to make all kinds of egg faces. You know a craft idea is good when your 13-year-old son comes over and wants to help. He was really getting into his “hippie” egg. To display the eggs, we just placed them on a plate covered with fake Easter grass. They looked adorable on the Easter table, let me tell you.
This is the second installment in my Very Pinteresting Easter series featuring cute craft and recipe ideas we found on Pinterest. Did you catch our first idea – the DIY Easter Egg Bouquet? Next up are the Bunny Butt Treat Cups we made for the kids.
Did you make or bake anything you found on Pinterest this Easter? Please share the link to your pin in the comments below. I’m always looking to add ideas to my Easter Board.
Tags: Easter Crafts, Recipes and Ideas
