Sidewalk Paint

So, it's been a couple of days since I last posted. We haven't been too crafty here but have been spending a lot of time in the pool. This morning was cool enough to go outside and not feel like we were frying to we decided to do something crafty.

Our movie theme for today is The Wizard Of Oz so we decided on a rainbow theme for our crafting today. Since we spent a good deal of time outside we decided to make some rainbow sidewalk paint. It was a bit messier than I thought it would be but nothing a bath didn't take care of.

So, what do you need?

1 cup cornstarch
1 cup of water
food coloring
old pie tins or bowls to hold paint
paintbrushes

Mix 1 cup of water with 1 cup of cornstarch. Make sure all the lumps are gone.

You will end up stirring this a lot throughout the project because the cornstarch tends to clump and stick to the bottom.

Add your food coloring and mix.

The lighting in my kitchen isn't the greatest but we have red, orange, green, blue, dark blue and purple.

Give your kids a paintbrush (we recommend any with a big brush to it) and let them paint away.














We ended up making another batch and put the colors in bigger bowls so it was easier to work with and there was no fighting.

The kids got extremely messy with this project. You will need to be careful because you can dye your hands different colors with all the food coloring you use. We tried using rubber gloves but the kids ditched them about 2 minutes in. :)

If you get tired of looking at your colorful sidewalk just spray it down with some water and you will have your plain and boring sidewalk back. :)

We hope you enjoy this project as much as we did!

Beauty and the Beast

Tonight, the Disney Channel is showing Beauty and the Beast! My kids are excited to see the movie and it happens to be one of my favorite childrens' movie. We based our craft and reading around it today. We actually have two copies of the book, so each of the kids was able to read a long with it (or just look at the pictures.)

I had a hard time coming up with a craft to do for this. I wasn't sure if we should attempt to draw Belle, the Beauty, or if we should go with the Beast. In the end, I went with something easy... Cogsworth the Clock. I free-handed a lot of this craft so unfortunately I don't have anything you can really follow along... other than the pictures...

The materials we used were:
Construction paper in various colors
Jumbo Craft Sticks
Glue Sticks
Markers

We cut out our main piece to resemble Cogsworth's head. This was the free-hand part, so it kind of looks like a monkey :)

We then glued the "face" part to the clock.













You can't really see it here, but we then glued eyes to the face. It would have been better to have another shade of brown or tan but we didn't have a lot of colors to choose from, so white it was.

We added eyes, eyebrows and a smile to the face.

We then added some detail to the clock, including the hands to keep time. We forgot to draw in the times but you still get the idea.

We glued the jumbo craft stick to the back of the face and let it dry.

Then we had a completed Cogsworth. This was a fairly simple craft. I did all the cutting and the kids did the gluing.















We added a little bit of glitter glue for something extra but it wasn't needed. Now all we need is to pop some popcorn while we wait for our movie to start. Yeah for family movie night!

The Dollar Tree

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a love/hate relationship with Dollar Tree stores. I love all the fun stuff for the incredibly low price of $1 but I hate that I spend way too much money there. Today we stopped for some coffee mugs for a craft we will be working on later and found some pretty cool stuff.

Kaylen is having a rainbow themed birthday party this year so these will fantastic mini totes will work as great good bags. There are 3 totes in a pack for $1... Our grand total on these was $6 for 18 totes.

We found this really cool gift bag for Father's Day. We are making a bunch of homemade gifts for Dad this year and they will fit perfectly in this handy man bag.

Magic Towels!!! Do you have little ones who hate the idea of bath time? I do!!! This is such a neat idea that I couldn't resist getting a couple for each kid. Put your kids in the tub, hand them one of these cool little things and watch the magic happen. These fun little shapes turn into washclothes and your kids get nice and clean.

PUZZLES! Who doesn't love puzzles? I picked these up with the intention of using them for another craft but let the kids have a turn or two putting them together before I use them.  If you want to be crafty, you can paint the puzzle pieces with a primer and then paint your own puzzle that can be put together. (We'll have a DIY on this later.)

We got this great 3 pack set of flash cards for $1. It helps the kids work on sight words that they have learned (or will learn) in school, letters and shapes & colors. There were a couple of different packs but we went with these so AJ could focus more on his alphabet and shapes/colors. 

We also picked up some great craft items like pompoms and pipe cleaners as well as glow sticks that we will use to make a firefly craft later this summer (stay tuned for that one, it's going to be awesome!) So, now that I have rambled my way through this post maybe you should go to your local Dollar Tree store. You might be surprised at all the fun you will find, just don't be surprised if you spend more than you planned, it isn't hard!



To Catch A... Bug???

Today the kids and I took a quick trip to the Dollar Tree. I find that I have a love/hate relationship with this store. I love all the fun things they have in the store for just $1 but I hate that I load my cart up and spend way more than I intended! A lot of dollar stores I have been to have prices ranging from $1 to $20 but the Dollar Tree is the only one I have been to where everything really is just $1.

While we there, we found some cool bug catching supplies.

We picked up a big butterfly net for $1 and this cute little combo pack. It had a little net, tweezers and a container to keep your bugs... all for, you guessed it, $1.

I let the kids loose in the yard to catch whatever they could find.

Kaylen and AJ ran all over the place looking for butterflies but had no luck. So they set their sights on other things...

They saw a bird and thought they could catch it.

While they didn't catch the bird they did manage to find a baby robin's egg that was in the yard.



AJ picked up the egg but ended up smashing it. Oh well, it was a cool experience nonetheless. After they were done smashing the egg up, they went on looking for other things. AJ found a bunch of rocks and Kaylen found some feathers. They plan on heading back out later tonight to see if they can catch some fireflies. Should be an exciting time!



Holi Powder

Have you heard about Holi Powder?? This stuff is so incredibly awesome that I just have to tell everyone about it.

For starters, here is the description Wikipedia gives about Holi:
Holi (Hindi: होली) is a religious spring festival celebrated by Hindus. It is primarily observed in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, ^[1] and countries with large Indic diaspora populations following Hinduism, such as Suriname, Malaysia, Guyana, South Africa, Trinidad, United Kingdom, United States, Mauritius, and Fiji. It is also known as Phagwah and Festival of Colours, or as Doḷajāta (Oriya: ଦୋଳଯାତ) in Orissa and Dol Jatra (Bengali: দোলযাত্রা) or Basantotsav ("spring festival") (Bengali: বসন্তোৎসব) in West Bengal. The most celebrated Holi is in the Braj region, in locations connected to the Lord Krishna: Mathura, Vrindavan, Nandagaon, and Barsana, which become tourist destinations during the season of Holi.^[2] Large parts of South India, however, do not celebrate Holi with the same fervour.

 Every year, thousands of Hindus participate in the festival Holi. The festival has many purposes. First and foremost, it celebrates the beginning of the new season, spring. Originally, it was a festival that commemorated good harvests and the fertile land. Hindus believe it is a time of enjoying spring's abundant colors and saying farewell to winter. It also has a religious purpose, commemorating events present in Hindu mythology. Although it is the least religious holiday, it is probably one of the most exhilarating ones in existence. During this event, participants hold a bonfire, throw colored powder at each other, and celebrate wildly.
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I saw a blog (you can see it here) about a birthday party that used Holi Powder in a baseball game. I thought this was such a cool concept and showed it to my daughter. Right away she said she needed to do something like that for her birthday party. She is all of 5 years old but I had to agree with her! What a fun thing to do with all her little friends, such a great memory to share with them.

So, I started to search online to see where I might be able to find some Holi Powder. At first, I couldn't find much of anything and then finally I found a supplier through Amazon (you can click the word Amazon to find the products page.)

I ordered a box of the Festival Colors and last night, the kids and I tried a couple of the colors out. We needed to test them to see how badly they stained skin or hair or clothing BEFORE I let a bunch of 6 year olds let loose with them.

Here is our box of Festival Colours. If you order some just be prepared for the smell. They are scented and my best comparison would be to really fragrant roses. If you have allergies, this could be an issue.

I split a purple and green between the kids so they each had two baggies. I also gave them white t-shirts and made sure the shorts they had on were grubby in case the powder stained.

Then I let them loose.

The end result: We had some extremely messy kids (and mom) but we had a lot of fun. Surprisingly the powder washed off with warm water and soap. It also brushed right off of our clothing. Anything that didn't brush off, rinsed off in warm water.  We did, however, have to wash the kids hair because it the powder wanted to stay put.

We didn't rinse the shirts off because we thought they looked pretty cool. I read somewhere that you can set the colors on the shirt by spraying it with some vinegar and then ironing it to keep it. I haven't tried this yet but I will soon.

So, what did we learn? We are definitely doing this for Kaylen's birthday party. After the kids go crazy with our "rainbow battle," we will let them run around in the sprinkler to rinse off a bit and then have them get into the pool. I am sure it will be a great time had by all (inclduing the parents!)

Homemade Pizza

Tonight we made homemade pizza for dinner and it was delicious. I wish I had some more pictures and instructions for you but I only have a few. We ate the pizza before I could get the camera out to take a shot of the finished project but you can use your imagination :)

The ingredients we used were as follows:

1 frozen loaf of white bread (we used Rhode's Brand. You can find this at your local grocery store in the freezer section.)

Shredded mozzarella cheese

Pepperoni slices

1 jar of pizza sauce

Start by letting your dough rise. This could take anywhere from 2 hours to 18 hours, depending on the method you use. The back of the package will have directions for you and you can choose what works best for you.

Once the dough has risen, roll it out onto a pizza pan or any other baking pan that's large enough for a pizza.

Cover the dough with pizza sauce. We only used about a half a jar but it's really your preference. Once the sauce is on, cover it with cheese and then whatever toppings you would like. Pepperoni is the only thing my entire family will agree on, so we'll stick with that.

Since I did that without a recipe, I had to guess on times and temperatures. I went with 350 degrees and for about 15 minutes, then I increased the temp to 375 for another 5 minutes. Make sure you check the pizza often to make sure it doesn't burn.

Once the pizza has a golden crust and the cheese is nice and melted, remove it from the oven and then let it cool for a few minutes. Go ahead and enjoy!

"If You Give A Pig A Party"

Today we focused on the book, If You Give A Pig A Party, as well as the letter P, and the colors pink and purple.

The kids started out the day by putting on their best party clothes that had the colors pink or purple on it.














Next, we headed to the kitchen to make some cupcakes. We had a white cake mix that we added some red food coloring to get a pink tint.

Once the cupcakes were done, we also tinted the frosting a pink color and covered it with pink sprinkles.









Next on our agenda was our piggy masks. We used the following supplies:

Colored construction paper
Scissors
Glue
Googly Eyes
Craft sticks
Crayons








To make the masks:

Cut out the shape you would like to use for the face. Our shape was more of an oval.

Cut out ears and nose pieces and glue them to your pig face. My kids opted for a different color and nose so there was a bit of contrast.

Draw on the mouth and glue on some googly eyes. (We got ours from WalMart and they were the peel and stick kind.)

Glue your craft stick on the back of the face.

Here are our completed pig masks.

Next we made a sign for part of our decorations. We just cut out some letters and glued them to another piece of paper.

We hung up streamers and balloons. Nothing too fancy here... we just draped them over our lights so it would be an easy clean up.

After our decorations were hung and our cupcakes were made, we played some party games. The kids were really excited to play Bingo.

After each kid had a chance to win a game of Bingo, we headed back into the kitchen to make some pizza.   We used bread dough, pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella cheese and pepperoni to make this delicious pizza. We will be posting the recipe in a later post if you are interested.

After we had dinner, Ben and the kids enjoyed our homemade popsicles. We got these handy popsicle containers from WalMart. All in all, we had a pretty eventful day. I'm anxious to see what tomorrow will bring.