Father's Day

I had been meaning to get this post finished BEFORE Father's Day but things got a bit crazy here! The kids have been incredibly "active" this past week or two and it's been a journey trying to keep up with them.

We worked hard on our Father's Day gifts this year. Normally, we would get Ben a gift card to Home Depot or Lowe's so he can get whatever he likes... this year, we wanted a more personal touch so we went with homemade gifts.

I hadn't intended on going with any theme this year but what we ended up with was a bunch of "hand print" crafts... it worked out quite well...


The first project we worked on was a card.
I traced one hand onto a folded piece of construction paper so that when cut out it formed a heart. We glued it onto the paper and free handed to words "Hands Down Best DAD."
The kids then colored it in how the wanted it to look .

Next was actual hand prints. I took two plain white canvas and painted them black. I then painted the kids hands white and placed them on the canvas. This was an extremely easy project... until I went to get Kaylen cleaned up (she went first.) After we washed her hands I found AJ had smeared white paint all over the left canvas and we had to start over... boys!!!




Our next project was a mold of the kids' hands. This one got a bit messy... but you shouldn't have any problem with it, I just have kids who like to be messy.
Take 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup salt and 1/4 water and mix it all together. You will get a soft dough like mixture.
I suggest putting it onto a baking sheet before rolling it out because it does tend to get sticky.

After we rolled ours out, we placed a bowl on top and used it like a cookie cutter to get the shape we wanted.

Press the hand into the dough until you like the mold. I suggest pushing down a little farther than what you normally would just because it will rise when baking. Once you have everything the way you like bake at 200 degrees for 3 hours. Once it has baked and cooled you can paint it or leave it just plain. Because of the salt it will look like it has glitter in it, which I think is kind of cool.

We decided to paint ours which is where things got messy. I set the kids down with their paints and their hand prints. I should have supervised a little better because before I knew it the kids were covered in paint... literally from head to toe...

It took me an hour to get them clean and the paint wasn't completely out of Kaylen's hair... luckily they were wearing paint shirts otherwise their clothes would have been ruined.

While I think this was quite funny, I would recommend checking your paints to make sure they are washable and kid friendly before they get all messy... and avoid hair... three shampoos later and the paint finally came out of Kaylen's hair. :)

So, back to the project. The kids painted more of themselves than the actual project. Since they used such dark colors, I had to go back and highlight the hand print in white. I am sure if we hadn't been working on this a half hour before Ben came home from work it might have been more successful... but they still turned out alright.

For our final project we traced everyone's hand (we traced Ben's a week or two ahead of time) onto colorful construction paper. We cut the hands out and then glued them on top of each other. We started with dad, then mom, then Kaylen and ended with AJ (we went age and size order.) This was an easy project and can be done in about five minutes, depending on how fast you can cut and glue.

Again I sat the kids down with the paint... this time, no mess! I put some plain construction paper in front of them and they painted pictures on it (and watched t.v. at the same time.) We used their painting as wrapping paper for the canvas project.

Ben seemed happy with his gifts and the kids had a lot of fun making them. I think they had more fun making a mess and watching me pull my hair out but it was still fun. :)

We hope everyone had a great Father's Day!!!