justem: little bits of this and that

Five for Friday:

1. Thank you to the Internet for thinking of great ideas for me so I don't have to!  Ideas like our first ever Back to School Feast we held in the backyard on Tuesday night. While I'm sure my paper chains and hand cut crowns do not hold a candle to those of the many other crafty mom bloggers, we had fun, and that's really all that matters. ;)

2. Tomorrow marks two really important things...first the Badger Football home opener!!  We have season tickets and I cannot WAIT.  Football season is my favorite!  However, we are actually missing tomorrow's game for something even more important...the baby turns ONE?!?!  I'm not entirely how this is possible since he was only born about a month ago! 

3. I'm all over the internet this weekend...and thankfully not in a "embarrassing celebrity slip" kind of way. ;)  Today I have projects up on the Gossamer Blue Blog and the October Afternoon Blog. Tomorrow I have two projects up as part of the Fancy Pants Social Media Team!  I will share these layouts here in the next few days, but in case you just can't wait...click the links above. ;)

4. In the short time since my last Five for Friday post, I've actually read another book: Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline.  I've officially read more in the past couple of months than I did the last two years combine. No lie.  So yeah...I dont know if I have really high standards, but this is another book I just didn't love.  I think the premis of the book is a good one, but I feel it could have been told better.  Her writing style wasnt my favorite, and I felt like the story was predictable and rushed in places. I'm still waiting for a book to WOW me. Any suggestions??

5. Last week we made "Cloud Dough" (thanks again, Internet, old buddy, old pal!).  It's the world's most simple recipe: 8 cups of flour + 1 cup of baby oil.  That's it.  My kids loved it.  Of course, it ended up all over the concrete patio, so make sure if you try this at home you do it outside!!! ;)  

 

 

Summer Fun: Sidewalk Chalk Paint

Happy Friday!  My kids have been begging me for a couple of weeks to make some sidewalk chalk paint. We finally did it last week!  If you've never made it before, it's just an easy mix of corn starch + water + food coloring. I used the Wilton Gel Food Coloring, which makes it very vibrant.  This was our first time making it at our new home, and we quickly realized that the smooth blacktop driveway at our old house is a far superior canvas than our current bumpy concrete. ;) I ended up making the paint pretty water so that it would work better on the concrete.  The foam brushes that we'd used the past also didn't like the surface, but they still had fun.  As you can see, by the end, they were just dumping it, stepping in it, and making a big old {fun} mess. Luckily, it washes right off with the rain!  

Have a great day and a fun weekend! Thanks for stopping by!

Kid Crafting: Washi Easter Eggs

I was planning on sharing this photo on Saturday before Easter, and I'd like to say that I couldn't because of that ridiculous Typepad outage, but in reality, I was totally busy with yard work and cooking for Sunday and all that jazz...so...in an effort to draw out Easter a few more days...here's a cute Easter craft that I blatantly stole from the Internet. That's right, like the majority of my kid crafts, I do not claim credit or responsibility for any of this!!

My first step was using my Silhouette Cameo to create some egg shapes.  At first I thought I was going to have to buy and egg shape from the Silhouette Store because I am a big old die cutting dummy, but after about five minutes, I was able to use the "oval" tool to create some pretty stellar egg shapes. I then gathered some other supplies - namely, washi tape and a craft knife.  A word to the wise - choose tape that you don't mind wasting, because man do kids have NO clue how to conserve product! ;)  

I adhered the negative image to a white piece of cardstock using a single strip of washi, then off my daughter went with the rest of the tape. I just gave her free reign to pick and choose what and where she wanted the tape.

Here is the egg after she finished with the tape:

And here is the final product once I used my craft knife to cut out the egg:

 I took one "in progress" cutting photo...you know...because y'all couldn't figure that out on your own... ;)

They turned out really cute! We made a few more and did some other nifty activities like stacking the washi tape... ;)  

She realized they weren't in rainbow order and had to start over again...that's my girl! ;) In this photo, you can see one of the funkier eggs sitting on the table next to her...not sure why I didn't take a good picture of that one.

The rainbow washi prompted her to make a rainbow egg. I love that she chose to create a (somewhat) symmetrical rainbow going from top to bottom!

 And yes, she is indeed wearing a tutu and a swimsuit over her shirt...because that's just how we roll...

It truly was a fun and easy project. We managed to make six eggs in the short time that her brothers were napping, and if you know them, you know that when I say "short", I really mean it!!  The only bummer is that the washi is not the stickiest of tapes, and the tape is starting to come up on a lot of them. Perhaps I should laminate them and keep them forever. Or throw them away and make more next year. We shall see... ;) Hope all of my Easter celebrating readers (all four of you, ha!) had a great Easter!  

Muffin Tin Monday

Last Monday, it was "warm" out - and by "warm" I mean it was above freezing!  It was probably about 45 - which felt like a heat wave!! The kids wanted to go have a picnic in the backyard for lunch, but I told them it was too cold and too muddy.  I'm such a party pooper!  All on their own they came back and suggested that perhaps we could sit out on the sun porch and have Muffin Tin Monday (although they called it - "where you put all the food in the little cup thing.") ;) I couldn't say no to that!! I scrounged up a bunch of little foods and we had our very own indoor picnic!  I'm super excited about the sun porch on our new house, and I can't wait until we can use it on a more regular basis!!

They were all..."Mom...it's so RUDE to take pics of poeple eating, duh!" ;)

Book + Meal {slacker mom style...}

I've seen a lot of great book + meal ideas on Pinterest.  This is something I've been wanting to try for awhile, because we love books here...and some of us love food - some of us, not so much (ah - the troubles of being two!). ;)  So, one day a couple of weeks ago, in our effort to beat the winter blues, we had our very first book + meal collaboration. I have seen some really fantastic book + meal ideas.  Some families go all out with food and decorations. Yeah...you aren't going to see that here. ;) The book we chose was one of our all time favorites: The Blueberry Pie Elf by Jane Thayer.  The obviously food choice?  Blueberry pie!! We could have made a blueberry pie by scratch or tried all the different pies that they make in the book (blueberry, cherry and apple), but instead I just bought the only frozen blueberry pie available at our little local grocery store. Gotta start small, people...! ;)  We read the book and ate the pie and it was a hit.  

Somebody could NOT wait to dig into the pie. ;)

On this particular day she chose to wear her Halloween costume. Totally normal in our house... ;)

Have you done a book + meal?? I'd love to hear some book suggestions!!  Next time we will try an actual meal!

Kid Crafting: Celebrate the Olympics!

Last week we made a fun Olympic project. I'm sure you've seen it a billion time on Pinterest already, but since I'm up to my eyeballs in fun Gossamer Blue kits, and I've got nothing else to share right now, I thought this would save the blog from getting stale! ;)  Before I post the pics, I need to give a little disclaimer: These "kid craft" posts are just for fun.  They will never feature perfect photos or instructions. It is not my intent to be a famous crafty blogger...and I know it shows, ha! Most of the pictures are usually taken with my iPhone. My house will most likely be a mess in the background. My kids will probably be wearing pajamas or mismatched clothes. Let's be honest...I consider it a win when my 2.5 year old wears pants!!  I'm a pretty "realistic" mom when I share things on the blog- nothing perfect going on here!!  

Okay, disclaimer over.  So, the Olympic rings...how did I decide to do this project? The truth?  There was a stack of paper plates sitting on my counter that was leftover from a night that we had guests.  I was about to put them away when I remembered this craft.  I cut out the rings and let the kids go with the paint.  I just used the Crayola Washable Kids Paint, which is great because it is...wait for it...washable. ;)  No really, it does wash off about everything. The only downfall? There is no black!!  We just made the most of our project and had a little art lesson called "how do we make black?!" ;) 

(Today she is actually wearing the Little Red Riding Hood costume she wore for Halloween when she was two. That's how we roll...)

I have seen some Olympic ring projects where they just kind of placed them next to each other and stuck them together. Well, that was NOT good enough for us. ;) We had to connect ours together exactly the same way the real rings are connected!  I then used some bakers twine to hang it up from our window.  It's not perfect, and in spite of my attempts to cover up the cut in each plate (which I had to do to get them intertwined), ithey are still showing on a few. Oh well. It looks great and makes our hose feel very festive now that the Valentine's decorations have come down!

I hope everyone is enjoying the warmer weather, though I think my Chicagoland friends are being hit with a crazy winter storm.  They are not amused at how amused I am that the year we move to WI, Chicago got way more snow than we did! ;)  Have a great day!

Kid Crafting: Pebbles Valentine's Banner

Last month, after we took all of our Christmas decorations down, I decided we needed to spruce up the place a bit with some Valentine's Decor!  I love the Pebbles Banner kits, but, as most of you know, I'm totally NOT a home decor/banner making type of person!! ;) I thought it might be a fun project for the kids.  First, I gathered some supplies...

Yes, that is a Halloween banner kit, but I love the newsprint look...and nobody would ever be close enough to read what it says! I also included some products from the new Yours Truly line. It's such a fun line!!  I made one example for the kids to follow. Of course, mine had some nice evenly spaced decorations all facing the right direction. And, of course, theirs all ended up looking a bit like this... ;) 

But, they had fun. ;)  I had to stop for a moment and remind myself that it's not really about perfection in this instance, but more the experience. I totally get that sometimes this is hard when you are working with limited (and often expensive) product. I just took a deep breath and let them loose.  So...our banner is pretty wonky, but it was made with love! (Truly - hearts, stickers, red crayons...!) I used some bakers twine to connect it all together and hung it up in our kitchen.  I had to take a photo of it at night, because I'm not camera savvy enough to figure out how to deal with the back-lighting!!

Just for fun, here are a couple close-ups of our beautiful banner! When they started coloring on them, I was tempted to stop them, but I actually love the colored ones the best!!  It makes the banner even more fun and colorful!

 Hit me up with some of your favorite Valentine crafts!! I am still in need of a few fun things for this week! ;)  Hope you are having a great day!

Polar Vortex Creativity! {Tape-Resist Snowflake Art}

So, you may heard about this little thing called the "polar vortex" that happened last week? ;)  Our low was -22 actual temperature with wind chills around -45.  My daughter had two days off of school, so we decided to do a fun little art project to keep us busy! (This also was part of my "bring back the creativity" plan of my OLW!)  We have done some tape resist projects in the past, but I recently saw this snowflake idea on Pinterest, so we thought we'd give it a try. The kids helped design their snowflakes...this was all about them having fun, and clearly not so much about them being realistic! ;) We didn't have any thin tape, so I just ripped the blue painters tape we had in half...they are VERY imperfect!

Next I let them loose with the watercolors.  I tried to encourage the use of "wintery" colors, but they pretty much scoffed at that. ;)

 

Henry is wearing his long underwear. It was that cold. ;) And, one good thing about moving? You have eight bajillion empty boxes to use under your art projects!

Here are our final products...

M stole my phone while I wasn't looking and took this photo of her favorite snowflake:

Finally, I grabbed some washi tape and stuck them to the door in our kitchen that leads out to the mudroom. I have to say, I'm kind of glad they didn't take my advice about the "winter" colors, because they are beautiful, even the one that looks nothing like a snowflake. ;)

This was a super cute and easy project that totally brightened up our kitchen!  We may need to do versions for all the holidays now!

Saying goodbye... {Pebbles Treat Bags}

Hi!  I apologize for my lack of blogging lately! We have officially lived in our new house for a week, and to say it's been chaotic would be a bit of an understatement. Although we've "lived" here for a week, we spent one day at a friend's for Thanksgiving, one day at a Badger football game (my team!! So glad we live closer now!) and one day back in IL gathering the rest of our belongings.  So, that means we really only had two "workable" days until my husband went back to work.  I'm having a hard time getting much accomplished - the daily tasks like laundry and dishes and chasing around my insane children seem to take up the majority of my time, and I'm lucky to get even a box or two unpacked a day.  I hope to have some house photos to share at some point!!  Until then...

Before we left Illinois, my daughter celebrated her last day of preschool. She has been going to that center since she was five months old, so leaving was incredibly sad for both us and th staff there . She wanted to do something special for her friends, so we decided to make some treat bags with her picture on them to say goodbye.    First we made a sign for her to hold with the greeting for her friends.  I let her pick the words, but I had help edit, because what she really wanted to say was, "It was fun playing at school with me. I'm sorry I have to leave you and go to a new house and a new school. Here is a bag of candy for you because I am saying goodbye...." Yeah. She had a novel planned out. ;)  I explained that we had to fit all the words on ONE piece of paper with a font big enough to read. So this is what we ended up with:

 My Canon Selphy worked perfectly to print out the small photos, and we used the cute little Pebbles treat bags from last season's Amy Locurto line.The bags were decorated with stars cut from patterned paper and washi tape from the Basics line.  Mirielle was in charge of choosing all the colors for each bag and was very particular about who got what color!  She wrote her friends names on the bags and we filled them up with candy.

Of course after we took the pictures she decided that they weren't quite embellished enough and by the time they reached her friends they also had some crayon drawn hearts and a few Wizard of Oz stickers stuck on them! ;)  She was super excited to give them to her friends, and it made me smile (and my heart ache a bit) when the mother of her best friend from school told me that she came home and immediately put the photo of Miri on their fridge. :)  I like to joke that outside of layout making, I'm a craft flunky. I don't make gifts. I don't make decor. I don't even make cards unless I have to.  Altered projects scare me. I've never quilted or sewn anything in my life. Costumes, wreaths and everything else that a craft person could potentially make just come from Target (man, I love that place). However, I will admit that in spite of the bittersweet occasion, I had a blast making these with Mirielle. Maybe you'll see some homemade Valentines in my future. Or maybe not. ;)

Gobble, Gobble! {Pebbles Kid Craft}

Happy Monday!  This is our last week in our current home - at this time next week will be loading the trucks to head to our new home in our new state!!  It's so bittersweet...but at this point I don't have much time to think about anything other than packing...and packing...and more packing!  Last week my kids and I made a cute and easy little Thanksgiving project that I thought I'd share!

I'm not very good at "tutorials," and it was crazy dark and gloomy when we actually made them, so I have no in-progress pictures, but I think they are pretty self explanatory!  First we painted the toilet paper rolls with Crayola kids paint, then added the googly eyes, the beak, and the waddle. To make the feathers, I simply stretched out the circle shape in my Silhouette software. I didn't measure or anything - just guessed and cut. I tend to wing it like that on kid's projects - okay, really, I tend to wing it like that on every project. Luckily they were perfectly sized. I used a bunch of my older Pebbles patterned paper (Tricks and Treats, Family Ties, Basics, and Walnut Grove - if you are going from left to right on the first turkey.) in fall colors.  Finally, we stapled the feathers onto the back. It was a quick, easy, and relatively clean project! 

Here are few close ups of my kiddos, all proud with their creations!

Have a great day, and thanks for stopping by!