A Little Absent!

I just realized it's almost been a month since my last post. Talk about dropping the ball. I've found a TON of projects that I want to do. Now I just need the time to do them. I promise big things are coming! And you will all love it!

Grandma's Gift

 We like to get creative here for birthday gifts, especially gifts for the grandmas. My husband likes to say, "It's not a good gift unless they cry." This gift didn't cause any tears, but it was pretty sentimental because grandma can hold her granddaughters' hands when she is at home. I feel pretty silly for not thinking about this project myself! As with most of my projects it was inspired by multiple pins on Pintrest. It's so easy and it keeps toddlers occupied for two days! Okay, not two days straight, but it does provide two activities on two separate days.

What you need: Salt dough, patience, oven, acrylic paints, paint brush.

Day 1: Unfortunately I didn't capture a photo of day one. But day one involves making salt dough (I googled a recipe). The real trick is to get the salt dough the consistency of play dough. You might have to add flour or water until you get it right. Warning: it took me a little while. Once I had it right, I pulled out two portions and rolled and shaped them into a circles. (I let my toddler play with the remaining salt dough. We had enough for her to make a couple cut outs while I shaped.) I pressed my little ones hands into the dough and baked the salt dough creations in the oven at 250 degrees for three hours. Now this is also tricky because the time might very, so check the molds periodically to make sure they don't crack or burn. When this process is complete the molds will look like the picture above.

Day 2: Painting! That's right. I dressed my toddler in her baking apron and let her go to town on her cut outs with water-based paint while I used the acrylic paint on the hand molds. We had a good time painting our projects together. My toddler liked it so much that she even painted the table, hence the water-based paints!

When we were done, I thought it was hard to see the print with just one color, so I emphasized the print with white paint. My mom loved them!

Cheesey Chicken Veggie Bake

So I think the name needs a little work. I'm open for suggestions. Anyway this is one of my go-to recipes on a hard day!

What you need: 
1 box of Velveeta shells (or the knock-off brand, I buy Kroger)
1lb of Chicken
1/2 Cup of chicken broth
1 bag of frozen veggies (I use the bag with peas, carrots, and green beans)
1 package of dry ranch dressing mix (again I buy the know off brand)

What to do: 
1) Defrost the chicken but not all the way because it's easier to cut partially frosted chicken. Cut Chicken into small 1-inch pieces.
2) Place the chicken in a pan on the stove and sprinkle it with half the packet of ranch seasoning.
3) While the chicken is cooking, boil a pot of water for the shells. Once it's boiling add the shells.
4) Stir the chicken. When the chicken is no longer pink add the vegetables. (You may want to dump out a little of the liquid, but not too much because it has all the good juices! I'm just not a fan of runny cheesey bake.)
5) Once the pasta is cooked to your satisfaction, strain it and add the cheese from the package. Mix the Shells with cheese in with the chicken and veggies.
6) Let it warm for a bit and test it. If it's a little bland stir in the remainder of the ranch seasoning.

My family loves this recipe and because it's easy, so do I! In fact we love it so much that the last time I made it, I forgot to take a picture and it was gone. So I will make it again so I can capture a yummy picture for you. Recipes are more fun when you see what you're trying to make. Don't you agree?

Cookie Cutter Art

 What you'll need: Paper plates (or something to place the paint on), WASHABLE paints, cookie cutters, paper.

1) Let your child choose the paint they want on the plate. I like to guide my kids toward colors that will blend to make other colors so we can talk about it. (Red and Yellow make Orange, Blue and Yellow make Green you get the idea). Place the paint on a paper plate or other item sturdy enough for paint.

2) Help the child dip the cookie cutter into the paint and place it on the paper. It will make the image of the cut out. Then they can do it over and over again!

We chose Easter cut outs because we did this close to Easter, but it works for all sorts of holidays or all sorts of cut outs. Really kids just have fun with it. My little princess got so excited about it, she started to finger paint. It seems like that is how most of painting projects go these days! But here is the finished product:

Most people can't tell it was a bunny cut out, unless I tell them. It's pretty abstract!

Marble Painting!

How apt that the follow-up post to Beauty in Failure is the fixed project! We have been so busy this month that we haven't really had a chance to do projects at home, but once I tracked down some marbles, we set to work on getting our marble painting on! And it turned out to be really fun and much more successful than using beads!

What you'll need: Thick paper (I used card stock), marbles, a pan with high edges, tape, and WASHABLE paint.

Tape the paper to the pan. Place dots of paint toward the edges of the paper. I like to put mine on the paper so that my little one can finger paint as well.

Place the marbles in the pan and hold the pan to rotate the marbles around. The marbles make cool paint trails. Toddlers love it!

 We even put the pan down and pushed the marbles around with our fingers. We had marble races. I don't really know who won, but we had fun!

Finished Product!

Beauty in Failure

I'm not above posting my failures for everyone to see, and unlike most failures in life, this one has a happy ending. My little princess still had a good time painting. Once again, I was inspired by someone's genius, but here's the problem, I can't find the link to the original idea. I can't remember if it was from a link party or Pintrest or . . . something else. Sorry everyone. But it's cool because I can give you the basic run-down.

You will need: Water-based paint, a cake pan (with high edges), thick paper, tape, and marbles (or other weighted round objects, but weight is important!)

Tape the paper to the base of the pan. Add paint to the edges of the pan and paper.

 Place the marbles in the pan and let your child roll them around. The marbles leave these amazing lines and it looks really cool. Queue my failure! I didn't have marbles on hand, but being the ever creative mom (or too lazy to run to the dollar store mom) I decided to use beads. The beads rolled until they got stuck in the globs of paint. Sadly, you need marbles for weight. So we abandoned the idea and my little princess used her fingers. I have feeling we will be trying this again after I track down some marbles, but the picture still earned a place of honor on the fridge if for nothing less than to remind me that my little girl is an amazing finger painter and there can be beauty in failure. Talk about taking some of the pressure off!

 

I've linked up to Frugal Friday!

Busy Book

So I wanted to sew a quiet book, but I'm not a seamstress by any means, and all the tutorials I found seemed pretty intense. So I was over joyed to find this awesome tutorial for a busy binder! I really had a good time putting this binder together. It kept me busy for awhile, so hopefully it will be worth it.

What you'll need: a folder, box colored pencils, zipper pouch, file folders, beads, items for I spy bag, hot glue gun, magnets, velcro, envelopes. 

I spy bag: I purchased my Eye Spy bag at the dollar store. It is pencil bag. I also bought two packages of beads from the dollar store. My little princess and I filled it with beads and items I found around the house. For example, key, safety pin, Barbi shoe. After we filled it, I sealed the zipper with hot glue to make sure my little princesses can't unzip the bag an sprinkle goodies all over the place.

Colored Pencils: I cut the colored pencil box, like the tutorial suggests. Then I covered the colored pencil box with sticky laminate paper. (The kind you line drawers or shelves with.) I finished it off by placing velcro dots to the back of the box and the folder, so my little princess can pull the box off and put it back on. I'm a little concerned the lid is going to fall off, so I will probably secure the lid with a strap of some sort. Maybe something with a magnet or velcro. What do you think?

File Folder Games: For these I did an online search for Black and White File Folder Games. I only have a black and white printer, so I found some games I wanted, printed them off, colored them, cut them out, and had them laminated. You don't have to laminate the file folder games, but they will last longer if you do. I put quite a bit of effort into coloring the games I printed, so I want them to last for awhile.

Magnets on the ship game

 Once I got home, I placed magnet backings** on the ship game and velcro on the alphabet game.

 To hold the pieces for the games, I hot glued envelopes to the back of the file folders. I also used the sticky velcro piece to keep the envelope closed so we don't loose any pieces in the madness of my diaper bag.

So there it is! A relatively inexpensive, no-sew busy book. I'm really excited to give this a whirl on Sunday.

I linked up to Frugal Friday.

** Just a little side note: After my princesses played with this, I discovered magnets were a horrible idea. I will be replacing the magnets with velcro.