Fun Finger Painting For Thanksgiving

I have always loved children’s fingerprints.  I am even in the midst of making up a whole alphabet book of animals that we turn our fingerprints into. 

So, today we had some fun using our fingerprints and handprints to make turkeys and trees.

I saw these adorable turkeys over at my new favorite site, Silly Eagle Books.  You must check her out!  My version is a little different than hers, and years ago I made these with rows of feathers.  A row of red feathers, then orange, then yellow, and then the body.  Fun!

How sweet are little hands!? 

We put our turkeys along the bottom of a page so they could draw and color the scene in themselves.  Sorry about the lighting, just imagine that you could see their cute eyes and beaks!  I couldn’t get the picture’s lighting right to make them show up!  I guess for blogging, a lighter color of brown would be better!

Then we went all out and painted up our hands and arms to make trees! 

This time our fingerprints were the autumn leaves.

I like how both of these activities turned out and the kids ALWAYS love when we paint!

Had to throw this in.  Do you see the orange face?  This is what my kids were doing as they ate their snack after school today.  I just love having them home and can’t wait for our 4 day weekend to begin!!

Rebecca

A Bushel of Apples to Play With

 
I loved my Mom’s crocheted apples so much that I had to make up some polymer clay ones!

These were so quick and easy to make.  Then, I let my kids play with them!

After I made my tiny apples, I made up this paper to use them with. 
I keep adding to my list of manipulatives for my children to play with.  There are so many ways for the kids to play with these.  They can sort them by color, do pattern work, use the above sheet and sort by numbers, etc.  I love this kind of stuff!
Rebecca

I'm joining the following fun parties; Its A Blog Party, Blue Cricket Design, Sew Much Ado, Just A Girl, ABC and 123,

Great Summer Activity-Boondoggle

I grew up making things like boondoggle and friendship bracelets in the summer.  I can’t believe I haven’t done this before with my children.  I grew up calling this boondoggle.  However, it is also known as plastic lacing or scoubidou.
This has been an amazing summer for us so far!  I love having so much time with my kids.  Last night I had a house full of giggling kiddos because we had a sleepover.  As a parent, nothing is better than giggling happy children!  LOVE IT! 

Well, I busted out the boondoggle last night and was so surprised that my youngest daughter found it so easy!

Here she is working on her boondoggle creation.  I showed her how to one knot and off she went!  I was just going to have them do the simple square.  However, she saw I was turning in mine and wanted to try it.  She adapted to this with no problem as well!

Here are the four variations that were worked on last night.  I love the color combinations that they each chose!

Here is the basics of how to make boondoggle:
I think that looking at my pictures will be more helpful than my directions! ;)
Cut two long strips of the plastic, which is called gimp.  We chose lengths of 30” and our boondoggle turned out about 3”.
At the halfway point of each strip you overlap them in a +. 
Bring your gimp that was going up and bring it down.  You want to make a loop of it.  Then, take the gimp that was going down and bring it up, again making another loop.  Hold the end that’s at top with your pointer finger and the end that’s now on the bottom with your thumb.  This frees up your other hand to do the next steps.  Refer to the picture above.

Now you will move your sides to the opposite side.  You are going to weave your sides through your loops going over the first loop and under the second one.  This is the same on both sides.  Again refer to the picture above.

Now you can let go of your gimp and pull the knot tight.  I pull two strands in one hand and two in the other.  Then, I alternate the two strands that each hand is holding and pull again.  You want this knot tight. 
Repeat these steps over and over again to finish the whole project up.  For a uniform look make sure to keep your gimp straight and don’t let it have a twist in it.  Also make sure to pull all the knots uniformly tight.  You will see if one section was not pulled as tight as the others.  I have heard you can pull too tight on this plastic and it will break.  However, I haven’t had a problem with this.
    
Are you ready for a variation?  Lets do the spiral now!
You are going to do the same basic thing of making two loops and then weaving in the side loops.  However, instead of making the top (right) loop come straight down and the bottom (left) loop go straight up you are going to make the loops diagonally. 
See the top gimp is to the right of the one going down?  Well when you form the loop bring the gimp to the left of the bottom gimp.

Next, you will take your bottom gimp that was on the left of the top one and when you bring it up to make your second loop you are going to cross diagonally over and to the right of your top gimp. 
Notice they aren’t crossing each other.

You will weave your side weaves the same way you made your top and bottom loops. 
Your gimp on the right side is below the left gimp.  So you will weave your right gimp over and under the loops, but you will want your gimp to end up above the left gimp.  See the above picture.

Now you will take your left gimp and weave it over and under the loops, but you will want your gimp to end up below your right gimp.  See the above picture.
Finish off by pulling this knot tight as you did with the straight square knot.  If you continue this you will have created a spiral design.  You can switch back and forth between knots in your design for whatever look you want to achieve.
     
Here are our two finished boondoggles so far!  However, as I’m typing this up the other two are being finished up and we are starting up some harder designs.  There are tons of different knots out there to try.  I looked through a bunch of kits at the stores and really did not care for their directions.  The best directions for more complicated knots that I have found is at Boondoggleman.   His site has wonderful directions with pictures and a large variety of knots to try!


How cute are they?  My kids love putting things like this on their backpacks so I’m sure this is where they will end up.  We will be going on a big (for us) vacation this summer with the kids (4 days in the car) and I had planned on breaking out the boondoggle for our road trip.  However, I’m so glad that I broke this out earlier as these giggly kids just loved it!  Now I wont be trying to explain how to do this at rest stops on the road!  I’m sure we will come home with lots more of these to show everyone!
I told a few friends that we were making boondoggle and they had never heard of it.  Have you?  I thought everyone grew up doing this at summer camp!  I’d love to hear everyone else’s ideas of if they did this or what are the other activities that they did as a child, during the summers, to keep them occupied!

This was a must do summer activity for us!  All five children from ages 5-12 gave it a thumbs up! ;)

Rebecca

Linking to the following parties:  Life as Lori, KoJo Designs, Fingerprints on the Fridge, ABC and 123,

Old Fashioned Summer Carnival-Great for 4th of July (or 24th of July)

Here are some great activities to make/do at your Fourth of July celebrations this weekend. 

We always grew up having an amazing Old Fashioned 24th of July celebration with our family (this is a Utah/Mormon holiday).  It was truly amazing.  So, last year we put together our own carnival, for our children.
I think you can figure out how to make each of these activities, but incase you can’t you can find tutorials for all of them, here!  This is a post about our carnival last year.
The above picture is a Water Bottle Bowling Game.  It has a super cute placemat that you have to go check out!


Fun action shot of my Nephew throwing the dart at the balloons!  This is a simple game to put together that I love the look of! 

Bean Bag Toss Game.  With homemade beanbags that each have a patriotic word embroidered onto them!  The game itself is made from a box!  Are you getting that we wanted the games to be part of the decoration?
Homemade Rubber Band Shooters!  Remember those from your childhood?  They are super easy to make!   Katrina made enough of these for each cousin to have one!  They are so much fun!  We just shot empty cans and bottles with them.
How about some Cork Guns!  These are made out of wood, pvc pipe, string, and a cork!

Tin Can Stompers are another super easy yet effective activity!
         
Tin Can Knock Down!  We used a ball that you get wet, just to keep water flying around the whole yard!

Hope this gives you some inspiration for old fashioned carnival games you can make yourself, from mostly things that you already have around the house!

Rebecca

Make Your own Zucchini Horn

Yes, you can make music from a zucchini stem, or Zucchini Horn!  These amazing Zucchini Horns actually blow pretty loud.  My Brother-In-Law showed me this, this summer and I think it is the coolest thing! 

It reminds me of making noise from a grass blade.  Anyone else do that in their childhood?

I love having my kids in the garden with me.  Anything like this that I can do, to help them enjoy it even more, is frosting on the cake to me!  Actually though, this gets me pretty excited too!

My sister’s garden is growing so well!  I have been reaping the benefits of her garden all summer!  This zucchini is about 15 inches long! 

They are finding their zucchini is wanting to take over their garden box (don’t they always take over!?).  So, they have to keep cutting back their zucchini foliage.  I was lucky enough to be over when they were doing this and my Brother-In-Law showed me this super cool activity to do before adding those zucchini leaves to the compost.

You want to cut the whole length of the zucchini leaf off, including the stem, down to the vine.

Then, you are going to cut the leaf off of the stem.  Make sure to get pretty close to the leaf, as marked on the above picture. 

The zucchini leaf’s stem is hollow between those two parts.  However, you want to make sure you cut close enough to the leaf that the stem part, at the mouthpiece, is solid and not hollow. 

Here is your cut stem.  This is the horn.  You will now need to do 2 things.
First, cut about 3/4” slit down the center of the mouthpiece side, which is the side that was attached to the leaf.   If you look closely at the picture I marked where you slit it.

Next, you want to scrape the outside of the mouthpiece about 2 inches down, on the outside of the stem.  This is because you will be inserting this into your mouth and it is kind of prickly if you don’t scrape off the bumpy prickles.

We actually used a kitchen knife to do all this cutting and scraping.

Next, you put the mouthpiece into your mouth.  You have to put more of it into your mouth then the length that you slit. 

Now, blow.

I’m telling you.  This is the coolest thing ever!  The mouthpiece vibrating from the slit is what makes the noise. 

These zucchini horns only work for a few hours as they don’t work once they start wilting and go soft.

Also, as my children played with it they would close the slit up and it wouldn’t work.  So, I would just kind of push open the slit a little and then it would work again.  I didn’t have this problem when I did it, so I think it was probably my son who tends to bite down on things. ;)
If your first one doesn’t work, practice with how you are cutting it.  My Sister’s horns didn’t work.  She would either cut too far away from the stem, or too long of a slit.  My Brother-In-Law’s worked every time!

Rebecca

I’d love to hear from anyone that does this! 

Lego Indiana Jones Birthday Party

OK here is where you start humming the theme song.  Cause that is totally what is going through my head right now. ;)  So go ahead and take care of that little sound clip for me. ;)

Now that we have the background music taken care of lets get on to party stuff.  I did a lot of searching on ye old’ web for ideas.  Boy! Did I ever find lots and lots of really cool ideas out there.  Some how with all that coolness I managed to put my own twist on things.  Seriously you hardly even have to do any of your own planning with how many cool parties there are out there with this theme.  I really did want to do each and every single idea and then reality set in.  There is no way that I could cram it all into one party.  Not even if that party lasted 8 hours.  Plus with my boys our parties can’t be too fussy.  They don’t do well when we try to micro mange the party.  All the transitions from one game or thing to the next causes them to be upset.


Google is a great place to start when looking for Lego Indiana Jones images.  All you really have to do is page through the images and find one you like.  Copy it and put it into your trusty photo editor, add a background and type up your invitation.  I saved it in a small enough file format to be able to email it to all the kids in my son’s class.  (His teacher was awesome!  At the beginning of the year she gave everyone a complete phone, address and email list of all the kids in the class.  It was complete with parents names.  She suggested we all get to know each other since our kids would probably be in the same classes through 8th grade.)

When I throw a party I try to come up with favors that are part of the theme.  Often times I will go with something that has a related theme.  For example I know that Indiana Jones was an Archeologist.  I know that he was some times after Egyptian artifacts.  So I went to Google and found  this website that allows you to write in Hieroglyphics.  Specifically they put it in cartouche format.  I made a key by copying the images of each of the alphabet letter.  By the way you can’t do them all at once because the program will condense it down.  When writing in hieroglyphics apparently it isn’t one symbol per letter at some point.  If you are doing 3 initials it is.  So get the initials of all the kids and paste them into your trusty photo editor.  I actually made up a sheet with all the symbols stacked for each name.  I also reversed the image because I painted the side you draw on with gold.  That way the front has a shiny surface.  To help me remember which was which, I put the initials on the master copy just below each cartouche.  The cartouches on the left are my Shrinky Dinks waiting to be cut out and put into the oven.  I used permanent markers to trace and color in the images.  I found that coloring in the images before tracing the out line was better.  When coloring over the black marker it tends to smear.

This one is my son’s initials.  I forgot to punch the holes in the top before I put them in the oven.  The one on the left is the back side of his brother’s cartouche.  As you can see they don’t all turn out the same size.  It all depends on the symbols for each letter. 

This is one of the finished cartouches for his friends.  Since the hole got really small (I used a regular size hole punch), I used a jump ring and put it on some gold boon dongle cord.  (I think that is what that stuff is called).  I have another observation to share.  If you over bake your cartouches a little it gives a slightly crackled look and makes the gold background look more shiny through the cartouche.  Also keep some chopsticks or something similar on hand when shrinking these.  You may have to open the oven and pry them open.  They curl as they shrink and some of them wanted to stick to themselves.  This was corrected easily by holding down one side and pulling back with the other chopstick to open it.  Then close the oven back up and let them straighten out.  I press them down with a flat spatula as soon as I get them out of the oven.  This helps to straighten them out a little more.  Once they were cool, I painted two coats of acrylic gold metallic paint on the rough side.   Once I had the templates made they were pretty quick and easy to trace out.
I had the key (shown in the top picture) out and had each of the kids figure out what the symbols were for their initials.  They then had to find the correct cartouche.  They loved it.  Their parents also thought they were pretty cool too. 

Dig out your memories of Raider’s of the Lost Arch.  In the beginning of the movie the Hovitos (sp?) Had poison blow darts that they were chasing Indy with.  Many people use straw with q-tips dipped in red paint and shoot them at some sort of picture of one of the villains.  I was ready to start working on that idea when I thought of all the extra PVC pipe I had left over from our Lego Agents Party last January (we made marshmallow shooters).  I had a few pieces that were 9” long.  I decided to take one of our tag darts and see if I could shoot it out of the pipe.  YEP, it worked.  Please not that not all 1/2 inch PVC pipe have the same inner diameter.  Be sure to take a dart with you to the hardware store to make sure it will fit.  I had picked up a few 2 foot pre cut pieces that ended up not working because of that problem.  So back to buying a 10 foot length of the stuff I bought in January.  Luckily we are only talking about $3 worth.  If you look closely at the above picture you can see all the info off the pipe I used.  I simply wound the duck tape diagonally around the pipe and trimmed the ends.  Another idea to help the kids know whose is whose is to label them with their names.  I used my trusty label maker for that.  It was kind of hard to see the names at a glance.  I would have liked to have had colored electrical tape to make colored bands that the labels could be put on.  That way the kids can see what color it is as well as their name.  Even the location of the tape could be an indicator.

Time to make some targets.  I purchased 5/8 of a yard of red felt and 1/2 a yard of black felt.  I also had a smaller piece of red felt for the circles.  I cut the red felt into 4 equal rectangles for the background.  For the silhouettes I printed out an image of Mola Ram on 13x19 inch paper.  I happen to have a printer that large but you can print him out in sections if you don’t.  I traced the image onto poster board for my template.  I found the image on www.bricklink.com and went to the mini figure section and then to the Indiana Jones figures and then clicked on Mola Ram (I did the same for all the other characters).  I then copied the image and pasted into my Photo Shop program.  I made the canvas size 13x19 inches and enlarged the figure as much as I could to fit the whole space.  I simply used my poster board cut out as a patter on the black felt.  I used no-sew Heat-N-Bond to adhere the silhouette onto the background and did the same with the target spots. 
Note:  Use a piece of paper between the felt and the iron otherwise the felt will melt onto the iron if you warn not using cotton wool felt.

If you don't know about www.briklink.com it is a website devoted to buying and selling Legos.  New and used.  When looking for specific items they have a picture of the item and list all of the shops that have that item in order of price.  Anyway, if you are looking for figure images it is a good place to go because all the pictures are front and center with the figures standing up.  We have shopped there many times for those hard to find items or for even replacement items. 


For each of the other figures I simple sized the head to the same proportions.  I cropped just the heads from the images and printed them out on standard 8.5x11 inch paper.  I cut the head off of my Mola Ram template and taped on the next head.  Since all mini figures have the exact same body this works. 

Here is my 6 year old demonstrating how to use these.  He is aiming at Belloq.  Put the dart in the mouth end of the tube and blow.  It does not work so well if you put the dart just inside the other end.  It flies straighter and faster if you put it in the mouth end.  Our tubes are 9 inches long.  We sampled shorter tubes and the darts didn’t fly as far or as straight.  I was able to blow the darts out of an 18 inch tube as well.  We went with 9 inches because I already had 5 tubes at that length.  If you are doing these then buy a 10 foot length and cut it down into 12 inch sections.  You will have 10 blow tubes for just over $3.  You can use Nerf tag darts that already have the hook side of Velcro on them or you could simply use 3/4 inch pom poms.  If you did that then you could probably try making the center circle out of the hook side of velcro for them to stick to.  We gave each child a tube and two darts to keep.
The boys got the camouflage “duck” tape and the girls got the tie dye “duck” tape.  I purchased the “Duck” tape from my craft store.

I had to do another mini figure cake.  I couldn’t do it for one and not the other.  You can check out my Lego Agents Party Post  for info on the head and hands.  For Indiana Jones I used food coloring to add his beard and eye brows.  His whip, bag, gun holster and belt are all made of rolled fondant (like the outer layer of the head and hands).  I used some napkins inside a plastic bag to help give his bag some shape. 
The frosting is regular white frosting from Wilton.  However, I did add some chocolate frosting for the pants.  So the top half of the cake is chocolate cake with white frosting and the bottom is chocolate on chocolate.  I used Betty Crocker’s gluten free cake mix.  If you want to make a 9x13 inch cake with that mix you have to use two boxes or you will end up with pancakes.
By the way our guests didn’t know it was gluten free and they were saying how good the cake was.
Note: I noticed that Wilton’s frosting says it may contain dairy.  I am not entirely sure but we think my oldest is reacting to possible trace amounts of dairy.  That or he is getting his Dad’s cold.  My 6 year old currently has the stomach flu with massive stomach cramps so it is hard to tell.

The whip and the bag were made a few days ahead of time so that they could dry out.  I added the strap to the bag the day I made the cake.  I simply wet one side of the bag so the strap would stick to it. 
I used embroidery floss to make the marks in the fondant to make it look braided.  For an added touch I tied the floss onto the end and braided it to look like the string on the end of an actual whip.  Yep you guessed it I Googled how to braid a whip.  I watched a couple of videos on it.  It is fascinating to watch.  I was going to try to braid the fondant but it likes to dry out quick and cracks when it does.  I like how it turned out don’t you?

I tried to do a tie in with all of the movies.  The kids used sticky dots and gems to make their own “Holy Grail” cups.  OK so we all know the real Holy Grail in the movie was as plain as could be but this was more fun for the kids.
My only note about this is that you need a TON of gems.  I didn’t have nearly enough.  I forgot that 6 and 8 year olds will load up the cups with as many gems as they can get away with.  So either have lots and lots and lots and double what you think lots is, of gems or give each child a set amount of gems to work with.  I put the gems on the sticky dots ahead of time.
 
There isn’t a whole lot that I would tie in with the Temple of Doom for 6 year olds but I had to do eyeballs.  I had been wanting to make eyeball ice cubes when I found someone that used truffle molds for the shape.  I decided to try using their girls marshmallow recipe and it worked great.  They were soft and squishy.  One mom said that she had to close her eyes before popping one in her mouth.  The adults couldn’t resist them.  The more adventurous kids also tried them.  All in all they were a hit and very yummy.  I can see making these every Halloween.

Click here for the recipe and how to make the marshmallows. 

To make them into eyeballs you will need:
The recipe from our Marshmallow Post
Truffle molds (like the ones Wilton makes) (I had two molds and they are only $2 a mold so get as many as you need so you can make all your eyeballs at once.  Each mold makes 14 truffles.)
Non-stick spray
A Pastry bag (or plastic bag with a corner cut off)
blue food coloring (the liquid type)
Black gel food coloring (for the pupil)
A Paint brush

Once you have made your marshmallow fluff put it into your pastry bag.  Spray the truffle mold  to give it a good coating (so the marshmallow won’t stick).  Then pipe in the marshmallow into each well.  Spray some foil completely with the non-stick spray and cover for a few hours so the marshmallow sets up.

I had a pan ready for the extra marshmallow fluff to make regular marshmallows.

Once your marshmallows have set up and can be handled it is time to “paint” them up.  They will be slippery at this point with the non-stick spray.  I made mine the day before and the slippery feel to them went mostly away.  Anyway.  Have a plate ready that is dusted with powdered sugar to keep them from sticking.

Carefully pull all the marshmallows out of the mold with the round side up.  Put a bit of blue food coloring in the bottom of a small bowl.  You will take an eye ball and dip the top of it in the food coloring.  It will have quite a bit on it.  You can then “paint” the others by dabbing the first eyeball onto some of the others.  When it no longer transfers much color put it down and start with another one.  Once you have all your iris’ done you can paint the pupil on with a paint brush.  I put mine in the fridge over night loosely covered with foil.

In the above picture you can see that I tried to paint one of the eyeballs with blue gel icing and a paint brush. (it is the one on the right almost in the bottom corner)  The others turned out so much better and took the coloring easier.

Other things we did for the party:

We also purchased some dates from the grocery store so that anyone who wanted to could try a date.  I was tempted to put a sign out that said “Bad Dates” but figured nobody would try them.

I found some big snakes at the dollar store and hung them from our tree and on the swing set in the back yard.  I also purchased sever bags of small snakes and put some around the food on the table and most of them in our sand pit area.

The kids took home the items that I had made for them plus gem lollipop rings, a twisty straw and mini packs of their own water balloons.

We had toilet paper on hand that we were going to do a mummy wrapping contest with.  We completely forgot about it since we were all having such a good time.


We also had a water balloon fight since it was 104 degrees out side that day.  I have to say that unless you plan to fill water balloons ahead of time I would go with those foam water bombs form the dollar store or water guns or they now have tubes that you can get for a dollar.  You put then end of the tube in a bucket of water and pull back on the plunger to fill.  They are awesome but don’t last very long (so get extras in case one breaks during water play).

We had a massive water fight on Memorial Day weekend with all the cousins.  They all got soaked with those water tubes and had a blast for hours.  Plus they got to take them home.

Totally unrelated to the IJ party but I have to share this.  I found this  set of plans on Instructables for making  water cannons out of PVC.  They would be fun for the kids to put together and then play with and last way longer then the ones I got at the dollar store.  The website makes them out of 2 inch and 1 inch PVC but you could easily use 1 inch and 1/2 inch PVC for smaller kids.  They would be very cheap to make up using the 1 and 1/2 inch pipe sizes.  I can totally see making these for a party.  It is a good thing I didn’t see this before the party or I would have had to make them. ;)  My darling husband smiles and goes along with all my crazy schemes.

You survived my extremely long post!!
Thanks for hanging in there with me!
Katrina

Technorati Tags: Lego,Indiana Jones,party,marshmallow,eyeballs,food,party favors,cake

We are joining the fun at the following parties; Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Stephanie Lynn, 

Summer Popsicle Activity

These paper popsicles are a great fun and easy summer activity to make and play with the kids!

I drew up this design on the computer, though you could freehand these as well.  It is just a simple popsicle shape, doubled.  Then, I print it out on red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple papers, and cut these shapes out.  The popsicle shape folds in half so there will be a front and back to the popsicle.  You just want the sides and tops glued together.  Leave the bottom and the middle unglued for the popsicle sticks to slide in and out of. 
This is a matching game.  I write on the bottoms of the popsicle sticks.
To play the game you give your child the popsicle sticks separate from the popsicle tops.  Then, they are to match the word on the popsicle stick, with the color of the popsicle top.
You can do this for many different levels of children.  There are 4 different sides to the popsicle sticks that you can write the words on. 
My levels were the easiest match by looking at the color.  I wrote out the words in the color that corresponded.  Even though smaller children can’t read yet, this helps them to begin recognizing letters and words.
The second level was the words written in black, so there are no clues to what color it is (other than the word itself)

The third level is to write a flavor and have the children match the flavor to what color that should be.
I store all of these parts as sets in small ziplock baggies.  My children love doing this activity and we do it every summer.
Actually I print up enough copies for each of my children to have their own sets (plus enough for each of my preschool/daycare kids).  I then have my kids make their own sets.  If you notice these steps were very easy.  It uses cutting, and gluing skills (and very basic lines, at that).  I even write out each of the words for my children to copy onto their sticks.  I think they love these even more because they made their own!
So, my question is, what popsicle flavor is your favorite?
Mine, without a question is Root Beer followed closely by Banana.  The rest I could do without. ;)

Rebecca