12 Days

With 12 days left until Christmas, I thought it was time for a couple of Christmas projects. I told the girls that if they did their chores really well this morning, we’d have time to do some fun things in the afternoon. And lo, they cleaned up! An early Christmas miracle.

 

This is stage one of our first project. I will have to finish stage two later – when there are less kids jumping around. Can you guess what they are?

 

Then, on to cookies! We decided on Gingersnaps today.

 

Diligently rolling the dough balls in sugar.

 

But ready to pause for a photo-op.

 

Or a little goofing off.

 

There was a lot of “tasting” throughout the process.

 

The finished product! Some of them anyway. It wouldn’t be Christmas baking if we didn’t at least double the recipe, right?

It turned out to be a productive afternoon. Hope your preparations are going well, too!

Celebrating Independence

Veronica and Jacinta wanted to show off the firecrackers they made yesterday. Paper towel tube, scrapbook paper, stickers, and pipe cleaners – super easy.

Veronica is camping with her grandparents now, but the rest of us will be celebrating by grilling, eating, swimming and reading the Declaration of Independence. Not necessarily in that order (urp).

Happy 4th everyone!

Party Bunting

We are having a small party to celebrate Jacinta’s 2nd birthday this weekend. I can’t believe my little Cinta doll is going to be 2!! Wait, yes I can. The drama has definitely been pointing that direction.

In any case, I was looking for decoration ideas that would be both cute and frugal, and remembered seeing homemade bunting somewhere on the interwebs. Google produced a variety of different ways to tackle the project, and I settled on making some paper bunting hung on spare kite string we have had lying around. I don’t know where the kite string came from, but hey, it came in handy so I can’t complain.

First things first, I hung the string on the wall to see what length I would be working with, and cut it. I ended up with about 30 feet to cover the space I wanted, give or take a couple feet.

 

I wanted to maximize the 12 inch scrapbook paper I was using, so I decided to cut triangles that were 4 inches across the top. That gave me 10 triangles per sheet of paper. Using fancy maths, I deduced I would need about 60 triangles to get the spacing that I wanted (approximately 2 inches) when I hung them on the string.

I picked out 6 fun papers that went together reasonably well, then folded one in half like so. If your paper is directional, like stripes, make sure they are facing the direction you want when you fold!

Using our classiest ruler, I marked along one long edge at 2 inches, 6 inches and 10 inches, then along the other edge at 4 inches and 8 inches.

 

Then I connected the marks and cut along the lines. The triangles that were on the fold also needed to be cut apart.

 

Once I had all my papers cut, I folded the top down just a bit to make a space for the string.

Then I wondered how that remote for an old DVD player got in with my scrapbook supplies. The world may never know.

 

Then I turned on a movie and got back to folding. Fold fold fold!

Missed a step! I also clipped the corners where they overlapped in the front.

 

When the folding is done, it’s time to attach the pennants (because I decided in the last step that they had become pennants, not mere triangles anymore) to the string. But first I had to untangle my string, which was lying in a heap on the table instead of nicely wound around something. Don’t be like me. Your crafting will go faster.

 

Some people used glue to secure their pennants to their hanging medium, but I decided to go with tape because it seemed faster and less messy. I lined up a few pennants along the string and stuck on a piece of tape to hold the fold down. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

 

Taping instead of gluing gave me the ability to slide the pennants around on the string if I needed to change the spacing a bit, since the string was only strung through the fold, not attached to the paper. That came in handy around the corners and the apexes (apices?) of the curves, since my maths were only approximate and not exact.

 

And one party decoration down!

It’s hard to gauge exactly how much time I spent since I grabbed a bit of time here and there throughout the day, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours from start to finish. Maybe a little longer because I fiddled with the pennant spacing a little more than necessary. Perfectionism can be a hard burden to bear.

I have a few more fun decoration ideas, so we’ll see if they pan out this week.

Friday Randomness

Missed last week, but jumping back in today (if a bit on the later side).

 

1. This is what happens when you use candy canes as Christmas tree ornaments.

2. Yes, our tree is still up, why do you ask?

 

3. We tried cornstarch finger paint yesterday. The girls had a lot of fun with it. Here is the recipe we used (though I did cut it in half). It was a little too goopy to keep the pictures hanging around (they never really dried), although I think if I could convince them to spread it out more it would work better. Veronica’s first page was pretty sparse and actually dried to nice, bright colors.

4. The past couple of days I wrote journal entries at 280daily. I wish I could remember where I came across the link, it may have been on Facebook. Anyway, you sum up your day in 280 characters or less. I thought it would be a fun way to document what we do with the girls, and the entries can be saved as a PDF or made into a book so it could be a keepsake someday. Here’s hoping I keep it up!

 

Grablins? Gooloom? Slag the Terrible?

5. If you have twelve minutes to kill, check out this short Hobbit cartoon, circa 1966. Definitely not true to the story, but kind of fun nonetheless. You can find the history of the cartoon here. H/T CSTM.

6. Sleep deprivation.

 

7. I made these last week. Do you know what they are? Post coming soon! Mmmmmm.

Some Stuff

So I’ve been a little remiss in posting again. Life just gets going sometimes and before I know it it’s been almost a month since I put anything up. So, some stuff:

 

I said I would try to post pictures of our Halloween costumes, so here they are!

I made my pregnant skeleton costume following the directions on this blog. She certainly got the proportions better than I did, but it was fun trying freezer-paper stenciling for the first time.

Paul made himself an animal attack costume using some stuffed bears that we found at Goodwill. He just sewed them on some clothes and called himself a Zanesville Sherriff.

 

Here’s a better view of the attacking bears.

 

We inherited this dinosaur/dragon costume from my nephews, and to firmly cement it in the dragon camp I decided to make some wings. They turned out alright, but ended up a little heavy because I framed them with old coat hangers. I definitely would do them differently in retrospect. More like these bat wings. But with a split up the middle so the tail would still show. Veronica REALLY enjoyed being a dragon, and was not shy about letting people know what she was!

 

Last but not least, Jacinta was a chicken. I had originally planned on making her something, but we came across the chicken at Goodwill and just could NOT pass it up. The little tail when she walked…so adorable.

And that was Halloween!

 

I also realized that I never really finished up posting about our October trip to Wisconsin.

 

We pretty much spent the rest of the week relaxing and taking advantage of the great weather.

 

The girls loved being outside.

 

And hunting for dandelions became a favorite activity.

 

There was lots of time to spend with family, too.

 

The last day we were there it cooled off quite a bit, which meant we finally got to use the sweatshirts I had packed.

 

The cold didn’t keep us from one last run at the raspberry bushes.

 

It was a great trip!

 

Hopefully we’ll make it out there again soon.

But for now, this baby is due to arrive any day. Every day Veronica asks if this is the day her baby sister is coming. Soon enough, my dear!

Homemade Halloween

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I’ve always loved celebrating Halloween, and this year I decided to add some homemade touches to my Halloween décor.

 

First, these Pumpkin Votive Luminaries that I spotted on Dollar Store Crafts.

I picked up the votive holders at the dollar store (appropriately), and they worked great. Next, some Mod Podge, which will continue to be useful for future crafts. The hardest thing to find was the orange tissue paper. Apparently Halloween is not a good time to be looking for orange things.

Once I had everything assembled, the instructions for making the luminaries were really easy to follow. In no time I had my own! Very fun to make, and a great result.

 

Next, Trash Bag Spider Webs from How About Orange.

These were also easy to make, and cost absolutely nothing since we already had black trash bags on hand. Though she wasn’t kidding when she said they were slippery, you do have to be cautious when cutting them out. She managed to get hers to hold their shape better, but I think all in all they turned out pretty well.

 

I knew when I saw these paper bats from MADE that I just had to make them.

Though the other decorations weren’t hard, this one has all of them beat for simplicity. Just print out a bat template, and go to town on some black construction paper or cardstock. Voila! Bats. I think this turned out to be my favorite new decoration. I love the effect.

 

Last, but not least, a family tradition – Fan Ghosts.

I remember these from when I was a kid, they were always one of my favorite decorations. Usually, we made them out of napkins but this year I decided to try white trash bags for the shininess and translucency. I just cut out squares, put a cotton ball in the middle and tied them with string. A little black marker for the face, and done! Then hang them from the fan blades and watch them zoom around the room. It was hard to get a good picture of the action, but they are lots of fun.

 

We also had some homemade fun with our costumes, so hopefully I’ll get some good pictures to share when the girls go Trick or Treating tonight. Have a great Halloween!

Fun Hat

Veronica recently saw an episode of Curious George in which George, forbidden to touch the Man’s iconic Yellow Hat, decides to make himself a “Fun Hat” of his own. He adds various gadgets that he thinks his pals will like. Then the Man accidentally wears it to a presentation and manages to inadvertently set off all of the fun features while giving his speech.

 

Taken with the idea of a “Fun Hat”, Veronica just had to have one of her own.

 

And while it wasn’t as fancy or high tech as George’s hat, it did have a few surprises.

Now I’ll just need to be careful not to accidentally wear it the next time I give an important scientific speech.