A while back I posted about being afraid that the summer would pass us by and I thought I'd give you all an update. We decided (ok I decided) that we should do Friday Fun Days this summer. In order to accomplish this goal I made up some Friday Fun Sticks. I dug into the wonderful craft supplies from my mom's teaching days and found some tongue depressers. I wrote all of the fun things that we wanted to do this summer and then put them in a jar. Each week we pick one out for our Friday Fun Day.
Beaded Spoons
Stretchy Headbands that go well with the Flower Barrettes
Flower Barrettes and Flower Headbands
Bent Spoons that can be used as business card holders, picture holders, or even cell phone holders
Towel Hangers - Crocheted rings that neatly hold the kitchen towel that you already have.
Scarf Holders - These are my own invention that I came up with to hold all of the girls winter scarves in our coat closet :-)
Kitchen Towels
A cute little purse made out of a baby dress
Picture Frame Earring Holders (I don't have any earrings to show you how they work - oops!)
Snowman Candy Bars - They come in 5 varieties: Hershey's, Hershey's w/Almonds, Reese's, Mr. Goodbar, and Snickers. If they don't sell one you may just get one from me this year!
Kid's Craft Kits
Flower Dishcloths
I didn't have a picture of the fuzzy flip-flops currently on my camera (other than the layout picture) but they are really cute, too! Seriously, if you know anyone that would love to come to a craft fair (and bake sale) send them our way, this Saturday! Thanks for looking at all my pictures :-)
These are the girls' new chore charts that I got finished about a week 1/2 half ago. Then I made up some quiet time boxes for them. They worked really well this last week.
Then the girls and I picked up some 3/4" blocks at Hobby Lobby this week. We tried two new projects with them. Story Dice and Puzzle Cubes. I wasn't 100% satisfied with how the puzzle blocks came out but I may try again after I am caught up on MOPS stuff. Here's another cute way to do them.
So, while we had the Mod Podge out I had to try this great idea for making window clings. I didn't have a really smooth surface to do this on but I think they turned out all right anyway :-)
And that just about sums up my busy crafty week. (Other than the mending that I don't have a picture of :-) ) I did work on one MOPS project for this September but I don't want to spoil the surprise! I hope I've inspired some of you to have a crafty time this summer!
The theme for the ballet recital was Good Night Moon and 3 other children's classics. Both Lily and Kathryn were in The Velveteen Rabbit. Lily was a Toy Soldier and her dance was right before Kathryn's. Kathryn was a Raspberry from the scene where the Velveteen Rabbit gets left outside. She loved being a Raspberry and she did a fantastic job too!
Here is a picture caught by a real photographer during the dress rehearsal. These pics were put up on a website so I bought this one. My little ballerina is 2nd from the end with her toe pointing out. After she saw this pic she told what move she was doing at the time and what she was supposed to do next, etc. She seems to have a really good grasp on this stuff!
And finally, part of Kathryn's dance was performed behind a raspberry bush. After the recital we could go on stage and take pictures.
They even had a raspberry bush out for us take pictures with! The set up was perfect but my little anti-picture girl would not let us take her picture peaking out from the bush. So, these are pictures of the bush and Kathryn hiding behind the bush. She thought she was pretty funny when she saw the pictures. :-)
And my #1 craft is this set of adorable nativity blocks! We had a lot of fun working on these blocks over two MOPS meetings. We spent the first meeting painting them (they needed 2 layers of acrylic paint) and then at the second meeting we did the sanding, stickering, and Mod Podging. We finished them up in December and our speaker's topic was sharing Christ at Christmas with your children. It was so neat for everyone to have a nativity to take home that their kids could play with and not worry about breaking. The trickiest part of this craft is finding someone who can cut the blocks for you. I am blessed enough to have an awesome father-in-law that spent countless hours cutting out over 500 blocks for our MOPS group. The stickers were from Current but you could use different ones or maybe even print out clip art and color it yourself? My favorite tutorial for this type of block is here at Bucket of Cherries. Thanks for taking time to read about my favorite crafts, hopefully you will be inspired too.
Just last month we put together these journals at our MOPS meeting. They were a huge hit and it was a good thing that I had ordered extra! We used scrapbooking paper and Mod Podge to decorate the front and back. Then we used Mod Podge to put ribbon on the front, followed by hot glue to attach flowers and sequins or buttons. They were also very pretty with just sequins on the ribbon. I found some sticky sequins at Michael's that matched our papers really well. The only tricky part was making sure that you did not accidentally glue your cover to your pages. :-) I ordered the journals from Oriental Trading and they were very sturdy and just the right size (4"x6") for $12.99 per dozen. I've done fabric on a composition notebook as well but these were more useful since they would fit in your purse, glovebox, etc.
In order to expedite the process of putting this together I had all of the paper pre-cut into the right sizes and the circles I cut with my Creative Memories circle cutter. I also printed and put together all of the calendars so that all the mommies had to do was add the stickers on the days that I had pre-marked for our MOPS meeting dates. I put as many of our events as I could on the calendar as we had planned for the year. The overall cost of this project was pretty minimal and we only used part of a post-it note so that it would not be too heavy. I would suggest making sure that your magnets are strong enough to hold up the whole weight of the calendar and post-its. Here is the link to the old MOPS forum where I got this idea from. The name is life and the password is together.
