Valentine's Craft 2

I saw this idea on Pinterest and wanted to try it.  We made these at N2's Valentine's Day party at school as well.

Supplies:
coffee filters
washable markers
water
droppers

Cut a heart shape out of a coffee filter.  Have your child color on the heart.  It's best to use a lot of color but not color in the entire heart.  Scribbling is actually the way to go.  Noah would NOT scribble though so his hearts don't look too tie dyed.  You don't want to color all one color in the same area.  You want to scribble all around.

 This is the way you want to do it but with more colors.  You don't need to have it colored it quite this much.

 This is the way you DON'T want to do it.  It doesn't turn out looking tie dyed plus it takes forever to color one heart!

Then put a paper plate down and have your child drop droplets of water on the heart.  The key is to get the right amount of water.  You don't want too much or it will just blend the colors together so your heart looks one colored and you don't want too little where you can see the marker strokes.  It's a fine balance.  Once the heart looked how we wanted it to, I would take a paper towel and mop up the water.  It doesn't take long for these to dry.

Here's some of our hearts.  I made several so that we could figure out the best way to do it.  Natalie made a ton of these and we sent them to grandparents for Valentine's Day.  I think Noah made 3 :)

We did stick to red, pink and purple markers.  We did try with blue and that looked fairly nice too.  Noah wanted orange and that made it look a little muddy when putting water on it.  I would stick to just a few colors that would blend together well.

Valentine's Day Craft

I know it's after Valentine's Day but I wanted to show you this craft we did.  I had wanted to do this at N2's preschool party but the teacher nixed liquid starch because she didn't want to have to use smocks.  I don't think my kids got any liquid starch on them but oh well.  I was also going to do a craft a preschool that needed lots of squares of tissue paper and we nixed that one as well after I had already cut up the squares.  So I was left with a TON of little tissue paper squares.  I had done this craft with my students and have been wanting to do it with N2.

Supplies:
tissue paper, cut up into small squares (1 inch)
liquid starch
wax paper
masking tape
paint brush

Tear off whatever size wax paper you would like to have.  Tape that to the table.  Then have your child brush liquid starch on the wax paper and put tissue paper squares on top of where they put liquid starch.  It's best to work in small areas (don't put liquid starch over the whole piece of wax paper).

After sticking on the tissue paper, you want to go over it with more liquid starch.  You don't want to use TOO much or you'll bunch up the tissue paper.  A light hand is best.  Repeat this process until the wax paper is full (or enough of the paper is full so that you can cut out your desired shape).  Put tissue paper on top of tissue paper.  You do want to have 2-3 layers of overlapping tissue paper and you want to make sure that you don't have holes between the tissue paper squares.

Your wax paper and tissue paper will be quite damp.  Just a warning, your table will be wet.  Put this somewhere to dry.  Once it is dry (we made ours in the morning and they were dry by late afternoon), you can gently peel the wax paper off.  You may have difficulty with the edges as it may only have 1 layer but it can be peeled off!   Once you peel the wax paper off, you can cut it into whatever shape you would like. You could use sharpie to draw your shape on the wax paper and cut it before peeling it off but then it might be harder to peel.  I cut mine into hearts for Valentine's Day.  I did butterflies with my class at school.  You could do Easter eggs for Easter.

I hope that is clear enough!

Family Birthday Party-Cake

I had planned on using one of the cakes that I had made for the friends' party at the family party last weekend but since both parties were canceled, the cakes are undecorated in the freezer.  I wanted to have both cakes for the friends' party so that meant I had to make something for today.  I decided to go easy and make cupcakes.  I saw a picture of cupcakes made into a dump truck and I knew I had to make that!  My kids argued for quite some time on what color to make the dump truck.  Luckily at the last minute, they agreed on the color or I was just going to pick it!

 Instead of having the load be on the cutting board, I cut the remaining 2 cupcakes in half and put oreos and m&m's on them.

I let N2 pick which cupcake they wanted and put candles in those.  It was Uncle Dan's birthday too so he got to pick his cupcake as well.  We sang happy birthday to Natalie first and she seemed to really enjoy it.

Noah covered his eyes the whole time we were singing.  He told me later that he didn't want to have his picture taken.  He blew his candles out so fast that I didn't really get a good picture.

We sang to Uncle Dan too and then everyone helped blow out candles.

I think everyone had a good time.  I know I did and N2 did!  Thanks everyone for coming!

Family Birthday Party-Presents and Decor

After the games, we had N2 open their presents.  They got some really fun new toys that are currently all around my living room floor!  I think they've played with almost everything already!

While Brian and I took care of lunch the kids played with the new toys.  I think everyone enjoyed them!

We had a lunch of taco salad, taquitos, refried beans, corn, and quesadillas.  My kids love this kind of food! Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of the kids table as they were too busy eating and wouldn't stop eating to take a picture!  Here's how I served the chips.

Here are a few decorations I made.  I found a lot of these ideas via Pinterest.  I made the wreath using a wire wreath form and tied pieces of caution tape all around it.  Brian thought I was a little crazy for doing that.  I made the signs on Photoshop and printed them on cardstock.

I'll show you the cake tomorrow!

Family Birthday Party-Games

We were finally able to have N2's family birthday party yesterday.  We had such a good time!  N2 were so excited when people started to arrive!  Once their cousins arrived, we started some games.  The first one was a scavenger hunt.  Brian and I hid construction equipment around the house and the kids had a paper with pictures of what they needed to find.  Amelia, Natalie and Noah found all of them!  The other cousins wanted to play with toys instead.

Then we played ring toss.  The kids had to toss rings around cones.  I didn't get pictures of Amelia because I was handing out the rings.

After that we played wrecking ball bowling.  Dan and Brian built the towers (much fancier than I would have done).  The kids had a great time rolling the ball to knock down the blocks!

Charlie's version was to go over with his hands and knock over the tower.

Then the kids just wanted to build with blocks although Charlie wanted to knock down the buildings as quickly as they could build!

I'll post more about the party tomorrow!

Birthday

As many of you already know, N2's birthday weekend was a total bust.  Natalie came down with a stomach bug on Valentine's Day.  Their friends' birthday party was supposed to be on Saturday, as well as their family party.  After Natalie threw up again on Friday (when I thought we were in the clear), I decided to reschedule their birthday parties.  Good thing because I came down with the stomach bug Saturday morning.  Noah woke up on Sunday (their actual birthday) with the bug.  What a way to spend your birthday!  We spent the day watching movies and staying in our pj's.  We weren't going to give N2 their birthday presents since Noah wasn't feeling well but then after naps, Noah really perked up and seemed to be feeling much better and had energy.  Here are my birthday kids.

And before you ask, yes those are Natalie's pajamas.  I bought Noah fleece digger pajamas that were supposed to be for next winter but when they went to PJ storytime, Noah had nothing to wear that wasn't footie pajamas, so I broke them out.  Natalie threw quite the fit because SHE wanted digger pjs.  I should have known.  I searched all around and couldn't find the same ones but I did find these and after some convincing, she decided they were OK.

Brian surprised me by getting N2 something by himself.  His dad got him his own toolbox with real tools on his 4th birthday so N2 got their own toolboxes with real tools on their 4th birthday too!

Then we gave them their bikes.  They were so excited to have their own bikes!  We let them ride around the first floor for a good 20-30 minutes.  If you look at Natalie's picture, you'll see her hair blowing.  She could get moving quite quickly!  She also figured out how to stand while pedaling to get moving a little faster.  I'm going to have to watch out for her!

 I made them pose for pictures too.

More snow

After the small amount of snow we got over the first weekend of February, we got at least 6 inches the following Thursday.  Brian's after school activities were canceled so he was able to come home and play in the snow with N2 although it took him over an hour to get home so it got a little late when they played outside.  This was AWESOME snow to pack!  We built our first snowman (at least I don't think we've every built a snowman before with N2).  Noah is hugging the snowman in the first picture.  Natalie wouldn't pose for a picture with the snowman.

Natalie liked to go around and eat snow.  She constantly had snow in her hand that she was munching on!

Brian made a great snow fort with N2.  He filled up buckets, packed them down and then stacked them in a circle and then packed snow between them.  He rolled a giant round disc of snow and put that as the "door."  He then dug a tunnel into the fort under the disc.  He added a second tier of buckets and packed that down. It truly was an awesome snow fort. It was dark by the time the fort was done so I didn't get great pictures.

 I didn't get a picture of the snow fort all the way finished.  Unfortunately it got warm not long after and rained so our snowman melted and the snow fort was melted down as well.  So they didn't have too much of a chance to play with the fort.