A Fun Family Craft - Family Flags!

This post is brought to you by my five year old son. He has an imagination and a sense of creativity that I like to think I have something to do with...although his Daddy is no dummy...so who knows where he actually gets it. Anyway - he asked me to take him to Michael's last weekend. He had a list of what he needed - below is the list. It turns out it was all just different colors of felt, but he had it very well planned out and even though he's just now in Kindergarten and learning to read - he wrote the first and last letter of each color so that he'd remember what he wanted. I thought that was pretty resourceful!
So, here it is part way through the project. There was a lot of planning, cutting and gluing going on. He worked for at least an hour (which, you know, in kids years is like 4 hours).


Have I mentioned I got him his own hot glue gun for his birthday last year. Sniff - my little boy makes me so proud. ;) Look at him wielding that dangerous tool. (BTW - Steelers jammies made by yours truly).

Here's the finished product! It is a Team T family flag. He planned it out with one T in the corner for each family member. The middle is a tiger - his current favorite animal. Not too shabby, huh? He plans to take it up and hang it at our summer get-away in Pennsylvania next year where the "T" side of our family gathers. I love it.

AND - this is one that my three year old and I made together. She - of course - had to pick out some felt too when her brother was doing his shopping. She's not quite as skilled with the hot glue and scissors as her brother (yet) - so she did the planning and I did the cutting for her. She did most of the placement and gluing though. Pretty cool, huh? I'm sure any of you who have young kids recognize this guy.

All in all a fun and successful family craft time that didn't end in tears or cost a lot of money... can't ask for much more than that. I can also see doing these with a theme for holidays, etc.

Thrifty Thursday Chalkboards!

This chalkboard was created out of a need for somewhere to start our five year old son tracking and fulfilling his responsibilities around the house. He's been wanting to earn some money for random toys that he would like to purchase - I'm proud of him that he's asking to work for them and not just for us to buy them. So - we've jumped on it and started a "Chores" list. Since it will be constantly changing and evolving a chalkboard will be a good way to jot down chores and let him work on reading and writing skills with us as we check off chores, etc.

Here is my $1.79 tray from the Salvation Army store.

I used chalkboard spray paint and then hand painted a border to match the area where we are hanging it. I will admit... this isn't my greatest masterpiece ever. But, I won't openly critique it. ;) It serves its purpose and it does look cute hanging by our ladder frame. However, I have to devise a new mounting technique. It fell down mid-picture taking!

I also picked up these little plastic plates while I was shopping for my big chalkboard. I think they were $.99 a piece. I made a custom chalkboard for each child to hang on there door knob to their bedroom. This is actually an example of a cute idea... that in practice didn't turn out great. My son's is fine, cute, works, etc. See:

My daughter's (3 years old in 2 days) lasted about 3.5 minutes until she drew ALL over the plate including the WHITE ribbon that I trimmed it with. Duh. Why would I use white ribbon?! Then she SLAMMED her door knocking the chalkboard to the floor and breaking the hanging ribbon in the process. A re-do is in order... grrr. But, live and learn. ;)

Head to Tales from Bloggeritaville for some more great thrift finds!

Linking up to a Trash to Treasure Tuesday at Reinvented also!

A Summer Craft for the kids

Isn't she lovely? The kids and I made our own butterflies this weekend. This was an easy craft that we thought up... my almost three year old enjoyed it and was able to do a lot of it herself, and my 5 1/2 year old also enjoyed it. So - there you have it. Something for all ages. Would you like to do your own? See below for some quick tips.


Supplies needed: Clothespins, Glue, pipe cleaners, construction paper, scissors, marker, googly eyes (or you can just draw the eyes), strings (if you want to hang it from somewhere)
My daughter chose to decorate hers with stickers - which was a fun way for her to have control over how it looked. I had to do the cutting and gluing, so adding something like stickers lets them get creative on their own.
My son was able to do it all himself - which was a challenge for him - in a good way. He was very proud to see his creation all finished.Hangin' from the chandelier!

Compartmentalizing

Containers... my kids love containers. My son especially has a room filled with little bags, packs, boxes, whatever - places to put things. Are all kids like this?

This one I made for him before he was born, awww. I had a short-lived basket making hobby. Very short lived.









This extra-special one was given to him by his aunt (it contains more containers!)


This is a Red Sox cup he confiscated to keep Happy Meal toys in.


And here we have a treasure chest that he and Daddy made together, it holds... what else? Some treasures!


And is it just kids? I think not. Especially those of us who sew or craft - we're always needing new compartments and containers for our threads, beads, buttons, needles, and more. So - lately I'm trying to reuse instead of buying new containers every time the fancy strikes. Here is a wooden compartmentalized tray that originally had little horses in it - now used for sewing supplies. All I had to do was redecorate the top and it fits right in with my eclectic group of supplies.




And finally, here is plastic cookie container (not sure where all those cookies went...ahem) now divided (cut and used some plastic ribbon holders that I didn't need to make dividers) and holding my clothing tags!



Both of these reused items were decorated using just a glue gun and some on hand supplies. And a note on glue guns - KIDS love these. I know it is not something you can let your child play with on their own... but my five year old has his own and is allowed to get it out when I'm working on sewing and crafts and work along side me. His favorite thing is to glue buttons together to make cool little sculptures. We get bags of mixed buttons at craft stores and it has provided hours of entertainment and creativity!

And if you are in need of some fancy containers but don't have any left over cookie boxes- how about looking here? Etsy Container Search. ;) These are actually a bunch of decorative boxes for different uses - but they're great and I'm sure just the tip of the iceberg on Etsy!