Wordless Wednesday

Something for Mom, Something for the Kids

Remember that Reverse Works for Me Wednesday? Well I had a dilemma about air freshners that day. I can't stand the chemical after smell of all aerosal air freshners, but sometimes a girl just needs/wants the room to smell nice. A lot of you suggested yummy smelling candles, and I love a really nice smelling candle. Right now I have Yankee Farmhouse Apple in my kitchen. Yummy! But during the day with 6 little ones running around I can't be burning candles. So I still had a bit of a dilemma.

Until last week when I found this:

What is that contraption, you ask? It's a reed diffuser. The jar holds beautiful smelling oil and you place the reeds inside. The reeds do their thing and soak up the oil and as the air moves around the reeds it diffuses a lovely smell that is not overwhelming but there in the background. No chemical smell, no fuss, no muss, just luscious fragrance. It lasts forever and looks cool. I just have to have it out of reach so it doesn't get dumped. This one is grapefruit vanilla. I've also got SweetPea and White Lily. Aaaah. Luscious I tell you.

And I just found out that Shannon will be hosting another Reverse WFMW tomorrow. So get your questions ready!

In keeping with celebrating fall, my favorite time of year, I would be remiss if I didn't do some kind of craft with all those leaves that my back yard collects.

So we made our own picture of fall trees. So easy and fun to do.

You need: a large sheet of construction paper, brown tempra paint, white glue, q-tips or craft paintbrushes, lots of leaves that are not yet crunchy and dry.

To make the trunk and branches of the tree, paint the child's hand, palm side, and arm right up to their elbow with the brown paint.

Have them spread their little fingers as wide as they can and then lay their arm onto the construction paper to make the print. You might have to help the smaller ones so they don't squiggle and smear it on the paper otherwise you get a very smeared tree.

This must now dry before you can go on. So now is when we went out and played in the leaves and collected for the rest of the picture. I took the colored leaves right off the trees because they were still fresh and not dried out and crumbly. Pinch off the stems.

When the paint is dry, give the child the leaves, and a small container with white glue and let them "paint" glue on the back of the leaves and glue on their "tree" and falling on the ground.

This is a great time to talk about fall and what happens to the leaves, colors, back and front. Small children will need to have it explained that the fingers of their hands are the branches of the tree and the arm is the trunk. It's very interesting to note how each child interprets it. Some will just glue leaves all over the place willy, nilly while others will be quite particular about keeping all the leaves on the top of the tree while others will make very particular lines of leaves falling to the bottom.

You can finish it off with some cotton ball clouds.

Chicks, more chicks, and a rabbit

No profound, thinking post today as we were too busy having fun making these:

Aren't they the cutest little chicks. And so easy.

~Just have the children color or paint yellow a circle that you've drawn on paper or a slight oval shape is nice too.

~ You can use round eyes you've drawn, have them color that too. Or you can use google eyes. I used the coloring ones because I didn't have enough google eyes to go around. Color a triangle for the beak.

~Color the foot shape with 3 toes as in the pic.

~If the child is able have him cut all the peices out, if not you get the pleasure. I did hand over hand with the smaller ones.

~Have them glue the eyes, beak and feet on. Now I let them do this totally on their own with just a touch of guidance for the smallest ones. Don't expect perfection. Some of the chicks look like they've been nipping a bit of brandy, but that is part of the charm of a project like this.

~To make the wings trace around the child's hand and again do the cutting. This cutting is hard even for the four year olds. So I even helped them when it came to the finger part. Glue to the sides of the body.

~Don't forget to write their name and age on the back if it goes into a keepsake box.

Voila a whole flock of cute birds to decorate your house.

And we did these cute bunny crowns yesterday and played bunny role play all day. You can make little holes and hutches out of piles up blankets. They loved it.

Works For Me Wednesday-Spring Flower Craft

Well, I am totally itching to see all the beautiful things that come with spring. It has been so windy, so constantly around here that I'm longing for the gentle rains, the flowers springing up and the trees budding out. So in an effort to try and hurry spring along we made these cute flowers in dayhome for the kids to take home. They loved them and they are really easy.

For supplies you'll need:

-coffee filters, tempra paint, green pipe cleaners, long straws

I used liquid tempra paints and mixed springy type colors like soft purples, blues, pinks and yellows. Mix only about a tablespoon for each color. Now in tiny jars or small containers such as yogurt cups, I mixed them thoroughly down with water. I used about 1/4 teaspoon of color to about 3 or 4 tablespoons of water. You want the mix to be very watery and not thick at all. This is what will make the coffee filter absorb the colors and blend them. If the paint is thick the colors will not be blended by the filter.

Now just let the kids paint a filter only on the inside. Explain to them to also do up the sides and to try not to squash down the sides. Although if they do, as preschoolers will, don't worry about it. It just won't keep the ruffle edging. I supervised this part closely as the younger ones tended to want to just keep painting in the same spot and then you end up with a big puddle underneath the filter.

When they are happy with their painting, the filter needs a day to dry (especially those who were very generous with their paints :vP ). I put them into small cereal bowls to help them keep their shape as some of the children had flattened them out. 500ml yogurt containers would also work. Anything like that.

When dry, have the child thread a long pipe cleaner through the straw. This gives it strength so it doesn't flop over. Have it flush on the bottom end. At the top, where you have extra pipe cleaner coming out the top of the straw, place tape over the pipe cleaner and tape to the back of the flower. You'll have to help here so that they don't flatten out their flower again.

Now take a long green pipe cleaner, lay it horizontal on the table, have them lay the flower stem vertical onto it and then have the child bring up the ends of the pipe cleaner together and criss cross them, so that you are actually wrappying it once around the stem. Now they can just bend a leaf shape out of each side and wrap the end once around the stem to secure.

Voila, springtime come early. Works for Me.

For more ideas that work check out Rocks in My Dryer

Well last night was the night where it was my turn to plan our ladies activity for my clothes horse group. I gotta say it got just a wee bit tense. I had originally wanted a girl I know, who owns a dance studio, to give my ladies a country line dance lesson. She was supposed to get back to me. But by the middle of the month I hadn't heard from her, so moving on. I had to come up with another idea. The thought of bowling came to mind but my sis wanted to do that on her month, complete with us having to dress in tacky shirts or something to that effect. Then the thought of going to the local craft store to have someone teach us to make a really nice homemade valentine's card for our hubby's came to mind, but couldn't put it together on time. Oh no, time is ticking away and it's almost the end of the month. What to do? What to do?

So what did we finally do? We made a jar of bath salts complete with a pretty little tag if we want to give it away. We even had someone come in to teach us.

It was so much fun just to sit around the table with seven other ladies trying to work on a craft. There was lots of chatting, some yummy eats and of course, tons of laughter that usually comes with a bunch of women getting together. Half the fun was the fact of the different "crafting personalities". There was the "perfectionist-professional crafter" who thought hard how she wanted her jar to look, what pattern she wanted her bath crystals to make, how to match the card. Then there was the "I'm just here for the visiting" crafter, who couldn't of cared less about the craft and basically chose two colors of salts, poured in a layer of one color, added a layer of the second color and topped it all off with a layer of the first color. She was done in about, oh, two seconds and enjoying her coffee while the rest of us kept working. Then there was the "I wanna do something nice but am totally intimidated by the professional perfectionist types" crafter. They sat for a little while taking peeks at everyone else's work to get ideas. Then there was the "too many options-can't decide" crafter who picked 2 or 3 colors or smells or all of them, poured them in the jar and shook it all up. Voila. Don't have to choose, got them all.

It was great fun! I'm not a great crafter. I enjoy certain kinds of crafts. This was a fun one. You could make it as finicky as you wanted. Even the cards were fun which is usually what I would have got frustrated on because I can't see close up as good as I used to. But she gave such good examples. So here is my humble little jar. My "wanna be a crafter" creation.

Gibee and Beck, hopefully you're proud of me! :vD

Busy, busy, busy

Today I was pretty much missing in action around blogland today because I was busy making this:

Cheese Shortbread Cookies

These cookies are perfect for those who cannot have a lot of sugar.

1 container (250 grams/1/2 lb.) McLaren's Imperial Cheese [the one in the red container with black lid] *Update: here is a link to this cheese. Apparently it is a Canadian product but I guess made by Kraft so I'm thinking it would be available for you south of the border!

http://www.ioriginals.net/imperialcheese.htm

1/2 lb. butter

2 cups flour

2 Tbsp. light brown or golden sugar

Bring cheese and butter to just room temperature. Mix all ingrediants together with mixer. Push into a ball in bowl, cover and refridgerate 1 hour or more.

On large square of wax paper, spread a little flour down. Place half the ball of dough on wax paper, folding the paper over the ball. Now roll into a tube like shape. Do the same with the other half of dough so that you have two rolls of dough. Place in freezer for 1 hour for easier clean slicing. Cookies will be pretty much as large as you made the roll and as thick as you slice them.

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. Place sliced cookies on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from pans immediately and cool on racks. Makes about 2 1/2 - 3 dozen cookies depending on size and thickness you make them.

If you don't consider rolling pins an instrument of torture you can roll and cut them with cookie cutters.

We also made these today with the 2 - 3 year olds:

On a large sheet of paper, I used newsprint, trace around a small plate or dish. For the hand prints I used 2 different greens. Use the round area as your boundary for the heal of the hand. For the young kids I totally helped them to place their hands turning the paper for them.

After cleaning up on a stiffer piece of paper, such as construction paper we colored 3 round shapes, then daubed glue on them, then shook sparkles to make them shiny. After then handprints were dry, I braced the back of them with strips from an old file folder as the newsprint tends to curl up a bit.

Then I just cut out the "balls" and let them glue them where ever they wanted and gave them a hunk of curled ribbon to glue on where they wanted. Voila: handprint wreath.

With the 4 year olds I made this Christmas countdown.

They traced and cut out the star shape (some with a little help), then cut strips of construction paper. I made 7 for the 7 days left for Christmas. With older children you can do from December 1 as their countdown. I find that is a big concept for a 4 year old and 7 days is plenty. They grasp that easier. We glue and sparkled the star, then made a chain of the strips. Each night at bedtime they tear off the bottom circle. When only the star is left it is Christmas Day.

So that is why I didn't get to visit to many of you today. I will catch up tomorrow.