Embroidery Floss Eggs

I have to thank my sister for sharing this idea with me from the Better Homes and Garden website.  She knows the oodles of floss that I have from all the cross-stitching I've done! ;-)

 

Embroidery Floss Eggs:

What you need:

*Water balloons

*Embroidery floss in desired colors

*corn starch

*water

*flour

 

First, I blew up the water balloons.  I tried using my own air until I turned blue in the face.  Then I turned to a foot pump that we have from an exercise ball, which worked wonderfully! 

 

Next, I combined 1 cup water, 1 tablespoon corn starch and 1/2 cup flour in a storage container.  I put the lid on and shook until there were no lumps.

 

The kids and I then picked out the floss colors we liked for each egg.  I cut 1 yard of each of four colors for each egg that the kids made.  (I think you could probably use another yard or two if you'd like.)  The floss then soaked in the flour mixture until the kids were ready to wrap them on their balloons.

 

Morgan carefully wrapping her balloon with floss.  As you can see, there are newspapers down as it gets quite messy!

 

The kids each made 3 eggs.  They had to sit and dry overnight.

 

The next morning, I handed the kids a pin and watched as they excitedly got to pop a balloon!

 

We then dug the balloon out of the egg once it was popped...

 

...the finished Embroidery Floss Eggs!

 

On the Better Homes and Gardens website they made garland, but I liked the idea of hanging them from our light fixture. :-)

The kids had a BLAST with this project!  They LOVE getting messy, especially right after taking their baths! :-/  (Mom isn't as big of a fan, though-lol!)  They LOVED popping the balloons and they absolutely LOVE their finished eggs!

St. Patrick's Day 2013

We didn't do as much for St. Patrick's Day this year as we've done in the past, but the kids still had a fun time celebrating.

My mom and Morgan made this shamrock barrette together.  Morgan was so proud of it, she wore it every day last week!

 

The kids also made it to our local St. Patrick's Day parade with my in-laws.  Rich and I had a prior commitment during that time and were unable watch it this year.  It's strange the difference in temperatures from year to year.  Last year the kids went with their grandma to get ice cream after the parade because it was 70 degrees...this year they went for hot cocoa because it was snowing!  LOL!

 

On St. Patrick's Day the kids woke up to Leprechaun being in our house.  Blake set his trap and caught him this year!  He cleaned up the trap before I could get a picture of it, but it was cute...basically we set out "gold" and a sign that said "Leprechauns a loud" (yes 'a' and 'loud' were two separate words).  Then he set up a little pit that he covered for the leprechaun to fall into.  Unfortunately the leprechaun got caught in the trap before he could set out the clues to find his pot of gold, but the kids were still able to find it on their own. (It was in the media cabinet on top of the TV.)

 

We ALWAYS have at least one craft for each of the holidays, so thankfully I had seen one that looked like fun that we could throw together after church.  It's called Swinging Shamrocks from the FamilyFun Magazine.

 

All you need to do is flatten a 4 inch toilet paper roll, cut it in 1/2 inch strips, then cut on one of the folds on each strip.

 

Next, start forming the shamrock by gluing (or stapling with a small stapler like I did.)  Make three heart shapes and one triangle shape for the stem.

 

Then, just glue, or staple, them together.

 

Put the kids to work painting their shamrocks.

 

Isn't this fun!?

 

And these are the cute shamrocks you'll end up with!  Since they're suppose to be swinging, I think you just hang them from some fishing line, but we didn't do that.

 

We also made Corned Beef and Cabbage (with potatoes, carrots and onions) for the first time ever!  Rich had one of our last steers' brisket made into a corned beef (for only $5!) and it was the perfect time to cook it.  I know it isn't pretty, but it was DELICIOUS!!!  (I can't emphasize the DELICIOUS enough...Rich said it was one of the best meals I made in a long time...of course he meant that in a good way-lol!)

How was your St. Patrick's Day this year?

(Please take a moment to visit some of our past St. Patrick's Days: 2012, 2011...and more!)

Halloween Fun 2012

My head was NOT into Halloween this year. Between mentally preparing for a trip, being distracted by the hurricane and it's effect on our area and our yard being dug up for a water line to go to the barn, I didn't do as much as usual. We still got a couple little things in though :-)

The kids' footprint ghosts.

These are some pudding mosters we made

 

A game we played called "Don't Eat Frank!"  We had a TON of fun with this one.  So simple too!

A wine bottle ghost I made with glow-in-the-dark Mod-Podge.  I made 2 more for my sister and my mom :-)

 

Rich took Halloween off to help get a last minute car issue fixed before I had to drive it for my trip.  It was nice since we were both able to go to the kids' Halloween parties at school and I didn't have to feel guilty about missing one to be at the other.  We also got to bring the kids home early and they carved their pumpkin that we got from the garden a month ago! :-)

 

Love Blake's face as he cleans the pumpkin.  Too funny!

Rich enjoyed doing the carving.

The picture I took the kids right before they left for trick-or-treating and I left for my trip.  They still had fun without me :-)

I hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween festivities.  I'm hoping next year is a little more relaxed! :-)

Please ignore the messes in the background!  A tiny house, with small kids somehow equates to HUGE messes!  It's never as bad as it looks though ;-)

Pumpkin Fun and then Some

We managed to squeeze in a few pumpkin projects this fall, despite having less time with both kiddos being in school. I think it's harder on me than the kiddos, not having the time to be as creative with them! LOL!

The kiddos' entries into the newspaper's coloring contest. I think it's cute Blake tried coloring his like his sister's :-)

These are some Marshmallow Pumpkins we made. I had seen them on Frugal Family Fun blog, but I made a little change by adding a green sprinkle for the stem :-)

The kids LOVED making these Paper Bag Pumpkins!

The pumpkins turned out almost as cute as their creators :-)

Of course we had to pick our TWO pumpkins from the garden.

Then do a little posing for pictures with the pumpkins....and the cattle.

I put the kiddos to work taking the pumpkins to the house...good thing work is fun at their age :-)

I made these Candy Corn Cupcakes just because I thought they were cute and would be fun to eat this time of year :-)

The cat posing with the pumpkin that we never had time to carve before Halloween. Now if only she were black, it would be more fitting for this time of year! :-)

Fun Links!

I came across these links this past week and liked them SO MUCH that I just had to share them!

Spring Crafts, Fun & Activities for Families eBook: This is a FREE eBook and has SO MANY fun crafts to do with kiddos this Spring! I've looked through it several times already dreaming about the fun the kiddos and I could have...and we've already made one of them! :-)

We Give Books: I actually just discovered this site this morning after reading today's post on Give Every Day. This site allows you to read books to your children online for FREE. The books you, or your child, like can be added to your 'library' and read over and over again. The coolest part is that for each book you read to your child, a book is given to a charitable campaign of your choice! I have already signed up and within 20 minutes Blake and I were able to read AND give 5 books to the NEA Foundation's Teaching Excellence Award winners' schools....we're going to start reading to give to the Jumpstart for Young Children program next! :-)

A Dr. Seuss Birthday Celebration!!

I was reminded :-) by Alexia at The Mommy Rambles how fun it might be to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday this year, so I did some planning and this is what the kids and I spent the day doing:

We had to do some reading of Dr. Suess books of course, with the help of some the Dr. Suess characters. (Only seven books and it had to be over an hour of reading combined....phew!)

We had some fun with food too! This is just a small pancake, sliced strawberries and whipped cream.

In my searches for Dr. Seuss foods, I kept seeing Thing 1 and Thing 2 cupcakes, but I couldn't imagine making a batch of 24 cupcakes so we could have 2! So I came up with these instead! It's just raspberry Jello in clear plastic cups with white and blue (dyed with food coloring) whipped cream....much better on the waistline too! ;-)

More Cat in the Hat hats! These are a Ritz cracker, vanilla frosting and gummy Lifesavers. We had to get creative and try different colored hats too :-)
I found these worksheets at http://www.seussville.com/. The first one was a simple addition worksheet, so we used colored goldfish ("One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish") to visually do the addition. Then we did a word search, maze, dot-to-dot and a couple coloring pages.

Of course there had to be games at a birthday party! We played "Three Cats in a Row" (Tic Tac Toe) and Morgan beat me!! LOL!
We also played "The Cat Says" (Simon Says) and Morgan and Blake do awesome at what they're told to do whether that cat told them to do it or not-lol. I guess we need to practice this one a little more ;-) (Here the kids are flapping their arms.)
We also had to have a craft! We made a Truffula Tree forest ("The Lorax") that I had seen on the Frugal Family Fun blog. We just gathered some twigs from the yard when Morgan got off the bus, then painted some yellow stripes on them. I had already colored batting with markers (I'd suggest using roving if you have it...the marker doesn't stick the batting fibers and comes off on your hands.) Then we glued the the 'Tuft' batting to the twigs and stuck them in some Play-Doh on a lid to a container.

The kids played quite a bit with this and even got the Lorax in there to protect the forest :-)

After we finished all our activities, I happened to glance at the CEIVA frame and it was showing 'This Day in History' at the time:

Pretty neat to learn a little more about Dr. Suess!! :-)

Besides all that, we also caught 'The Cat in the Hat' specials on PBS before Morgan left for school. Most PBS stations were running 2 hours of 'The Cat in the Hat' in celebration of Dr. Seuss's birthday.

It was truly a super fun day to celebrate!! :-)

Pre-Thanksgiving Fun!

We have been having fun, like usual, doing some crafting to get ready for Thanksgiving. Most of these I saw online and seemed easy enough, so we tried them out!

This one is actually a card. Morgan and Blake each made one (with mom's help) and the cards were given to their grandparents. Aren't they super cute!? This one was found at Peppers and Pollywogs.

This is Morgan's entry into the newspapers contest. She had to color in the turkey's feathers and she wanted to use paints...not sure paints were allowed, but she had fun! ;-)

This family of turkeys idea came from Trendy Treehouse. We changed them up a bit by adding beaks and waddles and leaving out the legs...I think they turned out adorable! :-)

I put them above the doorway into the kitchen...they seem to like roosting up there ;-)

These were kinda my own idea. I had won a turkey cookie cutter last year AFTER Thanksgiving, so I had to wait a whole year to use it, but I think the wait was worth it! YUM! We took most of them in to Morgan's class and to the vet clinic my moms work at. (Moms=my mom and my MIL.) Morgan had fun cutting them all out and putting the tail feathers on for me :-)

Morgan colored this turkey in her preschool class....they don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but no one will say anything if they happen to focus a little more on turkeys this time of year ;-)

I saw the idea for these pilgrim hats on Snack Picks. (I must have got the link through another blog I follow, but don't remember which one right now.) They were SO easy and they'll make a great addition to our Thanksgiving dinner! :-) (They taste delicious too!!!)

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!! There is definitely A LOT to be thankful for! :-)

Don't forget to enter my giveaway for a $45 gift code to CSN Stores!! It ends tonight (Thanksgiving) at 10:00 pm.