Advent Day 9: DIY Snowglobes!

We've had these strange little jars (I have no idea where they came from) for a few years, and thought they might be cute to use for making our snowglabes. I had originally intended to use mason jars, but the figurines we found were on the small side.

To  make these, all you have to do is:
- Hot glue waterproof figurines to the lid of a glass jar (make sure you can put the lid on the jar!)
- Add glitter and water
- After putting the lid on the jar, seal by hot-gluing around the edge of the lid

 

Mommy-and-Me Do Together Craft: Photo Frame/Art Display

My kiddo loves to paint, and I'm always trying to think of cool ways to display her art. I was at the dollar store scoping out frames for an office-redo project I'm working on, and had an idea to make some mother's day frames that for interchangeable artwork and photos.

While Viv got to work crating some masterpieces, I heated up the 'ol hot glue gun and started by cutting a few pages out of an old photo album.

Measure and mark on a paper instert exactly where you will want to glue onto the plastic... this will save you from having a crooked frame.

I covered by photo frame insert with felt and foam frames... remember not to glue the top of the insert and frame if you want to be able to change the photo!

Ready for artwork!

Kiddo Craft: Chalk Driveway Paint

This was so easy to do....we have more large sidewalk chalk than one family (despite our numerous chalkboards) would ever go through in a reasonable amount of time, so here's what we did:

• Placed the chalk in thick-ish ziplock bags, and used a meat tederizor to crush it up (a regular hammer will do, I just didn't feel like searching for one that early in the morning).
• Combine with water in containers with lids that seal! 
• Enlist a petite helper or two to mix mix mix and shake shake shake!

Make sure you frequently mix each  color!

Kiddo Craft: Birdhouses and Butterfly Feetsies

When we moved into our house we were given an unpainted birdhouse for Viv to decorate. Since we're in the midst of mother nature's fickle 'is-it-spring-or-is-it-winter' dance (an as I typed this, it started to snow again), we decided that today would be the perfect time to do something to welcome spring!

 

And since we had some paint leftover... we made a fe spring creatures of our own :)

 

Bring on the sunshine!

KIddo Craft: Melted Crayon Madness With My Little Lady

Have I mentioned how much I love doing artsy-craftsy projects with my little lady? Well, I do. In fact, you could say I *luff* it even..We have an abundance of crayons (and were inspired by the Sofia the First episode 'A Royal Mess), so I decided today's craft would be the 'ol wax paper-and-crayon "stained glass. My husband claims to never have done this, and I'm kind of in awe. I thought it was a childhood rite of passage to have to iron leaves and crayon shavings between two pieces of wax paper! But, I digress...

You know I remember this being MUCH less messy to do as a kid... :)

Low-Cost Valentine's Day

Or would that be LO-cost Valentine's Day? Hahahahahah..hahha..ha...mmm. Yes, I'm often a lot less funny out loud than i am in my head. ;-)
We're not huge into celebrating Valentine's day, although it's certainly fun to do crafts with Viv and all that! Here are the two little things Vivi and I made for Mike:
Photo Collage: This actually only took a few minutes to do each part! About 10 minutes to take the pictures, 10 minutes to edit them and add the text (we used Picasa), and about 3 minutes to print. Total cost: $3

Message in a Bottle:
I saw this idea on Pinterest, and when I came across the bottle at the dollar store, I decided it might be fun! I opted to remove the gaudy faux rose petals (Mike doesn't really dooo faux petals, and the pre-written (well what's the fun in that?) note. We replaced them with some M&Ms, a "Daddy and Me" picture Vivi drew, and large amount of stickers that all preschool-aged projects require. Total cost: $4

Happy Valentine's Day!

Kiddo Craft: "Magic" Message Painting

Is it spring yet? We spent this chilly afternoon doing some arts and crafts!

Using the clear crayon leftover from Easter egg dying (white crayons would work too, but our paper was slightly gray so I went with this) I created some pictures and messages for Viv to water color and discover what each one was. Easy-peasy and really fun for little ones! Viv  painted about 12 in all, but would have gone on all afternoon if I hadn't started running low on crayon :)

Chalkboard Wall: How NOT to DIY (A Step-By-Step Guide)

I'm normally pretty crafty, but someone please take away my hot glue gun, and send me remedial arts and crafts after the wallpaper/paint debacle that was the last day or so.

We have this big empty wall in our kitchen, and I thought it would be fantastic to make a chalkboard calendar (the kind that keeps popping up all over Pinterest) out of it. And here it is, all set and ready to schedule...

This should have been easy-peasy lemon-squeezy.

SHOULD have.

Here's a step-by-step guide on he do's and don'ts on making a chalkboard wall calendar:

Step 1.
DO: Measure, measure, measure: Make sure you check your measurements multiple times before marking and taping.
DON'T pay attention to my bad hair day (boho braid brought to you in full by mommy morning madness)

Step 2:  Tape it off!
DO: Have a princess tambourine player on hand to entertain you, as this step is kind of boring.

DO: Enlist your local BFG to help you with the high-up parts

Step 4: Paint (chalkboard paint comes in both regular and spray form)

Step 5: Let dry, then remove tape
DON'T:  USE CHEAP TAPE. Seriously, splurge on the type that is guaranteed not to leak. Do not buy the bargain brand or this will happen!

Step 6: Plan B
DO: try various paint removal techniques before throwing in the towel
DON'T: Attempt to 'lightly" scrape any paint off, it may cause accidental wallpaper butchering resulting in this...

And if THAT happens, definitely do NOT decide to remove the wallpaper AROUND the chalkboard like this:

Because if you do, you will spend all night doing so, only to have to wake up, go to the store, get GOOD painter's tape, go home, finish removing the wallpaper, sand AROUND EVERY FREAKING CHALKBOARD SQUARE, re-tape and then paint.

Why not just remove all the wallpaper and start from scratch? Because I will be damned if I'm going to w waste the money I spent on the chalkboard paint (that stuff is expensive!), especially since the majority of the squares didn't run.

I'm not even going to post all the pictures of how bad this got. 

If you ignored my previous advice and did this the hard way, or just feel like you haven't F'd your project up enough, go right ahead and hand-letter the days of the week. By this point you will be so tired that you will also probably write them the Canadian way, starting with Monday rather than Sunday, and your handwriting will look like a 4th grader's.

Ta-DA! You now how a chalkboard wall (and possibly a migraine).

New House, New Look

Okay, so in an effort to be less confusing (or more confusing, I haven't decided ;-) all my personal, non-parenting related stuff will now be posted here, instead of over at It's A Daughter's World. What can I say, K and I are generally outspoken, so it only makes sense that we would have too much to blog about to post all in one spot :)

So, I wrote briefly about moving here, but never really followed up with any sort of explanation. Shortly after writing my summer bucket list, we were faced with the decision of either buying the house we were currently renting, or moving on. Needless to say, that was the kick in the tush we needed to go in search of the new Olmstead Homestead. Our little rental house served us well for 3 years, but we would be lying if we said it wasn't too small for our active family, and not as energy efficient as needed in northern VT.

And so our hunt began, and fully consumed the majority of our summer! We closed on our home in a quiet, sweet little neighborhood 3 weeks ago, and couldn't be happier! The room makeovers have begun (who am I kidding, I had that hideous dining room wallpaper- ALL three layers of it- down and re-painted within 2 days). Here are a few peeks at some of our room re-dos, starting with this weekend's hallway project. I still need to photograph the  living room, but that is done too. Forgive the poor quality of the 'before' images, I had to take them from the internet listings.

Not that big of a change, but definitely much more 'Us'

Our style isn't for everyone,
 but you can't say this isn't much better!

Still more to do on this one, but all in good time!

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