Wednesday, November 30, 2011

One Week Break

Hey, all. I just wanted to let you know that I'm taking this week to wrap up my semester at school. Finals are next week, but I'll be done with the big stress by then.

I have three awesome art adventures coming, a couple Christmas projects, a "old" sign tutorial, and an organizing project, oh, and the wrap up of Kitchen Crashing.
December is going to be awesome around here. See you next week.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Art Adventure: Parchment Paper

I've loved doing this project since I was a little kid myself. I thought with Thanksgiving this week it was the perfect time to make your own paper look old. Maybe recreate the Mayflower Compact? :)

"Old" Parchment Paper
Supplies:
  • white paper, like copy paper
  • tea bags
  • oven
  • lighter

To prep, take a tea bag and strip off all the paper and string and then soak in a small dish of water. And preheat the oven to 200 degrees F.

Take a piece of paper and crumple it a bit. Then smooth it back out.

Next, squeeze excess water out of the tea bag and rub the tea bag all over the paper, dipping back into the water if necessary.

Once the whole paper is stained, place directly on the rack of the oven. It will take about 3-5 min. to completely dry out depending on how wet the paper is.

Take it out of the oven and either keep it as it is, or

burn the edges for a really worn look. Obviously this a parent/adult part!

Use a lighter to burn just a small portion at a time. Once the paper lights, be prepared to start blowing it out. My seven year old could help blowing out the fire.

Then the paper is done. It's time to let your child's imagination run wild.

Maybe an old letter? Or a treasure map?

X marks the spot.

This post may be linked at the following parties (for their Blog Buttons see my Link Love page): (M) C.R.A.F.T., Amaze Me Monday, Sumo's Sweet Stuff,  (T) A Little Birdie Told Me  Stories of A to Z, The Blackberry Vine, How To's Day , Type A, Amaze Me August, , Show Me What Ya Got,  (W) Wow MeBlue Cricket Design, What I Whipped UpWicked Awesome Wednesday, Sweet Peas & Bumblebees (TH)   Creative Juice, Thrifty 101 , Smilemonsters , Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Shabby Chic Cottage, Thrifty Thursdays, House of Hepworth's,  (F) Fingerprints on the Fridge, Furniture Feature Friday,  Lovely Crafty Weekend , Remodelaholic, For the Kids Fridays, , Craft Goodies, (Sat) Tatertots and Jello , Anything Goes , Funky Junk Interiors (Sun) Creative Blog & Hop, Sundae Scoop, Under the Table and Dreaming

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Design on No Dime

Our bathroom needs help. I want to take the tile out, but it's just not in the cards right now.

I talked about the why's and how's of the dandelion shower curtain in this post.

I wasn't thrilled because it was just too dark for the space. Gabe ran in and exclaimed, "Cool, mom! You made it look smaller!" Uh, yeah. That's exactly what I was going for. :/


Then I wanted to steal the bathroom valence for the kitchen, so I replaced it with the one from the kitchen which I knew was too big, but I just went with it anyway.
It was starting to look like I should just throw up a disco ball and call it the seventies. It was getting bad. I cringed when people asked to use the bathroom because I didn't want them to see it!

But, with other things going on, I did not want to spend any money on it right now. So, I shopped my house.

I found green curtains I no longer use, and discovered that it takes two curtain panels to span the bathtub. I just put the tabs through the curtain rings and overlapped the panels in the middle.

I found the flower valence as well. I was surprised I still had it because it's just not my style anymore, but for the purposes of this bathroom, I was going with it because it fit the window better.
I didn't have anything that could stand in as a bath mat, so I tried to bleach the lime green one. But, alas, being made of synthetics, it didn't work. So, it doesn't really match, but still. It looks better than before.

Before.

After.

And I spent zero dollars!

This post may be linked at the following parties (for their Blog Buttons see my Link Love page): (M) C.R.A.F.T., Amaze Me Monday, Sumo's Sweet Stuff,  (T) A Little Birdie Told Me  Stories of A to Z, The Blackberry Vine, How To's Day , Type A, Amaze Me August, , Show Me What Ya Got,  (W) Wow MeBlue Cricket Design, What I Whipped UpWicked Awesome Wednesday, Sweet Peas & Bumblebees (TH)   Creative Juice, Thrifty 101 , Smilemonsters , Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Shabby Chic Cottage, Thrifty Thursdays, House of Hepworth's,  (F) Fingerprints on the Fridge, Furniture Feature Friday,  Lovely Crafty Weekend , Remodelaholic, For the Kids Fridays, , Craft Goodies, (Sat) Tatertots and Jello , Anything Goes , Funky Junk Interiors (Sun) Creative Blog & Hop, Sundae Scoop, Under the Table and Dreaming

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Art Adventure: Gobble! Gobble!

This is more "craft" than "art" but my boys love this project. As adorable as these little turkeys are, just try to let them do much of it themselves even if it's not perfect. It is a lot of cutting though, so they usually beg for help.

Hand and Foot Turkeys

Supplies:
  • construction paper
  • pencil
  • scissors
  • glue
  • googly eyes
On a brown piece of paper, trace your child's foot (shoe on) or just have them trace one of their shoes. Set aside.

On your turkey feather colored paper (whatever colors you wish, we used red and orange and yellow), have your child trace their hand one to two times on each color. Little ones may need help tracing.

Once everything is traced, now it's time to start cutting everything out.
Have your child cut out a triangle as a beak and a red wattle too. Both my boys wanted to make feet as well. Just use the scraps for these little pieces.

Once everything is cut out, it is time to start gluing. The heel of the foot will be the head. 

On the toe part of the foot, add glue and begin sticking the hands on to make the feathers. Depending on how many hands, you may need to add glue as you go.
Flip the turkey over. 

Add googly eyes, wattle and beak.

Add the feet if you made them. You have a cute little turkey for Thanksgiving.
Gobble! Gobble!

This post may be linked at the following parties (for their Blog Buttons see my Link Love page): (M) C.R.A.F.T., Amaze Me Monday, Sumo's Sweet Stuff,  (T) A Little Birdie Told Me  Stories of A to Z, The Blackberry Vine, How To's Day , Type A, Amaze Me August, , Show Me What Ya Got,  (W) Wow MeBlue Cricket Design, What I Whipped UpWicked Awesome Wednesday, Sweet Peas & Bumblebees (TH)   Creative Juice, Thrifty 101 , Smilemonsters , Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Shabby Chic Cottage, Thrifty Thursdays, House of Hepworth's,  (F) Fingerprints on the Fridge, Furniture Feature Friday,  Lovely Crafty Weekend , Remodelaholic, For the Kids Fridays, , Craft Goodies, (Sat) Tatertots and Jello , Anything Goes , Funky Junk Interiors (Sun) Creative Blog & Hop, Sundae Scoop, Under the Table and Dreaming

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Being Prepared

About 7 years ago, we lived in Joplin, MO for a couple years. My friend, Amy, still does. Although they lost everything, their family was fine, so we are thankful for that. But Amy has given me some insight into what you should know before disaster strikes.

It may not be a tornado in your area, but there is destructive weather everywhere and there is always the chance of fire.
When we visited last summer, we got to walk through our old duplex. It was on the edge of the tornado.

You just never know.

So, you have insurance. Great. But do you know what you actually have? You will have to be able to itemize. Amy's trick is a great one.

Go and take pictures of everything. Every room, every drawer.

I tried to be systematic. First, I snapped a general picture of the room. Partly so I'd know what room the details were for, and partly to get a shot of rugs, furniture, bedding, etc. The big stuff. I'll show you Chi's room.

Then I would take a shot of the dresser.
Open each drawer and take a picture.

Then move on. I took snaps of the bookcase.
His big toys.

The closet. His cubbies.

Then each cubby.

Go through the whole house. Every drawer in your kitchen. You don't need perfect pictures with every single item in it, but you need enough to jog your memory and be proof of what you had.

Once you get all these pictures taken, store them somewhere else! Put them on disc and stick them in a safe deposit box or even use cloud storage. 

This post may be linked at the following parties (for their Blog Buttons see my Link Love page): (M) C.R.A.F.T., Amaze Me Monday, Sumo's Sweet Stuff,  (T) A Little Birdie Told Me  Stories of A to Z, The Blackberry Vine, How To's Day , Type A, Amaze Me August, , Show Me What Ya Got,  (W) Wow MeBlue Cricket Design, What I Whipped UpWicked Awesome Wednesday, Sweet Peas & Bumblebees (TH)   Creative Juice, Thrifty 101 , Smilemonsters , Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Shabby Chic Cottage, Thrifty Thursdays, House of Hepworth's,  (F) Fingerprints on the Fridge, Furniture Feature Friday,  Lovely Crafty Weekend , Remodelaholic, For the Kids Fridays, , Craft Goodies, (Sat) Tatertots and Jello , Anything Goes , Funky Junk Interiors (Sun) Creative Blog & Hop, Sundae Scoop, Under the Table and Dreaming

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Art Adventure: Postive and Negative Space

This one is geared to an elementary (or older) student. In art we talk about positive and negative space. Typically, positive space is the figure you have drawn and negative space is the background. Though there are ways artists play around with that, we don't need to get too tricky here. But this project will help us think about how we normally look at positive and negative space.

Positive/Negative
Supplies:
  • white paper
  • pencil
  • ruler
  • marker (one color only)

Have your child draw a picture that takes up much of the page, but try to keep it somewhat simple. Not too many details. Gabe drew a big tree for his picture.
Help your child draw a straight line, using a ruler or other straight edge, from one corner diagonally to another corner.

On one side of the line, your child will color in the positive space. So anything that is not background. You can leave some space if you have objects touching, to create a white line if needed.
On the other side of the line, your child will color in the negative space. So anything that is considered background.


Your picture will be opposites. Just use one color. We don't need to complicate it too much. Using one color will help you focus on what is positive space and what is negative space.

Gabe thinks the picture looked "kind of weird" but also "cool." :)

This post may be linked at the following parties (for their Blog Buttons see my Link Love page): (M) C.R.A.F.T., Amaze Me Monday, Sumo's Sweet Stuff,  (T) A Little Birdie Told Me  Stories of A to Z, The Blackberry Vine, How To's Day , Type A, Amaze Me August, , Show Me What Ya Got,  (W) Wow MeBlue Cricket Design, What I Whipped UpWicked Awesome Wednesday, Sweet Peas & Bumblebees (TH)   Creative Juice, Thrifty 101 , Smilemonsters , Everything But the Kitchen Sink, Shabby Chic Cottage, Thrifty Thursdays, House of Hepworth's,  (F) Fingerprints on the Fridge, Furniture Feature Friday,  Lovely Crafty Weekend , Remodelaholic, For the Kids Fridays, , Craft Goodies, (Sat) Tatertots and Jello , Anything Goes , Funky Junk Interiors (Sun) Creative Blog & Hop, Sundae Scoop, Under the Table and Dreaming

Friday, November 4, 2011

Us vs. the Leaves

If it were up to Matt, he'd never remove the leaves. He doesn't think he needs to tamper with nature or God. I, however, eventually get sick of looking at them.

We resisted a leaf blower for a long time. I have issues with gassing up lawn tools to take care of nature. Polluting to make a pretty lawn just kind of irks me. But we finally bought an electric leaf blower. Partly because we can't rake the new patio, and we have a long driveway and I hate the sound of rakes scraping concrete. Worse than fingernails on a chalkboard to me. (Yes, we sweep it, but that takes forever, and sometimes you just quickly rake the edges. You know what I mean.)

Matt and I are in disagreement though. I think after using it, that a leaf blower only makes you feel like it's less work, but that it doesn't actually save you anything at all. Matt says, not so! It really is less labor (though he admits probably not less time).

He's wrong of course. :) But what do you think? For me, I can rake faster than I blow the leaves because when you blow them you have to go back and forth and there is not nearly as much control. I also think the blower is heavy and so my back hurt more when I was done. Matt has more upper body strength so he thought it was less achy to use the blower.
The part I like though is the vacuum attachment. You can suck up the leaves and it chops them into a bag. This at first seems like it would take longer, but I raked and put leaves in the wheelbarrow, wheeled it to where they needed to go, dumped it, came back and did this five more times. With the vacuum, it was two trips. Plus the vacuum works better in planting beds and on our patio.

But I have to say, walking around vacuuming your yard just feels weird!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Art Adventure: Play Dough Re-do

Do your kids love the same projects over and over again like mine? With the school year, I've been able to only do about one project a week with them, and play dough was once again demanded. But I have new followers who may not have seen the recipe yet, so it bears repeating. :)

Art doesn't have to be kept forever. One of the best ways for little (and weaker) hands to practice sculpture is with simple play dough. And this is what the boys asked for this week.

So this is the recipe I use when I make it (and the kids can help make it too!):
Play Dough

Combine 1 1/2 cups water with 2 tablespoons mineral oil*; set aside.
Combine 2 cups flour, 1/2 cup salt, 2-4 tablespoons cream of tartar (I typically use 2 tablespoons) in a saucepan.

Over medium heat, add water mixture and stir constantly.
It will seem lumpy, then sticky,


then it will form a ball.


Once that happens, take off heat and cool for five minutes.

When you can handle it, knead the dough with your hands. Separate into as many balls as you desire different colors.

Add several drops of food coloring to your dough ball and knead it through.


We stuck bags on our hands because we didn't have gloves and we were getting pictures done. Didn't want blue hands for that!

And that's it. You are ready to play!


We have several play dough tools. You can use your homemade play dough with your store-bought toys and tools.


Stick it in a bag when you are done to keep for another day.

*I use mineral oil because the dough will then keep at room temperature for quite awhile (we've never tested past a couple months). Vegetable and olive oil can be used, but then you should stick it in the fridge to prevent it from becoming rancid. I happen to think the mineral oil smells better in the dough too.

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