Valentine's boxes

I found these cute little mailboxes at Target, and bought one for each member of our family. One night we each decorated our own and then everyone was encouraged to leave nice notes, etc. for the others during the week leading up to V-day. I left something in their mailbox for them to discover each morning, alternating treat (food) and fun thing (non-food). Riley woke up extra-early all week just to check out her mailbox. I have put them away until next year, when we will do it again.

Mario Party

My 2 older boys have birthdays within 3 days of each other, so this year we decided to hold a combined party for them with the Mario/ Nintendo theme (they love to play it with their dad on the Wii). When the kids came in from their half-day of school, they were dressed as a character from the Mario games (Ethan-Luigi, Mason-Mario, Riley-princess Peach, Carson- Yoshi, and Kiechel- Wario) which mostly consisted of the appropriately colored T-shirts plus hats, crowns, and mustaches. Then they stepped onto the giant gameboard I had set up in our front room. The took turns and rolled the dice to advance on the board. I covered one side of the dice with an M, if it was rolled, we played a mini-game (there were 6: smash the chain chomp- a pinata painted to look like a chain chomp; Save Princess Peach- a follow the clues which led them to a large Princess Peach cut out along with a treasure chest of coins; Get the goomba- stomping brown balloons with coins inside; Tic Tac Drop- trying to get 3 in a row by dropping rice-filled balloons onto a 3x3 grid; Yoshi's egg hunt- filled easter eggs with coins for a hunt outside; and Musical Mario "chairs"- we downloaded a couple of versions of the Mario songs from iTunes and the kids walked around on pictures of different Mario characters, when the music stopped, I drew a picture from a hat, whoever was standing on that character was out). The kids earned coins (purchased from HobbyLobby) for each of the mini-games. After they each reached the end of our giant board game, they had the chance to trade in their coins for a prize (small toys I had purchased and hidden). We then ate pizza and then had a Boo cake with ice cream. A memorable day for certain.

Cute bag

My little sis came over the other day with an idea for a cute bag, so we sewed one up. I think it turned out quite nicely. We cut 1- 9"x9" square of white flannel on the fold (making it an 18"x9" rectangle). Then we cut out 3 sets of leaves from green felt and sewed them on to one side of the rectangle with just one straight stitch down the middle. Next we sewed on 3 lengths of different colored ribbon to make the stems for our flowers. I sewed a button to the top of each ribbon. As I sewed, my sister cut out a few flower heads from different colored felt and cut a small slit (large enough to fit over the button) in the middle. Now the flower heads can be moved around for fun and/or to change the look of the bag. To finish the bag, we straight-stitched the bottom and sides, turned under and stitched the top edges, then attached 2 lengths of the same white flannel that we had cut into 3-inch widths, folded in half, sewed at 1/4" seam, turned right side out and then stitched again for added stability. The handles we attached with a box shaped seam for strength.

Babies, babies, everywhere

My sister just had a little boy a couple of weeks ago, and there are several friends of mine at church who have had babies this month, not to mention my newest coming in April. With all these babies, I needed a new baby gift/craft. I combined a few different variations to come up with my own spin of a cute baby burp cloth. I bought a 12-pack of single fold diapers (you can use double fold, just skip the next step) and then folded them in half so they were approximately 12 inches wide. I bought a cute flannel (1 yard) and ribbon to match. After pre-washing the flannel, I cut it in 12-inch widths for the entire yard length, giving me 3- 12"x36" rectangles. Next I pinned 2 lengths of ribbon onto the folded diaper. I sewed the flannel to the diaper (12-inch ends) right sides together. Next, turn it right side out and edge stitch the selvages to the flannel side. Turn wrong side out. Since the flannel is longer than the diaper, I just centered the diaper in the middle of the flannel and stitched the long sides, leaving an opening to turn right side out- this leaves a cute flannel border to the nicely absorbant diaper. I then edge stitched the long sides with a straight stitch. Finally, zig-zag stitch the ribbons down (I sewed both sides of the ribbon). The end! This project was easy enough I let my 8-year old and 6-year old each sew one for their first sewing project.

"I spy" Christmas ornaments

Each year at Christmas my kids exchange homemade ornaments with their cousins instead of presents. This year we made "I spy" ornaments. Another 1st grader mom and myself came up with the idea, and she wrote the poem on the tag:

I spy 2 snowflakes, a star from the night,
A golden ring, and a Christmas light;
A holly leaf, a snowman, a little white dove,
2 bells, a present, and a heart full of love.

We are making them with our daughters' first grade class at their Christmas party on Friday.
They are super simple to make. I ordered the empty craft ornament balls (4-inch) off of ebay. I then filled one side of the ornament with Polypellets (1c.) purchased at Walmart. I then put in 10 small Christmas-y items: confetti snowflakes;heart, holly leaf, and star beads, "gold" ring and tiny dove (from the bridal dept at Hobby Lobby), miniature Christmas light, and present (from Hobby Lobby's miniature doll house dept), 2 types of small bells, and a snowman button. I glued the 2 halves together, tied on the tag and a ribbon, and that is it. They have been a huge hit.

Holiday Projects

Just a couple of things I have done lately.
I saw the specimen jars on someone's blog, we had a lot of fun putting them together. Notice the bionicle in one of the jars.
I am also working on a Christmas ornament. My first version was quite plain. The second is fancier, but I can't tell if it is cute or looks like a drag queen (due to a lack of available paint brushes, I painted it with q-tips and toothpicks)

Family History

We had a great HFPE meeting last week on keeping our family history (along with a fantastic dinner). Different sisters were asked to bring in and then talk about how they keep their family history. One had a collage of family pictures along with some sweet notes written by her husband to her in their early marriage. When her children were on missions, she also kept a copy of all emails and letters she wrote to them, and those they wrote to her and printed them out (there were pictures along with them) and that was a record of their missions. There were several scrapbookers, to various degrees, personal journals, family journals including one which contained only "happy" things. A journal of Christmases and family traditions. Another idea was to have a baby's first year calendar on which to jot in those small squares what your baby did in their first year. The limits of space and 1 year time were big advantages. I showed the "big book about me"s that I do each New Years for each of my kids. I take those inexpensive photo albums (4x6") that I pick up at Target, and insert photographs, lists of likes, trips taken, etc. also pictures the kids have drawn, including a self-portrait and sample of handwriting, for smaller kids I trace their hands or use footprints. I use a lot of clip art and stickers to go along with their lists of likes and favorites. They love looking at them year round, in fact, I have to hide them to keep them in tact.