DIY Painted Barbie Undies

I have a creative friend who always thinks of great ideas. One of them is to paint undies (or swimming suits) on barbie dolls, because lets face it: barbies spend a lot of time in the buff. So far we only own one barbie I got at a garage sale, but I thought I would try it. For the top I outlined it with a sharpie and filled it in with nail polish and let dry. For the bottom I just painted it. I think next time I will do a full swimming suit.

Now we have a (semi) modest barbie whether she is dressed or not!

Destruction: Keeping boys entertained

Our trusty printer of many years bit the dust recently. Instead of feeding it to the garbage can, my husband suggested letting the kids take it apart. It sounded like kind of a pain to me, but when a four-day weekend came upon us, I decided to go for it. And they totally loved it. It kept us busy for a couple of hours.

Notice that I said "us". My kids weren't able to get many of the screws loose. So, be prepared with a few kinds of screwdrivers, old clothes in case of grease or ink, and lots of your own time. But it was worth it. They were totally excited to see it come apart and how everything worked.

So next time you have an electronic device break, let your kids go at it. Or you can also pick up something at the thrift store too.

Easy School Valentines Day Party

I'm in charge of the third-graders V-day party this year. Here is one game I thought up:
Taking the numbers of kids in the class and divide that number in half. Then find out how to say "I love you" in that many languages. Then I will print off two strips of each language, fold them up and randomly hand them out.
Then they have to go around the room saying "I love you" in their language until their find their match.

One of the other moms helping me is going to do "Do you love your neighbor?" Which I think the kids will like too. Click here for the instructions to that game.

Little things we've done lately...

Trying to beat the Winter Blues, we've done a couple things lately that the kids found fun.
First we made Banana Men for our "Family Night" treat. Basically you cut the banana in half and decorate it with chocolate chips, candies, whipped cream for hair and mustaches, etc. And please don't be jealous of the fine china we use at our house. :)



Then, for dinner one night I let the kids make their own pizzas. I made up some pizza dough, rolled out individual sized circles, and let them pick from a variety of toppings. Fun for everyone.


Also, here is another little trick I used this week. Red food coloring and corn syrup mixed and brushed onto a bandage and then dried overnight makes awesome blood!


I'm not really into gory Halloween costumes, but our school does a "Fake an injury day" for part of our spirit week. This works great for some fake-out blood!

Personal Message from Santa

My friend featured a very cool site on her blog that I had to share. You can add a couple of photos and personal information about your child and Santa will send your child a video talking just to them. It's pretty cool. My four-year-old was pretty amazed.

To see an example go here or just go straight to the site here.

The $10 Wall

Upstairs we had an "extra" catch-all room. This is what one wall looked like (which was painted with love a few years ago for a couple of cute little boys who are now downstairs). It needed a redo. It had black permanent marker in a few too many places.

Since this room is bigger than my daughters room and I had to paint anyway....I decided to move her over. I painted this yellow color.


But it needed a little decoration. So, I took these of these chargers ($1.99 each) that I got from the Hobby Lobby.

And then I cut some purple fabric scraps into strips.

And then I used Mod Podge to glue them down in a random fashion



Then I found a leaf pattern from my computer and cut out 5 leaves for each flower from heavy purple fabric.

I traced the plate and made a pattern so I would know where to place them around the center.




Then I used a paint roller to roll some fabric starch onto the leaf.


Then I pressed it onto the wall, slightly under the pattern and smoothed out. At this point you can use a sponge to spread more fabric starch onto the top of the leaf. (To remove the fabric from walls, just dampen and peel off)

And here are all of the petals:


Repeat for any other flowers you want.
To hang the chargers, we used Gorilla Glue to glue a teeth bracket to the back, then hung them on a nail in the center of the petals.




I'm happy with how it turned out. The flowers are big enough they take up an entire wall. I like the modern/shabby look of them.

Dolly

This summer I spent more time enjoying summer than crafting, but I was feeling an itch to make something. And I keep drooling over the Waldorf dolls Lil Blue Boo keeps featuring. Having the "I'm too frugal I can make that myself mentality" can be a curse sometimes. Those dolls are expensive, but I learned why. I researched some sites online and attempted to make one. Not going to happen in this lifetime.
But, I still I had this itching to make a doll. So, I found a great tutorial on Martha Stewart. The doll instructions were very easy to follow. However, I found the clothes a bit challenging. (Don't let this intimidate you, as I am a very amateur sewer) So, I made an extremely basic version of the shirt which was supposed to have a collar, buttons etc.

It was good enough for my 15-month old. I love her long crazy hair. Maybe I will have to live my long hair fantasies through her. Now I've gotten it out of my system. Time to move on to other craft projects.

And to start saving for the real Waldorf doll.

Peaches and Cream Dried Peaches

Awhile ago, I saw an idea here on Blue Cricket Design to dip apple slice in Jell-o before dehydrating them for flavored apple chips. Intrigued, I decide to try it with peach slices when I bought a couple of boxes. But then I go to thinking that dipping them in dry pudding mix might be pretty yummy too.
So, after I peeled, pitted, and sliced I dipped them in some of this:



At first, I dipped each one,


But, then I decided it would be easier to do the whole batch at once.


I did this with Jell-o and chocolate pudding too. Then put it on my (ok, my moms) dehydrator.



After drying for about 12 hours, this is what the vanilla pudding ones looked like. They were still pretty sticky. But they tasted just peaches and cream. Yum!



So, here is the final cherry jell-o, chocolate, plain, vanilla pudding, and lime dried peaches.




The favorite with the kids: Lime
The favorite of mine: vanilla pudding
Least favorite of everybodys: chocolate



So, next time you come across some fresh peaches, give this a try!

Otter Pops Solutions

Yes, I'm a bad mom and let my kids have otter pops despite their high fructose corn syrup. I have bought molds to freeze fruit juice in, I just need to get to it. Anyway, we usually have a major problem with scissors and otter pops. They lose them, ruin my good pairs with stickiness, etc etc.

So, a year or two ago my husband came up with solution. We took wire and hooked onto something near the freezer. We originally used string, but it was too tempting to cut them off with the said scissors. No more looking for scissors or ruining mine.

Now, if only I had a solution for wrappers on the ground....

I made a shirt!

I never thought I could actually make a shirt that was wearable! It's not perfect, but
I am in love with it. And it was really fun to make.

Even a beginner sewer figured it out.

Check out the original tutorial found here, which was featured here.

If you are interested, these posts are terrific. The only thing I did a little differently was add a band around the bottom, with a matching applique from the top material, with a zig zag stitch hem.

She also started the sizing at Size 2, and told you how to go up for additional sizes. I wanted a size 1, so I went down the recommended amounts instead of up.

Class Pictures

All of my creative/computer time lately has been spent building a new website for a new business venture we are doing.
But, I did just have a small AHA moment I thought I would share. It might help at least ONE of you.
We just got back all of our classroom pictures from the kids classes. And they (especially the four-year-old) has been obsessed with looking at, holding it, bending it... you get the idea. I ruined one of my class pictures when I was kid and I'm still sad about that. So, I was stressing about keeping them nice and how to take it away from him.
Until, I realized I have a scanner/printer. I scanned them all in, printed them out and in a couple of minutes a little bit of ink, everyone was happy. He can now hold his picture and name all of the kids to his hearts content. And the originals are safely tucked away.
Now, if only this website I'm working on was that easy. :)

Easy Hamburger Cookies

Spring is starting to tease us around here. It was 40 yesterday and I didn't even wear a jacket to run errands! So, it is getting my in the mood for summer foods and parties. Here is an easy treat that I've been making since I was about 9. I got a BHG Kids Cookie Cookbook for Christmas and this recipe came from there. Except, they called for york peppermint patties. Trust me, grasshopper cookies are way yummier.* It is always a hit at BBQ's and better yet, you can sit back and let your kids make the whole thing.

Hamburger Cookies

Few drops water

Few drops green food coloring

1/2 cup flaked coconut

48 vanilla wafers

24 grasshopper cookies

sesame seeds or poppy seeds

Turn over to 350. In a small screw-top jar combine the water and the green food coloring. Add coconut; cover and shake until all of the coconut is tinted. Set aside.

Place half of the vanilla wafers, flat side up on an ungreased cookie sheet. Top each with a grasshopper cookie. Place in the oven for about 1 minute or just until chocolate begins to soften.

Immediately sprinkle each with a tsp. of tinted coconut. Top with another vanilla wafer. Press gently. Brush the top vanilla wafers with just enough water to moisten so the sesame seeds will stick.

Sprinkle each cookie with a little sesame seed and serve.

*Make your own grasshopper cookies. Find out how here.

Back to Basic Chore Charts

I've tried several chore charts. Mostly elaborate ones that are too complicated to stick with. So, in my effort to simplify I've come up with two simple systems.

I remembered a similar chart my mom had when I was little.

This one I made a page with my three boys pictures in Photoshop. Then I made a circle divided three ways that has a list of their responsbilities. I laminated each part and stuck a brad in the middle.

We will turn it every week so the assignments will change up weekly. It goes on the fridge and will hopefully eliminate fighting over who has to do what.

I'm also using this scrabble tile board as incentive to be good. I wrote the boys names on top and give them 14 letters at the beginning of the week. They lose letters for things like disobeying, fighting, saying "suck", leaving dirty socks out, slamming doors, etc. At the end of the week if they have 10 letters left, they can choose a prize. Mostly they are thrilled to get a soda or a Propel. It doesn't take much to please kids. Last week I had a child lose 5 and begged and begged to able to earn one back by cleaning. I let him, but I'm not sure if they should earn back letters or not. What do you think?

Visits from leprechauns

We don't make a huge deal about St. Patricks day around here, but a few years ago my sister told me that they had a leprechaun come to their house in the night before St. Patricks day and turn their milk, eggs, and waffle batter green for breakfast the next day. I thought that sounded fun so we invited one to come to our house to do the same thing. The kids love it of course!