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Friday, November 6, 2015

Ribbon wind sock craft

A new day, brings another toddler emotional breakdown. It seems lately L lives his life laughing hysterically or sobbing for the craziest reasons. "Mommy I want real fruit, not cup fruit!! I want watermelon!!!!" 
Thankfully doing some simple crafts will calm him down and get him excited to decorate for Christmas really early. 

This toilet paper roll windsock is easy and quick


All that's needed is a toilet paper roll, ribbons in various sizes and a hot glue gun. 
I let L pick out the ribbons we used (which don't match at all, but whatever) then I cut them and wrap some around the roll and hang the others from the inside. 
I finished it off with a ribbon on the top to hang it. Voila! 
L loved to use this as a "car wash" as well. 

We hung ours from Jingle, our reindeer but you can hang it outside to sway in the breeze, just make sure to secure it well. 





Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Being the Crafty Mom

With working so much, I often don't get enough time to be "that mom" that crafts with their kiddo, but I just had surgery so I am trying to do more fun things with L while I recover. I have been on Pinterest looking for easy crafts that my big boy would enjoy without getting too messy or too bored. There is A thin line with raising a rambunctious boy. 
Introducing salt dough! 

I absolutely loved this idea because I already had all of the ingredients on hand and L and I could whip up a batch fairly quickly. 
All it takes is 1 cup flour, 1 cup salt & 1/2 cup warm water. We also used different gel colors. He loved using his hands to mix up the dough and we put some cinnamon in the mix to make it smell yummy. 
L also loved using the kitchen tools to cut and divide the dough to color 
Since it is November, we starting to get into the holiday spirit so we used green and red to make some cool ornaments and added in some other colors at the end with the left over dough. We didnt bother with rolling out out, we used the flat end of the dough scraper to push down on rolled balls in order to achieve the right thickness


Not only can you make ornaments, but you can also mold this stuff into shapes. My kiddo wanted me to make a volcano and have lava spilling out of it. So...
Not too bad. 

Don't forget to use a straw to push a hole through the top of your ornaments to put ribbon through. 

Place your shapes onto a pizza stone or a non stick cookie sheet and put in the oven for 2 hours at 200 degrees. They should dry, not cook. 

When you take them out they should be rock solid, but if they aren't they will dry out completely in about a day. I would wait until that time before you string them with ribbon. 

L had so much fun making these, we are going to use a permanent market to add the year to them and our names. 



Mission accomplished. Now time for a much needed nap after clean up. 

Happy Holidays!