Sequins & Felt Flower Headband

Monday was the first day of preschool 4. I made Lu a new headband to go with her outfit.

I cut out felt flowers, stacked a few on top of each other, sewed on sequins using seed beads to hold the sequin in place, sewed the flowers onto an old headband.

A fast and cute way to dress up an outfit. If sequins aren't your thing you can use a button as the flower's center. Lu just loves all things glittery and sparkly :-)

Sewing on the sequins is simple:
Push the needle through the felt
Add a sequin to the needle
Add a bead on top of sequin
Draw needle and thread all the way through
pushing sequin and bead flush to felt
Take needle and go back through sequin hole
Bead will hold sequin in place






A happy customer!

Halloween Kids Craft: Witches Hats

Edit: I am making 16 of these for Lu's preschool class. I will make the hats & spray paint them black at home. I will provide the collage materials for the kids so they can decorate their own in class. So far I found some glitter glue in the Target $1 zone (4 tubes for $1), I order a ton of googly eyes and gems from Oriental Trading Company on the cheap. I think I'll pick up some Halloween curling ribbon and pre-tie bundles of curls for them to attach. I'll post pictures afterwards.

I can't help it...I know it is still September. I just love Halloween.

We still had a bunch of Elmo Birthday Party hats sitting on the "I'll deal with it later pile." Lucky for me I am a procrastinator. I picked up the hat and thought up this fun little craft.

Take a small paper plate. Make pie shaped cuts in the center circle. Fold up. Tape or glue to inside of hat. Paint or spray paint black. Decorate. Lulu and I both had fun decorating ours. We used googly eyes, sequin stars, glitter and ribbon.

When dry you can tie ribbon around the hat or even better glue feather boa around the brim!

Technical Difficulties

Hello! I am sorry I have been MIA for several days now. My computer up and died on me last week. All is fixed now. I just got my "baby" home tonight. I have some great posts lined up. It helps being unplugged for a while. Thanks for your patience. Mama King

Cool Bug

Katydid? We think. Anyone know for sure?

Happy Labor Day

Time to paint the kitchen! Goodbye to the girls makeshift growth chart.

Feed the Birds

You may have noticed we have been doing a lot of outings and not a lot of crafts. As soon a s school starts we will go back to our regular routine. I will be posting a craft project every Monday and Wednesday starting September 14th.

Until then we have been enjoying the beautiful weather. One of our favorite sunny day places to go is our local children's Zoo. We have a membership which makes going less of a commitment. We can go and visit a few exhibits, have a picnic and ride the little train and go. We know we are coming back so no need to see the entire Zoo and traipse all over mankind. We go year round and the girls never tire of it (maybe 6 times a year.) I have them pick one paying activity each time. Nothing costs more than $2 but I want these activities to be special and not expected that we ride the carousel, ride a pony, and feed the birds every time we go.

I let Lulu choose the activity this time because she had acquired 10 big sister stickers on her rewards chart. These stickers were given to her if I saw her helping her sister, making good choices, walking away from potential conflict and being kind to her sister. Lulu was really motivated by the chart and I saw her think twice a couple of times without me saying anything.

Lulu chose the Aviary as her activity. For $2 you get a stick with bird seed stuck to it. The birds (Australian Budgies) will fly down and eat from your stick. Pretty cool!

Have a great day!

Historical Farm Outing

We went to visit a historical farm yesterday. The girls had so much fun washing clothes (*gasp!*) We may have to find ourselves a washtub and washboard.

Rinsing the clothes.

Hanging them up on the clothes line. They even had a little basket so you could take the clothes off the line and start all over again. They could have done this all afternoon but some other kids came along and I saw my chance to move on!

Next came watering the garden. They got to fill up kids size watering cans with a real water pump.

Big sister helping little sister!

45 minutes! They went back and forth countless times. It really is the simple things that get kids so excited.

Of course there were animals, barns and historic homes on the farm but this was the highlight!

We are enjoying our last days of summer before school starts. Hope you are (did) too!

Corn Husk Dolls: Part 1 Update

As my daughter Em would say, "Whon Whon. " My husband taught her this sound effect for when things go wrong. It is actually very hysterical when something really does go wrong and my husband and I are tense (usually involving directions.) All of a sudden we will hear "Whon Whon" from the back seat. You can't help but laugh.

Back to the corn, "Whon Whon!" They shriveled up! I did see that you can buy nice flat husks at the craft store or use tamale wrappers. So much for being resourceful -- off to the craft store we go!

Fall is in the Air: Corn Husk Doll, Part 1

Went to a local farm for peach picking yesterday. Bought some gorgeous corn. Decided to save the husks to see if I could attempt to make a corn husk doll for the girls.

Step 1: Start saving your corn husks (about 20 per doll.) This is the husks from 4 ears. Plenty to make two dolls or extras to make lots of mistakes and end up with one doll. Let dry 3 days.

I will be using the tutorial from Family Fun.

Making A House A Home

Lu went to her first Build-a-Bear birthday party this past weekend. The box her panda bear came in was as exciting as the panda bear. It is shaped like a house with windows and a door already cut out. We decided to spruce it up a bit. 3 sides got painted today. We hope to finish painting it and adding some decorative touches later this week.






Emme wanted to get in on the action so I gave her an extra box and didn't she have fun!