Fun Craft

The kids' Sunday school class is taking a break for the summer. Ryan will be promoting to another class, and I wanted to thank their teacher for her ministry to the kids. The kids made a simple bookmark out of beads and string for her, and they also made this cute vase. It was so easy and turned out really great, though I forgot to take a final picture. It's just Mod Podge and tissue paper and ends up looking like a piece of stained glass!

Autumn Craft

I've been out of creativity lately, so I purchased a couple of craft kits from Oriental Trading Company to do with my kids and also with our playgroup. This one was a cute little magnet we made with beads and pipe cleaner. It's a very easy and cute autumn craft!

Decorating Shirts

I can't ever seem to find gender-neutral shirts that I can get so Ryan and Abby can match. Every once in a while, I think it would be fun for them to match, so I saw this easy project (I'm really in to easy right now) and decided to do it with the kids for Independance Day.



Ryan actually had a choice of doing this project or going with Daddy to work, and he chose doing this...that's how much his love for crafts, painting, etc. is! Well, it's so easy that I hurried up and got everything ready so he could whip out his shirt quickly before Daddy left for work (he had to work on the 4th), so that Ryan could do both.

This is Ryan's shirt.
Abby had a bit of trouble as she tends to press too hard, but her shirt turned out cute too. Though you can't see it in the picture, the fabric paint is sparkly, and Abigail loves sparkly! I neglected to get a picture of them in their shirts, but they looked really cute all matched up. In fact, Daddy and I also wore red shirts, so we were one big dorky matching family!

Valentine Cutting

We made some Valentines yesterday, and though Abby had a great time, she mostly cut red, pink, and white paper into tiny bits. She did glue some hearts on and drew some pictures on her Valentines too!

For the Birds

Abby loves the birds who visit our yard each day. We all especially like these small black chickadees who stay all year long. Since there's not much for them to eat during the winter and we don't have a bird feeder yet, the kids and I made some pinecone feeders for the birds. We smeared peanut butter on the pinecones then rolled them in birdseed. Easy, fun, and they look pretty hanging by green and red ribbons from our fir tree outside!

Christmas Craft

Both Ryan and Abby love to do crafts, and this time of year there are so many cute and fun things to do. I found this very simple idea online today, and we made several of these Christmas trees to hang around the house. I was surprised at how improved Abby's scissor skills have gotten. A few months ago I started giving them catalogs or magazines to cut up that I was going to throw into the recycle bin anyway. They cut out pictures they like and just generally make a huge mess. But I guess it's been really helping because Abigail did much of the cutting on this herself!