as seen on tv

Still catching up on our Easter activities. :) Have you seen the Rice Krispies commercial where the mom and kids are oh so happily making rice krispy treats for easter? Well, it was one of those "Duh! Why didn't I think of that?!" ideas and we decided to try it the Friday before Easter.

Step 1: Make the general recipe for rice krispy treats. Growing up, my mom always just went ahead and doubled the recipe because, well, YUM! :)

Step 2: Spray the inside of some plastic Easter eggs and squish a spoonful of krispies into the top and bottom of the egg, making a dent in the center of each with your thumb.

This is a great texture lesson - the smoothness of the cool, greased, plastic eggs contrasting with the rough stickiness of the warm rice krispy treats. :)

Step 3: Count out/choose your color of m&ms (or whatever candy you want).

MH took this part very seriously. :)

Step 4: Place your m&ms inside the bottom part of an egg.

Step 5: Gently squish the top part of the egg so that it sticks to the bottom part.

Step 6: Shake the egg to see if you can hear the m&ms rattling inside...just like on tv! :)

Shannon and Jonathan also made these the same day, only theirs didn't rattle when they shook them. I'm not sure what the difference was...we seemed to make them the exact same way! Oh well. :)

Step 7: You know you have to eat one right away! :)

I saw on another blog where they added dye to the marshmallows as they were melting to sort of make the eggs different colors...but that sounded like too much work and too many pots to wash since you would have to do a separate pot of marshmallows for each color... but as they were, these were easy and simple to make, and so fun!

a valentine craft and one extra pic

I love Valentine crafts...and Valentine decorations...and all the fun Valentine stuff in the stores. Mostly cuz it's all red. And pink. ("it's pink!!" heehee...that was for you m.) :} We did a few crafts this year for Valentine's Day and making our own conversation hearts was my favorite. I found it here.

This was so simple and easy to make! All you need is powdered sugar, water, powdered sugar, corn syrup, gelatin, and um...oh...powdered sugar! :} You slowly add 2 lbs of powdered sugar to the liquid part one cup at a time until it becomes stiff like in the picture above.

The next step is plopping it on a **very generously dusted (with more p.s.)*** surface to knead it until it is smooth and not sticky. Did I mention you'll need more p.s. for this part?? lol

This part took the longest - trying to get it not sticky - but was totally fun. This was also the only part my kids did not do themselves. So, to keep them for getting bored just watching me, we pulled out some sticker sheets I'd been saving and they created a pirate scene...which had absolutely nothing to do with V Day. :)

Oh, and before you start kneading, you can let your child have a taste. It doesn't really taste like a candy heart yet - just a lot of sugar - so you may get this face in return...

Ha! :)

Then we mixed in color and flavoring (we chose banana, peppermint, and almond...but there are many more you could do). Next we rolled each color out and cut out our hearts. The smallest size heart cutter I had was about 1 to 1 1/2 in, which was a great size since it was a little easier for the kids to write on them at that size than if they had been as tiny as the "real" ones.

Last, they have to dry for at least 24 hours. The next morning I looked at them and flipped them all over since I could see darker spots on the bottoms where they were obviously not dry yet...and we had a busy day that day so we actually didn't do them until two days after we made them. We used food markers to decorate them.

I asked Mr. Happy what he wanted to write on his green ones and he said, "Um...how 'bout...'God loves you soooo much...cuz he made everything...aaand...etc....etc.(I don't remember everything he said but it was quite the paragraph!)..etc......from Mr. Happy!"

I told him that was an awful lot to put on such a small little heart! and could we just put "God loves you." and he said ok. So we did. :)

We put these in little jars with ribbons around them and gave them to our friends and the kids parents and grandparents...and I totally forgot to take a picture of the jar. I'll try to do that tomorrow and add it later. :)

We had such a fun day today filled with all kinds of friends. And oh my goodness! I LOVE getting to have grownups around for a little bit!! Makes me feel refreshed. Although part of that today was the fact that we were outside almost the entire day - looved the warm weather!! Anyways, still editing those pics and will put them up soon. I'll leave you with just one from today.

If you look closely, he's kissing her nose. :}

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

mother's day crafts

Yes, this post is a little late...I'm having trouble finding time to post more often! Anyways here are the crafts we made for Mother's Day...

Painting! Out on the back porch was a perfect spot.

Decorating our flower pot.

LM Sunshine took this picture and the last one for me. I told her to be sure she could see her sister in it. She promised she could. Hmm...guess I forgot to specify her face! Lol!

The girls drew and cut out their own flowers, glued a cotton ball in the middle and we used pipe cleaners for stems. I made the boxes and they decorated them.

This is what Mr. Happy was painting in the first picture - little locket necklaces! They're made out of empty match boxes. I think they turned out so cute! They each picked their color paint...and paper...and decoration for the front. LM Giggles put her buttons so they looked like Mini Mouse...LM Sunshine wanted flowers on hers...and Mr. Happy dug through my button box for a l.o.n.g. time and found all the super cool buttons...then placed them all on the table and studied them to find just the perfect one that he thought mommy would like...it finally came down to three choices: an American flag, a teddy bear, and the one he ended up choosing - the heart. Y

april fools!

My kids think April Fools day is great! Last year I did a lot more than this year. This year I had a random cold and had zero energy. But we did do a couple things.

This was the note I found on the kitchen table when I came down in the morning. It was the first april fools that my middle child came up with all by herself.

Very clever. :) Except that it sounded like a heard of elephants was running around upstairs above my head.... ;)

This is what I let my kids have after lunch...

I found this idea here...one of my favorite go-to sites for fun and easy crafts and ideas. My kids thought this was hilarious. It's really just a wrapper you print out and put around a box of Reece's Pieces. :} They couldn't wait to show mommy and daddy when they got home.

This next one was one I had seen on the above site but wasn't planning on doing...until I realized we had just a bit of chocolate left over from making our Oreo balls.

Spilled chocolate in the kitchen...oh no! Oh wait...! :)

April Fools!

a tutu named calla

I have had a busy week! It was so good to have Emily and Lauren with me for most of the week. But I finally have a minute to catch up on a couple things. First, we did several fun Valentine crafts this week. I shared one earlier. Here is another one we did. They were supposed to look like this. They ended up more like this:

Ha! Ok, so not quite perfect...but everyone had a blast doing it...so that's all that matters, right?

So, I keep finding new blogs that I love to read. I need to update my blog list over to the right there! I want to share about two of them. The first one is here:

I found this sweet family through her blog. These two ladies go to the same church out in Kansas. Jess, from The Macs, and her husband Joel, had an adorable little girl named Cora (isn't that a pretty name??). Last January, when Cora was 11 months old, she was diagnosed with cancer and went home to be with Jesus 17 short days later. This past year has been obviously so so hard for Jess and Joel. But they have allowed this terrible situation to draw them closer to each other - and closer to Him. Jess is so brave to keep up her blog and share both the good days and the bad days. Just in the past month, Jess and Joel welcomed a new baby boy named Levi. His name means "joined" and is a reminder that they will be joined again with Cora in heaven one day. To read more of Cora's story, click here:

Even in the midst of mixed emotions - loving every second of baby Levi while still missing sweet Cora every day - Jess is reaching out to help another friend and sister in Christ.

This is Calla and her mommy Julie

Calla was born at 26 weeks and is busy growing in the NICU right now. I know at least one of my readers knows what this is like. :) Calla also has a daddy - and a big brother named Ori (all these cute names!!) :) Having a baby in the NICU is tiring in a lot of ways. It puts a strain on everything - work, home, siblings, gas money, etc. So Jess from the Macs blog had the idea to do a raffle every week until Calla comes home. All the money raised from the raffles will go directly to Calla's family to help with all the extra expenses. And all the items in the raffles are so beautiful! To find out more about how it works, click here: (wow, I'm just full of things to click on today!) :)

Jess asked her blog readers and etsy friends to send anything they could to add to the raffles. It was such a simple thing to do to help someone out. I created a new tutu just for the raffle (it will be in the weekly raffle sometime between now and when Calla goes home.) and have added it to my etsy shop (link on the right side of this blog...). I am calling it the Calla Tutu. Wanna see it?

I just love these colors together. So fun and happy. And even brighter and happier in person. :)

From now until Calla goes home (hopefully sometime in March), I will be sending a portion of the money from each Calla Tutu sold to help out her family.

So click on the links to read about two great families and pray that Calla will grow strong and be home with her family soon - and that Jess and Joel's hearts will continue to heal as they trust in God's perfect plan for their family.

love birds

well, i have a couple posts i want to write, but just have not had the time in the past week to get to them! hopefully i will soon. in the meantime, here is a cute and simple valentine craft we did today. check it out on the crafty crow....here. (the black one on the far right is the one my toddler cut out himself. :) )

more soon, i hope.

christmas crafts

Last week we took a break from "regular" school work and I planned a couple very simple crafts for each day (Monday - Wednesday). It was so much fun and so relaxing. We turned on Christmas music and crafted away! I tried very hard to give minimal directions and not stress about each item being "perfect".

Here is a run down of each craft and where I got the idea (I can DO crafts...if I can borrow someone else's idea at least as a spring board.....) :)

1. Snowball Wreath found here.

I modified it and used a foam wreath (found at any craft store), double sided tape (makes it extra toddler-friendly!), several sizes of cotton balls (at the Dollar Tree...cheaper than pompoms!), and red bows (stuck on with double sided tape...and also from the DT!) I covered the wreath in strips of the double sided tape the night before. Then the next morning, all the kids had to do was stick the cotton balls on and add the ribbon! All three loved this...and I made an "example" one...and loved it too! :)

2. Snowflake button ornaments found here.

So simple...and so cute! Popsicle sticks (I think I got these at DT too but I already had them on hand so I don't quite remember.), buttons (a big tub of them from a craft store), craft glue (elmer's would work, but would take a lot longer to dry), and thread. The only trick on these is to be sure that you put one button on the end high up enough so that you can put the thread through to be hung when it's dry (see the close-up pic).

3. Snowmen

Ok, this was a spur of the moment craft. We had a bunch of cotton balls left over so I slapped down a strip of double sided tape (love that stuff! lol), they added a few cotton balls and voila! snowmen! Oh yeah, we added some googly eyes too. (Also had those on hand...but pretty sure I've seen them at DT too.)

4. Felt Birds also found here.

The hardest part about these was tracing and cutting them out the night before. And it wasn't that hard. :) I cut the birds and the wings and let the kids choose how to combine them. Then they chose sequins for each bird and we glued them on (definitely need craft glue here...I even splurged for felt glue...tried both kinds of glue...and the felt glue definitely worked much better...gee, who would have thought??) :} Then I put a strip of glue on a wooden clothespin (Pack of like 20 from...you guessed it! Dollar Tree!! Love that store...) and they stuck the bird onto it. They can easily be clipped to a Christmas tree...but since ours is kind of full...Mommy had the great idea to clip them to the top and bottom of the lamp that sits on our school table - and I think it looks pretty cute! :) Oh yeah, we also added googly eyes to these. The ones the girls made have eyes with eyelashes on them (I think I found these at Hobby Lobby for 50% off a while back...). My baby informed me that his were boy birds and did not need eyelashes. :)

5. Snowflake Quesadillas found here.

THIS was one of those "Oh for pete's sake - why didn't I think of that?!" ideas! The girls remembered making paper snowflakes last year and thought it was rather funny to be making them from FOOD! :) I helped fold them into the right shape - and helped my baby do the cutting. (Ahem. Once again... DT to the rescue! They have the best little-kid scissors I have found yet! I can't explain them...I will have to just take a picture and post it.) The only reason I helped him was that the tortilla was kind of thick once it was folded. Martha Stewart used flour and spinach tortillas so the contrast is better...I just used flour tortillas...and the cheese helps the pattern to be visible. I added refried beans and sour cream (tinted pink...we like to color our food crazy colors sometimes! and why not? It makes it extra fun - and when you have plain white sour cream staring at you...it's just begging to be turned a crazy color! :)

5. Birthday cake for Jesus

I found this (obvious) idea last year, but too late to do it, so I have saved it all year. Now I don't remember where I saw the idea. Anyways, I'm sure lots of people do this. I simply bought a small cake from the grocery store and a tiny tube of red icing for the words and one little pack of those sugar decorations. We already had M&Ms at the house. I was going to let the kids write the words, but that icing is just so hard to write with, even in the little tube! so I held their hand and we did it together. Then they stuck on the decorations and we added candles. After lunch, we lit the candles and they sang Happy Birthday and blew them out. They loved it and I was happy to focus on the reason we celebrate CHRISTmas.

6. This is not a craft, but was the final thing on our to-do list last week. We had a popcorn party! Every day in school, they get a chance to earn a bead to put in our "popcorn party jar". It might be for using their manners without being reminded, being especially kind or helpful to a sibling, sitting quietly during Bible, accomplishing something difficult - willingly and with a joyful heart, etc. I don't always give beads for the same thing or every time. Just when I can see their hearts being genuine. We are often quick to correct and discipline, but I want my kids to know that I see when they are doing their best too. I told them that when they earned 100 beads together, we would have a popcorn party - with a movie and everything (a rare occurrence when Kiki is around). The week before they reached our goal and I promised that we would have our party just before Christmas. I even splurged on the newest Veggie tales for the occasion. (It is the story of St. Nicholas.) They happily settled on the couch with their popcorn bowls while I made lunch (one bag of popcorn split three ways still leaves you hungry for real food...) and my heart melted when I looked over and saw my baby with his hand resting on his sister's head! So sweet! :)

So that was our Christmas Craft Week! We didn't even get to do all the crafts I had planned! I was going to try to do some this week too, but I think I will save them for later. One will come in especially handy in the middle of February when we are sick of winter and wondering if the warm spring weather will ever come! :}

More Christmas recaps to follow...

thanksgiving

Last week was busy with several Thanksgiving activities.

We made turkey cards for the parents and grandparents...and somehow I never got a picture of the finished product. My baby takes his crafts very seriously...most of the time anyways. :)

Then we made a Thanksgiving tree, which was an idea I got from another friend's blog. My kids named all the things they are thankful for and wrote them on leaves and we made a tree trunk out of brown paper and stuck the leaves on the top like a tree.

It was fun to hear the things they came up with to be thankful for. Of course there was the typical "mommy and daddy", "kiki", "my brother", etc. But then my oldest wrote, on the yellow leaf on the bottom left, "lemins" (lemons). ! Not quite sure where that came from, but sure, ok! :) Can you see which one was my favorite? I don't know why, but I just got so tickled when my baby listed some of the "usual" things...followed by the one on the red leaf on the right..."my socks." :) I'm glad he is thankful for his socks! Some kids don't have any....

Thanksgiving at my parents house was quiet this year and I totally forgot to take my camera. However, the day after Thanksgiving was my dad's 60th birthday and Mom planned a surprise party for him. I got to decorate, which is my job of choice on any party! :) I went to Party City in search of ideas and decided that I just did not like all the sad, black, "over the hill", old person with a walking cane, sad to be 60 theme! This was supposed to be a celebration! Then, as I wandered around a different part of the store, I saw the 50's theme which had a lot of old records and classic cars...and even a necklace that said "clearly a classic"! So I went with a "classic" theme...which seemed much more positive and happy!

I have decided that streamers are one of the cheapest and easiest ways to decorate a room for a party.

We had our friends, the Bunn's over for dinner. We used to go to Pastor Chris's church when I was in middleschool/highschool and that is where I met my best friend, Shannon. :) We are still good friends with the Bunns but so rarely get to visit with just them, so it was a lot of fun getting them to ourselves for dinner.

After dinner we were supposed to have about 30 minutes to clean up and get ready for the rest of the surprise group to come...however, just then there was a knock at the door and one couple was standing there when Dad answered, saying, "Happy Birthday, John!!" Haha! They were half an hour early!! It sort of ruined the surprise, however dad didn't know exactly who else was coming (and neither did I, it turned out!)

While the men visited, Mom, Robin, and I cleared and reset the table with party food. (Not that we were that hungry after a delicious steak dinner!) :)

The three little cars in the middle of the table were my favorite decorations. I needed something for the middle of the table and was wishing I had some old toy classic cars when I remembered that Steak & Shake serves their kids' meals in little paper cars! I simply went by S&S and asked if I could have a few (gotta love free decorations!). They were the perfect thing for holding munchy foods like M&Ms.

There were quite a few friends who came to surprise Dad - several couples from their Sunday school class, some neighbors down the street, friends from here who Mom knew in college, and friends from OR who I literally hadn't seen in at least ten years!!

It was so much fun getting to catch up with everyone as we watched Dad open his presents.

My brother and I gave him a gift card to one of his favorite stores...Home Depot. Of course. However, a gift card is so small and I did not want to just put it in a card. So I found ten gift bags. Heehee! See the big red one in the bottom left corner? That's what we handed him. In this picture above, he is about half way through the bags, trying to see if there is any gift in them at all!

There was! And it was in this little tiny bag! :)

Mom made TWO cakes for the occasion - Dad's favorite, carrot cake, and also a Most Delicious red velvet cake - YUUUM!!! (Leah, Mom later wished that we had asked you to make one of the cakes for us! :) Oh well...maybe another time!)

I couldn't resist these fun candles - the super tall "60" ones and the shorter colorful ones that sparked like a sparkler as they burned! :)

Dad saw the two layers of candles and came out prepared...can you see the fire extinguisher in the corner?? :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!! :)