This years new handmade ornaments...

...for our tree. Every year the boys and I make a few new ornaments for the tree as well as buy them each a new one to represent their interest that year. Toy Story won hands down this year-surprise, surprise!

These rage ball ornaments are so adorable and so easy to make! I love making rag-a-muffin wreaths and these were inspired by that as well as Under The Table & Dreaming 4 days of handmade ornaments posts-there is an icon on my side bar to take you to all those goodies!

When we saw this years flyer from Bass Pro Shops Santa's Wonderland these little cuties were pictured on the front-we had to make our own set!
These jingle bell wreath ornaments were again inspired by Under The Table and Dreaming-check out the blog-I swear you'll got lost on there for hours!

The ever popular Popsicle stick snowflake-you can't go wrong with this timeless holiday craft staple!

Thankful is a state of mind...

It has been fluville here at our house this week so while I am not thankful for cleaning out "puke bowls", wiping little bums or the avalanche of soiled laundry I am thankful that I am crafty enough to keep us sane!

Give Thanks wooden blocks for the fire place mantel

THANKFUL banner for the kitchen I used Monika of i love it all free printable that can be found in this post thankful :: ideas, projects and free downloads and punched the letters out with a circle punch instead of making a pennant banner
A close up

Gobble Gobble Gobble

Our turkey's...

A close up of the twinkies pine cone & pipe cleaner creations

A close up of Mommy's block and mini painter sticks creation

We've been working on Christmas ornaments for another post too!

My Own Monster(s) monster's...

In my previous post My Own Monster(s) I raved about sei lifestyle My Own Monster iron-on kits. After the boys made their t-shirts they painted up a couple blocks of wood to make their own little monster mini-me's with some of their left overs:

Glitter Spider Webs-PBS KIDS

Last week between shows PBS KIDS aired an old cooked spaghetti, glue & glitter spider web craft. We made a few substitutions and made our own glittery spider webs complete with pipe cleaner spiders!
We laid out yarn (in place of spaghetti) in the shapes of spider webs...

Liberally coated them with glue...

Connor dumped nearly an entire canister of glitter on his...

Braden had to add blue sparkles to his web...

Connor's finished product...

Braden's finished product...

My Own Monster(s)

I fell in LOVE with these simple (PEEL PLACE PRESS-how can it be any easier?) iron-on monsters when I came across them on the sei lifestyle blog in this post My Own Monster
We immediately ordered up a "Cool Curt" and "Blobby Bobby" kit for the boys...
Here are their super cute creations!

The twins want to paint up a couple blocks of wood today and use up some of the extra pieces to make their own monster Halloween decoration look-a-likes!

Pasta stamped fireworks tee's

This morning the boys made these super cute pasta stamped 4th of July fireworks t-shirts. Last night I glued the pasta to the cardboard pieces (I only burnt one thumb) elbow macaroni is tiny to hold & put HOT glue on!
We painted fabric paint onto the "stamps" and the boys stamped away on grey t-shirts. The key is to not push the stamps down very hard-use only gentle even pressure. They eventually got the hang of it!

Thanks for the idea Tara! : )

4th of July sun catcher-toddler style...

The twinkies made these cute 4th of July sun catchers that are now hanging in our window:
Using double sided tape I stuck down squares of contact paper (sticky side up!) on the table and they made a pile of items they wanted to stick into their catcher: red & blue torn tissue paper, red, blue & silver sequins, glitter and punched out white stars.

Little hands expertly placing each item just so...

The final result after sticking another sheet of contact paper on top of the first. We cut out star shapes, punched a hole and hung them!

More Easter crafting...

The boys love making collages. They love getting to tear up all the pretty scrapbooking paper scraps I leave in a stash for them and pasting (and pasting and pasting) them onto a sheet of paper. This time we cut out an egg shape from their collage and Connor yellow "washed" his and Braden "blue" washed his.
We also made little baby chicks. The first grade class at their school just had some hatch and the boys got a kick out of seeing them. They painted one large and one small paper plate yellow.

I didn't get pics but you simply cut a third paper plate in half (with jagged cuts) to resemble a broken or hatched egg and glue that on the bottom of your large paper plate. We cut the small one in half and added both pieces to the sides for wings.

They then glued on wiggly eyes, an orange pom pom for a nose and some feather hair. Braden's chick amazingly has blue hair!

Hippity, hoppity Easter is on it's way...

Tissue paper egg and salt dough egg magnets...

The boys made these cute tissue paper Easter eggs last Easter. All we did was cut out an egg shape, rip up and crinkle several pastel shades of tissue paper that I had on hand and glued them onto the egg card stock. We punched a hole at the top and tied a ribbon through and tah-dah...
Remember our salt dough dino fossils from January? Remember that we still had half a batch in the refrigerator? We cut out some thin Easter egg shapes using an egg shaped cookie cutter to make some cute festive magnets.
*Recipe:
4 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
1 1/2 cups of water
extra flour for kneading
After cutting out and etching some designs onto our eggs we baked them in the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes.
All set up to paint-don't you just love those tootsie roll containers-we're scrapping the boys each their own today to hold all their brushes in!

Braden working on his egg-sterpeice...

Connor deep in concentration

The finished project looks so much cuter in person-we put a coat of sparkle glaze on top and boy do they shimmer!

More St. Patty Day Crafting...

The boys made this cute St. Patty's Day macaroni necklace while Mommy made ANOTHER wreath. You can never have too many can you?

A ball of yarn, barrel pasta, green food coloring and a few foam shamrocks is all you need
Add 6 drops of food coloring and one teaspoon of water to a plastic bag and toss in a handful of pasta and let them shake till their little hearts are content

Leave all the dyed pasta spread out to dry on sheets of wax paper-it does not take long-15 minutes to half an hour

Stringing their necklaces

Displaying their creations

I bought another grapevine wreath, spent $3 total on the marked down flower's at AC Moore & spent $2 on a bow ($3.99-and I used a 50% off coupon) at Michaels and tah-dah...

another St. Patty wreath...

Yet another set of St. Patty kid crafts...

I'm so glad that the twinkies are crafty or at least like to craft almost as much as Mommy! In my opinion you can never have too many cute little holiday projects going on. Here is another St. Patrick Day craft the kiddos made.
I came across this idea in my online travels last week-I thought that I had saved it in my favorites but can't seem to find the link to give the creator credit with our wet coffee filter creation.

All you need are some blue & yellow markers & some coffee filters (you need four filters per shamrock)...

Let the kiddos go wild scribbling all over them...
Then the magic happens when you spritz them with water: blue & yellow run together to make GREEN! We let them air dry over night...

Then you simply fold them in half and then half again into a shape like a slice of pie-put the slices together & you have a shamrock! We cut into the ends (making them almost heart shaped) added a button to the center and a stem before attaching them to a piece of yellow card stock...viola!

Remember these little clovers they made in the last post-well I thought they were so cute and needed to be displayed more permanently so they could be used year after year so...

We stained two pieces of wood-I let them "distress" them a bit with green & gold and then modge podged the clovers on top!