Busy Hands: Ice Play

It's been hot.

Reeeally hot man.

The kids have been cranky.

Reeeally super-@*&! cranky.

What's a mother to do?...


PLAY WITH ICE!

What you need:
 - ice
 - a good blender or some other gadget that will shave your ice to snow consistency
 - food coloring

What you do:

Shave ice. Dump in bucket. Add food coloring. Let play. Sit back and enjoy...

This activity started at the table in a big plastic container, it then evolved into a build-your-own-snowball-then-eat-it-or-throw-it-around event.
Whatevs... they were happy, entertained and cooling off.
Success!

A simple sensory play idea that they thought was the bee's knees... lol!

I know the boy looks sad, but that's only because I wouldn't let him dump the entire thing in the pool... wah wah...

Happy Creating!

:)

P.S: don't forget to save some of that ice for a margarita :)

Please leave me a comment, I would love your feedback. Thanks!

Home, Sweet (organized chaos), Home... the (not) TV unit

Last year when we decided I would leave work and stay home to care for my mom and kids, one thing became immediately apparent...

Order was needed.

Some kind of system to find stuff and put stuff where stuff belonged after stuff was being looked for and stuff was not found. Another thing also became achingly apparent... we had a lot of... shi.. I mean, stuff!

There were homework supplies on the kitchen table. Fast food (yeah, yeah, we go there!) toys in the sofa and randomly surprising us throughout the house. Paper and crayons were wherever we last used them. Play dough in a grocery bag in the kitchen. And my checkbook and papers wherever there was a spare corner.

I would have taken a before photo, but 1) we have been using this for a while now, so that would have been forever ago and 2)I would have had to take a photo of every corner of the house, between pillows, under chairs and places where spiders want to be left alone.

So, here then, is one of the many areas I simplified and organized to help not only hide the mess but also try to make sense of it and bring things together that were often used in a common, neat area.

What you see here is an old TV stand. It was brown and sticky colored... yep... sticky colored! It had two rickety glass doors on it that were barely hanging on their hinges and also a couple of screws loose.

Don't we all!? ... I don't judge here... :)

Anyway, we used it at first for the TV sure, cause that is what we bought it for. Later it held my son's toys in his room and when he outgrew the little toys we used it as a side table in the living room to hold board games. Until our daughter was born and decided it would be a whole lotta fun to dump all the pieces of all the board games on the floor. At the same time.

Fast forward to some sanding down and a lousy paint job on mama's part and I re-purposed this old thing into something (still not quiet attractive) kinda useful!

Each shelf holds three Ikea baskets. The top one has one for me and one each for the kids (dad has his own area for his stuff... also, dad doesn't need something the size of a basket to hide his mess). No need for an insider view here. There are checkbooks, a calculator and a couple of binders in mine. My son has school folders, forms and toys he gets from parties, friends, etc. that don't really belong with anything else. He also keeps his empty wallet in here. No need to put it anywhere safe. It is, after all.. always empty. Maya's basket holds the same kind of crud, minus the school work.

I actually love their baskets, cause any time I find something lying around the house I don't even need to ask where it goes, I just pick it up and toss it in their basket. They know where to look if they can't find something. It's the single Hotwheel car on the floor, the pair of sunglasses, the one lost My Little Pony, the three Lego blocks or the homework from under the table. I don't really care... it all goes in the baskets.

Next shelf is...

scrap paper and coloring books with a box of crayons and a box of colored pencils.

All. The. Stickers. (and tattoos)

and the play dough.

Then on the bottom shelf...

all the other kinds of colors. No, not the paint... I'm not that stupid.

It's metallic markers, dry erase markers, high lighters, twisty crayons, regular markers, Wondercolor pens, erasable window markers, oil pastels and dot markers.

all the glue. all the scissors.

And lastly, it's the other random supplies. 

Colored tissue paper squares, for, you know... spreading around the room like confetti (according to Maya) and tape... glorious tape, which in this house is like crack for my kids... HOURS of entertainment with tape. Tape the fort together, tape sticks together, tape on our bodies, on the wall, let's put some under the table... you get my drift.

Up top...

My day planner, a kid-made can that I use for highlighters, pens and pencils, an empty decorative box 

(shh... it's actually where I put the slinky when I don't want the kids to ruin yet another one, or where I hide a toy they are fighting over and I don't want them to find... *insert evil mama laugh here*).

And my favorite sign in the entire house...

Yes, I cleaned up the table for the photo. It doesn't always look so... clean.

No, I cannot lend you my monkeys!

Happy Organizing!

:)

How do you keep it together?

(the house I mean... not you... we all know none of us are really keeping it together)

:)

Busy Hands: Rock Art

Soooo.... this was originally supposed to be Rock Monsters, which would involve the same process but with the added googly eyes at the end.

Mama was a little sad... I really wanted to see some cute rock monsters. Oh well, my little princess still included googly eyes in her play time... mostly scattered all over the living room floor... but I guess I cannot be picky! lol

This was a really fun outdoor activity (of course it is totally suitable for even a rainy day... but why mess the inside of the house when that's what the outside is for?!)


Rock Art!
(and yes, art does rock!)


What you need:
 - ROCKS! any size, any shape... although smoothly textured would be better
 - acrylic paints
 - paint brushes... or fingers!


What you do:

Prep table with paints and brushes and scream at kids not to touch so you can get one good photo before they dig in.

Let the three year old do her thang...

And the 10 year old his...

And even though you scream and lose your shit often... you still get one of these in the end!...

This is an embarrassingly easy craft, but the kids really got a kick out of painting on part of nature and of course the inevitable mess is always fun too! For them!

Happy Creating!

:)

Busy Hands: Sandpaper Art

Even though this needed some mama guidance, the kids really had fun with all the stages of this project.
Especially the 'reveal' at the end!

Sandpaper Art!

What you need:
 - medium grain sandpaper (too fine and you won't see the texture... too coarse and it will eat up your crayons)
 - pencil
 - wax crayons
 - scissors
 - paper
 - clean towels
 - iron
(Sorry, got way too excited about this project I guess to actually take a photo of all the supplies!)... lol


What you do:

First, we used the pencil to draw some shapes on to the sandpaper. I put a few basic shapes down for my toddler since most of her stuff is still linear and wouldn't work very well for cut outs. My 9 year old was left to his own devices on this step.

Next was too outline with a crayon (yeah... I did this for her too... whatcha gonna do about it?!)

Now it was all her coloring in the shapes. It really didn't matter if she went out of the lines since we would be cutting the shapes out anyway later.

Quick note: The shapes should be big and bold. Anything thin will be difficult to cut out and iron later. Same goes for shapes with cut outs on the inside. Not impossible, but a little more work.

This is where you will realize if your sandpaper is too think... the crayons will last about three strokes before they disintegrate into the paper.

My son's creation... when all else fails... print your name!

When everything is colored in it's time to cut the shapes out of the sandpaper. At this point the kids were at two different stages and the iron was already on, so I didn't have time for a quick pic of the cut outs.

I ironed on the kitchen counter for this craft. The ironing board is in the deep dark recesses of the garage and I refuse to get it out when my husband isn't home to kill critters that have made it their home. Yuck!
I laid a clean towel on the counter and a clean piece of paper on the towel. This paper is what the final design shows up on. Doesn't necessarily have to be white. My daughter opted for yellow paper and that worked out great too.

On that goes the sandpaper cutouts... upside down. When you iron it, the wax will melt and transfer onto the paper, so you want it facing the paper, not facing the top towel ;)

Now I covered with a double layer of a clean towel...

...and ironed. I used the highest setting and steamed it too once in a while.

We ironed each paper for about a minute or so. You can tell by a quick check if it is working and done...

Yay!

Some of the designs from my son's paper...
He ironed his own stuff! (Now I just need to train him to think that ironing shirts and pants is a craft too!)

Another note: If you are writing names, etc. you need to sketch it as a mirror image since you will be turning it around to iron it. When you turn it over it will come out the right way round. Learned this one through trial and error. Mostly error! 

Happy Creating!

:)

Busy Hands: Days Like These...

Sometimes, there are days like these...

When all they really want is to spray silly string and run around screaming.

And ya know what?...

Let 'em!

"Hey buddy... look here so I can take a quick pic of you", said mom, while holding the other can of silly string inconspicuously behind her back.

GOTCHA!... He got me back too!

Thankfully it came right off her hair. Whew!
They had so much fun until some old mama said 'clean up time!'... hahaha

Lots of squishy, stringy tactile fun :)

We used this product which we got at Walmart...

Happy Creating!

:)

Busy Hands: Homemade Lollipops

These were so quick to put together and make.
The kids loved that they had just made their own candy!

Homemade Lollipops!

What you need:
 - Jolly Ranchers hard candies, unwrapped
 - mason jar lids or cookie cutter shapes
 - lollipop sticks
 - cooking spray (for goodness sake, please don't use olive oil or some such flavor, your kids will never forgive you!)
 - parchment lined baking/cookie sheet

Yesterday the kids were out in the pool since it was almost 100 degrees out and that was the only sane place to be, so I brought the necessities out to them and let them build their own before taking it in to bake.
My son had a friend over, hence the 4th lid... and mommy wanted to try make one too! Duh!
I sprayed the baking sheet lightly with the cooking spray as well as the inside of the lids.
Do. This. Step!

This is what they looked like after baking in a 350F oven for less than 10 minutes. I kept my eye on them (and the kids in the pool!) the whole time. Even though the lids were flat on the baking sheet, these little suckers still 'bleed' all over the place if they feel like it, so don't get your heart too set on whatever shape you have used.

I immediately used one of the lollipop sticks to swirl the colors together. In all honesty, these could have used another minute or two in the oven. They were still a little thick as I was trying to swirl them around.

Oh, and they harden VERY quickly!

Next, it's time to remove the lids. You want to do this as soon as possible so that it doesn't harden with the candy. My tool of choice: nearby scissors. Yehhhhs... they were clean! This looked pretty cool too. Keep scrolling down to see the artwork that came from this step ;)

Then I swirled the lollipop sticks into one side of the candy. It was already hardening, but still warm enough to get the stick in.
SO COOL!
Yes, I'm shouting! I get super-excited when something actually works the way I wanted it to! heeeeeeheee

I let them cool in the fridge until after dinner and before basketball. Ha, you see what I did there?... sugar AFTER dinner but BEFORE burning it all off at practice. Anyway, they only managed to eat a quarter of it before it was stored in plastic bags for the next day.
Sneaky mama!

Now... check this out!....

These are scraps of hardened candy I had after cleaning up. 

'aint it pretty?!

And this is what I was referring to earlier... the lid of pulled candy.
I want to live in here!

His lollipop...

'Mommy, mommy... take a photo of mine too please!'

Happy Creating!

:)

Thanks to http://www.playathomemomllc.com for the great idea!

Busy Hands: Salt Art

Hello mess.

How are you?

I haven't missed you. At all. But my kids have... so, let's...

Salt Art!

Every Tuesday and Thursday I try to carve out an hour or so for the kids to get crafty, use their imagination and their hands to create something. Here is what we did on Tuesday...

(this is by no means my own invention but as hard as I looked to find the origin of this idea when I searched for it I couldn't find it. Sorry)

What you need:

 - paper

 - liquid glue

 - pencil (optional)

 - salt

 - watercolors and paintbrushes

What you do:

My son decided to plan ahead a little and used a pencil to draw a design/picture onto the paper. My daughter went with a more laid back resolve and just let the glue fall where is may :)

I opted to put the paper in an old baking sheet because I also opted to not have to sweep up salt off the floor later.

Pour it on. Don't be stingy with it!

Gently pick up the paper and let the salt fall to the pan, or whatever you use.

You'll be left with fuzzy, fat white shapes that you will be so tempted to stick your finger in to. Don't touch! Especially you, princess. As you will soon find out, with tears in your eyes that 'it tastes yucky mama...'   :(

Sorry, bunny!

Now comes the really fun part... painting!

Using a VERY water and paint saturated paintbrush, gently tap the salt. The color will immediately begin to spread. Along with the ooh's and aah's. Now, this wont work if you don't have enough paint and color on the paintbrush. You should literally be able to barely tap down on the fuzzy line and the salt will just grab the color and soak it right in. 

She had a bit of a hard time not applying too much pressure but the effect of the paint spreading fascinated her :) lol

Finished product. He used a bit too much water, but I always look at how much fun was had. Not how well the rules were followed. Especially when it comes to being creative!

It looked even cooler the next day!

Happy Creating!

:)