Styrofoam Sculpture

The idea to do a styrofoam sculpture came from Young at Art by Susan Striker. I was so glad that we finally received biodegradable styrofoam with a recently shipped purchase. We glued a few pieces of styrofoam to the cardboard, and then we just wet the styrofoam so it would stick to the other pieces to form the sculpture. This was a fun family art activity that we all enjoyed working on together.

Painting with Water

O and I painted with water after lunch today. I know that this is a no-no according to Susan Striker, but I've always loved painting with water. I like for most of our art activities to be open ended and creative, but I think a little paint with water and coloring book exposure is ok, too.

Barrel Painting

After seeing this activity on A Bit of This and That and What do we do all day?, I decided to give it a try. It's easy and fun.

 
I found a barrel and put a piece of paper in it. O dropped a penny, a marble, and a pom pom in the barrel. She then squeezed blue paint into the barrel. She shook the barrel, and then we rolled it on the counters. It fell on the floor, so we kicked it for a while. Here's one of her masterpieces.

    

Cotton Ball Collage

The idea for this activity came from Young at Art by Susan Striker. I gave the girls a bowl of cotton balls (I cut the cotton from medicine bottles to make the cotton balls since Guh-guh didn't have any) and a bowl of diluted glue. They dipped the cotton into the glue and made cloud collages on their construction paper.

This was a quick and fun art activity. We talked about the contrasting colors of black and white. Although O has known her colors for quite a while, she still sometimes confuses black and white, which I think is somewhat strange :) We also talked about the different textures of the cotton verses the paper. I'm looking forward to doing a texture collage with O soon!

Valentine's Day Cards

 

This post is a little late, but better late than never! I wasn't planning on posting it, but I'll want to remember what we did one day, and I like to be able to easily look back at the blog to jog my memory :) I painted O's hands, and we made heart shapes using her handprints for cards for her grandparents. We love to make things with O's handprints, and this was easy to do. The idea came from a book of my sister's, and I also saw it on The Crafty Crow. The sad part is that we never actually finished delivering the cards to her grandparents. I hope they won't mind receiving VERY late Valentine's!

Number Shirts

I intended to make O a #2 shirt when she turned 2 in July, but I didn't get around to making it until last week :( Since I was making the 2 shirt, I decided to go ahead and make her #3 shirt. So I'm 6 months behind on one, and 6 months ahead on the other :) I used freezer paper to stencil the shirts. Check out Laura's freezer paper stenciling tutorial to find out how to do this. It's super easy and fun! O was thrilled with her shirt, and she wore it for 3 days before I convinced her to wear something different. I've hidden the #3 shirt in the birthday bin (a storage bin with birthday hats, banner, plates, crown, etc), so I won't forget to give it to her in July :)

Hard at Work!

O has been hard at work making handmade Christmas gifts. A couple of lucky folks wil get origial artwork by O painted on a canvas :)

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Felt Gingerbread Cookie Making Kit

For O's 12th advent activity, we had a treasure hunt to find a special handmade gift :) The 1st note sent her to the ottoman where she found another note (Elliott read the notes to her). That note sent her to the sliding glass door by the stairs. She pulled the curtain back to find the note on the door. Then she headed to her seat at the table. There was a note stuck to the bottom of her seat which directed her to the pots and pans cabinet. When she opened the cabinet door, she found her special prize! O didn't really understand the treasure hunt at 1st, but once she understood what we were doing she LOVED it. I plan on having a couple of more treasure hunts for her to find handmade gifts for advent.

O's special prize is a felt gingerbread cookie making kit! I've seen sugar cookie kits similar to this on etsy and at various online shops, and I couldn't wait to make one for O. It was easy to make, but it did take a while. I did all of the sewing by hand, which I really enjoyed (I'm still a little intimidated by the sewing machine!).

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Here are the freshly baked and decorated gingerbread girl and boy. I'd planned to embroider the details, but then I realized that it would be MUCH easier, faster, and would look more like icing if I painted the details with puff, fabric paint! O immediately took these cookies to her play kitchen :)

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Guh-guh quickly made a coordinate gingerbread man drawstring bag for storing the gingerbread making kit before she left our house this morning. Thanks, Guh-guh!

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O's Stocking is FINALLY Finished!

I embroidered O's stocking using a free pattern from Wee Wonderfuls (love that site!) months ago. Then I put it aside until just a few weeks ago. Thank goodness for Guh-guh! I told her how I wanted the stocking made, and she made it! I embroidered O's name at the top of the stocking, and Guh-guh did the rest :) Thanks, Guh-guh!


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Our stockings don't match, but they all have one thing in common...they were handmade with love by our mamas and grandmamas! This is my stocking. We had several different stockings as we were growing up, but this one was always my favorite :)

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This is Elliott's stocking (obviously!). His mom made it for him. His is MUCH smaller than mine and O's, so Santa can focus on ours :) Opening my stocking was always my favorite part of Christmas morning :)

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Christmas Crafts with Guh-guh

Guh-guh and O had fun making Christmas crafts for O's 11th day advent activities. They had a busy day!
They started their day of crafts by pushing whole cloves into an orange. This is one of the crafts that we did every year when we were kids, and we always loved it :)

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Mmmmmm. It smells good!

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After O's nap, they colored a picture and decorated a t-shirt by making a Christmas tree using O's handprint. O LOVES to make things using her handprints, and we've done A LOT of that lately while making handmade gifts (more on that later).

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What a fun way to jazz up an old t-shirt! O is VERY proud of her shirt :)

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Thanks, Guh-guh, for crafting with my girl and for taking pictures!!!