Rhythmn Sticks

Since I have lots of dowels left over from the dowel match activity, I decided to make O a pair of rhythmn sticks. These are 10 inches long. Another fast and easy project is done! Hooray!

We Love Playsilks!

Since O hasn't been playing with her playsilks much lately, I decided that they needed to be more accessible. I *think* that the idea for this display comes from The Rowdy Pea, but I can't remember for certain. I used a leftover floorboard and hot glued clothes pins to it. Super simple and fast! O was thrilled, and she has been playing with her playsilks nonstop. She loves to wear them as skirts and hats :)

Homemade Puzzles

This idea came from One Little, Two Little , and I've been planning on making these puzzles for a while. I saved a Cheerios box and Goldfish box, and I finally found the time to cut them into puzzles. I'm not holding out too much hope that O is going to love (but I hope she'll at least like them) these puzzles because she really shows very little interest in puzzles (except for the Montessori puzzles that are quite difficult and somewhat frustrating for her!).

A Painting for Grandpa

Since we are into homemade gifts, I decided that O would paint her Granpa a painting on canvas for his birthday. She was thrilled! She chose blue and yellow for her colors, but then asked for green. She looked skeptical when I told her that she could mix blue and yellow to make green. She was very happy when she saw the green appear on her canvas!
She loves making handprints!
Ta-da!
She added a little red after the blue, yellow, and green paint dried to spice things up a little.
Here's her masterpiece :)

A Shell Memory Game

Can you tell that I love making/playing memory games? The idea for this game came from The Write Start. When I saw her post, I knew we would definitely make this game. Its so pretty and fun! If you haven't checked out The Write Start yet, you need to!

First we washed and dried the shells. Then we put the stickers on the shells. I looked several places before finally finding the same exact stickers that were used on the inspiration post (at Target). I was pretty excited especially since all of the other sea life stickers that I'd found were flashy and tacky :) O helped stick a few of the stickers on the shells, but she was a little rough and I was afraid she would tear them.
Since she's not quite ready for a full-fledged memory game, we did a matching game instead. I put a set of shells in each basket, and she chose one from the 1st basket and then found its match in the 2nd basket. She REALLY enjoyed this!Here she is with all of her matches!

My Little Babywearer

O is practicing attachment parenting at a young age :) My mom shortened her sling, so it is easier for her to carry her babies in it. She loves wearing them in the "sing, ike O!" What a good little mama she is! She also nurses her babies frequently and loves to change their diapers (cloth, of course!). Next I've got to teach her to do EC with her dolls. I'm sure she'll LOVE that!

Edit to Add: I'm VERY sorry that it has taken me so long to get back to this post with more details about making the sling! The sling is about 11 inches wide and 21 inches long. It's reversible, so you need to cut 2 pieces of cloth with these dimensions. At each end cut the cloth with a curve instead of a straight line. You sew the 2 ends together (after sewing the 2 pieces back to back and turning them), and the curve forms the pocket for the baby. You can see the seam at the bottom of the picture. I know those are terrible directions, but I'm no sewer (although I'm trying to learn!).

Rainbow Felt Goldfish

I finally found the time (and motivation) to finish sewing the felt colors goldfish that I cut out before O's birthday :) I'm not sure why I couldn't bring myself to start sewing these fish because it wasn't difficult to do, just a little tedious. Anyway, I'm glad they're done, but I think I'll wait until Christmas to give them to O. They'll make a nice advent gift (I'm super excited about the advent calendar I have planned for O! I'm going to start making it next month, and I have started working on a list of tiny gifts and activities for it).

A Miniature Matching Game

I can't remember where the idea for this miniature matching game came from. I think I saw it on a blog about a year ago. If anyone knows, let me know :) To make this game you need as many bottle tops as you can find (Thanks, Auntie EB for saving your bottle tops for us!). I cut cardstock circles to fit into the bottle tops and put tiny matching stickers on the cardstock. Quick, easy, and fun! First, the girls matched the pairs while looking at them. O was much more interested in playing with the leftover stickers :)Then we turned them over and played a game of memory. There were too many pieces for a 2 year old, and O was not at all interested in playing. My 4 year old niece loved the game, and we had fun playing!
I can't wait to make more memory games using bottle tops! I think it would be very funny to make one using the faces of family and friends :) I'm adding it to my list! This would also make a great category sorting activity. Once I add a few more tops to the game, I'll show O how to sort the fruit, vehicles, clothing, and animals into their categories.

A Couple More Chalkboards

I had leftover plywood and paint, so I made a couple more chalkboards yesterday. They are smaller than the original one, and I'll put one of them on our deck next to O's new playhouse (I'll post about this soon, I hope!). The 2nd one is for my niece. You can't really tell in the picture, but the border is aqua. I hope the girls like them!

Scrapbook Paper Memory Game

When I saw this memory game on the Crafty Crow, I knew I would be making one soon :) Its just too cool and pretty to not make! This game will be one of O's Christmas gifts, and I plan on making a drawstring bag to keep it in. One handmade Christmas present is made, and I have about a hundred more to go! I bought wooden rectangle boards (sold in packs of 4) from Hobby Lobby and used Mod Podge to glue the scrapbook paper onto them. I planned on covering the paper with a layer of mod podge, but I decided to spray them with clear acrylic sealer at the last minute (since it's so much faster and easier). This was a fun and simple gift to make, so give it a try!
Here's a pic showing the other side of the boards. They are bigger than I planned, but I couldn't find boards any smaller, and I didn't want to go through the trouble of cutting them.

Homemade Christmas

I've been reading about people getting ready for Christmas on several blogs lately. At 1st I was surprised, but now I realize that I REALLY need to get started if I want to have everything made in time without a lot of stress. I wasn't planning on starting until October, but I realize now that is too late! Here's my list for O: baby doll cradle (Elliott will help with this one), baby doll quilt, baby doll diaper bag (my mom will help with those), playdoh (pumpkin pie scented, cinnamon scented, and gingerbread scented), memory game (using scrapbook paper decopaged onto wooden pieces), frog and lily pad game, a couple of books, felt play food, etc. I also plan on making (with O's help) gifts for her grandparents and aunts and uncles. I can't list them here since they all read this blog :) What are you planning on making for Christmas gifts this year?

DIY Gigantic Outdoor Chalkboard

One of my goals for O's birthday party was to make a huge outdoor chalkboard. I barely made it...I was still painting it at around 12:00, and the party started at 3pm. It was fairly easy to make.
1st- buy 1 piece of treated plywood and cut it to the desired size
2nd- paint the plywood with primer. You may want to sand it first. I painted ours with 2 coats of primer, and it still had rough spots that I filled in outdoor wood filler. Then I had to wait for the wood filler to dry, sand it, then paint another coat of primer. After 3 coats of primer, I painted the board with chalk paint
3rd- I taped off a border with masking tape, and then painted it with 2 coats of chalkboard paint.
4th- After the chalkboard paint dried, I pulled off the masking tape and painted the border red. I painted 2 or 3 coats on the border.
The kids loved drawing on the chalkboard at O's party, and its also lots of fun erasing the chalk with water using paint brushes.

Homemade Paper Doll Birthday Card for My Sweet O

I really wanted to make a homemade birthday card for O, and when I saw this I knew what I had to do :) I printed the doll on cardstock, cut her out, and painted her with watercolor paint. After I painted her, I laminated her. I traced around the doll to create an identical back, so the card could open. I taped them together using white labels.
I cut dresses out of scrapbook paper, and then I laminated the dresses. I put a small sticky magnetic square on the back of the doll and on the back of each dress. Then I put magnetic squares in the file folder, so O would have a place to keep her doll and all of the dresses.

She's going to love the dot file folder!
This was an easy, fun, and quick project, and I hope O likes it. I'd really like to make shoes for the doll, but all of the shoes that I made looked ridiculous. I may work on them again later if she asks for shoes (and I'm sure she will!).

Postcard Book

The idea for making this postcard book has been bouncing around in my brain for months, so I'm so glad to finally have it made! I added a piece of cardstock to the left side of each of O's postcards and laminated them. Then I cut the cards out of the lamination, punched the holes, added the rings, and now she has a book of postcards! Yay! Most of the postcards are from her grandparents from their various vacations. I've also started getting postcards whenever we travel, and I write a few lines about what we did and what O liked about each place. It's an easy way to create a vacation memory book, and hopefully I can get Elliott to participate, too. Since I used ring binders, it will be very easy to add new postcards to the book.



O likes looking at her postcard book, and her favorite page is the postcard from Disneyland :) I'm not sure why she surrounded herself with the bowling game bottles when she sat down to read. Silly girl :)

Blue

Today was our last color day. O was excited to take the "boo picture" since blue is her favorite color. Now I have to make the book!

Color Fishing

O and I went fishing today...color fishing! Thanks to Shannon at Teaching Tiny Tots for this great idea! To make this activity you need craft foam sheets, paper clips, a pen, a wooden dowel, yarn, and sticky magnets. This activity was especially easy and quick for me to make because I was able to use the fishing pole that came with a Melissa and Doug puzzle instead of making one. I cut about 10 fish out of craft foam and drew faces on them with a sharpie. I only had 4 paper clips, so I slid the paper clips onto the fish. I planned to use blue craft foam for the water, but then I decided to use blue felt. While I was looking for the felt, I saw O's blue playsilk and realized that it would be perfect for the water! We had a lot of fun with this activity, and there are so many ways to expand on it. I plan on eventually writing letters and numbers on the fish. I think it would be fun to have O catch her name. With the number fish, we could put the numbers in order and eventually add them together. Since the fish are made out of foam, you could even put them in a bowl of water (or the bathtub) to make the game more challenging! The possiblities are endless!

O was very excited that she caught 2 fish at once. She said she caught "both!"

Animal Flip Book

I downloaded this animal flip book from this site, and it was very easy to make and it turned out great! I printed the pictures onto photo paper, cut them out, punched the holes with a hole puncher, laminated the pages, cut them out again, punched the holes again (its surprisingly difficult to punch holes through laminating paper, so I'm glad that I'd already punch the holes through the pages!), and used book rings to bind it together. I think O is going to love matching the animals in this book on our plane ride this weekend :)

Brown

Today was brown day! O loved being a kangaroo :)

Another Homemade Book

The pictures aren't the best, but I am very excited about this new book. It was so quick and easy to make! I printed wallet sized and 3x5 pictures and glued them to 4x6 notecards. I narrated each picture, then laminated them using my laminating machine. Elliott took the pictures to his dad's office (thanks, Grandaddy Harry!) to bind them into a book. Its a very sturdy book, and O LOVES it. I'm planning on making A LOT more soon. You can see the other books I've made for O here and here. This book doesn't look as nice as the board books, but its much sturdier. I've had a problem with O trying to pull the pictures (sometimes successfully) off the board books, but I don't have to worry about that with this book :)

Purple

I think purple is my favorite! The hat and bubbles were last minute additions to our purple photo shoot, and they made the picture. O loved blowing bubbles, and I just love the hat! It was my favorite hat when I was around 7 years old, and there is a picture of me wearing this hat hanging on my wall in my bedroom at Guh-guh and Grandpa's house (remember that picture, Anne?)