An Art Project

Since Monday was a holiday and all six of us were closed up in this house for the day, I decided to do a fun little art project with the girls that will help me out later on.
I picked paint colors that matched the accent colors that I'm going with downstairs and colors that match the girls' bedding.
I cooked up some fettuccine noodles and cut up some extra yarn that I had and even grabbed some little craft puff balls that I had in my room.
I let them go to town with this stuff giving them each a couple of pieces of paper and then when they were done with those I had them switch and create a few more.
Kaley got a little crazy with some designs and created a giant X on one with all of the colors and a huge happy face on another, but at least she had fun creating her own masterpieces.
Madison understood a little more what I was asking them to do, create some abstract art that I can then frame and add to the walls to add color.
She did a really great job and I can't wait to use them. I just have to be on the lookout for cheap frames since I don't have a trip to Ikea planned any time soon.
Most important of all, we had a great time doing this. I really should let them do creative things more often but we are still having the "keep your room clean" battle with them. I can ask them to go and clean their room quickly so that we can do something fun and three hours later I go in there and they have done nothing but play, watch shows on their TV and create inventions. I have a plan for their room to create more storage and space for them and all of their stuff I just have to put it into action!

I will share what I do with these pieces of art when I get it done!

Things I Love...

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!!
Although I am still in the middle of a couple of little projects to finish up my new Valentine's decor, I will share with you some of the things that I have finished and things that I am just loving right now. First off is this wreath...
I saw this in the back of the Scrapbooks Etc. magazine and knew that I had to make one for myself. It wasn't until I went to buy the stuff for it that I realized that theirs was only an 8" wreath (too small for me) and it used 1" wide strips of paper (too bulky). So here is my version, a 12" wreath form covered in 1/2" strips that are an old SEI collection called Twitterpated that I have had in my stash for over a year.
The lollipop is just a felt scalloped circle glued behind a circle that I cut out of matching paper and then used a rubon from Making Memories that I have had forever (I love to use up old products in my stash), I added a lollipop stick and some ribbon and glued it on!
The time consuming/pain in my rear part of this was hot gluing all of those strips on. I think I may have burned off my fingerprints from all of the hot glue burns! But I do love how it came out and I finished it off with some glue and chunky glitter. I am loving turquoise and pink this year, as you can tell...
I am loving jars lined up on my mantle right now, filled with little love treasures. I will definitely have to get more Ball jars for next year, maybe even some blue ones!
I whipped up some of these super easy ribbon flags using American Crafts valentine's ribbon that I picked up for a dollar a spool last year at Michael's. There are little buttons that I hot glued onto the ends and then I just placed them in this jar on my mantle.
I really love these Valentine's Day kitchen towels that I picked up at Target the other day. I am definitely noticing a turquoise theme everywhere I go this year.
I just couldn't resist picking up some red & white spice drops at Winco to fill up one of my Apothecary jars. The heart candies I have had for a couple of years now from another candle holder.
And most of all, I love these roses that I picked up at Vons on Friday. I bought them for each of the girls and then took them into their classes to tell them how much I love them and to make them feel special. They were very surprised and kept smelling these roses all afternoon. Now they are filling my kitchen with thoughts and smells of love.
Well, I am off to Disneyland today with my hubby and the girls. The girls are out of school today so we are going to take advantage of it. Can't wait to spend the day with them, the boys will be here at the house getting love and attention from their great grandparents, and then we will spend a quiet evening at home watching a movie on the couch as a family. I love Valentine's Day!
Hope you all have a great one!

Mailbox of Love

Kaley needed a decorated box or bag to receive her Valentines at her class party tomorrow. Now, if you know my Kaley, you would know that just a plain box or bag is not good enough. So I took her with me to Michael's with the plan of decoupaging a cute box that I saw on Laura Vegas' blog and then be able to reuse it after her party. But when we got there she saw this little foam mailbox instead and fell in love with it. It was only $3.99 and then some of the packs of foam shapes were already on clearance. So we went with that.
I had to use glue dots to hold one of the ends in place and the flag because it kept flopping all over and was getting bent. And as you can see, I helped her with the front where her name went (and those layered hearts we bought I loved so much that the rest are for me!) but the back she wanted to do all by herself. This is when I have to let go and walk away and just let her do it. My perfectionist self can't watch or help or things get bad! So to Kaley this meant using almost every shape that we bought and creating some kind of pattern that covered the whole side! Oh, she is so cute!
But now she has a cute place for her friends to put her Valentines, although I am starting to realize that the popular thing to do is create goody bags full of stuff. I am always shocked at the amount of money that some parents spend on this kind of stuff (especially when there are 31 kids in their class!)
By the way, the girls started Girl Scouts last night and they loved it! They can't wait to start earning patches and I love that most of the girls in their group are their friends from church!
I have a few more Valentine's Day crafts in the works and then next week I will start sharing pictures of the garden that my husband is creating for us!

It's Valentine's Time!

It is that time of year again... Valentine's Day! And that means one thing to a mom of school aged kids... parties! I always hold my breath when looking at the list of what things I'm supposed to bring in to the girls' classrooms and some years I get off better than others. This year Kaley had to make a Valentines box (I'll be sharing that tomorrow), Madison made hers in class. For Madison's class I have to make 20 heart sugar cookies unfrosted. Easy, especially since I found a BIG heart shaped cookie cutter at Michael's for $.79. But the one thing left was the Valentine's for the girl's to give to their friends. I gave them the choice, either: a) you can pick them out in the store and they can be any of your favorite characters, or b) we make them. They both opted for option b, and I found a cute idea in the Scrapbooks Etc. magazine. Here they are!
I used a big 3" scallop circle punch to punch out what seemed like a million shapes out of pink, blue, and purple tissue paper. These I let the girls take two of each color and layer them in whatever order they wanted.
I threaded them onto the suckers and the girls helped me fluff them up.
I came up with the idea to poke holes into a square paper plate and stick the suckers through for the girls to transport them with out crushing them.
The leaves I hand drew one based on the size of the Valentine's stamp that I had and then traced almost 90 of them! 31 for each of their classes and then 13 for each of them to take to Girl Scouts which they are starting tonight! I stamped each of them and then hand cut, then stamped the back with the to: and from:

I love to get pictures of their writing to see how far they have come in the last year.
One more Valentine's project down... yay!