Kid Art Display

Kids (all kids, I think) love to display the things they create. Heck, so do grown-ups! When the boys create something "artsy" they want to show it off. Our walls/fridge have served us well the past year of home schooling, but um, I realized we needed to make different arrangements when Spencer stapled (23 times) to the wall a piece of paper with a tiny bit of art on it.

Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating?

Exhibit A:

From August 2011

Overkill much?

So, I started combing the interwebz for options for "kids art displays" many featured frames and clothes pins and other lovely homey type things.

Then the thrift store came to my rescue. What's that? A giant, glass-less frame for 10 dollars? Don't mind if I do! Excuse me? Krylon spray paint? Oh, yes please! Clothes pins? I'll just rob ma clothes line! Wire? Home Depot, you got my back!

And thus the "kid art picture frame" was born. I just painted it, sanded it to make it look less, erm, nice. Cuz really, "nice" doesn't stand a chance around here. And then I attached a picture frame hanging kit three times to the back. It's pretty, and messed up a bit and uneven, and well, exactly as it should be.

Not too shabby. Just shabby enough to fit in around here. I had the boys draw me some stuff to put up for picture taking. They came through... kind of. "This is you when you're angry, Mom," says Henry.

Hmm.

Alas, can't win them all.

Here it is folks: $15 dollars.

From August 2011

Love the shadow-y phone pics. Sigh, my SD card for my camera is MIA

But, regardless of craptastic photography, I am in LOVE with it. LOVE!

So, there. Yup, I have no conclusion to this post.

Read more...

Clothing Organizer Bag

Well, with almost four kids, I am attempting to streamline our "everyday" things, ya know? I mean, like getting dressed for instance. I'm not ready to pull a Duggars and make everyone wear blue every Tuesday, but still, a little bit of smooth-ness to our daily routine is not unwelcome.

To that end, I decided the best way to get our mornings to be happy times (besides my grumpiness) is to set everything up the night before. But with little boys, "laying out" clothing is simply not an option. It will end up everywhere, all over the floor. 

So, I created these "Clothing Bags," and each night, we'll throw tomorrow's outfit in each bag. It's great! It's adorable, and it's easy. Each bag is assigned a kid, there is no mistaking it. And Sundays? Prechurch? Forgetaboutit! I have big plans for that. We can even put their church shoes in the night before, so there is no, "WHERE IS SPENCER'S SHOE!" I am excited!

To make the bags, I used fabric I already had in my stash, which equaled out to FREE. It really doesn't need to cost a thing! If you haven't got fabric, why not slash up an old pillow case? That'd be SUPER easy!

I did the Nature Bags basically, but on a bigger scale and rather than a strap, I added a little loop to hang on a  hook. Fabulous. 

So, I started with one 15"x15" square and for the back, a 15"x20" rectangle. The rectangle makes the flap, see? Depending on how large your children are, you may need to make a different size. Do what you must. 

From The Diet Coke Diet

I made three at once, cuz I have three boys.

Then I did the monograms. I just used my pinking shears and sewed them on in the middle of the front square piece.

From The Diet Coke Diet

Then the bags got sewn up and the flaps made. I sewed the loops just from scraps from the bags, on the back side, right in the middle.

EASY!

From The Diet Coke Diet

And I use command hooks to hang them on. I purposely hang them up high, because really, I don't want them getting into them once they are packed for the next day.

Some things I learned from this project:
1. Polar fleece DOES NOT work for applique work. No, it does not. It stretches way way way too much. So, on attempt #2 I just used cotton and pinking shears was much more successful.
2. Don't try to sew bags for your kids when they are hungry. It makes Mommy angry, which means I end up needing a seam ripper.

So there it is. An easy way to streamline your life in the mornings.

And if I utterly disappear for a while, well, I'm counting down the days (FIVE) until our fourth is due, so just hang tight. I'll be back, I promise!

Read more...

Thanksgiving Thankfulness

So, my kids are very little, in comparison to... um... other people's kids??? Anyway, so we're working on gratitude and thankfulness since it's that season (I am a FIRM believer in Thanksgiving. Do not talk to me about Christmas until NEXT Friday, do you understand?) And since I love Thanksgiving and what it means, I want to instill in them the importance of being thankful for our blessings.

Since they are so very young, things like, "my toys" are high on their lists, which I recognize is important. But, I want to start cultivating in them that deep-seeded joy that comes from realizing that we have WAY more than a lot of people, and are indeed, richly blessed.

SO, tell me friends. How do you teach and cultivate that gratitude in your children? How do you help them recognize what they have?

Read more...

Halloween Traditions

From October 2010

Halloween can be SO fun, especially for families. There is a lot of gross, scary, nasty stuff out there, which I despise, but there is also tons of fun to be had. If you're struggling with how to celebrate a totally silly Holiday, here are some ideas to make it "mean" something (even if these days Halloween means basically nothing!)

1. Decor (which we already talked about!) Kids seeing the same decorations year after year gives them a sense of tradition. I *still* love my mom's Halloween decorations and many of my own mirror hers. The kids have their favorites too, which is fun.

2. Pumpkin Gathering. However you do it, make it fun! Pumpkin patches are a blast, but so can a special trip to the grocery store wherein you buy pumpkins and candy corn.

3. Pumpkin carving. This can be a whole evening experience. Have a special dinner, watch "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" and carve away. Do it in the week before Halloween. Make it a ritual.

4. Special Halloween Meal. This can be Halloween-themed or not. We eat Chinese food. I don't know why. but if you have a lot energy, you can do seriously fun things with food on All Hallow's Eve.

5. Trick or Treating. This might be becoming a lost art where you live, but around here, it's still going strong.

6. Other venues for costume-wearing. I mean you either spent money to BUY the costume, or you slaved away to CREATE the costume, right? You really ought to find reasons to drag your kids around town in their costumes. And you can call it a tradition. Library story time in costume? TRADITION!

No matter what you decide to do, if you find things that are TRADITION your kids will always remember, and they will love it.

Read more...

How to Make Easy Halloween Decorations

Well, if you're like me, the fact that Halloween is this week is BLOWING MY MIND. I mean, seriously.

Anyway, so I have my standard Halloween decor that goes up every year, but this year, we've had a blast creating our own fun things. Spencer and Henry are big enough to do very simple crafts, and turning them into decorations has been so fun for them. To see THEIR work decorating the house has been cute.

So, here are some simple, easy decorations you can make this week to jazz up the house before All Hallow's Eve.

1. A Halloween banner. Either with Halloween paper or fabric, let the kids help cut out the shapes, and if you're using paper, staple them to a bias tape or yarn, if it's fabric, sew it on. SO easy and fun.

From The Diet Coke Diet

2. Q-Tip Skeletons. I just found the skeleton picture on Google Images and then cut up Q-tips in different sizes. They glued them on as "bones." If your kids are older, they probably wouldn't even need the template.

From The Diet Coke Diet

From The Diet Coke Diet

3. Bats on a stick. Ours got ripped, but we made construction paper bats and then taped them to skewers. The plan was to stick them all over the house plants, but like I said, ours got loves a bit too much. So no pictures.

4. Paper Towel Roll Mummies. Ours are actually a wrapping paper roll cut up, but toilet paper would work as well. We made "paper mache" which was actually white glue, diluted until it was pretty thin. We dipped white strips of paper, about 1 inch wide and 6 inches long, in the glue and paper mached the rolls. It took a whole day to dry, but when they did, they were rock hard. Then, we traced the paper mache lines and had our "mummy" look. We added faces, and BAM cute mummies.

From The Diet Coke Diet

5. Halloween collage. Simple as it sounds, we drew Halloween pictures, and stuck them to an orange piece of poster board. Viola. Collage.

From The Diet Coke Diet

So there ya have it, five projects for the week. The only things I actually purchased were the supplies for the banner. Everything else was stuff we had on hand.

Have fun!

Read more...