We decorated David's 2nd grade Children's Ministry door over the weekend for the Christmas Door Decorating Contest at church. I love how it turned out. We used various wrapping papers, burlap, felt, cord and beads. We even added lights to the star (at D's request)!
I made last minute costumes for the kids! I wanted to have a candy theme so the boys were m&m's and the girls were Skittles. These were super easy to make. I bought solid colored shirts in a variety of colors and then white felt for the letters - that's it!
David free handed the m and S templates that I used for these costumes. I used his templates to create the letters on white felt. I cut out the felt and then hot glued the letters directly onto the shirts, easy peasy!
The hardest part was deciding which color everyone wanted to be! I found a few of the shirts at Walmart and the rest at Michaels (they had a wide selection to choose from).
The girls as Skittles!
And the boys as m&m's!
I love this candy of mine! Hope you had a great Halloween 🎃.
You may remember my Mother's Day Bouquet this year, seen above. I had a request for a tutorial on how it was made. So A and B created just that, a video tutorial for creating paper flowers and your very own bouquet. Enjoy! And let me know if you have any other requests.
The kids and I have been creating DIY Lava Lamps for the last few days. It's a lot of fun and you only need a few things to make them work. We used various sized clear containers, water, vegetable oil, various colors of food coloring drops and Alka-Seltzer tabs.
Above is the pack that we used.
We had everything on hand except the Alka-Seltzer tabs but I found them easily at the grocery store. We used various containers because we wanted to see if smaller ones worked better than bigger ones and vice versa. We made sure they were all clear so that we could see the lava lamp in action. Once you select your clear containers you need to fill them with water and vegetable oil. It doesn't matter which one you add first as the oil will always float to the top as it is less dense than water. And as you probably know, oil and water do not mix so they will form two distinct layers. We filled some of our container with water first and then added oil and vice versa so the kids could see what happened each way. We did not measure exact amounts for our lava lamps. We made sure we added enough water so there would be a visible water layer and we added more vegetable oil than water so our oil layer was noticeably larger.
The kids added drops of food coloring next. Some of them chose to use one color and some of them chose to add a few different colors. B chose to add pink and blue food coloring drops that eventually mixed together to create purple. Similarly, C used yellow and blue drops that eventually formed green.
Watching our lava lamps.
Above you can see the colors joining together to form purple.
In our experiments the hourglass vase with the rounder bottom did the best!
The kids with our homemade lava lamps.
{You can see the different shaped containers that we used.}
After the Alka-Seltzer tabs had dissolved, the kids dropped in another tablet to begin their lamps once more. You can add more tablets to your heart's content. The kids enjoyed doing it several times. Enjoy our video below and let me know if you make your own lava lamp!
Yesterday we made homemade sidewalk chalk, or sidewalk paint really. We used equal parts corn starch and water. It makes a nice white liquid when mixed together. We poured our mix into a number of Dixie cups and then used various food coloring to make different colors. We also left one of the cups white. We used foam paint brushes and had fun making creations in our driveway and on our sidewalk. Enjoy!
E making a variety of shapes.
G making squares with orange sidewalk paint.
D with a rainbow.
F getting some handwriting practice in.
A made this American flag.
B made this sun!
I made a purple flower.
A making our sidewalk balloons.
E posing with our balloons.
David made a snowman. Above is what it looked like when he first made it.
I have the coolest gift to share with you today, one that my father-in-law made me - it's a plant stand teleidoscope. If you don't know, a teleidoscope can be used to make kaleidoscopic patterns from objects outside the instrument. My father-in-law build a plant stand with a lazy Susan bowl and attached a teleidoscope. You can turn the bowl and look into the viewfinder to see some magical patterns. The bowl is removable. We have an additional empty bowl that we can fill with various items and see what patterns they make. We are having so much fun with this gift!
A front view...
A side view of our Plant Stand Teleidoscope
And a view from the top...
Here I turned the bowl so you can see that the flowers rotate.
Heading toward the viewfinder...
Almost there...
Aren't the patterns amazing?
Another pattern...
And another!
We have already looked at various items through our teleidoscope - LEGOs, D's gymnastics medals, and stuffed birds to name a few. What would you want to see?
C is a collector. This boy has been collecting things since he was a tot. Currently he collects rocks, smashed pennies/quarters, Star Wars ships, mini erasers and PEZ dispensers. He actually has quite the collection of PEZ. When we moved he didn't really have a place to put everything. He had boxes all over.
One of C's PEZ boxes
PEZ candy box
Over the holiday break David and C built a PEZ dispenser holder and it's awesome. It is a fairly simple design. Basically shelves with dowels.
Building the shelf
PEZ shelf going up on the wall
C loading his shelf.
Close up of PEZ dispensers
Everyone is super happy with it, especially C - who now has a great place to display his PEZ and his ships (on top). This is actually great for me because I can never remember which dispensers he already has but now I can see them - woohoo! Do your kids collect anything? I'd love to hear what.
We just got back from a local fall festival. The kids had a great time. It was raining off and on today so I am thankful that they moved all the festivities indoors! A and B made their own costumes this year (Ace of Hearts and Queen of Hearts) and I made F's costume (A Wild Card) - card theme!
A basically made this using red felt.
My favorite part was her homemade bow that she made using an ace of hearts playing card.
B's costume was also made from red felt. The wand is felt and a chopstick.
We took a Dollar Tree tiara (left over from E's party) and spray painted it gold. It worked great.
I made F's costume using felt and one Uno wild card.
He's pretty excited.
We had a few Star Wars repeats - a Jedi, Princess Leia and BB8.
This robe that I bought on Etsy a few years ago is still as amazing as ever!
Princess E as Princess Leia
Our BB8
And D was Sleeping Beauty. Hope you had a fun filled night!
Sleeping Beauty with her crown. This is a similar crown that we spray painted for B's costume.
