We’ve been having a lot of rainy weather around here and the kids have been stuck inside for over a week now. The other day, the five-year-old and I stumbled upon an easy activity that kept him busy for over an hour. OVER AN HOUR, PEOPLE! If you’re the parent of a five-year-old, you know how awesome that is.
We ended up making these things that I am calling: Tie Dye Window Decorations.
I’m pretty good at naming things, don’t you think? Also, I know it’s starting to look like we’re a bunch of hippies, but we really aren’t. It’s just that tie dye crafts are easy and fun and they give you pretty results with a fun surprise factor at the end.
All right, so here’s what you need to make these totally easy Tie Dye Window Decorations:
A cheap-o kids water color set
Paper towels
I bet you have those in your house right now! Sweet.
Start off by filling each of the water color thingies up to the top with water.
I found an easy way to do this is to fill up a big glass of water and then transfer the water to the paints by doing that thing where you put your finger over the end of the straw to trap the water inside and then let it go over the paints to get it out. Wyatt liked this part almost as much as the actual dyeing. You can also just fill them up at the sink, but you’ll be running back and forth a lot more often if you do it that way.
Stir the paints up to get more of the color in the water.
Now, take a big paper towel and cut it into quarters. You’ll want your pieces of paper towel to be about 6 inches square. If they’re bigger, they’re harder for little hands to handle and the paint doesn’t saturate as easily.
Fold your square of paper towel in half.
Then fold it in half again.
And then fold it in half on the diagonal, kind of like how you’d fold paper to cut a paper snowflake:
You can just leave your towel as is, or if you want it to be more of a circle, cut the end off the towel like so:
Instead of folding the towel on the diagonal, you can also fold it in half again so it’s a rectangle shape which will make the end design different, but equally attractive.
OK, so now that the paper towel is all folded, you get to start the fun part — the dyeing! Dip different parts of the paper towel bundle into the paints and let it absorb the color. The corners are the easiest.
You can fold it in half again to get the colors into the middle sections. You can also dab paint on with the paint brush.
Keep dipping and dabbing until the paper towel bundle has as much paint on it as you’d like.
Then unfold to see your beautiful creation in all its glory!
Lay towels flat to dry (we used a cookie cooling rack) and then hang them in a sunny window to catch the light!
Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a fantastic December and enjoyed their holidays tremendously!
As is often the case, the new year has spurred me to do a little reflection on my life and look at some places I’d like to make some changes. Most people refer to these ideas as “resolutions”, but I much prefer to think of them as goals. In the past, I’ve had some grand ideas about how I would make change happen in my life — lose weight! spend more time with friends! de-clutter the house! do more creative stuff! — but my follow through on those nice ideas has been less than stellar. Last year I set some much more specific goals and I’m happy to report that I actually achieved (and even surpassed) many of them.
This year I want to get even more granular in my goals. One of the big things I feel like my life was lacking last year was self-fulfillment. My lay-off and the subsequent transition from career-lady to stay-at-home-mom left me floundering a bit. I could write a whole big post about this topic, but for now I’ll just say that I found myself dedicating the majority of my time to satisfying other people’s wants and needs and significantly less time doing things I enjoyed and that made me happy. So this year, I’ve compiled a list of small, achievable goals for myself. Most of them are fun and all of them will make me happy in some way. I’ve grouped them loosely into five categories: cooking, crafts, kids, organization, and personal projects.
There are a gazillion things on the list already and I suspect that I’ll add more from time to time. It’s possible that I won’t complete them all this year (though I hope I will) but even if I only get to half of them I bet I’ll feel happier.
A few weeks ago, Wyatt and I were invited to a wreath-making extravaganza by our friends Whitney and Heather at Rookie Moms. Heather and Whitney threw this crafty party along with the folks at Underwriter’s Laboratory to spread some holiday cheer while passing along safety tips about holiday decorating in general and light safety in particular.
While I knew that Wyatt would like running around with the other kids and eating pizza, I wasn’t sure if he would be all that into the actual wreath making. But he surprised me and worked his little fingers to the bone punching circles out of patterned paper and directing me to add a string of lights, ribbon, a funky gold pine cone and letters to spell out his name to his wreath. I placed everything exactly as he directed me to and this is the final product:
Not too shabby! We will be hanging this in our front window when I get my act together and put up the Christmas decorations some time in the next few days.
The high point for me was when the photographer, Erin Nelson, pulled Wyatt and me aside to take a few pictures of us together. As the family photographer, I’m almost always behind the camera and very rarely in front of it. I’ll occasionally manage to take a self portrait that I like, but it’s really rare that any photos are taken of me with the kids. So when I saw this photo in Erin’s gallery, I about died:
What mom doesn’t want a photo like that with her boy?
And this is totally unrelated to wreath-making, holiday lights or brilliant photographers, but you have to check out this turkey frying video from the UL folks. Jeebus! I can assure you we will never be frying a turkey at our house!
Disclosure: I received wreath-making supplies, safety advice, 2 slices of pizza, a slice of sweet potato pie, a print of the photo above, and the pleasure of spending time with crafty people and a slew of cute kids at the Safe and Bright holiday party. And then I wrote this blog post. Hopefully the FCC won’t throw me in the big house now that I’ve told you all that.
If you grew up in the late 70’s or early 80’s chances are pretty good that you had a baseball shirt at some point in time. And if you had a baseball shirt, you most likely ironed something onto it. Maybe you had a picture of a kid with braces that said “The tin grin is in!” or maybe you had your name or perhaps you were one of the lucky kids who had both — one on the front and one on the back? My baseball shirt was white with pink sleeves and my mom and dad carefully ironed a unicorn picture to the front and my name on the back in sparkly Cooper Black font. I can assure you I was hot stuff in that shirt!
I bought Wyatt a baseball shirt a couple of weeks ago and since then it has been calling out for some fuzzy iron-on letters.
This should be a quick and easy project. Shall we begin?
Start off by ironing the shirt. By looking at these photos after the fact, you’ll note that there is some kind of stain down the front of it. Please ignore that going forward.
Pull the letters off the sheet. I used flocked letters because they’re fluffy and wonderful. Not quite as wonderful as sparkly letters, but these run a close second.
Scatter the letters all over the shirt willy nilly.
Ha ha! Just kidding. Did you know I use rulers in practically every craft project I do? I do! I’m a Virgo.
Start off by centering the ruler on the shirt. Then pick the middle letter in the name you’re adding and put that on the mid-point of the ruler.
Add the rest of the letters on either side, spacing them out as evenly as you can.
Put the ruler over the bottom of the letters about a quarter inch to hold them in place and then press with the iron for a few seconds.When you lift up the iron, you may notice the T’s are stuck to the iron. If that happens, it means that you put the T’s on upside down like I did.
When you pull them off the iron, they’ll be all melty and stuck to themselves like this. You won’t be able to pull them apart to fix them either. Check the package to see if there are any more T’s. Since there won’t be any others, it would be OK to say something like, “Oh, crap-a-doodle-doo!” at this point.
Take a look at the shirt and see if you can get by with just the letters that stuck to the shirt. Consider creating a new nickname for your son, such as “Wya”.
Your next step in this quick and simple craft project will be to drive back to the craft store for another package of iron-on letters.
When you get back home put your new T’s on the shirt. Check, double-check and triple-check to be sure that you haven’t put them on upside down again.
Press the letters with an iron.
When you lift the iron, notice that there is some kind of sticky brown goo all over the letters you just drove all the way to the frakkin’ craft store to get. Say a naughty word and look at the iron to see what the heck is all over the lang dang heat element. You should notice some brown goo in the exact same shape as the T’s you ironed the wrong side of earlier. Curse your own carelessness and shake your fist at the stupid shirt with the stupid brown letters on it.
Try wiping the goo off with a wet washcloth. When that doesn’t work, get out a butter knife and scrape the brown goo off. This will work! Wipe the brown stuff off the iron and re-press to make sure the letters are properly adhered.
Enjoy your fancy new shirt and the Bad News Bear who will wear it.
(Incidentally, Wyatt loves his new shirt, despite the poses he struck in these photos. When your name is Wyatt you don’t get to pull personalized license plates or mugs off the rack in the gift shop at Disneyland, so having something with his name on it finally is pretty cool.)
A few months ago, Wyatt became completely enamored of spies and secret agents. I’m not exactly sure what triggered it — I think it might have been an episode of the Backyardigans — but it seemed like a good way to foster creative play so I’ve encouraged it as much as possible.
Every spy needs supplies for surveillance, trapping bad guys and getting out of sticky situations, so we looked around the house for items we could put together into a little spy kit. This is what we came up with:
First we needed a bag to store the spy gadgetry. Zach dug up this freebie from a conference he went to earlier in the year. It’s just the right size — big enough to hold a lot of stuff, but small enough for a five-year-old to sling over his shoulder without it getting in the way when he needs to crouch behind a bush to avoid detection.
We needed stuff to put in the bag too, so we scoured the house for the proper gadgetry. Starting at the top row and going down, we have:
Bottle caps — These were one of Wyatt’s contributions. I’m not sure what they’re for, but he insists that they’re absolutely necessary.
Money – Every spy needs to carry cash with him, of course. You never know when you’ll need 6 cents to bribe a hotel clerk.
A Rock — Another one of Wyatt’s additions. “For throwing at bad guys if they run away from jail.” (Don’t worry — he knows better than to throw rocks at people.)
A pen cap — To store his cyanide capsule. Kidding! It’s for keeping your pen from drying out.
Middle row, top to bottom:
Miniature digital camera — Yes, I know it’s ridiculous that we had a miniature digital camera laying around our house. One of Zach’s friends gave this to him, but he wasn’t using it so he passed it along to Wyatt. Obviously, this is the epicenter of the spy kit.
Flashlight – If you press on Dory’s fins, an LED in her mouth lights up.
String (and a dollar) — The string can be used to set traps, rappell into office buildings and tie up bad guys. It currently has a dollar attached to it so Wyatt can put it in the middle of the living room floor and snatch it away when I say, “Ooooh! A dollar!”
Keys – Old keys to luggage locks.
Last row:
First aid kit — I put some band-aids and antiseptic wipes in an empty candy tin.
Magnifying glass — Because how can you spy or detect without a magnifying glass?
EDIT: Oh goodness! I almost forgot the best part because it wasn’t in the kit when I took the picture. He also keeps a self-adhesive mustache in the kit in order to disguise himself, like so:
Absolutely invaluable when you’re intent on infiltrating a group of elderly, chess-playing bad guys.
I resisted getting an iPhone for quite a while. “Why do I need one,” I’d ask my husband. “It’s not like I need to keep track of clients or appointments or anything and I already have a regular cell phone to make calls with.” Oh, how naive I was! I finally caved to my desires and now I think I use my phone more as a stay-at-home mom of small kids than I ever would have in my former professional life managing a multi-million dollar website.
Beyond the obvious parental-type things I use my iPhone for (texting my husband to pick up bananas on the way home, calling the day care to say my son will be late) here are some of the ways I use my phone to be a happier mom:
1. I Entertain Myself While Breastfeeding
I love breastfeeding — let’s just get that out of the way right up front. I talk, sing and make contact while I nurse my baby. But after he starts to get sleepy, I need to be quiet and avoid eye contact so he’ll relax enough to go to sleep and at that point I’m stuck sitting quietly in the rocker for another 20 minutes or so. And when he was a newborn I did that 10 times per day! Besides normal web surfing and blog reading, I love to use this time to play games. Some of my favorites include: Wurdle, StoneLoops of Jurassica, Bejeweled 2, CandyMania PileUp and my most recent favorite, Blowfish Lite (sorry, couldn’t find a link). And even though it’s slow going to type on the iPhone keypad, I even use it to write sometimes. In fact, this post was partially written using the WordPress app!
2. I Take Photos of My Kids When We’re Out and About
This one is sort of a no brainer, but as a photography obsessed mom I love being able to take photos of my boys without lugging my big camera everywhere. I use these photos for scrapbooking in general and my Project 365 photo essay in particular and I recently had a “Duh!” moment when I realized I could email these photos to my mom and dad to give them a grandkid fix when they’re at work. No one ever said I was the sharpest tack in the box….
3. I Listen to Podcasts to Keep Myself From Going Insane
So very many of the mommy things I do in a day require that I use my hands and pay attention to my surroundings but don’t require that I be particularly mentally engaged. Housework and driving around running errands are a few examples of these horribly boring, mind-numbing chores. To keep myself from spiraling into a deep depression triggered by mental atrophy, I like to listen to podcasts while I do this stuff. Some of my favorites are the Manic Mommies, NPR’s StoryCorps, Meal Makeover Moms, and I’m looking forward to checking out this list of creativity podcasts Lain blogged about the other day.
4. I Record My Kids Laughing
…and babbling and telling jokes with the voice memo app. Photos are great and all, but those recordings of their little voices take you back to the age when they were recorded in an instant and oh my, they are sweet.
5. I Entertain My (Big) Kid at Restaurants and in the Car
I’m obviously not handing my iPhone to my 14-month-old baby, but my five-year-old is careful enough to be trusted with it occasionally. I don’t often let him use it, so when I give it to him to play with it’s a very, very special treat and he is absolutely thrilled. Some places I let him use it include: doctor’s office waiting rooms, in line at the post office, drives of over an hour and a half, and on airplane flights. I have a number of kid-friendly apps on my phone, but he also likes “playing” the same games I do. I also have an episode of Handy Manny on there for extreme circumstances and my husband has Wall-E on his phone for even more dire distraction emergencies.
I also use it to take notes for my son’s #babybook, but I already wrote about that.
How do you use your phone to make parenting your kids easier or more fun?
Comments
crafty · kid · kindergarten · motherhood
