crafting

We’ve moved!

We’ve been pretty busy over in this house with summer camp, doctor appointments, book releases, crafting, cooking, baby showers, and WORK! Here is a little weekend craft time I did with the kids. It started off as just the Diva (she is 4 going on 14) and me, but then the boys sensed the use of markers and insisted on creating with us. Who am I to stop their creativity?! I know I usually try to share tutorial style crafts, but this stuff was made up on the fly so there really aren’t many directions…but there are pictures!

It took me 3 tries to spell “Popsicle” correctly

So we were trying to come up with something for my dad’s birthday as a present from the kids. While the kids are still little we try to do homemade gifts or pictures (Note to self: Get copies of spring pictures for the family).

My kids love to color, so we went with that (also, I will do anything to avoid paint while the little man is awake).

So I hot glued some sticks into a “square.” Sure, we talked about shapes and made this a little educational. I try. Really. But this barely looks like a square. Its all Wibbly-Wobbly (anyone…).

Then I glued some construction paper to the back of it and trimmed the excess. Not rocket science. At this point I had to start moving a little quicker…Liza was getting antsy to decorate.

Look how she is staring at the markers. You can almost sense her thinking “Mom, stop taking pictures and let me color!”

So her name is Eliza-Beth. We have called her Liza from day 1. Daycare calls her Eliza. She has now requested we call her Eliza. Per my father “She’ll always be Liza to me” and this present was for him so “L” was glued on. I have NO CLUE how you would do this with a curvy letter like Q. I am open to suggestions!

Finally I let her free to color! A large bag of crayons lives on our dining room table so that the kids can color whenever, but markers only get pulled out with supervision so they get excited. Of course by the time she started to decorate (and I thought I was going to clean up) the boys came in like a tornado. So I super quickly whipped up 2 more Initial decorations. Thankfully all 3 kids can have L’s (Liam, Liza, and London – 2/3 are nicknames) so I didn’t have to think too hard.

When they were all done I glued some ribbon to the back upper corners so that they could be hung up…when I eventually put them in a FedEx envelope and ship them to my dad. I am HORRIBLE about putting things in the mail!

The final masterpieces!! Notice “Eliza” on the top of her picture…

Well by the time they were done with these they were in full on crafting mode so Mommy had to think quick. So I just started gluing together popsicle sticks and ended up with little houses that stood on their own. Don’t ask me how I did it. There were 3 kids chomping at the bit so there are no step by step pictures, but I got a couple of them coloring them. I’m actually pretty proud that they stood on their own.

We, of course, needed refreshments by this point. Juice and cheapo fruit snacks anyone?

So there are my simple popsicle stick crafts to do with the kids this summer. Tomorrow we are making cupcakes for Father’s Day. I will try to get some pictures of my kids fighting over who gets to dump the flour in and who gets to stir…and something spilling somewhere. What projects are you doing with the kids on break?

Try these – Bat Hair Bow or Coconut Oil Chocolates.