Hunt for Random Acts of Kindness not Pokemon

In my area, a new craze has caught on. Instead of catching Pokemon (which I'm not ashamed to say I do also), the big thing is to paint and hide rocks. Kind of like a scavenger hunt. At this point you're either thinking, "What?" or "Sweet. we play to", but hear me out. The point of this game is to spread cheer and joy within our community. You don't have to be a great artist to play and there's no age requirement. The rules are pretty simple:

• You can paint rocks, or not
• You can hide rocks, or not
• You can find rocks, or not
• You post hints to your rocks, or not
• You can share your designs within the social media group, or not
• If you find a rock:
• You can keep it
• You can take it and re-hide it somewhere
• You can leave it
• You can share it with others
• You can add rocks to it
• You can replace it with a different rock, or not

There are a lot of these groups around if you such local media for them. Type in your city and "rocks". Again, the point is to spread joy and cheer with others. In my area, people have said that this has helped them become closer as a family as they will now paint and hide and search for rocks together. Several others have also said its helped them with depression and anxiety. I know several families who have said its helping their autistic children communicate more.  And I think that's the best part. That this one simple activity by many random strangers is helping so many people in so many different ways. I am really glad and grateful to be a part of this. 

As such, I wanted to share it with all of you. Maybe you have hidden rocks or other treasures in your area. Maybe this is the first time you are hearing of it. Either way, I would love to see any rocks and/or treasures you make if you decide to play along with us in your own areas. 

Here are a few I have done and sent out into the world :)

I post more on my Instagram, check it out. :)

Valentine, You're Griffindorable!!

With Valentine's day fast approaching, we are hard at work making our valentines.  As we are pretty big Harry Potter fans here and with the anticipated new Harry Potter movie coming out in November (you can see a trailer for it HERE), Rini decided her valentines this year would be wands.

We printed the valentines on thick card stock and cut them out. Then punched a whole through each one and used string to tie them to the wands. You can get a set of your own awesome Harry Potter valentines at Art by STOWE.

To make your own Harry Potter wands you will need:

• Printer paper
• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue sticks
• Acrylic or craft paints (we used black and brown but you can add other colors too)
• Marbles or gems (to add to the base- this is optional)
• Wooden dowels (this is optional but add support to the wands and makes them more sustainable)

Begin by taking a dowel (if using them) and placing it diagonally across one corner or a piece of printer paper. Grab the corner and place it on the dowel. You can tape it here with scotch tape if you want. Now roll the paper and dowel (as tightly as you can) until you get to the end of the paper. Once there, secure paper corner to the paper wand with a bit of hot glue.

If you aren't using a dowel, you will do the same process, just without the dowel. Start at a corner of your printer paper and roll (as tightly as possible) diagonally across the paper. Once at the end, secure with hot glue.

For both wands, you will need to fill the inside of the wand with hot glue.  If using the dowel, its easier as you have less of an area to fill. Fill both ends (and middle if not using the dowel) of your wand with the hot glue. Be patient as this part can take a while. 

If you wanted to add a gem or marble ot one end, now is the time to do that.

Once your wands are filled and dried, you can use the hot glue to make designs on them. Rini wanted them to look like wood, so we made a wood fiber like pattern on all the wands. You could though build up areas and make larger 3D decorations on wands.

We found that its best to do one side of a wand before doing the other as the glue is hot and doesn't always dry as fast as we would like. 

Next comes the painting part. Take your acrylics and paint the colors and designs you want on your wands. Since we wanted ours to look like wood, Rini first painted them brown. Once the paint had dried, we made a black wash to paint over the brown. The black wash will pool up in the crevices and create a sort of rugged and aged look, making the paper to look more like actual wood.  To make a wash, simply add a little bit of paint to a cup and mix with water. Start with a little water and add more until you get the desired liquid base. For us, we used a 1:2 ratio. 

Once they were dried from the wash, we added our cards and viola,  Harry Potter wands for all.

Happy valentine's Day everyone!

Ice Ornaments

With all the snow storms rolling in lately, we decided to check off some holiday projects we didn't get round to at Christmas time.

Ice Ornaments were high on our to do list because they're fast to make and convenient.  They sit overnight and are completely ready for use by morning. And best of all, there's very little clean up. You can find tons of examples of these all over the web. Pinterest is a great source as well.  We used the instructions over at It's The Little Things, though we couldn't quite get our coloring to work like hers.

Here's the run down on how to make them.

Supplies:
* Water
* Natural debris (like leaves, needles, flowers, etc.)
* Food Coloring or natural food coloring (if you'd like to dye them)
* Containers to create them in
* String or yarn
* Scissor for cutting string
* Cookie cutters or other solid objects for making holes

And that's pretty much it. Now take your containers and put in a bit of water. Add your natural elements and dyes. You can also add your cut sting to the mixture, making sure to leave enough out for hanging and tying. Or, you can use the cookie cutters or another object to place in the center which will create a hole for you to use to tie the string through later.  To get them  out, simply run the outside of the bottom of the container under warm water and they pop right out.

Here's what we learned:

If you want your objects to be in the middle, add the water, freeze it, then add your objects. Now add cold water on top and refreeze. This will put most items in the center. Small needles though are tricky as they like to float.

Food Coloring will stain containers and came off on our hands when we took the ornaments out of their containers.

Place containers in the freezer. The containers we put outside under piles of snow and the ones we left out in the open still haven't completely froze. It's been 2 days. If it's freezing where you are, then it shouldn't be a problem. But you may want to pop a few in the freezer, just in case. There's nothing more disappointing than having the weather warm up before your ornaments were ready for hanging.

Valentine's Day Bookmarks



Here we are in 2013 and can you believe that I got away with not making valentines until this year.  Maybe that's not so hard to believe for some, but I was raised that valentines were made not bought. I have several fond memories of sitting at the kitchen table with my mom into what I thought at the time were the wee hours of the morning putting together Valentines for my classmates.

This year Rini decided she wanted to make her valentines after she stumbled across these adorable little owl bookmarks on pinterest.

Rini herself, is an avid reader and wanted to share her love of books with her class. And so, the bookmark valentines were born. :)

Ours turned out a bit different, but still cute I thought. Rini did almost all the work and in two days after school made 30 bookmark valentines.

Here is what we used:

• Card stock- for bookmark base and heart base
• Pattern Paper- (left over from pages in our scrapbook) for the inside part of the base and inside of heart
• Clip Art- image we found on google
• 2" Circle hand punch
• 3 in 1 scallop circle hand punch
• Scissors
• Glue sticks
• Printer for the saying and clip art image
• Stapler
• Ribbon Scraps
• Pencil for marking and signing name
• Suckers for treats (were attached using paper clips)

The process we used was pretty simple. First we cut the card stock to the size we wanted the bookmarks. Then measure and cut the pattern paper you want on the bookmark. We decided ours should be smaller than the bookmark as we wanted some of the card stock to show and frame the pattern paper. Then glue these two pieces together. We ended up with the above image once this step was complete.

Thirdly we printed out a few sheets of the clip art image (cat and dog) and used the circle punch  to cut them out. In order to make the scallop border around the circle, we used a scallop circle punch that we had at the house. However, our scallop circle punch is much smaller than the 2" circle punch so after asking Rini what she wanted to do about it, she decided that if we punched out several and glued them to the back of the circles it would create approximately the same effect. So that's what we did. We ended up punching out 5 scallop circles per 1  2" circle.  Of course you wouldn't have to do this step or you could hand cut out a border for the circle part.
Once they were all glued together we ended up with these.


The fourth step were the hearts which are made up of three pieces. First, choose the card stock you want. Rini chose green as its the opposite on the color wheel from red. Now measure how big you want the hearts and cut them out. If you have a heart hand punch you could use that, but we cut all 30 of ours by hand.

The next step was to cute the pattern paper into smaller hearts so they would fit inside the green card stock ones. For this we measured the green hearts and cut the paper into slightly smaller squares. Then traced a green heart on each square. Once that was done we tore the paper along the line to make the hearts. The result is the uneven and white line around the pattern paper hearts. Now glue those two pieces together. Thirdly, we came up with two sayings, typed them out in word, printed them and then cut them out. These were then glued on top of the hearts.

The fifth step is the ribbon. We used scraps of ribbon and folded them in half. Then using a stapler, stapled the ribbon to the top of one of the bookmarks before gluing our circles over the stapled ribbon. This hides the staple on the front.

Lastly, you glue all pieces together. This is what we ended up with when it was all done.

The bookmarks weren't perfect but they were well received and I don't know about her class, but mine will be well loved and cherished!!

Holiday Advent Calendar days 1-9

So  I know it's December 9th already and I swore to myself I would post this on the 30th of last month, but well...turns out I didn't get around to it.  So here is what we did for the first 9 days of December:

December 1st- Make a New Advent Calendar.  We actually hadn't ever made one. I was picking up those little cardboard ones every year, you kno w the ones with chocolate behind each day. But it with the kiddos getting older it was getting harder to have only one child open the little door for the day and then who would get the candy?  So this year I went to the craft store an bourght some holiday fabric in the clearance isle and some fat quarters that matched it. I pulled them out on the 1st along with a hot glue gun, 3 pairs of scissors and some glitter glue pens.  I explained to the kiddos that we needed to have something with pockets or doors and 25 of them (one for every day of the advent calendar).  What happened next was pure magic.  The kids set to work on their design, all working together. They got great tracing and cutting practice. I help the older two use the hot glue gun under supervision and watched as our calendar started to take shape.


December 2nd- Decorate House

December 3rd- Read a Holiday Book- Llama, Llama Holiday Drama- My kids love this cute story that helps with rhyming skills. It has been something we have read every year since I bought it.
December 4th- 1st Cocoa of the Season- We have a make it your own way cocoa bar, where the kids can add marshmellows, caramel, chocolate shavings, whip cream, cookie pieces, candy pieces and/or candy cane pieces to their cocoa.
December 5th- Giving Tree- Pick out names and go shopping -This is something we try to do every year from different trees. This year though we sadly had to limit it to only one tree instead of 2 or 3.
December 6th- Visit Family
December 7th- Holiday Work Party
December 8th-  Pick Up a Tree
December 9th- Hand and Foot Print Reindeers - These seem to be all over pinterest lately, but in case you haven't seen them, here is how we made ours. You will need brown paint for hand and foot prints. Red paint for noses and a different color for the eyes.  Start by placing hand or foot in the paint (or we used paint brushes to paint the palm of one hand). The make your print on the paper you plan on using. Once dry or dry-ish, you can use a paintbrush to add the red nose, paint on antlers and add eyes. Then the rest of the paper can be decorated or left blank, depending on the project. For a framed piece for a gift, it might be best to leave the rest of the space white for a clean look, like the one above. We just did ours for fun and as decorations for the house, so I let the kiddos go to town.

We only used paint for ours, but you could easily use twigs or pipe cleaners as antlers. Googly eyes could be used instead of painted ones also.