More Spring crafts: Sewing with a 3 Year Old

How do you let a 3 year old sew by herself?  Yarn, burlap, and plastic needles!  She was thrilled to be sewing just like Mama, and I was happy that I could turn her loose to be creative without worrying about her poking herself or losing a needle where her brother could get it.  I think next time we'll also add the cute little felt buttons we've sewn with before and turn it into a pillow!

Captain America Costume!

My nephew Barrett asked for a Captain America costume, and I was thrilled to make it!  I made it a simple t-shirt project.  Using XL t-shirts for scraps, I got one blue t-shirt in his size and added the white star and the red and white stripes to make it look just like Captain America.  Then I used this tutorial to add muscles to the shirt!  I haven't taken pics of him in it yet, but he was thrilled and his older brother was jealous, so there may be more in my future!

I just use the biggest star I can get from the basic Photoshop shapes on a normal piece of paper for an applique pattern

four inch stripes because that fit neatly around the shirt.  He was a youth small.

Crafting with Serenity

I've been having so much fun lately trying out all the great ideas I've seen around blogland that I haven't had time to share them!  Worst of all, I seem to have lost most of the links for where I saw them originally, although I think most of them come from Teach Preschool.  But I'll share our pics anyway!

Serenity saw this ad from Jo-Ann's and said, lets get supplies and make this right now!!!  I love that she was so confident we could figure out a way to make anything.  I wasn't ready to teach her crochet just yet, so we decided to use the picture as inspiration for a painting, and this is what we ended up with!  Such fun and she was so proud of it.

Colorful hand prints =)  She rubbed her hands together to practice color mixing.

She wrote me a note!  I am SO excited to start adding words to our projects. Scrapbooking is surely on the horizon!

Marble painting

Winter Tree

Spring Tree

Summer Tree

Fall Tree

Daisy Chain Craft

I finally made the daisy chain craft featured on Filth Wizardry!  We love it! =)  And it's super easy to make, check it out!

More Spring Activities

In our family fun magazine they had this great idea to make a nest using a paper sack all scrunched up with twigs glued on.  This seemed perfect for Serenity who is always collecting leaves, twigs and flowers outside.  She loves anything that uses glue also.  Once the nest was ready, we used a few leftover Easter Eggs to populate it!

And then after she went to sleep, this happened!

 She was thrilled to see her eggs "hatch" =)

Mud cupcakes, another fun activity to use up the rest of the twigs, some flowers, and a muffin tin and spoon I got at the dollar tree.  Woo hoo!  We spend a little of every day outside right now while the weather is so beautiful.  I love this time of year when I don't have to hustle to get us out before it gets too hot. =)

Spring Puzzling with Serenity

Eric had the brilliant idea of trying to do all her puzzles at the same time.  She LOVED covering the entire floor with puzzles.  Took them all weekend to do but so worth it. 

 

My Fireplace

To continue with the crafty catch up, here's my Fireplace!  I posted a very pitiful Photoshopped version of my fireplace.  Then one day, I took the plunge!  I went to Lowes and picked up a quart of Kilz primer and went to town on it!  The change is amazing!  I think it's the first redecorating project that my husband has actually said, "It looks so much better!" Normally he's more in the "I'm happy you're happy" camp, but he actually really loves this!  So here's the before and after:

Before: Nasty nasty bronze, red bricks.  It was just soooo busy when you looked at it with my desk and everything we had in that room. 

And now nice and white! Goodbye Bronze!  Hello clean and simple. =)

Yeah, I still need to clean the glass on the doors.  But if it was perfect I'd have nothing to distract me from staring at my computer screen =)

80's Gala Centerpiece

I've been on a crafting craze this last month or so and I've gotten so far behind on sharing!  I'm sorry and I'll try to do a post a day for a while to catch up.  So here is a little eye candy for those of you that still totally love the 80's!

My sister's in charge of a fundraiser for our school with an 80's theme, so we wanted to do some fun centerpieces.  Serenity and I went hunting for branches, I painted them bright yellow and hot glued them into a brick to hold them up.  Then I added the slinkies!  It's about four feet tall, so nice and dramatic, for almost no money!  Slinkies from the dollar store and oriental trading, some paint, and a dollar cereal bowl from Target is the whole cost on this.  Around 5 dollars a table.

Easter Egg Map

I am so excited about this!!!  Serenity just loves maps right now and her atlas, so I decided we should have a treasure hunt for her Easter Eggs.  I drew three maps of our house, upstairs, downstairs, and our yard.  Then I took egg stickers and stuck them where we are hiding the eggs.  I used page protectors so we can reuse the maps later for other things.

We have this book called Me on the Map which has maps of the girl's room and house, and she loves it.  She falls asleep reading her National Geographic Kids Atlas these days, so I think this will be a big hit!

I'm sorry I've gotten so behind on posting!  I'm in the middle of serious party planning though so I'll have things to share soon!