New Board Books for the Spring

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Spring is basically upon us and as everything awakens, I am noticing I know several people who just had babies or about to have babies. It is the perfect time to look at board books to read to little ones or gift!! Today I have four new board books (one being released tomorrow) to share with you. The first is Hey, Little Night Owl by Jeffrey Burton and illustrated by Joy Hwang Ruiz. 

Happy Spring! Let's Look at Books about Flying Things #Birds #Planes

Disclosure: I was sent these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Happy First Day of Spring!! Spring is my favorite season because I love watching things come back to life. One sure sign of spring are the birds. Yesterday I saw a robin in our yard and this morning I was awoken to the quacking of the ducks. Sure signs spring is here!! In honor of the first day of spring I thought I would share the books that have been collecting on my review shelf about things that fly--birds and machines! I hope these will inspire you to get the kids outside and looking to the sky!!

Autumn Crafts with Dollar Tree Supplies -- a Crafty Weekends Craft and Link Party

Disclosure: I will receive a small percentage from any purchases made from the Dollar Tree links. All opinions are my own!

This week I am sharing some easy fall crafts with supplies from Dollar Tree. They had some cute autumn ribbons. I chose a plaid. I also got a burlap ribbon spool and one of the adorable fall owls. I also used a 10-inch Styrafoam wreath form. I wrapped it with burlap ribbon and used a pin to hold it. Then I tied a bow with the plaid ribbon and hot glued the owl and a decorative pick (I bought elsewhere) onto it. I attached a loop of twine as well to hang it. I am going to give it to my parents to hang on their door of their new condo.

Just Us Girls Book Review--Mother Daughter Crafts

Disclosure: I was sent this book to review free of charge from Quarry Books. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Today I get to share with you a wonderful book called Just Us Girls: 48 Creative Art and Craft Projects for Mothers and Daughters to do Together by Cindy Ann Ganaden. This book has some fun projects for any mother and daughter team to try. It promotes bonding time which is always important. Hazel loves that it is called Just Us Girls. She thinks of it as a secret time to do fun things. As usual I let Hazel go through and pick some crafts to try. She limited herself this time or maybe I limited her by not giving her as many papers to mark pages. 

Sharing Saturday 14-43

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week and to everyone who shared the love by visiting posts that others shared. As a result we have a most clicked! From In the Playroom, Sensory Play with Chocolate Cloud Dough.

Last week we had many Halloween themed posts (I will be featuring some skeleton posts on Sunday). There were also Frozen themed posts, spiders, math and lessons and so much more. If you have not had the chance to check them all out, you should! Today I am featuring some pumpkin themed posts and a few favorites of mine.

Easy Cup Owl Craft

Well yesterday we went to Lakeshore Learning for their free craft. They had the kids making owl pencil holders out of styrofoam cups. (If you click the link above and then click the picture of the owl pencil holder it gives you their instructions.) We made three. First Hazel made a brown one since the craft leader told her to color the cup first.

Sharing Saturday 13-42

Ok, I have been a bad hostess the last few weeks. Once again I have not made it to visit many. I'm so sorry. I have to admit my life seems crazy from now until the new year. Hopefully I'll find time again soon. I am so behind on emails and social media as well. We also dealt with Hazel having a cold. She was sick enough to stay home and want mommy, but well enough to need to be entertained, so I didn't have the time I usually do the past few days. This is also why Flamingo Friday did not happen this week. Between Halloween and a sick child, I was lucky to check the computer. Anyway, I hope you had a chance to check out the great posts shared last week. They look amazing!! There was a large tie for the most clicked, so we will just feature a few that caught my eye.

1) From Doting on Deirdre: Wise Old Owl Crafting

2) From There's Just One Mommy: Preschooler Owl Craft

3) From What We Do All Day: 25 Math Activities for After School

4) From April's Homemaking: 52 Weeks of Fairy Tales #49--Lichka

5) From Juggling with Kids: The Secret to Cutting Felt

6) From Trillium Montessori: Parts of a Turkey (Free on Teachers Paying Teachers)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess:
This week we shared a Baby Moses craft and books we have been reading, an Islamic Snow White, craft book review to make felt animals, and our Halloween.

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Halloween Decorations

Today I will share a few more Halloween crafts we have made. Now remember I hate the blood and gore and scary side of Halloween, so our crafts are much more friendly. Like these adorable black cats pictured above made from toilet paper rolls. I wish I could remember where I saw it. Sorry!! (If it was your blog, please let me know, so I can add a link!!) I had planned to make the adorable owls at Family Fun Magazine, but Hazel made one sort of that way at Sunday School on Sunday. We may do it still though.

Hazel's Sunday School Owl (studying Solomon)

Then we made an adorable mummy from a paper towel roll. We got this idea from All New Crafts for Halloween by Kathy Ross. It has beads on pipe cleaners (with straws to help stabilize them) for eyes. I wrapped it with crepe paper instead of toilet paper since it was already a nice width and I had some in the craft room.

Making Mummy

Hazel also decorated a foam pumpkin with some new glitter glues.

Hazel also informed me that her baby doll Pocahontas was going to her first Halloween party as a fairy princess. She had picked out a baby doll tiara and wand at the craft fair at the Pumpkin Patch this past weekend. We decided she needed some fairy wings to have a complete costume. So I took some floral wire (bought at the dollar store) and made wing shapes. Then we glued on some tulle to both sides. While the glue dried, Hazel decorated them with glitter glue. Then I cut them out the next day and tied a piece of elastic cord to them for her arm holders. 

So what do you think? It was a pretty easy costume for a baby doll. If I had been making them for Hazel I would have sewn the tulle rather than glue it, but we were looking for a quick way to make them.

Hope you will join us tomorrow night for Sharing Saturday!! Come share your child-oriented activities and crafts and get inspired by all that is shared!

Owl Graduation Gift

Reminders:

There is still plenty of time to share at Sharing Saturday! Please stop by and check out all the wonderful ideas already shared and share your child-oriented crafts and/or activities. I am also collecting ideas for teacher gift ideas. Please stop by the link party to share any and all that you have!

Special Announcement: 

I'm so excited to be a part of this. Fifteen + wonderful bloggers/blogs are getting together to host a Virtual Summer Book Club. Each month an author will be chosen and all you have to do to participate is read one book by the author and do a craft tied to the book. Then come back here the third Monday of the month and link your post about it to our link party. The author for June is Mo Willems. (I know we are having trouble choosing just one book!)

Now back to our normal post...

Today we were suppose to go to a graduation party for the main person who runs the nursery at my church. She and her sister also babysit for us, and often Hazel is one of the only children in the nursery at church so she loves getting the attention of the high school girls. Since we went to the doctor yesterday and found out Hazel does have a bug that is going around and is still contagious we did not get to go to the party. However, we do have a gift for her. While on Pinterest, I saw something that was an owl and it said "Owl miss you." (The pin came from Lisa Storms Blog.)It hit me that we would do something owl related and make a card from Hazel with that on it. I thought of making one of the toilet paper roll owls and filling it with candy hugs and kisses (like this one on Clean & Sensible), but wanted to do something more.

I went looking for a good owl pattern or picture that I could make a pattern from and somehow came to We All Sew and this pattern by Ashley Johnston. Now that said, I found this pattern through another blogger, but for some reason I did not save the link and cannot find it again. She had made a smaller version of Ashley Johnston's pattern. I saved the pattern but it does not have a source on it. If you are the blogger, please let me know! I did add buttons to the inner eyes as well and made the front a pocket. figuring it might be a good place for a college student to hide something she doesn't want anyone else to find.

Next we made a card. I used Printshop and made this. I had Hazel color the front. Here is the card in pdf form in case you would like to use it (I changed the fonts a bit, but it is basically the same). Sorry the front of it is so blurry. You can see it a bit better in the next picture. I also picked up an owl necklace at one of the craft stores for $1 and helped Hazel make it. We punched a hole in the card an attached it.

I will bring it to church tomorrow to give to her since we couldn't go to the party. Today it poured so I was kind of happy to have a stay-at-home day. How was your Saturday?

This is where I link up...

Snowball Fight (Indoors) and weather related crafts

Well dear sweet Hazel has really been wanting to have a snowball fight and to make a snowman, but Father Winter has not been successful this year in letting it happen. (Though we may get some this weekend.) I decided to make her some indoor snowballs. This idea came to me when I made a needle felted wool ball to put in the dryer. Adding them to a load in the dryer decreases the amount of time needed in the dryer.  I used wool stuffing which happened to be white. Hazel saw them and called them snowballs. (I had made one for my mother since her dryer is horrible and takes forever to dry clothes.) She also told me she wanted one.

Since Hazel feel asleep on the way home from school, I had time to make these for her. When she woke up we had a snowball fight and we made a snowman. When Daddy came home, we repeated everything.

I also finished another owl this morning. I gave this one (and another one similar to the ones in this post) to Hazel's teacher for her classroom. Again I got the pattern at Natural Suburbia.

I made this one a snowy owl. The kids were fighting over them in school today.





Another craft we did this morning was one I saw on Pinterest, but the original came from Hands On: As We Grow. A fruity o's rainbow. I was thinking you could also do this with conversation hearts especially the Sweetheart ones since they have the nice blue ones.

I happened to have a box of Fruit Loops in the house because we strung them to make Hazel a necklace and bracelet last week. She enjoyed eating them while she glued them on.


We also finished up some valentines and this afternoon after her nap we got them mailed at the post office to my family. Since we add crafts, a picture frame with a picture, etc. we needed to go to the post office to see how much to put on them. Hopefully they will get there by Tuesday.

Anyway, that is how we spent our day. Tomorrow we are hoping to get outside for a bit since it is suppose to be close to 50 and Saturday we are suppose to get an arctic freeze and snow storm.

One final note, please go check out all the amazing Sharing Saturday entries this week. We have received a few in the past few days and I would love for you to see them. And of course come back to share with us again this weekend!!

Goodbye, Thanksgiving, Hello Christmas Season

We had a nice relaxed Thanksgiving here. I have decided I would like every year to be as relaxed and low key. No one ate too much and we didn't have too many choices since I still am not 100% and didn't want to cook too much. Really it was a perfect day except for the two-year-old whining we dealt with and the fact that I needed a nap half way through the day.

We started working on more Christmas ornaments. Usually we put our trees up this weekend and decorate. I pulled out our new smaller Christmas trees for the front window. Last year our small one got to the point of being unusable, so at the post Christmas sales I bought two small prelight trees that are meant to go on a front porch. After pulling them out, we decided to put both in the window with some Santa decorations inbetween them. I'm not allowed to put lights outside so the windows are all I get. My dear husband (who is an electrical engineer) is a bit paranoid about fire.

Hazel wanted to make a mushroom ornament. We found the pattern over at Echinops and Aster. She picked out the colors and I cut and sewed. Then while checking out the mushroom pattern we followed the link to the owl at Juicy Bits. I did the owl while Hazel was sleeping, but will let her choose colors for one as well.

Then for our child made ornaments, we did some gluing. I bought some star buttons in Christmas colors at one of the craft stores and Hazel wanted to color and glue, so she made a picture. I think it might make a nice card for one of her grandmothers.

We also made the popsicle stick Christmas trees. I cut the sticks and we glued them together and then we decorated them with the buttons. I finished them up since she got bored with it yesterday.

This morning Hazel wanted to make a scarecrow.  For our last fall activity we made one. I'm thinking I might put a ribbon on it and hang it on the tree as well. I got the idea and pattern for the clothes from Thanksgiving Day Crafts by Arlene and Herbert Erlbach. It is the craft book I took out of the library that I really liked.

Now I need to go add ribbons to all the ornaments we have been making and finish cleaning up the clutter of the fall decorations so we can decorate for Christmas.

Hope you are having a lovely day!!

Lazy day, but lots of crafting

My owls

So I woke up with a sore throat this morning. I think I'm catching Hazel's virus. We have laid low today. I sat in the family room and knitted and did a little needle felting while she played. Oh, and she tried to help, but she didn't listen and stabbed me with the felting needle tool (the one with five needles though one was broken so I think only four went into my finger). I have been working on crafts for the Cape Ann Waldorf School's Holiday Fair. They have a Wee Folk Shoppe where the kids go in and for a certain number of tickets can buy items and have them wrapped for gifts. From what I have gathered many choose gifts for themselves over their parents and the gifts are more aimed that way. I have been working on these owls for it. I got the pattern at Natural Suburbia. I think they are so adorable. I'm going to make Hazel some when I get a chance. I used different size needles to get the two different sizes.