DIY Envelope Liners for Christmas Cards from Scrap Wrap

When I was making my Christmas cards this year, Shutterfly had beautiful colorful envelopes to choose from and liners.  Before I knew if I had picked gold envelopes with a beautiful print liner.  I failed to see the part that the envelopes were 24 cents extra a piece and the liners were another 69 cents each!  ouch  Since I get 50 cards thats an extra $46.60 just for something that is immediately going to be thrown away..... I know that all people truly cherish the cards themselves.... or so I tell myself that, but the envelope..... well now we are stretching it.  I splurged and got the envelopes and skipped the liners.  By the time my cards came in the mail I had already been happily wrapping presents and had that strip of extra paper along the top.  That go me thinking.  I measured a bit against my envelope, trimmed a little, added some school glue and voila!  Finally a chance to use that extra wrapping paper that is only really good for gift cards. 

To make these just cut your wrapping paper a little shorter than your envelope.  As long as you can cover the top of the fold (under where you lick) to whatever you can see you are good.  I trimmed mine down diagonally a bit but I don't think you need too.  Some are longer into the envelope, but who cares.  I added a little glue to the top part so they don't fall out.  I did this while watching reruns of the Tudors.  Mindless work and at least I am using my scraps.  

If you have a paper shredded you can also shred the scraps and use them in gift bags instead of tissue paper.

DIY- Giant Christmas Star

My lovely neighbor started decorating her yard this past weekend and seeing her finished product made me think that I needed to up my game.  After looking at pinterest and Lowes, I didn't really find anything I liked.  My husband said he could make me a big star out of PVC pipes and asked if I could dress it up for the second story.  He originally wanted to mount it on the roof, but that didn't look as cool as just hanging it.  Using the pipes we had, we made the first star and I decorated it and I LOVE it!

Mr. Adorable with the Christmas Star

Each pole on this star was about 4 feet long.  I used two and a half packages of tinsel and 400 white on white lights.  

Supplies from Lowes

While I was at Lowes, I picked up a few more 10 foot lengths of PVC pipes and noticed that they had red tinsel and lights.  Since we do our house with white lights and red trim, I thought some red stars to line the flower beds would look nice. We cut the PVC in thirds, so 3 feet 4 inches.  You need 2 pieces to make one star and you will have one leftover.  My husband duct taped the ends and then centered the star and duct taped the middle.  I plan to make five more stars in white and red for my flower beds.  

to make, just wrap tinsel around, then wrap lights around

finished red star 

I'll post another picture when we officially light up next weekend, but this is how the silver one looks on my house.  I love the sparkle and it looks lovely during the day.  I think this would look great over a fireplace mantle too

Easy Halloween Teacher Gift $3.00

Why in the world am I getting my kids teachers Halloween gifts?  Who knows, but I found these adorable pumpkin soap dispensers at Michael's for $3.99.  The soap smells like apple deliciousness and they are so sparkly.  I love it.  After using my 40% off coupon I got them for $2.39 each.  I bought two packs of Halloween ribbon that were about 70 cents each on sale.  I used a wooden stick and clothes pins and wrapped the ribbon around the sticks and baked them at 250 degrees for 20 minutes to make them curly- cut them into short strips and looped them through the tag on the pumpkin.  A quick print out circle tapped to the tag and they were ready.  Adorable Halloween gifts for anyone.  I could have used one in my neighborhood BOO game.  (and I bought one for myself)

Farewell Sweet Providence

Our sweet chicks are now 10 weeks old and it has become evident that one of them is not like the others.

Providence is quite a bit larger and more comby and wattly than the other girls.  After posting pictures of her on the backyard chickens website we had a unanimous vote of rooster :(  We weren't really sure what to do.  We never intended to get a rooster ( I like to wake up around 8 am with minimal crowing from the children folks before)  Providence seemed like part of the family so we knew we wanted a fate better for her/ him then stew.  One night, while walking, Dan and the kids meet a vegetarian up the street (in the county land) named Bob who adopts wayward animals who might meet a terrible fate and lets them live out their lives.  So this afternoon we loaded up the wagon with Providence and said our goodbyes :(


Remember how cute Providence was as a chick?

2 days old

First time free ranging in the backyard

So today was a sad day......

Ready to go to her/ his new home

I couldnt stand to go with them.  I was afraid I would cry and make the kids upset.  About 20 minutes later Dan texted me that he was on his way back with a hen.....?..... ummmm, Bob traded us Providence for a hen?  Apparently as soon as Bob saw Providence he said she was actually just and absurdly large and well developed hen and even though she had a large red comb and wattle that she had many hen characteristics.  Back to backyard chickens and they all disagree and still believe she is a rooster, so right now there are still four chickens in the coop and we are waiting to see if a crow happens or if Bob is right and VERY large eggs happen :)

The Busy Toddler Easy Stained Glass

While we were visiting Katie's new Pre-K the teachers were trying to clean out some stuff from their classrooms and had a free table.  On it was an older book called The Busy Toddler.  It looked like it pre-dated the iPad so I figured it would be perfect for our family.  We have been choosing activities from the book.  So far they have all used stuff we have around the house and are pretty easy, though some seem more geared towards my busy Pre-Ker.

The activity we choose was stained glass leaf art.  We took two pieces of equal sized wax paper, mine were t really equal but I cut them later. I sent Katie in the backyard to find some pretty leaves.  Then we mixed a little glue with some paint.  I added a tiny bit of water because the paint seemed thick.  This drove my daughter crazy since the paint had ain't holes in it.  After she got over it she painted both pieces of wax paper stuck the leaves on and smushed the papers together.  Then I cut off the uneven edges and hung it up in the window.  I thought the spaces caused by the water looked beautiful.  

My almost two year old was asleep during this craft so I'm not sure how he would have done with it.

Meet Spec

Spec is our beautiful speckled sussex chicken.  She is now two months old!

Remember back when Spec was just a sweet little chick?

Well she has grown into a beautiful 2 month old pullet and is even starting to get her speckles.  She is very adventurous.  Even as a baby she was the best hunter.  At two days old she caught several roly polys and other bugs.  At one month, she caught and ate a bee.  Every time I bring out treats she is the first to try them.  Kuddos Spec for leading by example.

Spec enjoying one of her favorite treats- clover!

And not to be biased because all Grandmas love their grand babies the same, I hate to admit that she is one of my favorites to hold and snuggle with.  She is just so soft and loving. 

Cant wait to get some of her eggs soon 

Katie's Quiet Book - Weave It

I have started and not finished two pages for Katie's quiet book.  Today she wanted me to make her a weaving one.  This one was SOOOOO easy.  If you are going to make a quiet book for a slightly older kids, do this page.  I cut out 14 strips the short way of a piece of felt.  I didn't have enough new pieces so some were scraps the long way.  Were they all the same length? NO  Were they all the same width?  NO WAY  Were they even the same length across one piece?  NOPE  Does it matter for the weaving page?  NOT AT ALL  I lined them up, turned on my sewing maching and went straight across.  Then down.  EASY.  Some pinteresters put cut little "weave it" on their weaving pages.  I may do that sometime, but it really doesn't need it.  She loves the page and it took 10 minutes start to finish (max) with a 4 1/2 year old helping.

I thought it was interesting that my husband and I taught her how to weave differently.  Now if only I could photoshop the mess of my craft room out of this picture :)

Four Favorite Sight Word Games for my Pre-K er

Before having kids I was a fifth grade teacher.  By fifth grade kids obviously know their sight words so I never had to teach that skill until I had my very own Pre-K kiddo that wanted to learn how to read.  I made a ton of flash cards and drilled her but she hated it.  How could we make learning sight words more fun?

These are our four favorite game to play right now as we get ready for Kindergarten next year.  They are all fun to play and don't involve technology.

# 1 THE LETTER BALL:

I know, I said sight words but hear me out.  You toss the ball back and forth and try to say a word or name that starts with the letter that your thumb is closest to.  Since my daughter has two thumbs I let her choose which one she wants to use.  No repeats allowed- so once she says Katie she has to come up with something new.  We like this game because it is fun to play catch and it teaches kids to listen for the beginning sound in a word.  So if she sees a word like BIG she can look at the letter sounds and try to sound it out until she commits it to memory.

# 2 SIGHT WORD GO FISH

I think this game has helped the most to learn her sight words.  She loves to play go fish and now instead of cards with random pictures we use words.  I cut out cards and hand wrote the words on them.  I used all capital letters, all lower case letters, and first letter capital rest lower case.  Why?  I figured in reading she would see words written all different ways and would still need to know that it was the same word.  You could also do them all the same or just do letter go fish.  When we play I ask her the word and show it to her so she sees and hears the word.  Even if she doesn't know a word in her hand she can show me and I just say, nope I don't have a me, go fish.  I try to never point out- oh you have me, thats a me.  It is supposed to be fun.  

# 3 SIGHT WORD BINGO

I chose about 20 sight words and made up some BINGO cards (I cut a piece of card stock in half)  We use cheerios as markers.  This game is more fun with multiple people, so we have my one year old play too.  He likes to eat the cheerios, but it is still fun.  

# 4 ROLL A SIGHT WORD:

We have just started playing this game.  We roll the dice and whatever number you get you have to find a word on the list with that many letters.  Bonus points for this game since it involves math skills too- counting dice spots and letters and writing skills- it is hard to write those long words in the small spaces.  We use the same list over and over again to learn all of the words.  Once you used a word you cross it off so it cant be used again.  Sometimes I ask my daughter to try to use the word in a sentence, but I don't push it if she doesn't want too because it is supposed to be fun.  If you notice there are only two six letter words and two one letter words, so once they are used if you roll a six or a one you are out of luck.  Then we tally up who got to write the most words.

I use this as my word list

I use this as the page to write the words

So those are my four favorite games for my four year old to learn her sight words.  Am I missing anything great?  I am always looking for new ways to teach my daughter without using apps.

Levi's Dinosaur Invite- TWO

I know his birthday is technically like two months away, but it is never too early to start planning these things, right?  I looked online for cute dinosaur ideas for his invitation and found nothing for two year olds.  Four seemed to be the ideal age for a dinosaur party since you could ROAR, so and so is turning four.  Well, my kid is turning TWO and he likes dinosaurs.  So what rhymes with two?  Well, lots of things- blue, moo, crew- but those don't sound dinosaury.  So we had to come up with this little dinosaur egg with the pull out invitation.

Levi's Quiet Book Page 2- The Road and the Pond

Sweet little Levi loves cars so I had to make him a page with cars on it that he could move around.  My grand plan was to make a double page with one long road that curved around through an interesting landscape.  I spent a whole day trying to figure out how to do this.  I make the big road and used a pipe cleaner as the track to attach the car since I could bend it, but the pipe cleaner wouldn't stay put so I had all of these ridiculous tunnels to try to keep it in place.  It looked bizarre. Only in Japan would a road have that many tunnels.  So eventually I caved and decided that it would have straight line roads with multiple cars.  I was going to have two horizontal roads and one vertical road....  It was too much black so I ripped out the vertical road and made the natural scene a little bigger.  Doesn't everyone prefer another grassy hill and an apple tree to another road?  I know that technically roads are considered open space by the Carlsbad development committee, but in my world.... I digress.  I wanted more trees

  

I like to have my son test these things out as I make them.  His favorite part was.... the DUCKS.  Hummm.  Maybe I shouldn't have spent for ever trying to come up with roads and should have just made a duck pond.  At first I attached the ducks with a small string to the middle of the pond so they wouldn't fly away, then I added velcro to the ducks and their base of operation.  After moving them around a few times I decided the velcro was lame and removed it.  Now they are more free ranging ducks. 

The finished product!!!!

My four year old moved the duck onto the top road and had the police car run him over.....  I think this could be made for an older child too with a little apple basket and removable apples.  I have so much c r a p all around my house that I wanted everything to stay connected to the book.

If anyone knows how to make a winding road with a car attached, let me know!

Levi's Quiet Book Page 1 - Stop Light

My neighbor decided that we should make quiet books for our little boys and that we could make two of each page and then trade them.  There are sooooo many cute ideas on pinterest for quiet books.  Since I have no sewing skills, I figured I needed to start easy.  The stoplight seemed perfect for me.  Simple design and simple activity since Levi is only 21 months old.  I wanted activities that he could do on his own with success.  The idea of the stop light is to match the three colors.  

He loved the colors!  Good Sign.  He got to put yellow on yellow

After getting praise for putting the yellow on yellow he put them all on yellow

His work completed!  I guess he can grow into it, which may be a good thing since who knows how long it will take to make a whole quiet book :)

The stop sign if you want to make one.  I double sided the circles that he would be moving since he is not exactly gentle with things.  I also used velcro on the stop sign and where I wanted the pieces to go after the game.  Since my neighbor and I don't want their pieces getting lost around the house I think I will also add a small string so they can not be played away.

Bird Brain

Having chicks for a little over a week is certainly making me the expert on chicken lingo.  Today I put a bowl of treats into their cage.  They all stood around ignoring it until one chick pecked at a piece of zucchini.  Suddenly the race was on and all four chicks HAD to have the same piece of zucchini even though there was a whole tray full over it.  They fluttered and chased each other all over the cage, spilling hay everywhere and surely ruffling their feathers.

Chicken Coop Day 1

After spending all day yesterday (a Saturday) looking at coops for sale online, on pinterest, on DIY sites we got nowhere!  The coops that we could buy were way to expensive and too small for our four chickens.  We also couldn't afford to spend $500 to $1,000 for something that looked nice and was big enough.  So we started trying to do it ourselves.  The day ended with frustration.  Luckily Katie had felt a little sick all day and had been stuck in bed so by the time the evening rolled around she was ready to go.  Dan and Katie went to Lowes at like 9 pm (gasp) and bought some wood and screws.  We were committed.  Without a plan in mind I knew I wanted something Dan called "fancy" for my chickens.  He brought home siding which matches the style of our house and some 2 by 2s.  After drawing a crude design we got to work this morning.  Dan cut and I painted.  We decided to stick with the colors of our house, which is pretty dull, but it will blend in nicely in the backyard and we already had the extra paint around from the previous owners so it was essentially free.  I also figured I could add a few touches to spruce it up.

After a day of work, I think it is coming together nicely.  We have the base of the house built.

A giant piece of siding to work with

Dan is cutting the frame

Katie is ready to paint

first coat is on

Painting the shutters (I tried 4 colors)

Everything is upright now

Katie Approves

The coop so far

We still have A LOT to do!  We need shutters for the other side, planter boxes, shingles for the roof and not to mention the practical stuff like roosting boxes, a pull out tray for easy cleaning, a stick for them to sit on, a ramp to get into the coop, and an actual run to play in.  Glad tomorrow is Monday and this probably will be sitting in the garage all week :)  At least if the chicks don't make it Katie will have an adorable doll house!