Nesting and a Fun Craft

This Saturday I decided that I needed to be thorough in our vacuuming of the living room. We moved tables, the couch, everything. While we were busy deep cleaning Jonathan suggested rearranging the furniture. I was all for it. We had had the same basic set-up since we were married almost six years ago.

This set off a nesting kick for me. I then moved to the girls room where I thought I would do some organizing and consolidating to make room for our third girl. The girls' room has a huge closet that, unfortunately, was filled with a lot of Mommy and Daddy's stuff. So, I moved a lot of things into our room (which still needs to be gone through and put away). I then emptied a cabinet we had in the closet and moved it into the room. I am now using this for the girls clothes instead of the rubber-maid-type drawers under the beds. Now the drawers are holding craft items in the closet (I did all this because we're getting bunk beds in the fall and there won't be room for much under bed storage for clothes). So, are you all glad for that long-winded explanation?

My Mom asked how we were decorating the girls' room. I hadn't really thought about it, so her question ended up inspiring me. She bought the girls pink "coverlets" and is making them afghans with blues, purples, and the same pink. I'm excited to see how everything turns out. On the girls' bedroom door we have two foam flowers Abigail and I made a while back. We decided we needed to make another one for her baby sister, which is what we did this afternoon. You can find all sorts of free craft patterns and directions online, which is where we found this pattern for "Retro Window Watchers".

Simple July 4th Craft

I cannot believe that Independence Day is next week! I also cannot believe that we will be spending it at home for the first time in 9 years! Ever since Jonathan and I started dating back in 2002 I would head down to northern Virginia to spend the holiday weekend with Jonathan's family-complete with fireworks on the National Mall. Hopefully next year we can resume the tradition.

Anyway, I spotted a simple craft on a BabyCenter blog that I thought I would try with Abigail. I ended up using construction paper instead of foam. Abigail had fun with it and now we have two necklaces the girls can wear on July 4th (that is, if they last that long ;-)

Easter Eggs!

On Saturday we kicked off Easter weekend by coloring eggs. Abigail was able to do a bit more this year than last year while Sarah was more of a spectator.

It was about lunch time when we finished, so I asked Abigail if she wanted one of the eggs for lunch. Believe it or not, she hasn't had a hard-boiled egg up to this point in her life. She stated that yes, she wanted the orange one. So, she grabbed it and immediately tried to take a bite-before I had a chance to remove the shell!

Once we de-shelled the egg and seasoned it Abigail had her first taste. She said "mmm" but was just being polite I think. She didn't end up eating it.

Easter Craft: Paper Butterflies

We tried our hand at making paper butterflies this week. I found the idea on WomansDay.com. Though, I had trouble getting the template, so basically we went on our own with it.

I used scrapbooking paper instead of origami paper. I folded the paper in half, then in half again. Then I drew my own butterfly to cut out.

After cutting the paper we ended up with two butterfly shapes. We glued these together so that both sides of the butterfly would have the purple pattern on them.

The last step was to add a pipe cleaner for the body and antenna.

Abigail made one too (with a little help from Mommy).

Easter Craft: Stained Glass Cross

Today's craft was yet another I had to try as soon as I saw it: an Easter Stained Glass Cross.

When I looked over the directions I had a really hard time understanding them. So, I ended up doing things "my" way. Looking back on it, I probably wouldn't have had to do so much cleaning up work at the end if I had understood and followed the directions.

Here's a quick description of what we did.

1. Cut the cross and cross openings out of construction paper. After cutting out the cross I folded it in half (long ways first, then top to bottom) so I could easily and evenly cut out the openings:


2. Attach cross to the sticky side of contact paper.

3. Tear tissue paper into small pieces and attach to exposed contact paper. The girls were into tearing the paper. Abigail and I did most of the attaching while Sarah played with torn up tissue paper.

4. Trim excess contact paper.

5. Trim excess tissue paper. I ended up using an exact-o knife (this is probably an extra step I wouldn't have had to do if I had understood and followed the instructions).

6. Hang up! I didn't get the whole contact paper thing at first-why not just attach white paper and glue the tissue paper? The contact paper allowed for light to shine through to the colorful paper.

This is probably a craft more suited to older children, but it was still fun and I am happy with the results.

Easter Craft: Yarn Eggs

We made another Easter craft this week. As I was searching for creative ideas I knew I wanted to try this one as soon as I saw it. This week Abigail and I made Yarn Eggs.

I'll start off by saying that I don't think this craft was intended for 3 year olds, no matter how much supervision. Abigail was more interested in attempting to blow up balloons than actually doing the craft. Plus, every time a little bit of the glue solution got on her fingers she would wipe it off on her shirt, the table, you name it.

They still turned out though, so I think I'll make a couple more and hang them on our front door. We may make a couple for the girls' door too.

Easter Craft: Cotton Ball Lamb

We made our first Easter craft today. It is one of 40 lent activities we'll be doing. This one was pretty straight-forward and really easy for Abigail to do, though, I wish it would have occupied more of her time. Today we made a Cotton Ball Lamb.

We didn't have any paper plates, so I used cardboard that was packaged with a frozen pizza (I cut it a bit to make it smaller).

You'll notice Abigail is wearing pajamas. These weren't the ones she wore last night. In fact, I think these pajamas were maybe the third thing Abigail changed into today (and we made this craft at 9:00 AM)!

Lent Calendar

As a stay-at-home-mom I often lose track of what day it is, or when holidays come up. Case-in-point, I didn't realize lent started yesterday until I saw twitter comments about "Fat Tuesday" on Tuesday. I wracked my brain (and the internet) to see if I could come up with any Lent/Easter activities to help the girls understand Easter more and also count the days in anticipation of the holiday.

So, I decided on an "Easter Calendar" where we would mark each of the 40 days of lent with a decorated egg. Each egg represents a different Easter-related activity. I spent my free time Tuesday night constructing the calendar for the girls to see in the morning.

Some of the activities are simple, like watching an Easter movie or reading the Easter story in their Bible story book. Others are crafty (I'll share more on those when we get to them). When we get to 12 days before we'll have a special egg hunt each day to find one a dozen Resurrection Eggs.

I know the girls won't remember a lot of what we do (or even understand all of it), but it should give us something different to do for Lent. Plus, if things go well we may try it again next year.