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Category Archives: Crafts

Day 120. Seeing Colors.

Written on April 26, 2010 by just a night owl in 170 School Days, Crafts

Oh, school is getting tougher and tougher. The count down is seriously on. I can not wait until school is out! Today we got through the assignments and spent some time coloring rice. I ran across this on line and it looked like fun.

There were multiple recipes and ways I found to do this, but I am not into measuring and little details like that. This was the way we tried it and it worked perfectly. Complete directions are below.

Take gallon size ziploc bags.

Dump a bit of vinegar, rubbing alcohol, white rice (uncooked), and a few drops of food coloring. We used liquid not paste.

Zip bag tightly. I really can not stress that point enough.

Dance it out while shaking the bag until everything looks covered and pretty.

We then dumped each color onto jelly roll pans lined with parchment and put in the oven on 200 degrees for about 30 min. I turned it off and left the rice in until the next day.

Everything was dry and the color does not rub off.

I put it in quart size ziploc bags to store.

This will be used for future collage making projects….

My husband said to me today “babe, the art projects are coming along fabulous…how is english and math?”

Oops.

Now there is just 50 school days left until summer.

Day 110. A Project A Piece.

Written on March 26, 2010 by just a night owl in 170 School Days, Crafts, Homeschool Tips

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The kids favorite part of school is doing experiments and projects. It doesn’t matter what the subject. They enjoy the hands on learning a lot. We are currently working on the following:

First, I have started Bible Memory Verses with my 5 year old. She can’t read yet, but Abeka has these great Memory Verse cards for preschoolers. The pictures become the prompts for her verses. Her first one is

“I am fearfully and wonderfully made” Psalm 139:14

She walks around saying this all day. I hope this penetrates into her heart and mind…forever. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all live the day to day, with this as the truth of the foundation of our souls? How would we be different?

Next is my 11 year old son. Grandma gave us a Chia professor. Creepy? Uh huh. Perfect for a 11 year old boy. It lives in the classroom, thank goodness. The reviews say that he will grow a mullet first. Oh, how I hope so. An Einsteen Chia with a mullet. Brilliant.

Finally my 9 year old daughter is growing stalactites. This truly amazed me. Maybe I am too easily entertained, but you should try this. It’s crazy. This picture is after three days.

Here’s how you can do this…take two glass jars. Fill with warm water and baking soda. Keep adding baking soda until there is enough that it will no longer dissolve in the water when stirring. Next, take a piece of yarn and tie a paper clip on each end. Place the ends of the yarn in the two jars with a plate or something to catch the extra crystals underneath. You don’t dip the yarn in the water mixture…it does this on it’s own. The water creeps up through the yarn. Creeping crystals? What’s not to love. If you wanna get a little out of control, then try adding some food coloring to the water too. We will do that next.

This may be common knowledge to most, maybe I just didn’t pay attention in science. Whatever the case, I find this pretty fascinating. It happened so very quickly.

Now there are just 60 school days left until summer.

Craft Tray.

Written on March 12, 2010 by just a night owl in Crafts

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This past week I found an awesome way to store all our craft supplies we had laying all over the house.

First: Take any tray

Second: Fill with terra cotta pots or other small containers

Third: gather up all your fun crafty supplies.

This works great to be able to take it down off of the shelf and set it in the middle of the table for the kids to easily see and access all of their favorite crafty fun!

The terra cotta pots are just heavy enough that they are not easily knocked over as the kids are looking for their treasures.

I love organization…a little too much sometimes!

Day 99. Sew what?

Written on March 9, 2010 by just a night owl in 170 School Days, Crafts

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I love my blog readers, my friends. Within minutes of a posting of my infamous mommy melt down musings today, I had comments, emails, and instant messages of amazing encouragement. I felt hugged and all warm and fuzzy…all day long.

We took it easy today. We met some friends at the park for a 2 hour nerf gun war and some amazing homeschool life conversation between me and my great friend that I met at Bradshaw, the kids former school. We are both homeschooling now. We both went into homeschool, kicking and screaming (her classy and mildly and me full on tantrum). I always enjoy conversations with her. I have known her for almost 5 years since the first week we moved to Sacramento. She speaks wisdom.

After some naps and chill time this afternoon, we got out the sewing basket for the girls to practice their Martha Stewart skills. Last week, I bought an Easter basket at Joann’s and filled it with plastic buttons, giant needles, felt, yarn and some plastic shapes to sew. I got the idea of the felt and buttons from the Well Rounded Mama.

Here was one of the finished products.

The basket cost $10 to put together. Well worth it.

I am happy to have made it through today. I am happy that there is only 71 school days left until summer.

I’m the Map.

Written on March 4, 2010 by just a night owl in Crafts, Homeschool Tips, My home

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I NEED YOUR HELP!

I purchased this map and now it is roughly tacked up to the wall to see if I like…I wanted a bold statement, um haha.

Here lies my problem.

See all the white? It all has to be trimmed.

Is it prepasted? um no, adhesive needs to be purchased and applied.

Measurements on website were incorrect by a lot. Now the map is significantly bigger than my wall and we will lose part of the world when it is trimmed down to the correct size.

Color? it arrived significantly brighter then shown on my computer screen.

I am not happy about the amount of time to install, but it can be done. I love how visual it is. Although, I think I like the idea of it better than I like it. However, some days I walk in and am not feeling it. I am not after a map, just something to do with that wall that’s fun and different.

The map wall usually has all three desks sticking out from it. They are currently thrown around the room as the map is hung very insecurely with a couple of tacks.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? KEEP IT? or RETURN IT?

I won’t tell you which way I am leaning, for fear of possible public humiliation if you disagree with me!

I leave it up to you….however if you decide no my kids may cry, cuz they adore it !

Day 88. Diorama Day.

Written on February 24, 2010 by just a night owl in 170 School Days, Crafts, Curriculum

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Today it was Diorama Day. The kids both finished independently reading The Secret Garden and Tom Sawyer. We aborted Abeka’s reading program within 6 weeks of school starting. Seriously none of us could deal with it well. It would have the kids read 5 pages at a time. It was very choppy and just not our gig. I found some excellent things for our reading now. First stop was these novels and diorama’s. Next week new books begin.

This morning we went to Target to acquire some empty shoeboxes to begin the diorama project. When we got home, the kids picked their scenes out, discussed the book, and went nuts. Emma completely missed that the older two, were making scenes from their books. The funny thing is that she just went for it. With really no instruction on what it was “supposed” to be. She didn’t care and was happily proclaiming her creativity for the world to hear.

I still have my diorama that I made in 5th grade. It was of the book Benji and the Flood. It is packed far away in the abyss that is my garage. I remember making it with my grandma and grandpa. She clipped the metal ends off her special sewing pins to allow me to use the pearl at the top to hang down as rain drops in my box. Funny the things we remember.

Well here are our finished products! I love these. We are going to do them again this year for sure cuz they are fun!

This is Emma’s…do you see she has a chandelier hanging. I LOVE my girl. I’m training her well!

This is Taylor’s Secret Garden with real tissue paper flowers. Cameron’s follows of Tom Sawyer. Give that boy something to build and he is on a mission.

It was a great morning. Very relaxed. I really could play with crafts all the live long day!

Now there are just 82 school days left until summer.

Day 83. If At First You Don’t Succeed.

Written on February 17, 2010 by just a night owl in 170 School Days, Crafts, Random

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I had an idea…. and sometimes my ideas do not end well. These guys used to be two of my favorites in my home. We’ve all seen them before in their intended natural wood color state. Ikea sells them. I adore them. We put them into different acrobatic positions and laugh at them every so often. Then came the incident of twenty ten, that ultimately will lead to their demise. I wanted to get some more color up on top of my shelving unit. I thought “OOOH how fun. I will spray paint these guys red!” That’ll be different. Well, I was right on that one part. They are different.

With no regard for any common sense, I did it. I sprayed them. I killed them. They are creepy and now I can be classified as a murderer. Can you just imagine them coming to life and taking over the planet with their devilish little jig. WHAT was I thinking? I just may dream about these guys… and it will not be in a good way. They look soooo evil and that is definitely not the look I was going for for my classroom.

As I drop them in the trash, I am reminded that failure is part of life, right? Trial AND error are both o.k. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Do not be afraid to experiment and always laugh at your mistakes. That is definitely what this first year of homeschooling is turning out to be. It’s stretching me, teaching me, inspiring me, and definitely keeping me humble.

Now there are just 87 school days left until summer.

Bulletin Board Got Fancified.

Written on February 17, 2010 by just a night owl in Crafts, Homeschool Tips

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As I was going to the grocery store this morning, I had an idea. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Yeah, I stopped and did it right then. It took literally twenty minutes. I had all the supplies at home. It was a combination of several craft projects that I had seen online.

I had this boring black bulletin board, this wonderful circle cutter from Creative Memories, some gorgeous scrapbook paper needing to be displayed and of course, my Modge Podge.

I cut out a bunch of circles, in different patterns with my circle cutter and played with it until I found the layout that I liked.

Once I had the order that I wanted, I used Modge Podge to glue the back side only onto the bulletin board.

Here is the result!

It’s hanging on the wall in our classroom, by my desk.

HOW FUN! Still completely functional…only now it’s a bit fancy too!

I’m linking up with

PLAY Wall Art.

Written on February 9, 2010 by just a night owl in Crafts, My home

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This simple reminder and good use of scrapbook paper hangs on the wall in my home. I bought sixteen wooden squares from Joann’s ( I had to special order). I bought some yummy scrapbook paper with lots of different textures and some wooden letters to spell one of my favorite words…

P L A Y. Then I grabbed some left over fabric and embellishments from around the house and went to work.

1. Paint the sides of all squares. Make sure and paint the face of four of the squares that will hold the wooden letters. On the rest of the squares it isn’t needed. I chose ivory paint.

2. Paint the wooden letters to the desired color. I chose black.

3. Cut the paper/fabric to size for the face of the squares. I used both fabric and paper on mine.

4. Use Modge Podge to adhere papers, fabrics, and letters onto the squares.

5. Use any flowers, charms, ribbons, stickers, to accessorize… should you desire!

This quote to live by

“Never underestimate the power of acting young silly and crazy”

was a sticker mounted on light green solid scrapbook paper and mounted again on my original polka dot paper

The blue paper had a cool little BE YOURSELF design already in the design so I just cut it to make sure I had that part showing and then added three self adhesive silver embellishments

Make sure you paint all the sides of the squares! As clearly, thanks to this pic above, I missed a bit on the toile square. OOPS! I have to go back and do that one…

I used command strips to hang these up.

(YES, they really DO work!)

I want to make more! Imagine the possibilities!

I am linking up with

Christmas ABC’s Album.

Written on February 5, 2010 by just a night owl in Crafts

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You may remember my post awhile back about my sweet little friend Lillian. I wanted to share with you a great gift idea that can be changed up to fit any theme. I did a Christmas ABC’s album to give to Lillian’s family. I don’t have pictures of the completed product, but here is what I did.

A picture of Lillian with a Christmas object for every letter of the alphabet was the goal. It took a couple photo sessions to accomplish, but we did it. Here are some of my favorite shots.

A is for ANGEL

D is for Darling Santa Hat

E is for Egg Nog

M is for Mary

P is for Please No More Pictures

and S is for Star

I chose to print all the pictures in black and white matte finish. I purchased some coordinating lilac, aqua, and silver papers and letter punch outs. I kept the decor VERY simple in the 8×8 album to keep darling Lillian as the focus of each page.

A wonderful keepsake for her family to treasure.

AND I couldn’t stand that I didn’t have one to keep, so I inserted all the pictures into an iphoto book and printed one for myself!

This could be changed to Valentine ABC’s, birthday ABC’s or anything your mind can imagine!

Have fun!

Living My Days With Passion, Purpose, and Pizzazz

Category Archives: Crafts