This is an easy creative fun for kids all ages.  The best thing is that it travels well so you can put string and sand paper in the ziploc bag and hopefully your kids will enjoy it enough to stay quiet for a few minutes.  Plus it is relatively clean so you can be sure to arrive at grandma’s house clean and proper without pen marks all over your face.

You will need very coarse sand paper and yarn in various colors and sizes.  The best way is to go to a home store with a piece of yarn and see which sand paper works the best.  By no means send your husband unless you give him a piece of yarn too.

Our sand paper came package came with 3 sheets, perfect for multiple kids

Show your child how the yarn sticks to the sandpaper.  They will enjoy putting it on and pulling it off and creating new designs.  This activity is perfect for any age, even for mommy.

I have been trying to think of creative ways to recycle milk boxes in our house.  God know that with two milk drinking toddlers we go through a lot of milk, this summer specifically.  Lately it seems that my kids have replaced all their meals with milk.  I don’t blame them who wants to eat in a 100 deg heat.

I also used a piece of plywood or in this case yard stick, fishing line or transite.  I have no idea what transite is but I found it in a craft store which was much easier to find then fishing store.

There are also those hook an eye screws that I got at home depot fasteners isle.  I will spare you the embarrassment and tell you they are called hook and eye so you do not have to walk up to an associate and ask for twisty screwy things and be stuck drawing them in case he has no clue what you are talking about.  He should know better?

make a slot/hole on both sides of the milk box

that will fit the ruler/yard stick

screw the hook an eyes in

You can use the scissors to make small holes first which will make it a lot easier.  Also screw one side on the table (hum) before you push it through the milk box

make 3 notches on the top of the milk box (or more if you used a thicker ruler)

Pull the fishing line through the slots

and tie them on both sides of the ruler into the hooks

now all you need is a little one to play it.

My husband has been cleaning up his office from unused pieces of equipment.  He is an architect and he had these massive non working plotters in his office.  Two of them, taking over at least a quarter of the room.  None of them working since I met him, and we have been married for almost 6 years.  In any case this week these beastly clunkers were eliminated but we found a roll of paper in one of them, which I salvaged before it ended up in the dump.

We used this paper to trace ourselves, but you can use any paper you have laying around.

It was fun for the kids to see the different sizes of our feet

Some of the traces became peanuts

others shoes

and hand accessories

What I really wanted to do was to trace my kids so they would know what size they were, but they refused to lay down.  Sometimes I forget how small they still are, only 2.5

But with all the other body tracing and trying on shoes one of them finally caved in

So I traced my daughter, not doing a terribly good job since she was moving a bit

Then I cut her out.  I called her my daughters shadow but also continued to call her by my daughters name

We have colored her, giving her hair, eyes lips and even a shirt.  I bet an older child can have an absolute ball with it or you can even use some fabric scraps and allow a 4-6 year old to design a dress for her shadow self.

Our interaction was really basic just drawing and giving a hug but I can foresee that in the next few years we will be able to take this craft/fun into a whole different level.

This is the final installment of this years tadpole saga.  There have been some heartbreaks, some serious back stabbing, maybe even murder.  So if you have missed any of it you can always refer to Part I and Part II.  In this episode however we needed to deal with a major intervention.

You see the tadpoles where slowly developing their back legs.  I mean really slowly.  The biggest one took about 3 weeks from the moment the back legs looked like, well quite frankly poop to them resembling back flappers.  Once however the hind legs came within hours (definetly less then 24) the front legs appeared and the tail began to dissapear.

I really do not know anything about amphibians but it seems like the front legs were just hiding underneath the belly flap ready to come out when the back ones were developed.  Once that happened entered me at some wee hour of the night finding the almost frog speciment floating lifeless on top of the container.

I knew I had to act quickly so I built this contraption out of an empty milk box (we have a lot of those around) and figured that the frog can make a better choice of water or land then I would.  It seemed as if the frog wanted nothing to do with water and stayed on “land” (cardboard really) for the rest of the night.

In the morning I introduced the kids to their new friend no longer a tadpole

and actually let them hold it

my daughter was enamoured my son not so much

We let the frog out near the creek where we brought its water from and said our goodbyes

I love summer fun hair accessories.  Pinwheels are fun and easy to make.   You can put them into hair bands, rings or just leave them blowing in the wind.  You can make them twirl of be lazy like me and let them sit there as decorations, unless you get a hurricane and everything will be spinning.

Since I have a large box filled with torn out children book pages I decided to reuse them here.  If you have not been blessed with page rippers your book shelve and library will thank you but you will need to use some sort of thicker cards.  You could recycle old Birthday, Holiday and Thank You cards if you are like me and keep at least 5 seasons of Holiday cards hidden in nooks and crannies around the house you will not have to go to a store to buy any.  You will also need a piece of ribbon, needle, thread and scissors.  If you want your pinwheels to move you will also need small beads.  Mine were strictly for decoration.

I made two different sized pinwheels one was 2 inch square big

the smaller ones were 1 inch big

cut out squares of desired size out of paper

cut diagonal lines with scissors making sure you leave at least 1/3 of an inch in the center.  Do not cut all the way through.

Thread the needle, tie a knot at the end and sew through the ribbon

Sew through the center of the pinwheel.  If you want the pinwheels to move bead one bead onto the threat before you needle through the square.

Sew through the corner (1/2 of the corner really leave the other 1/2 alone)

continue with another corner

until all the corners have been sewn through.

Tie a knot, bead another bead if you want them to spin and you are done.  You can also make them into rings by sewing them around a pipe cleaner and wrapping around your finger.

Either way you choose they are so much fun to make and play with.  You can call this Christmas in July by recycling all your old Holiday cards into Pinwheels.  Now how about that wind?

This craft is more for parents or older kids.  This is an easy way to update your basic hair bands into beautiful hair accessories.  The younger kids can help by picking the fabric, drawing the circles and if parents feel comfortable cutting the fabric.  This is also a cute craft to do with the whole family.

I took cotton American themed fabric as well as sateen fabric.  I used nail polish container to trace circles from

I cut the circles out

I singed the edges of the sateen with lighter or candle.

you can’t do that with natural fabrics or you will burn them, believe me I tried

Stack the petals on top of each other.  I had between 6-10 petals of each color

Take needle, thread and rubber band

thread the center of the “flower” and continue to loop around the rubber band

keep threading the center of the flower and rubber band until the flower is tighter and to your liking

Tie a knot at the end

That’s it !!!! Now you have beautiful flowers.  You can make these with any fabric at any time

the sateen are my favorite ones of course

But even the cotton ones are beautiful.  Personally I think these would represent any occasion, team spirit so much nicer then a scrunchy and you don’t need a sewing machine.