Colorful Hair Wraps

Looks like we just came home from a fun vacation doesn't it. These are popular in tourist areas and many young girls get them on summer trips with their families. But you don't have to travel to an island in the Bahamas to get one of these you can do them yourself. They are easy and a fun way to celebrate summer.

You will need embroidery floss and a scissors.

Take a small section of hair and put it into a tight braid a bit smaller than the diameter of a pencil. Getting it wet may help hold in stray hairs. It may also help if you pull the rest of the hair back into a quick ponytail to keep it out of the way.

Choose the colors of floss you want to use and cut them 4 times the length of the braid. We choose 4 colors. Much more than 4 and you may have to make your braid a bit thinner because the floss is going to make it larger.

Put all your pieces together and find the middle. Place the middle under your braid and tie a knot as close to the top of your braid as you can. I just used a single knot but pulled pretty tight. Keep an eye on it and try to keep it high, it may try to slide down a bit as you start wrapping.

Choose the color you want to start with. Grab both strands of that color and wrap around the braid starting at the top. Make sure each time you go around you are right next to the last time you went around so that it covers the braid and the other colors. Wrap tightly, but make sure you are not pulling so much that the knot is sliding down. If it is push it back up to the top.

Some people do fancy knots as they go down I have done this before but it takes way more time, It is harder to keep stray hairs out, and it is really hard to remove when you want your wrap out. I also like the clean smooth look of this better.

 When you want to change colors, just put the strands of the color you are using back into the middle and grab the two strand of the color you want to change two and pick up wrapping where you left off.

Since you are wrapping with two strands at a time you could wrap with say one pink and one blue. It gives the wrap a neat stripe look.  It does get a little more tricky when you do this, because you have to make sure your strings stay in order and do not cross at all as you wrap. Single color blocks are easier until you have more practice.

When you get to a point you want to end it. Just take all the strands you have and tie them in a looped knot back on themselves. They do not need to be tied around the hair at the end. I left off a bit from the end of the braid so the her hair is hanging a bit out of the end. Sometimes they cut the ends at vacation destinations, sometimes you can continue it longer just wrapping the floss itself and then tie a ending knot if you have your floss long enough.

Anyway super fun, super cute, not expensive, and not too hard. Great for sleepovers. Or any holiday theme
Click to see a Halloween Candy Corn Hair Wrap Pattern.

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I Love Kiddie Cones.

I love these little kiddie cones I got at Hy-vee. This is the second year I have gotten them for summer treats.

 How do I love them? Let me count the ways....

1. They are just the right size! If I gave my kids a full size cone it would be larger than any portion of their meal was, which is NUTS!

2. There are 60 of them in a box. This means my three kids can each have 20 cones this summer before we need to buy more!

3. But the 60 cones come in two separate bags so that the other half of the box stays nice and fresh while you are busy eating the first 30 cones. This is a good thing during the humid summers we have.

4. You can use them as banana holders! Which reminds me I want to try chocolate frozen bananas and making them on a cone is a REALLY good idea I just realized. Stay tuned for that idea I will let you know how it goes.

5. Easy to decorate for the 4th of July if you want a quick and easy idea!

Keeping Kids Busy on a Long Flight?

I have flown to Korea and back! Long flight yes, but I only had to do it once with a child, and lucky for me that child was only 9 months old,  and super lucky for us, he pretty much slept most of the time.  But Malaysia is even farther than Korea! And that is where my daughter's buddy Linus (yes I know adorable name, and he is just as adorable to match it.) is headed this week with his dad.

How does one keep a 6 year old busy while in the air for 20 plus hours total? Well I heard this idea about using envelopes from a friend of mine and decided that that is what we would do for our friend Linus as a travel gift.

The idea is simple. Get a bunch of envelopes and fill them with different activities to keep him busy on his trip. The catch is... that our buddy Linus will have to wait two hours before he gets to open the next envelope.  So every two hours he will have a new surprise or activity waiting for him that he has not seen before. He has no idea what is in each envelope.  We have 10 envelopes ready for him to take on his trip.

Here is what we decided to put in them.

Envelope #1

Create your own puzzle and colored pencils. We also included a Ziploc bag to keep the pieces in when he is done. Instructions were to make your own puzzle! Draw anything you want, but the only rule is that there has to be color on every piece of the puzzle before you take it apart. Otherwise it would end up being a pretty tricky puzzle.

Envelope #2.

What 6 year old boy doesn't like 3-D! We found this soft cover book at the dollar store that came with 3d classes. It is not super thick but it is pretty cool. When you put the glasses on, the monkeys practically jump off the page. There is also great things to learn about jungles in different parts of the world and the animals and plants that live in the different countries.

Envelope #3

Go Fish Card Game. Thought I would put this towards the front of the trip so that he can play it again if he gets bored later. Card games are great to keep kids busy on plane rides.

Envelope #4

The Sticker Challenge

I got this sticker set in a scrapbooking section on clearance. The challenge is to use all the stickers and the colored pencils to make a picture scene. So for example he will probably have to draw legs and a body coming out of the swim trunks and put the sunglasses on the head he draws for that guy. I am hoping it will take some thinking to be able to use them all in a way that fits together.

Envelope #5

Bendaroo / Wikki Stix Dot to dot

I am sure you have heard of Bendaroo's, wax covered strings that you can bend and mold into fun things. Well they have been around for a while sold by another educational company that called them Wikki Stix. The Wikki Stix website has a few great activities you can do with their product and one includes free printable dot to dot pictures that you don't do with a pencil or marker, but you do using your Wikki Stix or Bendaroos. You lightly put them down and they will stick to the paper. It is great fun, I tried it myself a bit on the frog picture. They also stick to each other, and they are not messy, so I tossed some in a baggy for him and printed out a few dot to dots. One from the wikki stix website, and a couple others, Wubbsy and an airplane, I found by just searching dot to dot printables. I am sure the things he thinks to make out of these won't stop with the dot to dot pictures either. They are great fun.

Envelope #6

The m&m Guessing Game

Ok really I just made it up but I think it is a great activity, just might pass it on to a teacher friend or two. I went with the mini bag of peanut m&m's because we don't want little boys to be hopped up on chocolate and stuck on an airplane. I am sure 8 peanut m&m's won't get him too hyped up. Peanuts have protein that is good right?

Anyway... He has to guess how many m&m's are in the bag. (I felt the bag and know the answer is 8) The printed sheet says to guess how many of each color is in the bag and write his guesses down. Then when he opens it, he has to count the real number of each color and write it down to see how close he was at guessing. He also has to draw a picture of his m&m's at the bottom with his colored pencils. So he will have a cute picture of colored little ovals at the bottom I am hoping anyway. :) Keep him busy, do a little math, and eat a little snack.

Envelope #7

 I told him on the envelope he is allowed to open this one right after finishing #6 if he wants to. Because he might be thirsty after eating those m&m's. Linus has told me that I am pretty goofy and silly before. Ah this is true, this is true, so I had to come though and let the poor boy who is trapped on an airplane for 20 hours do something silly. So I grabbed these glasses that are actually a drinking straw. I am sure his dad will think I am totally nuts. And to be honest, Linus may not even want to try them especially if people are looking, because his is not one to draw attention to himself, but I hope he gets a kick out of the idea and long hours on an airplane may drive people to dare to do new and different things. lol

Envelope #8

Color your own wooden race car cutout with stand. It came with the little markers too. It was $1 at Michael's crafts. But flat, light and didn't take up much space, so I went for it. Has to be more fun than just coloring a printed coloring page right?

Envelope #9

Small puzzle in a little tin. I know he enjoys puzzles, I have seen him work on them before. I wished this one had more pieces. It came from the dollar store as well. There were others in the same size tin that had more pieces but they were for girls. I am thinking by this time that when he opens this envelope and does this puzzle it will remind him of the first puzzle and he may want to do that one again as well.

Envelope #10

Alright I may have gone completely loopy but I put in three paint with water pages. We tried them  out ourselves and they were a bit messy. I put a warning on the envelope for dad to hold the authority as to if he does them or not. Linus is good at listening to dad, and that is what my instructions say too. And don't worry too much this dad is totally craft capable. He actually owns a tandy leather and jewlry beading store. If this project is not for the plane, he can save them for when he gets there.

The one tip if you do them is that you will want something under the paint part. The paints leaked through the paper and stained my counter a bit. I had to get out the magic eraser to clean it up. But neat idea with the paint on the page. Then you just need cotton swabs and a little water to paint. This little book of pictures with paint we picked up at Michale's craft store as well.

Tying it all together

Well I wished I had thought of it sooner... but if I was to do this again on the inside flap of each envelope I would put one word. They would have to write each word in order on the big envelope to discover a secret message that is 10 words long. Maybe I will just write it on the outside flap of each one instead.

How about:

Have fun in Malaysia, see you when you get back!

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RRRRRrrrrrr A No-Sew Jack Sparrow Wig.

RRRRRRrrrrrrrrr

Look at my cutie patooty pirate! Love the scraped arm and dirty face from strawberries. It adds so much to the look don't you think??

Each week the Storyland children's Theatre has been putting on a show at the park for kids. The kids are encouraged to come dressed to match the shows theme if they want to.

Next week it is a Pirate theme! 

Pirate costumes are easy! I bet I can grab a thing or two from your closet and make a pirate costume in no time flat.

On our way back to the car this project popped into my head. I vaguely recall seeing it in a magazine.. Possibly at the dentist office, but when I searched for it today I was not able to locate it. So I went from memory..


What you need:
Various Beads or Trinkets
Scissors
Knit Cotton Fabric- I used pieces of three different t-shirts, one red and two hair colored, black, brown, whatever you have. I had these scraps from various other projects. By the way. that is not a real spider in the photo, it is a plastic spider ring.

Keep in mind a large T-shirt from a dollar store or thrift store may be less expensive than buying actual fabric.

How:
Cut 6 strips out of your hair colored T-shirt or knit fabric each should be around an inch wide and a little more than 1ft long depending how long you want your wig. You can always cut them shorter but you can't make them longer than you cut them. See there is that ring again. :)

Next pull the strips so that they curl up on themselves a bit and they will stretch out to around 2 ft long.

Cut your red or colored knit fabric into a 6-8 inch wide band of fabric. The length of it should be long enough to tie around the back of the wearers head. We made ours extra long so they hang down in the back, and will fit anyone.

Cut a hole a few inches off of the center of your colored strip about an inch and a half from the bottom of your band.

Thread three of your pieces through the hole and tie around the bottom of your headband.

Start to braid the three pieces down, you can braid some of the tied ends into the top of the braid, if they stick out that is fine too, pirates are messy.

Add various beads and charms to your braid as you braid down. Cut you can cut one end at an angle to make it easier to slide though the beads, I also used a toothpick to help out.

I even tossed in some of my broken jewelry trinkets for the kids to choose from. Yes I keep everything!

At the end tie off in knots any way you find easiest. Doesn't have to look perfect or pretty. Again pirates are messy!!!

Then before you start on your second braid, tie the headband on so you have a good idea where you want the other braid, this will keep them from being right in your face. Then repeat and you are done. Feel free to add more braids like one or two behind the ears if you want. Our kids were happy with the two in the front so that is where we stopped.

Looks great with a hat on top too!

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Or fine on it's own.

Not bad for some extra T-shirt Scraps!