Awesome Homemade Gifts for Kids

There is something special that comes from gifts that are homemade.

These gifts were a hit this year and made by myself, my mother, or my sister-in-law. The memories that will come from these gifts will last long beyond the things that came from the store.

PILLOW SHIELDS

My mom made these adorable shields for the little boys in our family this year.

She followed the tutorial found here.

We also added a foam dagger we found at Dollar Tree.

STAR WARS BUCKET



 I took this dollar store bucket...

And then I used a yellow paint pen to add the "Star Wars" logo around the center of the bucket.

This was where my son now gets to keep his new "Star Wars" figures dad bought him off ebay.

GEO-BOARD

I fell in love with the idea of a geo-board for my two year old. So I made one with some scrap wood we had in the basement and a pack of thumb tacks. Then I got a large pack of girls pony tail holders and it was ready to go. I got this idea here.

JUDY MOODY OUTFIT

Here is the Judy Moody fan, and her new Judy Moody outfit / PJ's or whatever.

She had stated a few weeks before Christmas that she wished she had a T-shirt that says "I ate a Shark" just like Judy Moody has in the books. How could I resist that comment, so I got aunt Lara on board to make her the shirt while I whipped up Judy's famous tiger striped pants out of polar fleece, super warm for winter. She has now had them on for three days if that tells you anything. Don't worry I washed them once in there.

 OWL NECKLACE, SAN-DISK MP3 HOLDER

The next thing I talked my mom into making, was a mini version of the Owl Cell Phone Holders I made. But this time they were necklaces to hold the girls mp3 players they got for Christmas.

Because they were so small she used her machine stitches to make them instead of hand done floss like my larger version.

The mp3 players which were pretty small, fit perfectly in these little necklaces. This was something I requested because the players were so small I thought they may just loose them.

They worked perfectly I was so happy with them and so were the girls.

JEDI ROBE

I have been searching for a bathrobe for my son for about a year now and never found anything I really liked. So when I saw these Jedi Robes here. I knew that was what my mother needed to make for my son this year.

He is in LOVE...

Not to mention it give new life to his light sabers which has sat untouched in a while.

Plus the polar fleece will keep him warm on cold morning this winter, and I am sure it will end up being his costume of choice for Halloween next year. I love multi-purpose gifts.

Notice the nephews sporting their shield pillows in the shot below as well.

Memories to last a lifetime!

Owl iPod or Cell Phone Case

I was in need of some gifts for a couple teens in my life. What do teen girls have? Well most have a cell phone and or iPod these days. So the first thing I thought of was some sort of accessory to go with them. I just recently got a new phone myself and I realized that even the cheap cases for these things are around $20.

I know if a teen had an extra $20 they would not be spending it on a cover for their phone or iPod. I knew for sure the two girls I needed a gift for didn't have covers for their devices. So I set out to find a cover I could make.

I found these adorable owl covers on Etsy. I knew I could make them myself out of scraps I had on hand so I made two and stuffed a Aunt Aunties' free pretzel card. In each one.  I used some funky neon colors since those are popular these days in the high school scene.

I think I might just have to make another one for myself. But maybe I will choose a different color scheme. Although... it would be harder to loose something so bright.

If you are not into making them, but have to have one,  please buy these adorable owl covers on Etsy.

Linking up here:

Here Comes Santa Clause?? Nope! Here comes Jesus!

I found this idea at Latter-Day Homeschooling website after seeing it pinned on Pinterest.

It was such a good idea and really got the one good point across I wanted my kids to learn and think about this Christmas.

Fold a piece of paper in half and make yourself a little door.

I trimmed the top of the door and colored it all fancy, my daughter is into Narnia so I wanted to make an old looking castle type door.

Then print out the picture of Jesus they have linked here.

Then with the door closed start this line of hints I took from this post.

"Pretty soon we might have a special guest visit our house. You never know! I'm going to give some clues that describe this person and you guess who it is." The clues included:

• he sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good.
• he has a beard and a kind face
• he spent his life giving to others
• he's often pictured in red and/or white clothes
• he loves little children
• he gives the very best gifts
• you can never see him, but you can feel him
• he gives us a wonderful, special warm feeling
• he can get into our homes even if the doors are locked
• he has special, wonderful powers
• we want to give gifts back to him, but he doesn't need anything we could buy; he just wants us to give to other people. (My kids have been talking about giving a present to Santa.)
• I ended with, "He encourages us to be good so we will be ready when he comes."

Then the origonal poster said the  kids all gasped in amazement that she was actually describing Jesus - there are so many similarities! They discussed how each description applied to both Jesus and Santa, and then they talked about how Santa is actually a symbol for Jesus, and everything we love about Santa is really everything we love about Jesus. They can be reminded of Jesus through many different symbols during the Christmas season, and we mentioned a few - candy canes, giving gifts, stars on the tree, etc.

They also looked at a few more pictures of Jesus and even a picture of Santa kneeling at the manger to discuss how Jesus is the greatest gift. It was a very enjoyable and memorable lesson for them. Now their youngest keeps wanting to open the door and let Jesus in - and we let him!

I can't wait until my daughter is home so we can do our Christmas lesson tonight.
I printed out the list of clues and put it on the backside of my door. I will save it and we will see if they remember who is behind the door next year too.

Judy Moody "I ATE A SHARK" Tiger Pants

We have hit the age of Judy Moody in our house.. My 6 year old loves reading chapter books and Judy and Stink have provided her with some entertaining adventures. If you are not familiar with Judy Moody, she is an adventuresome girl who likes to explore and discover. Her brother James, aka Stink, also has his own set of book adventures we have enjoyed.

Q. What is with the pants???

A. Judy was in a hurry for her first day of school because she woke up late and ended up tossing on the first shirt she grabbed and ended up going to school in her tiger pajama pants.

This is another reason my daughter likes Judy, she doesn't fuss about her clothes or her hair, she knows that those things just don't matter. Finally a girl character who doesn't play with Princesses or Barbies and ends up with some pretty cool and creative ideas.

Judy also has a shirt she made herself that says "I ATE A SHARK!" She had wished for an awesome summer and was bummed out to go shark fishing and not catch a single shark, so they went to a restaurant to eat and she tried shark. The shirt was her genius way to show her friends that she had done at least SOMETHING cool over an otherwise uneventful summer vacation. 

We just watched the movie Judy Moody and the not so Bummer Summer a couple weeks ago after reading a couple Judy Moody and Stink books. A few days later my daughter randomly mentioned how cool it would be to have a shirt that says. "I ate a Shark!"

So I called up my sister-in-law who has been doing a bit of freezer paper stenciling lately and put in our order for an "I ATE A SHARK" shirt for a Christmas present from her.

I even provided her with a shirt.

We went with neon green like the doll, In the movie her shirt is turquoise, but my daughter's favorite color happens to be green.

Plus they had the right color at the dollar store.

Aunt Lara used the freezer paper stencil method to make it into the I ate a shark shirt. You just cut out your stencil from freezer paper, Iron it onto the shirt, so it sticks. Then use your fabric paint over the stencil. Once it is dry you peel off the freezer paper and you have a nice screen print look.

So onto the pants. I found some tiger print polar fleece and used a pair of my daughter's pants for a pattern.

Then I cut around her pants, two pieces for the front, two pieces for the back allowing myself a half inch or so seam allowance. Then I sewed the pieces together with a double hem for strength, made a tunnel for the elastic waste and turned the bottoms up and sewed them so they matched the length of her other pants I used for the pattern.

This is the front.

This is the back of the pants.

She was in need of some warm polar fleece type pants for those extra cold days this winter. I figured why not make them Judy Moody Pants!

Here she is with her "Way, Not Boring, List of Fun Things To Do" She made herself.
She wears this outfit to school all the time.
It is one of her favorites!

Splish Splash I was Painting the Bath

It is bath night tonight... but earlier in the day the kids were bored and so I made some bathtub paint and let them loose in the tub.

Bathtub Paint:

   Cornstarch

   Liquid Dish Soap

   Food Coloring

Pedicure!

Forget about finger painting.. how about toe painting.

The final masterpiece.. minus the masterpieces they made on themselves.. I tossed them in the shower while I easily washed this off.

Wooah! I guess it was windy last night.

I looked outside this morning ad saw a large hole in the backyard fence.

The strong winds last night, combined with a rotten post, made the fence fall.

Although... many of the posts are doing this thanks to the horrible job whoever built the fence did putting the posts in to begin with..

 They just sit in water in the spring time and many of the cemented supports are just cracked and the fence wiggles.

Such a waste... just goes to show you should never half way do a job.

It is all put back up now with some extra support ... although we are not planning on digging the new post hole until spring since it is 32degrees outside right now but feels like 23 with wind chill.

Digging a new post hole is not fun, especially since we have to dig out the cement mess that they left there.

I am sure once we get three feet of snow the fence will stay put and we won't have to worry about it.

Oh the Joys right?

At least we know how to use a drill, and a hammer. :)

A Christmas Mantel

Whoo hoo! My mantel is done!

Click over to see my Inspiration Mantel over at Thrifty Decore Chick.

It was a project... mainly because I got sick right in the middle of it and it sat half finished for 24 hours which in itself was difficult for me.. looking at a half finished project. Especially one that is so easy. I could not belive how difficult it was to do on zero energy recovering from sickness when in reality it is really an easy project, but after laying around for a day I was bored and wanted to do something!

So there are two projects I want to share with you that I did on my matel.

The first is the letters "J" "O" "Y"   They are made out of cardboard that I paitned red.

Just print the font you want around 650pt font size onto computer paper. Then using a exacto knife you can cut around the letters onto the cardboard.

Add your red paint. 

 Then I hung them with white satin ribbon that has gold edges. My mom has a rather large ribbon stash and I just called her up and said I need some thick cream and gold ribbon and she brought me two choices. So my project ended up costing me nothing since I had the supplies on hand.

Now I am sure you are wondering about my photo frame stocking holders.

They were my solution to a small problem I had.

 We got the kids new stockings this year. We decided that we would only get the kids stockings instead of all five of us. The problem was our hangers.

We had five.. the letters "N" "O" "E" "L" and angel, and a deer.

So we couldn't use the letters since we only needed three, and there were only two shaped ones. So I went up into a box in the closet where I had photo frames and found three silver matching frames.

I put in the pictures and added a little sticky tack and stuck them to three of the letter stocking holders.  They ended up perfect!

Merry Christmas!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Craft-mas!

It's the Friday after Thanksgiving and time to get those projects going!

Remember my red frame we painted for fall?

Well here is what I did with that same frame for the Christmas!

A Pinterest idea of course see the original here.

I might add a few more little things like a bow, but for now this is good to go. Just add some ice skates that don't fit anyone this year that we had in the garage and a small piece of garland. I didn't buy a thing.

Then my 6 year old daughter went to work on this project using ribbon and a large needle she stung all of our silver tone ornaments together in three strands and we hung them from the light above the dinning room table. .

She likes to decorate this light for each holiday so when I showed her this idea she was ready to go. We had these ornaments on hand as well and were not using them where we had before. So once agian... didn't buy anything

Next we want to work on the mantle.. but we have a bit of work left to get that done. For now enjoy these two little projects.

Advent Blocks Church Advent Craft

I have been wanting to make these for a few years now, so when a friend at Church asked me for a family advent craft project I instantly thought of these.

God has blessed our church and we received 2 x 4 donations and people volunteered to cut the pieces to make 200 sets for the families who will attend the Advent family event.

We cut the pieces to 8 inch, 6 inch, 5 inch, and 3 inch lengths. Each set has four blocks, one of each size.

We decided on a four block set, one block for each week of Advent. This also cut down the amount of cutting our volunteers would have to do.

We had a member of the congregation who is an art teacher draw the characters inside a rectangle that matched the dimensions of what we cut the blocks to.

 The angel and the shepard are on one block.

The star is on it's own block.

Baby Jesus is on his own block.

Mary and Joseph are on one block.

I used this easy and cheap mod podge recipe, colored pencils, craft paint and glitter for my set. I think later I might spray a coat of clear spray paint on them  too to seal everything in better so that it will last for years. But at Church we will keep costs lower and people can choose to spray them at home if they wish.

We also have scripture pieces that go along with each piece.

I will include those later. I am not sure what they are yet. That was not my part of the project.

 

I plan on mod podging the scripture to the back side of each block once I get them.

Happy Advent!