Mother’s Day Thumbprint Flower Craft

May 8, 20132 Comments

As you can tell by the content of this blog, I love being a mom. “Mom” is really a title of honor, and I wear it with a lot of pride. You can imagine, then, how excited I get for Mother’s Day. But it’s not just for me. I have an amazing mom, the mom who taught me how to be a mom. She has inspired me, encouraged me, prayed over me, and loved me my whole life–and now she is continuing this legacy with my children. This weekend we get to honor all of the wonderful moms out there, and that’s something to celebrate!

I usually make cards for my mom and mother-in-law on Mother’s Day, and this year I wanted to get my boys in on the action. Since they’re so young, I wanted to do something simple that would also be somewhat personalized. I found some cute ideas for thumbprint crafts and poems online, so I just melded them all together to create this craft. I will be making mine into cards, but you could just as easily frame the artwork to make a keepsake gift. Enjoy!

Thumbprint Flower How-To:

Materials:

White paper
Green marker or crayon
Paint (green and at least one other color)
(Optional) Crayons to decorate

Trim a piece of white paper to your desired size (I just cut a piece of printer paper in half so I could make two pictures per card).
Use a green marker to draw a stem/stems on your paper.
Paint a small circle slightly above your stem
Put a small amount of paint on a plate. Dip one of your child’s fingertips into the paint and dab it around the painted circle to make the flower petals. You will probably be able to make 3-4 “petals” before you need to get more paint on your fingertip. You can use one color for the petals or a variety of colors. When you are done painting the flower petals, wipe off your finger (unless you like your 2-year old having red fingerpaint up his nose. Just sayin’.)
Put a dot of green paint on a plate. Dip your child’s thumb into the green paint and use it to make leaves on the flower stem. Now wipe off your thumb.
After your flower has dried completely, you can decorate your picture. Older kids may enjoy drawing grass, sunshine, sky, clouds, birds, etc. to complete the artwork. I also typed up the following poem to attach to my flowers:
A piece of me I give to you
I used my thumb and fingers, too.
I made you this flower so you will know
How much I love you as I grow.
A mother’s love and tender care
Make happiness bloom everywhere!
Sign your child’s name and the year, wrap it up all pretty-like, and watch your mom swoon!

To all the moms and grandmas out there, Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you feel honored and blessed on your special day!

DIY Photo Collage Wall

February 27, 2013Leave a comment

*Note* Sorry about the poor quality of the photos in this post. There’s a lot of glare and weird reflections of me taking the photos in the pictures. Turns out it’s difficult to take pictures of pictures inside glass frames!

A few years ago I saw a kit at Michael’s for making your own wall-size photo collage out of picture frames. I loved the idea, but it was ridiculous how much money they wanted for a few picture frames and directions on how to lay them out. I knew that I could make my own photo collage for pennies on their dollar.

We have a really long white wall in our “Great Room” (not that it’s especially great, I just don’t know what else to call the space) that I thought would be perfect for this project. It definitely needed some sprucing up, and I love the idea of having our photos be the centerpiece of the room where we spend most of our time.

To make my photo collage, I started by finding a bunch of black picture frames of different sizes. I already had several that were sitting unused in a closet and I found a few more at Goodwill. If you want to purchase inexpensive frames, Walmart always seems to have a good selection (there are few things that I will actually set foot in that awful place for, and cheap picture frames is one of them). You could also collect frames in a variety of finishes and spray paint them all the same color.

Then, I got to play picture frame puzzle! I laid out all of my frames on the floor and moved them around in different arrangements until I had a set-up that I thought looked nice. I got some inspiration from websites online, but mostly I just had fun playing around with the frames. Once I had a design that I liked, I snapped a photo of it so I’d remember the layout and I started hanging the frames on my wall.

For those of you who are more precise with lines and angles and such, you could actually trace the frames onto a large sheet of paper once they’re laid out in your desired arrangement. Then transfer the sheet to your wall and hang it up with painters tape so you can see where to place the nails for each frame. I’m more of an eyeball-it-and-take-a-chance do-it-yourselfer, so I skipped this step entirely.

For the actual photos in the frames, I decided to stick with back-and-whites. I like how classic and elegant they look. Plus, I’m really a bit afraid of colors–I never quite know how to use them and I feel like too many colors can make things look too busy and “loud”. I chose photos that are meaningful to our family–they show who we are and where we come from. Every now and then I print off updated photos to replace old photos in the frames. Here are a few of my favorites:

Our wedding– This frame is in the middle of the collage, and it’s a great reminder of the love that started our family.

Awkward family photo– This isn’t a particularly good photo, but I still love it because of the memories I have of taking the photo. This was the first family photo we had with all 4 of us “posing” for the camera. It was at a dinner we had at my parents’ house for my sister before she moved to California for her internship last summer. Jacob was about 8 weeks old and, if you notice, he’s naked in this photo. That’s because he was in his diaper explosion phase where he would ruin about 10 outfits a day. Right before this photo was taken he pooped on the 4th (and last) outfit that I had brought with us. His options were to borrow a dress from our friends’ baby girl or go naked–so, here he is, naked. Both boys are looking off to the side where some commotion more interesting that the camera seems to have been taking place.

Golden Gate Bridge– We had a 2-year stint living in the Bay Area while Jon was in graduate school. It was right before we had our first baby and it was a magical time in our lives where we both grew and learned so much. This photo of the bridge in San Francisco brings back so may great memories of our early marriage.

Babies on Bibles– We took newborn photos of both boys laying on Bibles. It’s neat looking at both of them when they were at the same tiny baby stage. I also love the symbolism of the Bible being their firm foundation.

Family Foursquare- This one has a picture of each family member (clockwise from top left): Jacob, David, our dog Bota (gotta include our first “child”), me and Jon. The photo of Jacob is the first time he smiled. The photo of David is a baby photo that I just loved so much I didn’t want to change it out for an updated one. The photo of me and Jon was taken on a family trip right before we got engaged–sweet, young love!

Family Rules– I ordered this wooden sign for us off Etsy. I had actually wanted to make my own sign, but then I realized that I have two young children and “want” would probably never actually become “made”. On Etsy I got to choose all of the wording for the sign and they did a beautiful job handcrafting it for us. The sign is made of wood and cost about $25 (making it the most expensive part of this whole project, but still a great deal if you ask me!). I actually ended up liking this sign so much that I bought one for each of our sisters this past Christmas.

Now I just need to come up with some ideas for the rest of my blank walls!

DIY Apple Stamp Valentines

February 1, 2013May 3, 20132 Comments

Today is February 1st and, with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I thought it would be fun to make some cards for our loved ones. I much prefer home-made cards to store-bought because they’re more meaningful, they’re fun to make, and they cost less than the off-the-shelf variety. I got my idea for this year’s apple stamp Valentines out of a magazine. For the life of me, I can’t remember which magazine it was and, since I just purged and recycled all of my back-issues a few weeks ago, the world may never know. So, to whichever magazine I borrowed this idea from, thank you!

Apple Stamp Valentines

First, cut an apple in half and trim the bottom to a point so that it looks like a heart. Put some red paint on a plate (we used finger paint because I already had it and it doesn’t stain clothes).

Dip your apple into the paint and stamp it onto paper (I had pre-folded cardstock into small cards for our project). You don’t need a lot of paint on your apple in order for it to stamp properly. Pull the apple stamp straight up off the paper so you don’t smudge your heart shape.

Let your stamped paper dry completely.

After the paint is dry, you can use makers to add a stem, leaves and seeds to your apple hearts. I also added some little sayings to my cards. The sentiments I used were: “You’re the apple of my eye!”, “Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. -Mother Teresa”, and “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. -Galatians 5:22-23″.

I have several blank envelopes from a stationery set that I’ll use to mail out our cards. Happy Valentine’s Day!

DIY “Cloud Dough” For Kids

January 21, 2013April 24, 2013Leave a comment

I found a recipe for “cloud dough” on Pinterest a few weeks ago and had been wanting to make it for David. Since we’ve been hanging out at home all weekend potty training, I thought it would be the perfect novel activity to help pass the time.

This afternoon while David was napping I whipped up a batch of the cloud dough. Basically, you just mix together 8 cups of flour with 1 cup of baby oil (I actually ended up using about 1 1/4 cup baby oil to get the consistency I was looking for, which was about 3/4 of the bottle). I just used the cheapest flour I could find in bulk and a generic brand of baby oil, for a grand total of $2.00 for all “ingredients”. I mixed my cloud dough with my hands in this old Lego Duplos bin that I’d been hanging on to for such a use as this (it’s nice and sturdy and has a good lid that snaps into place so I can use it to store my cloud dough after playing).

When David woke up from his nap I told him that I’d made him a special surprise–and he loved it! We laid out a quilt on the floor and put some large baking sheets on top for our play surface. Then we used plastic cups to make towers (kind of like sand castles) and our hands to form balls. The cloud dough feels really neat–soft and moldable. It also smells really great because of the baby oil. It does not, however, taste very good (just ask David). David played for a good 45 minutes before he was ready to move on to a new activity–pretty good for a 2 year old who usually gives things about 2 minutes before his attention wears out!

This worked alright as an indoor activity, but we did get pretty “dusty” and everyone ended up needing to change their clothes after play time. Since it’s just made of flour and baby oil, though, I’m sure it will clean up pretty easily. It would be great to make this stuff in the summer and just go wild outside in the yard. You could probably even have “cloud dough” fights instead of snow ball fights!

We Love, Teach, Grow

My journey through motherhood

Tag: diy

Mother’s Day Thumbprint Flower Craft

DIY Photo Collage Wall

DIY Apple Stamp Valentines