Foam Frames

This was an activity that my sister and I did with the kids in our family. It was super fun and easy. You just need foam frames, foam sheets, magnets, foam letter stickers and shapes. You could use anything you want to decorate the frames with. You could use glitter, paint, markers, pom pom balls... the list is endless. Then print off some pictures for the kids to choose from. Half of the fun for them was going through the pictures and picking the one they wanted for their frame.

You just glue the frame to a sheet of foam, then decorate the frame. We did this before adding the picture to keep the picture from getting messed up while we were decorating. Let the frame dry if necessary, especially if you attached your decorations with glue. Then attach magnets to the back of the frame. We found some really inexpensive magnet strips that were peel and stick. They worked perfectly. We attached a magnet to the top of the frame and one to the bottom as well. This will help the frame to stick to your metal surface better. Since we were putting ours on the refrigerator, we wanted to make sure they would stay put when the doors to the fridge would open and close, or people would walk past them, etc.

Some of the kids wanted to make more than one or two frames, and we didn't have enough foam frames. We found that gluing the picture directly to a foam sheet and decorating around the picture works well too.

This craft was anything but complicated, and it was a great way to keep the kids busy on a summer afternoon. Plus, even our youngest kiddo (age 3) made a super cute frame.

Book Purse Tutorial from Hungry Panda

I absolutely love this idea. I'm going to have to give it a try.

It's a purse made out of a book. I am a purse-addict. My family is always giving me a hard time because I buy a new one so often. Books are another one of my passions, so this project is perfect! I'll post pics. of my attempt to make my own book purse, in the near future. Hopefully I can pull it off! It looks so cute! Now to find the perfect book to use. Hmmm...

Check out the link below to try making your own book purse. I'd love to see pictures of how yours turn out.

http://www.hungrypanda.net/blog/2010/02/book-purse-tutorial/

Balloon People

This one was just a spur of the moment idea that I came up with because it's summer & the kids were bored and looking for a project. I looked around at what I had in the house & came up with this idea.

You just need a paper plate, a balloon, and some things to decorate the balloons with. We used googley eyes, yarn, markers, etc.

It was a lot of fun for the kids & the faces turned out pretty cute!

Accordian Style Birthday Card for Grandma

This is a Birthday Card that we made for Grandma. I started out by cutting a 12 x 12 piece of paper in half, attaching the 2 sides with ribbon, then folding the pieces accordion-style. Then I just decorated the pieces. It was super-easy to make. I didn't follow a pattern. I had seen accordion-style cards before, but I'd never made one. I just decided to feel my way through it, and it turned out really cute.

This first picture is the finished project tied up with a ribbon:

Front:
2 kiddos:
The other 2 kiddos:
The back:
Grandma loved the card! I wish I'd taken a picture of it standing up to show you, but I didn't. It is now standing up on her mantle, and she loved it!

Birthday Present Cake

I got the idea for this cake from an issue of Family Fun. I thought it was so cute that I just had to give it a try. The only thing that I did differently was use Skittles candy instead of Spree candy. Oh, and I added a little gift tag too. Either way this one is cute & super easy.

Here's the cake & how to make it on familyfun.com:

http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/pretty-package-cake-687401/

Ric Rac Side Snap Baby Shirts

I found the cutest idea on http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/. She made these little "take me home tees". They were so cute that I decided to give them a try. Here's how mine turned out. They were super easy to make. If I can pull them off then I know you can. If you want to know how just click on her blog mentioned above. Jill is amazingly crafty. There are tons of other great ideas on there as well. It's so easy to get lost in all of the fun ideas on her site. :)

My Crocheted Baby Blanket Attempt

I have a love/hate relationship with crochet. I love it because it's fun to do, and I like the way the needle feels in my hand. I like to work on it while I'm watching TV. It's a relaxing, fun, little hobby for me. The hate part comes in because I always end up with uneven, crooked shapes instead of nice squares. I've tried counting my rows to make sure that they have the same number of stitches, but I always seem to add or lose one here and there. I've also worked on my tension. I finally decided to just make a blanket and see how it turned out. This is actually my 2nd attempt at making a whole blanket, and again I have a wavy-square. I tried to improve the look of it by going around it with a border, but it didn't get much better. Still, I don't want to give up on crocheting. It's so much fun, but I want to make an awesome project one of these days. This blanket has inspired me to sign up for a crochet class. I'm pretty sure that I'm making my mistake when I finish one row and move to the next one. I seem to add in a stitch where I shouldn't, making the rows uneven. Hopefully I can figure this out.

I am glad that I persisted and finished the blanket, though. It was still fun, even if it isn't a perfect blanket. I could still use it. We don't have any babies right now, but we're planning on working on that in the near future. This blanket will be a blanket for at home use instead of when we go out, and I definitely won't be giving any of my blankets away as gifts until I can learn how to make a really nice one, but I can still say that I did it, and I'll keep trying til I get it! :)