Day 5: Color By Letter Turkey

I majored in Elementary Education in college. I don't teach now, but I say I am a teacher at heart. Not to stereotype teachers, but to get our degree we had to color, paint, dance, and sing our way to graduation. Part of me just loves little art projects, coloring especially. 

I am not a natural artist. Not in the least. Not even close. So as a little girl (and a slightly bigger girl) really loved coloring books. I also really loved those color by number pictures. I am now pushing that love onto my children.

Alas, here is the color by letter Thanksgiving Turkey

This was one where I sat down and did it too. Emily had fun, Lyla lasted about 3 scribbles. Emily and I enjoyed some nice conversation, but I would have to say the highlight of the night was at the end while comparing our pictures. 

Emily said, and I quote, "Wow Mom. Ours kind of look the same." 

For being a good sport I told her she could pose however she wanted. 

Original Pin: Reading-with-kids Thanksgiving 

Day 4: Knitted Bow Hat

A few days ago, while I was wasting time scrolling through pins, I came across this picture. Yes, that is a cute baby, but DANG that is a cute hat. 

I crossed my fingers and hoped it would take me to a tutorial, but my luck was run out. It led me only to the picture. Rats. 

I couldn't get the hat out of my head though, so I set out to figure it out. I found a pattern for the hat in a knitting book I own and I googled (gasp) "knit bow pattern". I found one I liked and surprisingly it was really easy. 

I knit a lot of baby hats for gifts and my older daughter has been jonesin' them for a while, so I decided I'd make this one for her. 

I personally like the proportions in the one I found on pinterest better, but I'll toot my own horn and say, I think mine is pretty darn cute as well. 

Credits: Original Pin Life is Beautiful

Bow tutorial A Common Thread

Day 3: The Perfect Fall Playdough

Since I've started looking at Pinterest I've been kind of intrigued by these homemade playdough recipes. The very first one I saw on the internet was a couple years ago and it was about making playdough with all natural ingredients. The colors were made with berries and other things found in nature. I thought it was pretty cool until I read the end that the playdough would stain your clothes and hands. Then I thought it was dumb. Who wants to go through all of that work to have it mess up your clothes. 

We've come a long way in the last couple of years. A couple weeks ago I made jello playdough. It was pretty cool. I would recommend it. 

Today we made the PERFECT playdough for FALL! I'm a little obsessed with fall right now. This is my new favorite playdough. The texture was smooth and easy to manipulate and it smelled AWESOME. You use cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. After playing with the kids for a while I washed my hands for dinner and they still smelled like cinnamon. Yum. I didn't color it and I thought the natural color really matched the smell. 

This is Emily's version of The Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree. Can you see the coconuts? 

Usually I make this kind of stuff and then hand it over to the kids to play with while I do something else. Today; however, I sat down and played with them for a while. It was pretty fun, I recommend that too. 

Pin Source: Be Organized

happy pinning!

Day 2: Balloon Ping Pong

This activity is one I've wanted to pull out and do for a while. Today was a good day. We are taking a go at potty training our little Lyla and so everyone has been cooped up in the house. After a few too many tv shows I busted this activity out. Wasn't the worlds biggest hit (pun!), but it worked for a little while.

It is as simple as it looks in the picture. 1 balloon, paper plates, and popsicle sticks. I used left over ones from yesterday's activity, but the thicker ones would definitely be better. We will do this again sometime when we have friends over. 

Pin Source: Pen N' Paperflowers

happy pinning!

Day 1: Popsicle Stick Bridges

November 1 came and I needed to do my first day of pinning. I had all sorts of great ideas for cute crafts, fashion forward outfits, delicious dinners, you get the idea. However, WHAM, busy day hit and any sort of "extra" thing I wanted to do that day had to go out the window.

One thing I HAD to do that day was teach my local cub scout group. I knew what we were doing for most of the day, but I had to build a model of a bridge. Hhmm. My first thought was to take wooden blocks and just see what they came up with. That felt a little lame, so I did a Pinterest search (not to be confused with a Google search) and came up with these cool popsicle stick bridges.

Most tutorials recommended using wood glue, but that was going to take way too long to dry, so hot glue it was. I laugh now thinking about my 8 cub scouts each armed with a glue gun. We had a few burns, but all in all they did pretty good.

Sadly, we were crazy busy at cubs so I don't have a picture of any of the ones they made. I'll just say they weren't quite as pretty and lined up as the one above. They all decided that their bridges would kill people. Oops.

Thanks Pinterest for helping me with cubs today, I really appreciate it.

Pin: Angry Chicken: Learning About Bridges

happy pinning!