Pet Frog

 Since the weather has warmed up here we have been hearing a chorus of frog friends singing melodies each evening to us. It sounds as if there are a thousand frogs outside our home, but have still yet to see one frog. We decided to make our own!

 My favorite crafts require a little nature walk. We took a nice long walk and collected things that the kids thought would make good frog building materials. Rocks and leaves seemed to be the best nature goods among the two!

 

 With a little glue, googly eyes and felt feet our rock became a new pet for the kids to play with.

This guy got well taken care of since everything in our house gets a name, a bed and of course some frog food. Although, Emma made this one a vegetarian since she was not willing to collect bugs for her new pet.
My full pet frog tutorial is over on Kiwi Crate.

Ribbon Mobile

 The sun was out today in our rainy city and all we wanted to do was to be outside and make pretty things. We painted shells and made nature puzzles, but what I adore most from our afternoon is this ribbon mobile. So many colors and textures, it is simple, but stunning and I made it with my two favorite people.

 Materials:

embroidery hoop

ribbon

twine

 We collected scraps of ribbon from our ribbon drawer and Em cut different lengths using her trusty safety scissors! The more patterns, colors and different lengths--the better!

 We tied them all around the embroidery hoop and watched it slowly become a magical tree ornament for our yard.

We used twine to hang our new yard decor right in our backyard. It makes me happy to look out our kitchen window and see our creation.

I shared this at Kiwi Crate. Head there for more fun family crafts.

Butterfly Print

 Hello Friends! It has been awhile, I know. I am sorry I have not been very inspiring these days. I have a full plate at the moment, but I hope you follow my FB page, as I try to post inspiration from others there whenever I can.
I had a few moments tonight and wanted to share a fun spring craft that I have been doing with the kids for a couple years now. I just love celebrating seasons with my children. Talking about it and opening our eyes to the changes around us really make me appreciate each and every season so much more...especially when you are looking through the eyes of a three-year-old.

 For the our butterfly print all you need is a heavy weight paper, black fabric (puffy) paint and watercolor paints.

 We folded a sheet of paper and opened it up. I helped the kids to draw half of a butterfly using the fabric paint.

 We folded out sheet back up and pressed firmly down to spread the paint to the other side.

 Do I need say more? She was excited by this part. You open up the paper and have a beautiful butterfly. Hard part is to let the paint dry after this step, but it doesn't take too long.

We used watercolor paints to fill in our butterfly. They came out beautiful and both kids requested to make more. I say that is success!

Happy spring! I will be back more often come April...promise!


I shared this over at Kiwi Crate. Check it out!

Snail Craft

Spring is here (yippee!) We are seeing lots of creatures come out to say hello. To celebrate, the kids and I made some adorable snail friends.

Materials

found sticks

air dry clay

pipe cleaner

googly eyes

tacky clue

paint (optional)

We used Model Magic clay for this. It comes in some fun colors and is easy for small hands to work with. The kids first rolled their clay into snake forms.

Next, they rolled them up into a snail shape. At this point you could paint the shell or leave it as is. Using several colors of clay swirled together would be fun, too.

Small snips of a pipe cleaner worked perfectly for antenna. You may need a couple drops of glue to hold these in place. We also added a googly eyes for a silly snail face.

Now, for the fun part. By gluing our new little friend onto a stick he became a fun new toy for the kids rather than something that sits on their shelf. They carried him around pretending to have a new pet and he was the start of much needed imaginary play on this wet spring day.

I shared this and many more spring crafts over on Kiwi Crate.

Tie Dye Flowers

 Friends! I am sorry I have been M.I.A. these days. I have been swamped over at Green Owl Art with school commitments and my latest exciting endeavor--a Girl Scout troop! I can't wait to share the amazing things our troop has in store, but today here is a simple no-treat Valentine to make.

 All you need:

paper towels

watercolor paints

paint brush

clothespin

 We started out by just painting on the paper towels. We love using liquid watercolors. They are so vibrant and a little goes a long way. An ice cube tray is perfect to hold these paints.

 The trick is to cover the entire paper towel with paint. Another way to do this is with paints or food color and water in spray bottles (especially good for the impatient little one.)

 Look at the results! So beautiful, right? I just love all the colors. It would also be fun to stick to Valentine colors for this. A bouquet of red and pink would be very sweet. We let these dry outside for about and hour.

 At first we thought we could just roll our towels up and secure with the clothespin, but they were way too bulky and didn't look much like a flower. So, we decided to tear them into smaller peices to get the right look.

 We made small piles with our "petals" and twisted each one before adding a clothespin to the bottom. You could paint the clothespin green if you'd like or just leave natural like we did.

Em decided a spritz of perfume was a great touch. A few drops of lavender oil would be nice, too. Along with a simple note these are a great way to make a no-treat Valentine still fun and exciting.

I shared this over at Kiwi Crate.

Easy Bird Feeder Crafts

 

 Making offerings to our sweet backyard birds is a great way to teach children about nature and compassion for all living creatures. It is something I have done with the kids since they could walk. Here is an easy one to start with. The Pine Cone Bird Feeder is the perfect bird feeder for little ones to make with confidence. All you need is a pine cone, string, nut butter (you can use sun butter if your child has allergies) and birdseed.

 First, we used a small spoon to get the butter into all the crevices of the pine cone.

 This was the fun part--into a bag of birdseed it goes! Shake, shake, shake! This went on for quite awhile.

Pretty proud of his little bird feeder. We tied it to a tree in the yard right near a window and it didn't take long before we saw sweet little birds stopping by for a snack. The kids loved watching their success! We first tried this feeder when Emma was given all the supplies as a gift from a good friend. Isn't that a sweet DIY gift? I thought so!

 This started out as a salt container. With a few cuts (by me) and some pretty details (by Em) this little house came together very nicely.

 We used a found branch for the perch, cute, right? Even cuter when we saw it being used by the sweetest little bird.

 Windows and flowers are a must for any bird house!

We filled it with birdseed and hung it in a tree with some floral wire. For all details check out my full tutorial here, Salt Container Bird Feeder.

 So, this Slinky Snacker started out as a little treat holder for our backyard squirrels, but we were surprised when it was emptied by another local friend.

 Using a slinky and pipe cleaner we filled our snack holder with peanuts and used twine to hang it from a tree.

This beautiful bird spent all afternoon taking every single peanut out, shelling it and bring them to her nest only to return for more until every peanut was gone. Wow! What a great way to observe nature. I hope you are inspired to feed the birds today!

Flowers, flowers and more flowers!

Yesterday the kids and I spent the day at the Tulip Festival. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It's one of those places you wish you could take everyone you know because a picture can never do such beauty justice. It was a wonderful day, even at the moment Grayson completely lost it over Emma asking if he needed help picking the one and only yellow tulip that he wanted to bring home. Yep, he threw himself down in the middle of the yellow and orange tulip rows and screamed and kicked and screamed some more, but I gotta say a two-year old melt down is much more tolerable when spent in the middle of this. 

He recuperated pretty well and decided on a purple tulip to take home. Good choice, Grayson! They were my favorite. With his new favorite tulip in hand and a ride on the cow train we were back to blissful peace out at the Tulip Festival. 

With flowers on the mind I thought I would share some wonderful flower crafts we have been enjoying this spring.

 Starting with Egg Carton Tulips seems appropriate! Isn't it amazing what you can do with an egg carton. They must be one of our most used recycled art good. I can never bare to toss them into the recycling bin.

 With a pipe cleaner stem and a button center these sweet flowers came together pretty nicely.

We used watercolor to add some color, but tempura paints would probably give you a better "pop" of color on your tulips. 

 Speaking of egg carton awesomeness, check out our Egg Carton Spring Wreath!

We started out with a cardboard ring and added egg carton flowers all around it. I just love the way it came out.

 Last summer when I brought home these beautiful white hydrangeas from the store Emma asked if the flower fairies had missed this batch when out adding color to flowers everywhere. I told her they must have and this sparked a new craft in our house and a very important job for her.

Eager to help the fairies out Emma painted each petal of our white hydrangeas with watercolors. Painted Hydrangeas is a new favorite in our house.

 Paper Towel Flowers are pretty fun to make by painting with watercolors right on a paper towel. The colors spread and blend to make a really beautiful creation.

With a clothespin these colorful towels become a sweet little flower perfect for adding on top of a gift.

 More hydrangeas! These Coffee Filter Hydrangeas are so beautiful and easy to make.

OK, a pattern is happening here. I guess when flower crafting we tend to pull the watercolors out. Interesting. A pipe cleaner stem was added to these to make a sweet little bouquet.

 We started our Newspaper Flowers out by painting sheets of newspaper with colored glue. When the sheets dried they were easy to cut into petals and put together to create these fun flowers.

I love that you can still read them! Very cool looking flower.

 This was an Emma idea inspired by her love of creating with q-tips. What I loved about it is that it became a really great fine motor skills activity for Grayson and they could enjoy this one together.

For these Q-tip Flowers I helped by cutting the q-tips in half and they stuck them into different sized styro balls. With a little paint (yes, watercolors!) and a pipe cleaner they became flowers. Very unique flowers, if I do say so.

 Magical Dandelions sprouted up in our yard recently and what a pleasant surprise they were! You can't go wrong with wishes and glitter!