It's Crafty Tuesday again!

Ok, for starters, I have been racking my overtaxed brain to come up with a catchy title for 'Crafty Tuesday' So far, I got nothing.  If anyone has any suggestions, please, PLEASE help me out!
And now, on to the juicy stuff!

Today we made an impromptu trip to the dollar store where we found super fun, super cheap loot for Crafty Tuesday.  (Ok, it's kind of starting to grow on me...)  Since apparently the new indicator of the start of Christmas madness is Halloween as opposed to the traitional Thanksgiving, we made Christmas decorations!   

We waited for Dad to get home so that it could be a whole family event.  We pulled out colors and stickers and these cute, foam Christmas tree cutouts!  Cute, fun, simple: my crafty Tuesday motto!

It all begins with stickers, crayons, and a clean slate!

 Kira had a hard time getting the stickers off the backing, but had a blast putting them on the paper.  She wanted to stack them though, so, on her Christmas trees the bottom is covered, while the top is bare.

 No more clean slate...

 The finished products: Mine is on the left, Kira's is in the middle, Steve's is on the left.  Kira helped daddy decorate his!  Mine is the best because there is a Misfit under my tree!  (*Misfit is my greatest ever Pug!*)  Kira was enthralled with the Boxer stickers.  She LOVES her Trixie!  (*Trixie is our greatest ever boxer!*)  She would point to the sticker and then point to Trixie.  She bogarted both of the Boxer stickers and the puppy stickers.  I had to fight for the Pug!  Of course, she ended up covering all the dogs up with Dora the Explorer.  They were by far her favorite.

 Our first Christmas decorations.  Steve usually has a 'no-Christmas-decorations-until-after-Thanksgiving' policy, but these were so cute, he caved. So, now we have our first Christmas decorations up on our mantle!



Happy crafting everybody!

It's Crafty Tuesday!

It was a rainy day today, but of course Kira was dying to go outside and run off some energy.  Instead we had to settle for a craft, so it had to be a good one!  And it was super messy, which in my experience makes it way more fun for a toddler.  Normally, I would have done this outside, but as I mentioned, it rained.  Luckily, it was also surprisingly easy to clean up, making it way more fun for mommy!  So here you go:

Kira loves to color, so today we made finger paint!  It was easy, cheap, and, most importantly, fun!

Finger paint:
 For finger paint you will need: 1/4 cup of cornstarch (be light with the cornstarch, a little less than 1/4 will be more than enough!  I added a little too much to mine and it was super gooey.  My 1 year old didn't mind though!) and 1 cup of water.  Add both to a saucepan, and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until it thickens.  (This happened way faster than I thought it would!  It was liquid one second and solid the next!)

Next, add it to little cups. I used the tupperware I used to make baby food.  Don't need those for a while.

Last, add food coloring, and stir it up to mix it. 

And there you go: fingerpaints!

Kira's masterpieces:

Eventually she got bored coloring the paper:

I looked like a smurf after this, so we took a family bath in mommy's big bathtub.  I was sort of worried, but all the color came off with nothing more than water and a little scrubbing (and what 1 year old couldn't use more of that?  At least mine always can!). 

 And here is my proof that the color washes off!  Aren't my girls beautiful?