4 Fun Ways to Celebrate Cookie Cutter Week

Raise your hand if you knew that this week is cookie cutter week! 

Not me, that's for sure!

But ever since I found out, I've had cookie cutters (and cookie cutter related fun) on the brain!

So what can you do to celebrate cookie cutter week? 

1. Cookies. There's always that ;-) We're a little sugared out from having Thanksgiving and Sammy's birthday back to back... so I'm going to hold off on cookie making till early next week. But I'm definitely excited for Ginger Bread Men this year. Even though decorating with the girls leads to hurricane sprinkles all over my floor! It's such a fun memory. If you want to see my tutorial on easy "fancy" Christmas cookies, check out this post.

2. Applesauce ornaments. I am really excited about this one because I think they're going to smell up the whole house in the most fabulous way. This is the recipe I'm going to use. I also think they look super classy and rustic. The girls will be able to help but it doesn't seem too stressful or involved. YAY!

3. Christmas tree play dough decorating. This is probably the one we're going to do this week. Here's the post. I am overdue to make us a fresh batch of playdough, so I may as well make it Christmas colored and let them have a blast! I think Lily is going to be especially excited about this one because she loves to decorate things. And we have a whole bunch of sparkly crafty bling she can use.

4. Paint stamping. I just randomly had this idea and I don't know if it will work, but we have tons and tons of plain packing paper that I use to wrap gifts. I think that I'll give the girls some green and red paint and some of our Christmas cookie cutters and let them make us some fun wrapping paper to spruce things up under the tree!

What are you doing to enjoy your cookie cutters this season? I'd love to hear from you in the comments! 

Also, what's your favorite cookie cutter? Mine is this gem that Kirsten and I found in Colmar. I can't wait to make a bunch of cute gingerbread stars for my morning mugs of coffee!

Oh to be a Kid Again

There are moments when my adult-self gets to remember how awesome childhood is. And it's usually when I'm watching my children almost pee their pants with excitement about some super cool experience. 

"You mean we're having ice cream for DINNER?"
"We're going to snuggle and watch movies the WHOLE afternoon?"
"I can have AS MANY fake tattoos as I WANT?"

You know, stuff like that.

Last week Kirsten took us on a little adventure to a summer toboggan track about an hour from us. The track itself was an absolute blast. But this bungee-trampoline business was probably even MORE exciting to Lily and Sam.

My cheeks started hurting from laughing and smiling at them having the time of their lives! Observe...

Lily learned how to flip over and Sammy kept squealing that it was tickling her tummy!

Made me think about how awesome play is. And how I need to do it more. It really is great to jump and flip and twirl and dance and giggle and smile till your cheeks hurt. 

If there's anything my little Monkeys are teaching me lately it's just that:

More play Mom. More play!

Christmas in July = Best. Playdate. Ever.

What's sweaty, red and green, sticky, and squealing with delight?  A bunch of kids wearing Santa hats in the middle of summer, that's what.  

I've always wanted to have a "Christmas in July" Party and it wasn't until this year that I had the motivation to do it. (Acquiring the bouncy castle might have been the push I needed - I just really wanted to share that blessing with our littlest friends!)

It was a perfect playdate.  And so easy to pull off!  All I did was make homemade playdough and colored rice.  And I set them up at different stations outside so there was hardly any mess to clean up inside!

The Moms (and non-moms, thanks for coming Kirsten!) just got to sit around and chat and drink iced coffee while listening to Christmas music!  And if any kids got cranky we just shoved another cookie or cupcake in their mouths. It was brilliant!

We also met some new friends!  (Hi, Carrie and co!)

The rice and play dough got EVERYWHERE and it was awesome and okay because the best part about Christmas in July is that it's OUTSIDE! :o)

The only real mistake I made was putting glass Christmas tree bulbs in the rice sensory bin with metal utensils.  Don't be like me.  Or else you'll spend a little while picking broken glass out of the bin so no one has to go to the ER on Christmas in July.  My bad.

Food?  Oh the food was heavenly!  Peanut butter blossoms and cake and snowball cupcakes - OH MY!  We definitely had enough sugar.

I made the green-peanut-butter-Christmas-tree-open-faced-sandwiches.  Which really need an easier name.  But we topped them with star fruit and used pull 'n peel licorice and gold sprinkles to decorate - so cute!  Rachael made avocado, turkey, and cranberry sauce sandwiches, which was a very good thing or else we might have all slipped into a sugar coma.  A delightful sugar coma.

It was fantastic fun and so easy to plan and pull off.  I'm totally putting Christmas in July on next year's calendar... you should, too!

My Top 10 Tips for Painting with Tiny Humans

I used to HATE getting paint out for craft time.  As in, I avoided it like the plague.  I hardly have any "artwork" from Lily's second year of life... cause I just didn't know how to let the 2yo paint while keeping the 1yo occupied and NOT covered in paint.  The control-freak in me didn't handle that stress well, so I just didn't bother.

But now is a different story.  I finally put on my big girl panties and decided my girls needed to embrace some form of daily art.  And once we started, we just can't stop!

I think the biggest push to pull out the paints more regularly came when I was researching home preschool ideas and fell in love with this blog all over again.  It's a gold mine of ideas and activities.  But her post on The ABCs of How to Home Preschool has a great section about how D is for Daily Art.  I also highly recommend The Toddler's Busy Book as it has a lot of great ideas in general, but specifically some great tips on making art time less stressful and more fun.  Most of these "top ten" ideas come from these two sources.  

So here are some of the things I've learned while working with my budding Picassos...

1.  Use washable paints or mix dish soap into acrylic paint.  I really like the Crayola Washable Kids' Paint because it even comes out of clothes!  But I have also found that simply mixing a generous squirt of Dawn into our acrylic paint makes clean up SO much easier!

2.  Reuse egg cartons as paint holders.  You were going to throw them out anyways!  They make for a nice paint palette for the girls and I can customize for each day by just ripping them down to size.  Plus I toss them in the trash when we're done!  Less to wash.  (Though the hippie in me cringes a little cause in Germany we usually recycle the cartons... but oh well, it's all about making craft time simpler, right?  I'll save the environment in other ways!)

3.  Upcycle an old adult t-shirt into a child's paint smock.  Exhibit A is modeling my old camp t-shirt that I used to wear when coloring my hair.  I just cut it in half right up the sides, then I secure it in back with a rubber band for each kid.  Wa-la!  No paint on clothes... usually...

4.  Don't try to multi-task.  We usually only paint for a half hour at the most, and I need to give the girls my full attention during this time.  At best, I can sip a cup of coffee, but usually it's best if I just sit at the table with them and watch them at work.  i.e. I can't be on facebook or someone will have paint up their nose faster than you can say "what's on your mind?"  (Also remember that timing is pretty important... we generally paint in the morning after breakfast.  I find that well-rested, full tummies are less likely to be whiny and fussy during craft time.)

5.  Focus on the process, not the project.  And don't be bossy.  It's really important for kids to just explore and play while they paint.  It was hard for me not to direct them at first... especially when they kind of suck at it ;o)  But they get better and more creative all on their own if you just let them be.  It's actually really fun to just sit back and watch!

A cool example of this is in the above pictures from the other day... I was taking photos for this post and wasn't really paying much attention to how the girls were painting.  All the sudden Sammy started to paint with the "wrong" end of her brush in the wet paint... and it made a really neat pattern!  When I commented on it, Lily of course wanted to try, too.  And a new experience was had.  Just from letting them explore!

6.  Prep everything before you sit them down to paint.  I have a pretty good system going now... but one thing that's really important for me to remember is to set out a big piece of paper in the hallway as our "drying spot".  The girls machine-gun through their papers and I am constantly running into the hallway with dripping masterpieces needing a place to rest.  It helps to have everything set and ready to go before we start.

7.  Use old towels as table protectors.  I tried using large sheets of paper, but they don't seem to stay as well.  And the girls would just end up painting on the table paper, or it would get wet and soak through to the table anyways.  Old towels do the trick.  Plus there's the added benefit that when they're working on a glue project they can wipe their little fingers off on the towels.

8.  Bring out the art on a regular basis... daily if you can.  We don't do it daily right now.  But that's the goal in the back of my mind.  It's great for their little brains and it's fun, too, once Momma stops being a control-freak ;o)  Keep it fresh by trying different kinds of paint, different brushes (we've used qtips, cotton balls, and even toy cars to paint!) and different projects, like gluing gems to paper or working with stickers.  Kids generally love any kind of art but they need regular exposure and variety to reap the full benefits.  

9.  Make a rotating art display somewhere in your house where your kids can see it.  I try to put up at least one new "work" from each kid every time we do art.  I hung some twine in the hallway so we could use mini clothespins and switch out the display easily.  Here in Germany we have a wood cabinet panel over our fridge, but using magnets to display some art on the fridge is classic, easy, and still awesome.

10.  Save and date the precious masterpieces.  I put each artist's name on the artwork and also the year.  At the end of the year I'm going to borrow Megan's (Hi Megan!) great idea and do a collage project with squares from my favorites in a framed poster.  That way I can save bits of the work of these early years and display it without saving stacks of papers and without wall-papering with gobs of paint scribbles.

Bonus clean up tip:  Use an old rag/washcloth.  I always have a load of rags to wash anyways, but if you're worried about paint getting on your other clothes, just wash it by hand and hang it up till tomorrow's paint adventure!  (I also never wash the table towels or paint smocks... just let them dry and put them in the craft cabinet till next time)  A washcloth is way more heavy duty to handle the tough job of getting in between those pudgy fingers... plus it's reusable! Be nice to the Earth and just say no to silly paper towels!  (There you go, we cancel out the disposable paint palettes by using washcloths!)  Love, your resident hippie.

And that's our "daily art" folks!  Happy painting and let me know if you have any other great ideas to add to this!  

Homemade Christmas Ornaments

Lily and I had a lot of fun making "clay" Christmas ornaments this year.  We just finished up our last batch the other day and Jesse was like "how many ornaments are you going to make?" ;o)  But we're done now... the bottom branches of the tree are sagging because those are the only ones Lil likes to decorate.  And we have gobs to mail to family for next year.  Cause what grandparent doesn't want dorky ornaments all over the place?

We used this recipe from The Woodside Kitchen and I didn't need to tweak it very much.  I will say that you need to roll it thick to prevent curling.  And if you want vibrant colors, you need to use high quality gel food dyes.  

LJ really enjoyed being mostly in charge of the stirring process.  Once it cooks on the stove you let the dough cool for a bit, then roll it out and stamp out your ornaments.  I will recommend rolling it onto parchment paper or a silicone mat so you can leave the ornaments where they are and just peel away the extra dough.  I do this with my sugar cookies, too.  Much easier.

I really liked that the leftover dough could be stored in the fridge for later use.  So one day we did red, then green, then we used the leftovers from both to make multi-colored creations.  We stamped designs onto them, which was fun.  The recipe says you can also paint them... lots of interesting suggestions in the comments.  We used curling ribbon and twine to hang them on the tree.

They certainly aren't going to last forever or be family heirlooms... but they're a cute kiddie craft.  And they're super cheap so even if/when they break it's not going to make me cry or anything!  One batch alone gets you about 20 ornaments, depending on size.  And we did about three batches this season!

I have a secret wish that I'll have two trees next year.  One big, to decorate as usual, and one little... to make the "kid tree"... strung with magical hand-crafted kid ornaments and popcorn garland.  We'll see if I actually do it.  But that's the dream!

I think this might be my last Christmas post... sniff sniff... How many more days till next Christmas???

Best $2 I've Spent in Awhile

So did you know a big ball of colored rubber bands only costs $2?  Did you also know that toddlers love playing with them?  Did you also know that they smell gross and get nasty chemicals all over your hands (and their hands) and then when your little one sucks her thumb later she cries?  Oops. 

I didn't know any of this until a few days ago... but now I know!  Rubber bands are awesome!  And smelly.

Obviously any good idea I have these days comes from Pinterest.  We're working on fine motor skills here.  And also trying to sneak in some color lessons.  

The original idea I read was to have the toddler(s) put the rubber bands around a doorknob but our doors all have these weird handles and Lily can barely reach them anyways.  So I flipped a dining room chair over.  That's what I call Mommy improvisation!  I'm like... okay, what can we stick these puppies on?  And that was the best I could come up with.  Don't judge ;o)

Lily even decided that they made great bracelets and (for Sammy) anklets.  Her improvisation skills are more creative than mine!

So I'd say this activity gets 4 out of 5 stars because it was a secret educational experience and it kept them occupied for at least 6.5 minutes.  

Just kidding, it was longer than that.  At least 20 minutes of focused and fun play... and it could have gone longer had not Sammy bumped her head and had a mini meltdown.  Perhaps too close to lunch/naptime?  Or maybe she's teething?  Or maybe she's just a pansy?

We'll definitely give it another go soon.  A nice simple, fun (and cheap) activity!  

Playdough Extravaganza

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Lillian.  Lillian's Momma was challenged by her friend (and her friend's friend) who did lots of fun activities with their kids.  Lillian's Momma has been realizing lately that she is not as good as she'd like to be about scheduling in times of "focused, educational play" with Lillian.

Since Lillian's Momma wanted to grow in this area, she busted out her Momma's old homemade playdough recipe... which took less than ten minutes to make and brought back tons of memories because it smelled like her childhood :o) 

And she showed Lillian how much fun it is to poke and play with the gooey balls of colorful dough.

(This face may or may  not be an "I just slipped a piece into my mouth before anyone noticed" face.)

So while Lillian's baby sissy Samantha played with bottle tops, Lillian's Momma showed her how to make yellow playdough snowmen and long playdough ropes.  Then she practiced naming the colors and even showed Lillian how mixing two colors together makes another color.

It was very exciting to Lillian's Momma (and Daddy) that by the end of the playdough playtime, Lillian was able to properly identify and "say" blue and orange.  This is a big deal, because Lillian hardly says anything very often!

Then Lillian's Momma let sissy Samantha play with a wad...

 

...which went down exactly as expected ;o) 

The End.