DIY Recycled Wooden Boxes

So. We made a thing.

We had a ton of landscaping stakes left over after we put up our own fence (you can read more about that here). We needed some shelves for our bathroom makeover. We got rid of a medicine cabinet mirror and replaced it with a flat mirror, so we needed something to store little odds and ends and keep them slightly out of view and easy to access; we thought some cute wooden boxes would do the trick.

We had been putting off going to the hardware store for some wood when it suddenly dawned on me - all those stakes were just sitting in the rain next to our house doing a whole lot of nothing!

Cor went ahead and cut the tips off of each end of the stakes, wood glued them together (holding them with clamps while they dried) to make a bottom and sides, and boom. Boxes.

We used some L brackets to hang them as "floating shelves" similar to the ones we put in our main bathroom.

Pretty dang adorable. And super practical too!

You Light Up Our Life Mason Jar Firefly Craft Card

Shh.
We have a secret.

We're sending our favorite grandparents some super sweet cards for Grandparent's Day and we're giving you a free printable to do the same!

I'm all about sticking as much on one printable as I can, so here's one sheet of 4 mason jars you can print and cut out for your favorite people.

Click Here for the printable PDF.

I intentionally left the printable free of "Happy Grandparent's Day" so we could write it in ourselves with our cute kindergartner handwriting. It would also make a great card for a birthday, mother's day, father's day, or any day! We printed our cards on white cardstock, but you could also print them on a color cardstock too. I think a blue or a light gray would be super pretty! You could also print on some printer paper or construction paper and call it a day. Grandparent's just love anything from their favorite tiny people!

You can either trim the cards around the mason jar itself, or keep them squared off like I did (because I'm in get-it-done mode. Sorry not sorry.)

Next, grab your kiddos and have them put a few fingerprints on the card with yellow paint or ink. Because I have so many children, I just let each of them put one firefly because I wanted to add their names under it, but go crazy if you want! When dry, take a fine tip Sharpie or a black pen to draw in some little winged creatures and add each child's name under their print (if you want. It's totally optional. You do you, boo.)

Get extra credit by punching a hole around both sides of the jar and adding a ribbon bow. So sweet! I used a fork to help pop the ribbon around the front and then brought it back around through the back and tied a bow.

I keep a box of 4x6 envelopes on hand. They are perfect to pop a photo in or stick a cute kid-made card in the mail to Grandma.

Enjoy!

DIY 4th of July Handprint Flag Shirt Tutorial

I've been wanting to do this DIY Flag Shirt since Cam was a baby. Now that we have ALL our babies, I thought maybe it was finally time. Haha. I've included some affiliate links in this post so you can make your own shirts too!

These we're so so easy! The hardest part was finding a pack of white tee shirts that would easily fit my 2T 3T 4T wearing bunch. And I found these that worked perfectly in size XS!

Since we were using this craft fabric paint I didn't even prewash the shirts.

I used some leftover painters tape to tape off a few stripes per shirt (I taped less stripes on Air's onesie since it was obviously much smaller). I also stuck a piece of paper inside each shirt in case the paint bleed through (It did. Don't skip this step.)

Then I gave the kids a foam brush and the painted the white part of the shirt that was taped off. Everyone had a different method. Brush strokes and dabbling seemed to work the best. We we're going for fun and not for perfect. So I just let them go at it. (You may want to also place a piece of tape vertically at the ends of the stripes if you are in a going-for-perfect mood).

Then we took some star stickers and put them on our top left corner. (Ours came from a practice workbook but these are similar)

I painted each kid's hand with blue fabric paint and quickly put their handprint over top the star stickers. Fabric paint dried quickly. So work fast on this step.

Next we freaked out and washed everyone's hands before they touched anything easily pulled off the star stickers and tape to reveal white stars and stripes!

And that was it! It was so quick and fun and I can't wait to get a picture of the whole gang in their shirts (Fingers crossed. That will probably be more difficult than actually making the shirts!) We even made a onesie for baby Air!

Happy Independence Day!

Biggie Bead Easter Egg Craft

We were getting close to Easter and really hadn't done much. (Oops!) To be fair, we are closing on the new house and getting ready for Cor to travel and for us all to take a pretty extensive road trip (stay tuned for that), so Easter was on the back burner.

Car brought home this craft from preschool and I thought it might be a fun idea to replicate with melted beads. We used BIGGIE BEAD PERLER BEADS (affiliate link) and placed parchment paper on top of our template and put the whole thing on a Baking sheet.

After we had them all placed relatively close together, I carefully slid the bottom paper away.

I then put the whole thing in the oven at 300*F for 1 hour. Ours needed about 10 more mins, and then it was all perfectly melted together. I used a spoon to squish one stray bead down while it was all still hot and it did the trick.

Here's the template Car came home with from school. But you could also Google image "preschool Easter egg color page" for more ideas. 

DIY GPS Sign

Without a cutting machine!

Hey guys! In case you haven't caught on, we're getting a new Mouse House super soon! I have been so excited. We don't close until next month, but that hasn't stopped me from making. all. the. things. The first thing I wanted to make was a GPS sign of our new house. I thought I'd add a compass rose on the sign, but decided halfway through to switch it up for the Whitman quote. Because it's perfect. I love these things, so I included affiliate links to help you find what I used.

I have a cutting machine (a silhouette cameo), but decided I didn't want to use it for this project. Sometimes dragging it out and setting it up seems like more work than necessary. It has it's uses, but today I didn't want to mess with it. And now YOU can make one too if you don't have a cut machine.

The first thing I did was go to this website to find the GPS coordinates for the new house. Easy Peasy. I typed it out in Word and picked a font that I thought was thick enough to trace.

Next I took an old piece of scrap wood and painted it brown with acrylic paint. If you stain it instead, the white acrylic paint won't stick as well. So I just used a dry brush and some brown acrylic and wiped it off with a paper towel to get a dry, wood-like look.

Then I took out my printed coordinates and quote and took some good ol' kid sidewalk chalk and chalked up the whole back of the paper. (Full disclosure, whenever my kids get sidewalk chalk I immediately take and hide the white chalk... Mom of the year here, folks!) Then I placed the paper on the wood and used a pencil to trace over my letters. This works like copy paper. Tracing the white chalk onto the brown wood.

Next I used an extra fine Sharpie Paint Pen and filled in my chalk letters. This also came in SUPER handy when writing out the quote. Just take your time.

After using the Sharpie pen, I went back over the letters with a fine brush and white acrylic paint to finish it up.

So easy! I did this whole sign in less than an afternoon (and had to chase after a few little kids while doing it... So that was fun.)

Enjoy!

St. Paddy's Fun

Well, it's been a while. I wanted to share with you a super cute St. Patrick's Day craft I did with the boys last week. I literally had a "Oh, crap. It's St. Patrick's Day. Maybe I should do something" moment. Not that I think it makes me a better Mom, but it makes me FEEL like a better Mom, so I decided to do some Pinterest searching and found this idea found on a blog here.

To be honest, I didn't even look at the blog. I skimmed Pinterest, saw the picture and figured it had basically no prep and my two year old could do it. Boom. Now I'm crafty.

While Little was exploring downstairs in a safely baby proofed room and Big was napping, I quickly gathered up some construction paper and sliced it into strips. Not gonna lie - my strips were pretty big because I didn't want this to take forever.

When Big woke up, we got our craft on. I know two year old's like tape, but Big LOOOOVVVEEES tape. I don't get it, but whatever kid. He really enjoyed putting a strip of paper through the hole of our paper chain and then sticking a piece of tape to hold it together (and then I would stick another piece of tape to ACTUALLY hold it together).

Little loved handing us colors of paper and waving them around in the air. I was actually shocked with how well they worked together. Shocked, I tell ya.

In the end, we hung our "rainbow" on the door so Daddy would see it when he was on his way home. I ended up going back later and cutting out a black pot with some gold gold in it later when Daddy got home and had no clue it was suppose to be a rainbow.

Our rainbow and gold hung in our kitchen for a few days after St. Patrick's day and Big loved pulling at it until it finally fell apart. Overall, I'm glad I could take some time and watch how much my little guys really are growing. They both are impressing us daily.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

(Oh yea - I was also 'that mom' who made 4-leaf clover sandwiches)

SuperMom: Valentine's Edition

I've read all these blog posts recently about not being a supermom. About being anti-pinterest. About not having the pressure put on us to be perfect.

I agree, most days I wear the uniform of my people: yoga pants and a sweatshirt with some kind of encrusted cookie on a sleeve somewhere. Doing a craft or making a snack together is the last thing on my mind those days and the countdown to nap time and when Mr. M finally gets home from work is always ticking away in my head.

But sometimes it feels so dang good to be SuperMom. And you know what, I'm going to brag about it on the rare occasions that I actually get to wear the cape and be the coolest Mom on the planet.

This week was Valentine's week and I took the opportunity to do some fun things to keep Big busy. We made Valentine's day cards on Monday and I was only planning on doing things on days I didn't have to work (M-W-F). Instead, we ended up staying busy the whole week! We had a blast. Big kept busy and enjoyed doing something new each day and it was fun to fill our morning with something more than Elmo and Big Bird.

We crushed up some old crayons -- Okay, we used already crushed up crayons because Big has a crayon braking (and eating) habit - to make some fun cute heart crayons. We used a silicone IKEA heart ice cube tray and baked them at 150 degrees for about an hour. Plan on throwing out (or save it for other non-food crafts) your tray though. These were only a buck so I didn't mind. I imagine you could spend time figuring out a way to clean them, but it wasn't worth it to me. Then we colored Spiderman with heart crayons. Yup! 

We baked a super big heart cake by splitting a box cake mix into a round and square cake pan. Big's favorite part was adding the icing, licking the spatula, and adding more icing... Good thing it was just for us to eat. Then we covered it in sprinkles and surprised Dad when he got home! 

And we had a special peanut butter and sprinkle lunch on Valentine's Day! I even heart bombed Mr's car and the boys' doors after nap. I don't know why, but I was really feeling it this year for Valentine's Day. I took it as an opportunity to do something fun and out of the ordinary each day this week, and I think everyone really enjoyed it. 

Now back to my cookie encrusted sweats and Elmo. ;) 

I Love You ... To Pieces!

It's Valentine's Week and I'm excited that we get to do a little extra fun things to celebrate. I decided I'd spend some time with the boys today to make cards.

I saw this on Pinterest and decided to use my Silhouette Cameo to make it a little more fancy and easier for little fingers. Big can't quite glue things inside the lines and Little is just the best at crinkling paper, so it worked out better for us to do it my way (and hello - it's way cuter!).

I gave Big two pieces of tissue paper and thought he'd love going to town ripping them to shreds. Not so much. He wanted no part of my crafting. I was all, "This is why we don't do fun things" and then just started ripping the paper for him. He just sat there looking at me like I was bizarre. Then he wanted cheese, and that helped put him in the crafting mood.  

Big, Cheese, and Glue 

Happy with his cheese, he then got excited about glue. I kept ripping and he had a good ol' time smearing glue on the paper (and his fingers - Yay, Non Toxic!).

Then Big figured out that it was way more fun to just glue the actual tissue paper, so that's what he did for a bit while I assembled his card. 

I gave Little smaller pieces and let him crinkle them up to his hearts content then glued his bigger pieces down inside his card. See... He likes doing fun things!

Little loved making his card! 

With some help from Big (since he decided it was necessary to glue some more things), we glued down the edges of the card. I like this better. It's not like opening it up would add anything to it's "cardness" and there's no place inside to sign it anyway since it's covered in shredded tissue paper. Way to go Big, thanks for thinking on your toes ;) So, we glued the card shut around the edges and glued around the heart a bit. I like how it lifts a little to add depth to the words. 

I'm so happy that Big got into it. They turned out super adorable and add a little festivity to our home. I love YOU to pieces, boys. XOXO.