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!

Mini Letter Crafts A B C D

We've been (attempting) to do a handprint and a cut out craft each week going along with the ABCs. I'm creating FREE Preschool Printable PDFs of our cut out crafts so you can play along.

Each page has 4 letters and I'll post as we go.

If you want the sheet with ABCD, just follow the PDF link below for the downloadable file.
(A is for Alligator. B is for Bee. C is for Cat. D is for Dots)

Here's some affiliate links to the supplies we use for our preschool crafts.

Elmer's Disappearing Purple Washable Glue Sticks (because who doesn't love washable).
Home Printer (this is the newer (and cheaper!) version of my Cannon MP560 that I LOOOVE!)
Ink Cartridges. (Because I promise you they're as good as the $30 for ONE you've been buying at the store).

Enjoy!

DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE ABCD PRINTABLE HERE.

Mini Letter Crafts A & B

It's already Summer Break for my preschoolers (and soon to be Kindergartener!). To keep busy this summer, we're (trying) to do some sort of craft each day.

We also practice writing our name and holding our pencil.

We're making ABC handprints and I made some mini cut-out-letter crafts for us to add to our Alphabet Books. There's two letters each on a page (to save the trees and have copies for siblings, yo!) but you could enlarge them too if you wanted.

You can download the free printable for letters A and B here.

Mom! I'm gonna draw a guy in his mouthing saying "Ahhhhhh!"

Here's hoping we get through the rest of the Alphabet (because, you know, kids are cray and summer gets lazy. Ha!) 

This Year BLEW By Last Day of School Bubble Tag Free Printable

Happy Last Day of School!

Last year I created and printed off these adorable bubble tags and tied them on with some cute twine. Boom. Instant summer gift. There's 9 to a page on the printable PDF (linked below) and the perfect summer send off.

Follow this link to a printable PDF to print some for yourself!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-XVhfwFTBF1S1JFRnpQaGx0djQ/view?usp=drivesdk&resourcekey=0-8V1KW842ZB_P5OiRmjn5FA

Dollar Tree Easter Basket Haul

We are on the road this Easter and the Easter bunny was one smart cookie. He visited our hotel and packed baskets full of activities we could all play with when we were stuck inside (while Cor had some work to do.)

Dollar Tree "Dough" comes in packs of 8. That's EIGHT colors for $1. So each kid got 2 tossed in their basket. And if you're like us, play doh is a disposable toy. We attempt to save it for a second play, but usually it gets smushed all together anyway. So I'd rather have a few small colors anyway. Usually I keep a pack of 8 colors hidden somewhere and pull out one for a restless kid.

Princess books came in a pack of TWO so each girl got one tossed in her basket.

There's something about ring pops that make my kids go Cray. And they came in a 4 pack. And I (obviously) like things that come in 4s.

Each Big Kid got a Easter paint set. Each came with 2 pictures to paint. And we also will use the paint for the next fun thing...

Build your own race car. For ONE DOLLAR! The boys could not WAIT to rip into these things and they were so so simple. Each pack came with all the wooden pieces pre cut and a small tube of wood glue. My almost 4 year old and 5 year old were obsessed! The Easter Bunny should have bought a few more (they come in different sets too!)

Ay got a pack of shape Flash cards to help her with Speech Therapy. Because words are hard, yo.

Socks!!! If your house is like mine, your mini van eats socks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don't know what it is, but there's something my kids love about throwing socks around the van like confetti. And each pack came with three pairs of socks. Good thinking, Bunny!

Number/Letter DRY ERASE practice books! Say whaaaat?? Cam needs to practice writing his name and when I... I mean... The Easter Bunny... saw these books, she hopped on it (see what I did there?). The boys can practice writing their letters and numbers and wipe them clean and start again. I also grabbed a pack of 4 dry erase pens at the Dollar Tree too.

Each kid also got some Jelly Bean candy (but they were well and gone by the time I got to take pictures of their stuff). And Bunny ears... That were on their heads all day long. And Ay got a little purse. What I'm really saying here is that I failed at getting a fantastic photo of all the sweet things they got. My bad.

There was a few more items not from the Dollar Tree that rounded out their baskets. Each kid got a new outfit. The Big Kids got a Skylander (thanks 5 Below for an awesome 3 pack for $5!). Baby Air even had the Trolls movie tucked in her basket! Lucky Lady!

Over all, we had a fantastic Easter, despite traveling for 13 hours, and now we have some fun things to do in our hotel. Win Win.

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.