Easter Craft Party!

We had an Easter Craft Party with Lily's preschool cousins this week. We started out by making paper Easter eggs using colored cotton balls:

and colored rice:

(These are both made by using a several drops of food coloring and a cap-full of rubbing alcohol, mixing with the cotton balls or rice, and then letting them dry on newspaper.)

The kids had fun making designs with the glue, and then adding the rice and cotton balls.

They all did a good job!

Then we made bunny faces using paper plates, googly eyes, puff balls, and construction paper.

The twins didn't get to do crafts. ;0) But they did have fun being held by their Grammy.

After the crafts, it was time for the:

After they found all of their eggs, it was time for a yummy Easter snack!

It was another great party!

I am going to miss these when Lily is in Kindergarten next year, so I will try to get in as many as I can while she's still home with me. :0)

Outdoor Chalkboard

Recently, I saw this cute outdoor chalkboard idea in a Lowe's idea magazine. It seemed fairly easy to do, so I thought I would give it a try. The kids love to use sidewalk chalk, but we are in the backyard more than we are in the front, where the sidewalk is. You can attach the board to the fence, so this seemed like a good idea for us.
All you need is a piece of smooth plywood (I used a 4x8 piece), pieces of trim, chalkboard paint**, and paint for the trim. (and screws and nails to attach the trim to the board and the board to the fence.)

**Actual chalkboard paint is for indoor use only, but I needed something for outside. This idea was for an outdoor chalkboard and it was in a Lowe's magazine, so I ask the Lowe's paint guys what to use. They said that the paint that was in the magazine was black outdoor latex paint, so that's what we got.
After I put the first coat of paint on the board, I started painting the trim. This proved to be a problem, because Jeff got pvc trim so it would last longer outside. Well, the paint I bought did not want to stick to the trim, so Jeff suggested I sand the trim down first:

It worked! The rest of the trim was much easier to paint! I put 2 coats of paint on both the trim and the board. I had a quart of paint for each and I had a lot left over of the red, but I used almost all of the black.

Then I helped Jeff screw the board into the fence, making sure the screws went into the cross board on the back of the fence for support.

To give you an idea on how big this is, here is Lily standing next to it:

The next day, Jeff cut the trim for me.....

and nailed it up onto the board:

Then it was time to get the chalk out!

Ta-da! It works!!

Lily could not wait to use it!

Once the boys saw Lily out there, they wanted to draw too!

It was easy to clean off too. We just sprayed it down with the hose!

Later on after it dried off, they were back out there again drawing on it. I think this chalkboard will get a lot of use!

Still Here.....

We're still here and I'm still blogging, I just haven't posted anything all week. I had all of these fun outdoor plans for the kids during Spring Break, but the rain decided to cancel those. So, we just kind of hung out. The kids played games, we baked some yummy treats, we went out to lunch with Jeff, drew pictures, and just relaxed. And I didn't take pictures of anything. On Friday, it finally stopped raining and we met Aunt Amy & Uncle Sam at the zoo. It was nice to be able to be outside and run around! Today we are enjoying the sunshine, watching Jeff with his new toy....
and I'm working on a fun new project for the backyard. (pictures to come soon.....hopefully) ;0)

I hope you enjoyed your Spring Break. We did, even though we didn't get to do most of the stuff we had planned. It was a nice break from the rush of school, meetings, and homework. =)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Dress-Up Part 2

A few weeks ago, Lily decided it would be funny to dress my foot up as a ballerina. I even posted pictures about it. Well, a few nights ago, she decided to do it again.....only this time, she did it to Jeff's foot:

Silly girl! Jeff let her do it, so she ran upstairs to get more things to dress his foot up with. She obviously wanted to see what she could get away with, because she brought lip gloss down:

Jeff said no to that.....I don't know why! ;0)

He did let her add wings, a butterfly wand, and a princess hat:

Doesn't his foot look beautiful??

St. Patrick's Day Craft Party!

On Monday (because that's when we could all get together), we had a St. Patrick's Day Craft Party. We even had a treasure hunt planned:

With a treasure waiting at the end!

But first, we started with a couple of cute St. Patrick's art projects. The first one was a handprint rainbow. We got all of the colors of the rainbow and painted the kids hands each color.

Then we arced their handprints across the paper.

Then we added pots of gold for the end. They turned out super cute!

The next craft was making a leprechaun's face. I had all of the pieces cut out, they just had to assemble them.

Aren't they cute??

Finally, it was time for the treasure hunt!

The kids raced around the house and out in the backyard to find the next clue!

They reached the last place and found their treasure!!

All of that running around makes you hungry and thirsty, so of course we had to have some yummy green treats!

Thanks everyone for helping make this another great craft day!