All tagged DIY
What started out as very simple party favors turned into something a bit more elaborate in true Brittany fashion. As you can see, Melody had a Frozen themed 4th birthday party. The idea was to have snowflake wands for all the kids. While we did those (and you can see the how to below), since there were only 4 kids including Melody plus 2 babies, I also incorporated a bit more since I had the room to spend more. Check it out below.
I always find Father’s Day crafts just a bit harder than any other craft. I don’t really know why. This year I found the perfect crafts for our dad’s, but Brad was the hardest one of all. I eventually found something online I liked and went with it. I ideally wanted things that involved her footprint, but she is awful when it comes to putting paint on her feet. This means I need Brad’s help which would ruin the surprise. So we went another route.
Melody begs for crafts at all times I feel like. This is a craft we did early on during the quarantine when we were going over colors and such. We had all of the things on hand for this easy craft too.
During the quarantine we have tried to find fun ways to entertain ourselves at home. One of those things involved making a volcano. I had seen people doing this all over my facebook feed simply using a clear solo cup. But Brad decided to go beyond that and make a volcano using his 3D printer!
Since Melody’s birthday was dramatically smaller this year, I only had to make 4 invitations to mail out. I did make six in the end so that I would have some extras to store away. I debated between store bought, store printed, or DIY at home. And since I didn’t have to make as many, I opted for DIY. Plus the date was decide about 10 days out, ha!
So I must be honest, I made this a LONG LONG time ago. So long ago, we were at our other house, and I am most positive Melody wasn’t even a thought yet, ha! But I found all the pictures, and I wanted to share with you this countdown idea. This does involve quite a bit of work, but you can use it beyond a countdown!
So this was far from an original idea, but it was a really great one and we had everything on hand to do this. I found this on Oriental Trading’s website. It is really easy to make, and a fun game to play for toddlers.
So obviously teacher gifts were a little harder this year. We did get to see Melody’s teachers briefly during a pickup of their things this week. So I wanted to do something small along with a gift card. So I opted to make bookmarks just like I made our moms for Mother’s Day. I won’t go into much detail since it’s exactly the same, but I did leave a blank copy below if you want to make your own!
One of Brad’s Christmas presents last year was a 3D printer. He has found lots of things to print, and I wanted to try and find something he could print as decor in our newly made over playroom/craft room. I searched and searched, but I could not find anything I loved. That is when we decided to just put letters on the wall and work with that. Brad came up with the letters himself, and we decided to spell out “CREATE” above my craft table since I do a lot of creating there.
Since we haven’t been able to see our parents in person, we thought it would be nice to mail them a happy from Melody. This only required a little bit of paint, and it was a fairly quick craft!
One of the things we added to our playroom when we did a makeover to it last month was a dress-up storage solution. Melody just recently started getting into dressing up, but that is even still not super often. But she does have a few dresses from Halloween, last year’s dance recital, and a few gifts. So I wanted a better place to store them than on the back of a door. She also has lots of accessories like jewelry, wands, tutus, etc. So we needed room for that too. My best friend, Emily, recently came up with storage for her daughters dress up, and I decided to copy it! All you need a 9 cube storage system, a tension rod, and storage bins to fit the cubes if you want. Follow along below for the changes I made to the instructions.
So to start, I have used a purple crayon to show you what you do NOT want to install. Follow all the steps in the instruction manual unless noted below.
So this year we obviously have a lot more time at home to do and prepare for things. One thing we do a LOT of are crafts (in case all of my posts these days doesn’t give that away). Well I wanted to do something fun for our mom’s (and myself) for Mother’s Day this year. So I decided to make us all bookmarks! You don’t have to do everything I do for this; I just happen to have a lot of craft supplies, ha!
We did this craft before Easter, but I think it also can be a craft you can do anytime. It is another unique craft in that you don’t use a paint brush. And if your kid is a little older, they should be able to do it all without little help!
The playroom/bonus room/craft room has always been a difficult room for me. When we bought this house, we loved the size of this room. It offered us a space that both Melody and I could easily share between her toys and all of my crafting supplies. It even has a nice big closet with shelving installed. Well once we finally moved in and got everything up there, I realized we have a LOT of toys and we are lacking in the organization department when it comes to all of these toys. Christmas did not help this either! We did try to spread the toys between her bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the playroom. However, we found that doing this some rooms just were left out during playtime. So now she doesn’t have any toys in the kitchen (she has a cabinet with arts and crafts for downstairs), and we have reduced the number of toys in the living room and her bedroom. So now we have a majority of the toys upstairs in the playroom. But this has caused even more organizational issues.
Melody’s obsession during this quarantine has been bubbles. And while we found a bubble machine through grocery pickup early on, we have been having trouble finding bubble solution. I mean we can find small bottles, but every time I order bubbles through grocery pickup, they are out of stock. Well we opted to figure out a way to make our own! We tried two recipes, and both have their pros and cons.
So while we did this craft as an Easter craft, it can definitely be a craft you can do anytime of year. We plan to display this cross year around. Because of this, I did it on a canvas instead of regular paper. But this also can be done on regular paper too!
If you are like me, you now have tons of those plastic Easter eggs laying around this week. Well one thing you can do with them is have your kids paint with them! You can make this as simple or as elaborate as you want. I let Melody pick 4 paint colors. Then we took two eggs and separated them. Then she used the inside of each egg to paint.
This week has been a fairly quiet week as far as anything new goes that impacts us. We kept our focus on Easter this week, and we also spent a lot of time outside when we could.
The bunny mask is the last of my Easter specific crafts, I think. These last two weeks have been full of Easter and spring crafts. And there are definitely some more spring crafts to come, and even a fun after-Easter craft next week too! What is kind of neat about this craft is you can do this with a variety of animals too.
So this is another craft we did during our homeschooling days. It didn’t go quite like I had planned, but Melody wanted to do it her way. And it wasn’t worth the battle, ha! I will explain as I go along as to what I had hoped she would do.
