Northpole Breakfast – Elf on the Shelf

Posted on November 25, 2012 by admin

We love when Happy Elf, our Elf on the Shelf, shows up each year at The HoB! This year Happy started a new tradition and brought us a special elf breakfast this morning!! The boys were so very excited to have our first Northpole Breakfast. Happy Elf had all kinds of yummy sweet treats and even brought the boys some fun ornaments for the tree in their room and a fun Christmas Craft.

Happy found these great Northpole Breakfast notes at 505 Design+Paperie! The PDF file is editable for the names on the notes. The title card does say 2011, Happy just used a sharpie to write 2012 and it worked great!!

Do you have Elf on a Shelf visit your house? Do you have a Northpole Breakfast?

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GAK!!

Posted on June 14, 2012 by admin

I am loving this summer with our boys. Last week we made GAK! The boys just loved that stuff!! I stumbled upon a recipe on Pinterest, and as soon as my older son saw it he immediately stated “WE HAVE TO MAKE THAT NOW, MAMA!” So I added the few items to our grocery list and then as soon as we had all of the ingredients we went to town making our own GAK! Here is the link to the recipe I used GAK! at Come Together Kids

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Jello Cookies

Posted on June 5, 2012 by admin

Recently, I was on Pinterest collecting ideas to keep my boys busy this summer. I found this recipe for Jello cookies. The colors just looked so fun I thought it would be a good baking activity for us!

I let my boys each pick 2 flavors, my younger boy picked lemon and strawberry, YUM! My older boy picked Lime and Tropical Fusion, YUM!!

Here are our cookies

They are not as pretty as Jamielyn’s but that is ok, the boys helped roll the balls of dough and smoosh the cookies down with the bowl. The cookies did taste good and they were fun to make!!

What are you doing to keep your kids busy this summer?

FauxFlakes

Posted on December 13, 2011 by admin

If you missed my first time to guest post here is the post from last week! I shared this over at

Thank you so much Adrianne for letting me guest post!!

So now onto the project I have for y’all (yes I am from Texas) today! My boys just loved this quick and easy projected! We decorated our windows with some FauxFlakes, since we are in south Texas this will be the only snowflakes at The HoB!

To make the snowflakes on the window I cut out snowflake with my mother-in-law’s Cricut. I used contact paper to that I could stick the snowflakes to the window. You could use vinyl as well but I did not have any and I had the contact paper. I cut out a few five inch snowflakes and several three inch snowflakes. I did notice that the snowflakes without the really small details seemed to cut much better and were much easier to put on the windows.

Before I put the contact paper snowflakes on the windows, I did clean them and made sure the windows were dry. Then I placed the snowflakes along the bottom and up a little on each side of the window. Then we sprayed the Faux Snow onto the window!

Next I very carefully pulled off the contact paper. I found the best way was to find a corner and pull straight off, trying my best to not smear the faux snow. There were a few snowflakes that I had a hard time pulling off, so I used a pair of tweezers to pull the contact paper off the window.

And there you have FauxFlakes on your window! My boys were super excited to see the snowflakes when I pulled off the contact paper, their reaction was worth the whole project!!!

Christmas Advent – Only a day late!

Posted on December 2, 2011 by admin

So I like to do things last minute! No I don’t really like to do things last minute, that is just how it usually goes! So I did get my Advent Calendar up yesterday on the 1st!! I also took pictures and had every intent to write the post yesterday, it just did not happen. So here is our Advent Calendar for 2011.

I am reusing the mini-stockings from last year. I bought them at Michael’s the day after Thanksgiving, so they were way discounted, I think they ended up being about $.35/each. The circle numbers are from Amy at Living Locurto. The circles are part of her Personalized Christmas Advent Calendar, this is an amazing free printable! Thank you Amy!!! I printed out the circles and punched them with a 2″ punch. Then I used a safety pin to attach to the stocking. I then hung the stockings on the wall in a Christmas Tree shape. I cut the yellow star and added to the top.

Last year when I did the stockings I came up with 24 Christmas activities for the family to do together everyday. I looked at the calendar and tried to plan the activities accordingly but somehow almost every night the Hubs and I would be trying to change the activities around as something came up and we would not be able to go look at Christmas Lights or whatever the activity was. So this year we decided to only put in a few days at a time so I can make sure the activities are ones that fit into our lives for those days. I just put the little card with the activity in the night before I head to bed.

If you have not started your Advent Calendar, no worries, it is never to late, just start with the day we are on and go forward, set yours up for the 10th-24th and do a 2 week count down for Christmas. The kids love countdowns and getting ready for Christmas!

We are also doing a book advent countdown. I was pleasantly surprised to have 24 Christmas/winter books in my stash, so I wrapped them in plain brown paper bag wrapping and added the same circle numbers that I used for the stocking. I just printed the circles on a sticker sheet, punched and attached to each book. I covered a box in red wrapping paper and my two year old added some Christmas Stickers.

My boys are so excited to get to read their book before bed and I am so excited to share this special time of year with my family!!

Turkey “Stained Glass” Kid Craft

Posted on November 16, 2011 by admin

I wanted an easy and fun craft project that both my boys could do, so we make “Stain Glass” Turkeys to decorate our window in the play room! All I did was cut up different colored tissue paper into small pieces. Then took a piece of contact paper with the sticky side up had my boys put pieces of the tissue paper onto it. Next I cut traced an outline of a turkey I found on Google and then cut out. We put the turkeys on the window in our playroom. Then the boys asked if I could cut out their names and Happy Thanksgiving so we added those.

My older son put so many pieces of tissue paper on the contact paper that I added a square piece of contact paper on top of the turkey to keep the turkey stuck to the window.

Please ignore the brown grass and messy backyard! My youngest boys loves the turkeys and when he is the playroom he has to have the blinds up so he can see the turkeys!

I am thankful for my family!!

Hand and Footprint Turkey

Posted on November 13, 2011 by admin

WOW! What a crazy week. Sorry for being MIA, busy with life. I did get some different projects done but did not have time to get them up on the blog. I will have them all up this week.

This past week the boys and I made our Hand and Footprint Turkeys, we make these every year and I love seeing how each year their turkeys are getting bigger. This is a very easy and fun craft! All you need is brown, yellow, orange, and red construction paper, pencil, scissors and glue. I also use googly eyes for the Turkey but you could color yours on the turkey too.

Trace your child’s foot on the brown paper and cut out, trace both hands on the red, yellow and orange papers and cut out. Then glue the hands onto the back of the foot, the foot is the turkey’s body and the hands become the feathers. I then cut legs, a beak and a caruncle (the red part on the throat/under the beak) for the Turkey.

This is my younger son’s turkey, he had so much fun helping me make the turkey!

This is my older son’s turkey. I cannot believe how big his feet are!!!

I am thankful that I can do these fun activities with my boys!!!

Halloween Bowling

Posted on October 9, 2011 by admin

Back in August I was pouring creamer out of the container into my morning coffee and when I set the creamer down I noticed that the container looked almost like a bowling pin. My creative mind started turning, ten creamer containers later and Halloween on the brain, I made an indoor Halloween bowling game for the boys!

For the bowling ball I picked up a foam pumpkin from the Dollar Store!

For the pins I took the labels off, washed and dried 10 creamer containers. Then I squirted some white tempra paint (cause that is what I had) inside the containers and shook around the paint till it covered all of the inside. I allowed the containers to dry over night then put the caps back on. Because I have a two-year old I should have (I will have to go back) and glue the lids closed. Then I just added the ghost face with different colored sharpies.

We set the pins up against our backdoor and the boys had a blast! I did go back and using painters tape add Xs on the floor where the pins go so the boys could set the pins themselves. In the end the boys played with the bowling set for thirty minutes and have gone back several times to play with it since we put it out yesterday. A fun indoor activity, perfect for our rainy weekend!

Since I drink creamer and had the paint on hand, the only cost was the $1 to buy the foam pumpkin. I just had to wait till we used 10 creamers. Though I am a huge coffee drinker so it was not that long!

Ghost Footprint Plaque

Posted on October 4, 2011 by admin

So last week I post my Ten on Tuesday list of Halloween projects I wanted to get done. I have finally completed one of them! I have 4 others I am in the middle of, I tend to be a bit ADD with my projects and cannot seem to just start and finish one. Instead I feel the need to start four or five at once and then slowly finish them.

I have finally finished the Ghost Footprint Plaque! My inspiration was found on pinterest!

Miner Moments

Mine turned out a bit different but I really like it!

I had wanted to write Happy Halloween and the boys names in white paint but I am no good at free hand! Vinyl would have been cute but I do not have a cutter! Someday… So I just glued some chip board pieces I had left over from a project from last year. I did not do a full tutorial but the ghost footprints are easy, just paint with white paint and push down. Though some how it was not that simple with either of my boys!

Handprint Caterpillar from The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Posted on August 30, 2011 by admin

One of my favorite children’s authors has to be Eric Carle, I love how he does his illustrations! His pictures are collages and here is a great answer from Eric himself as to how he creates these amazing collages, How do you make your pictures?

So a few weeks back I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Dare-Devil,my youngest. He loved the story and loved saying caterpillar over and over. So now the former elementary teacher comes out in me and I cannot help but do an activity connected to our storybook. So we created a handprint caterpillar after reading! I first found the idea on Pinterest (um totally in love with Pinterest!!!) And yay for the original pinner having the source listed, I found the idea at Snails and Puppy Dog Tails.

I love handprint and footprint arts and crafts projects with my boys, it is neat to see their different size feet and hands. I have also been known to do the same project multiple years in a row so then we see how their hands and feet have grown.

Now I have no pictures of us doing this activity cause paint, a two-year old, me as the only adult around, and my camera do NOT belong together, talk about a recipe for disaster! So I took pictures when the project was done! This is pretty easy I just used tempra paint and painted one of Dare-Devil’s palms green and his fingers blue, pushed his hand onto the paper, reapplied the paint for a second handprint. I wanted a third but Dare-Devil was running out of patience so I quickly moved to the head, just painted the palm of the other hand red and two fingers purple, pushed down the hand. When the paint was dry I used a black Sharpie to draw on the mouth and eyes!

The next day we re-read the story (repetition is a two year olds best friend!) And I needed another activity to go along with the story, so this time we made butterflies with Dare-Devil’s footprint as the body and his two handprints as the wings.

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