Bestie's Broncos Barrettes

My mom and sister have been bow and barrette making machines this week!  I found some Denver Broncos material in the scrap bin today and just had to make matching Broncos barrettes for me and my best friend, Trisha!  I had my mom show me a cloth flower barrette that she had been working on and just copied her design.  These were so easy to make.  It only took me a few minutes to make each one.

Can't wait to wear this with my Tebow jersey next weekend!  Go Broncos!

DIY Wall Decor

I saw some wall decor on Etsy at the Pretty Foldings shop and thought I'd try my hand at making my own.  I started by making paper flowers and butterflies as seen in my previous post.  I then painted an 11x14 canvas with black and white acrylic paint until I liked how it looked. 

 

I then hunted for some twigs outside on our property.  I used high temp hot glue to attach them to the canvas.  I originally thought about painting the twigs black but I liked their natural look better.

I used the hot glue to attach the flowers and butterflies.  I placed the top butterfly on the end of one of the twigs that is not glued down to give it a bit more dimension.  I am thinking about doing two more of these to line up across my bedroom wall.

  I took these pictures with my Droid so the quality is not the best and the lighting in our basement made the canvas look a bit grayish.

Gettin' My Paper Crafting On

My sister is visiting from New Mexico for the Thanksgiving holiday and we spent the day at my mom's house.  The morning immediately turned from browsing Pinterest to full on crafting in the basement.  While my mom and sister worked on hair bows for little girls, I was determined to learn how to make paper flowers after seeing a really amazing piece of artwork on Pinterest that incorporated canvas and paper flowers.  I found a pretty good tutorial for Simple Paper Flowers. 

I made my first flower with yellow printer paper and then decided to try some out of newsprint.  I found an old textbook from high school and began tearing out pages.  I also made a few paper butterflies and attempted several rolled paper flowers (these did not turn out the way I envisioned them). 

I'm hoping to pick up some canvas and turn these into some wall decor for my bedroom.  I will post a picture of the finished product if it turns out how I'm hoping. 

Fingerprint Turkeys

I originally saw this Thanksgiving craft on Pinterest.  It did link to http://uniquecraft.info but the page says it is currently suspended.

Each of my preschoolers created their own fingerprint turkey card and picked a person to write a thank you to.  Most of my students chose to give their card to someone in their family; however, a few children chose to give them to people at school (e.g. counselor, principal, other students).  

Examples of Thank You's:

• (To counselor) I love you, Ms. _____!  Thank you for playing games with me!
• (To peer) Thank you for being nice and being my friend! Thank you for telling me to tell my mom to come to your house!
• (To mom) Thank you for cutting chicken and rabbits! (We are a small country school...enough said!)

Pumpkin Pie in a Cup

I got this idea from Vanessa at www.pre-kpages.com and decided to use it as a Thanksgiving celebration with my students.  I followed the recipe Vanessa provided but I also wanted a more visual representation that my students could follow.  I created this preschooler-recipe on Publisher and found the clip art on Google Images.  

Pumpkin Pie in a Cup - Recipe for Preschoolers

As a whole group, we reviewed what baking tools we would be using and what their functions were.  We also looked over our ingredients and read through the recipe.  We then split into two groups of 7-8 students with either myself or my classroom aide.  

The preschoolers took turns adding in the various ingredients.  Everyone was given a turn mixing the pudding with the whisk and using the rolling pin to crush graham crackers. 

The preschoolers all agreed that their favorite part was getting to eat the finished products!  We made a few extra cups that we then gave to our principal, secretary, counselor, custodian and lunch lady as thank you's for all the hard work they do.  It was the perfect way to end our week of giving thanks!

A Tuturrific Halloween

I thought it would be fun to post a few pictures of my Halloween costumes.  The first costume I made was for my school Halloween carnival.  The first grade teacher and I had the great idea to come as salt and pepper!  We each made a tutu (25 yd rolls of 6" tulle from the Tulle Source...we used about 5 rolls per tutu).  I found the colanders in the dollar section at Target.  We used the die cut machine at school to cut our letters and used some silver glitter to help them stand out.  These were fun and super cheap!

The second costume I wore was for Halloween/my birthday costume party.  I borrowed some butterfly wings from the preschool and made a tutu to match!  I had the antennae headband from my bumblebee costume last year.  Tossed on some black heeled boots and voila!

Tutus just add an extra dash of fun to any costume!