Ice Cream learning fun!

Today I am over at Gummy Lump sharing some fun early learning we are doing this summer using Ice cream cones! We are working on our lower case and upper case letter recognition and matching, plus colors and numbers. These are easy to make and fun to try so I hope you head over to Gummy Lump and make some learning fun Ice cream cones with your kiddos. 

Project 52: Week 6

Project 52: Week 6

Another week has come and gone... 

This week we rediscovered an old park close to home. We hadn't been there in about a year and it was great to see all the changes yet a lot is left to fix. They put in real nice walking paths. We got to hang out outside and we even made a cute Valentines Day card. I drew the heart out on paper for munchkin and gave him glue and confetti. He put the glue on it and smeared it in the heart, then threw confetti all over it! (Fun for a boy to make a mess) Then he wrote Happy Valentines (oops "Day" didn't fit). Final touch was a couple of Valentine stickers. I am love with his Valentine and he was very proud of it too! 

I forgot to mention that I read "Warm bodies"! Yep! My sister had already read it a bunch of times and I told myself tonight is the night and I laid in bed reading until I finished it beginning to end. It wasn't too long so in a couple of hours (with breaks in between) I was done. I havent seen the movie yet, Have you? Did you read the book first? What did you think about this Zombie Love story? Share with me! 

Every week I will and have been sharing my Project 52. How is yours going?

DIY Heart Wall Decor

This past week I made two Valentines Crafts out of empty toilet paper rolls, the first was this one actually but I ended up posting the DIY Heart Wreath first. I am so in love with this Heart because it has been up on the wall the whole week and adds a great touch to the room.

Here's how you can make one for you:

Materials:

4 to 5 empty rolls of toilet paper to be on the safe side
paint with paintbrush
scissors
hot glue gun with glue
old newspaper to cover your work area

Directions:

Lay out your newspaper and decide how big of a heart you want to make. My first time making this I cut the toilet paper rolls first and made the design to see how it would look but now having done 2 of these I recommend you to please paint the toilet paper rolls first and let them dry. It is so much easier if you paint first!

After the paint is dry cut each toilet paper roll into 5 pieces as even as possible. Recreate the shape now and start hot gluing

Let the glue hold tight and admire your Heart! Hang it up to make a statement of love on your wall and ta-da! Valentines decor on your wall is done!


Check out my other Valentines craft I made this week here:

DIY Heart Wreath

Thanks for stopping by and hope you are having fun crafting and getting ready for Valentines day!

Valentines Day DIY Hearts (Recycled Toilet paper roll crafts) Wreath

Just yesterday we finished picking up all the Christmas decorations and now there is about a month left until Valentines day! Yep, hard to believe it but Valentines Day is almost here and its a perfect reason to get the house out of the ordinary(boring right now that there's no decorations) to being in the Valentines Lovey dovey mood.

I wanted to make something with materials found at home so I used toilet paper rolls to create this special hanging decor.

Materials:

• Toilet paper rolls (5 to be on the safe size)
• paint and paintbrush
• scissors
• colorful paper or plain white paper to color on
• glue stick
• glue gun with glue
• newspaper to layout to cover your work area while painting

Directions:

Start by painting your toilet paper rolls inside and out so that the color you choose will be on evenly because if you do this after it is too hard to get in the creases (trust me) Put them off to your side to air dry. I drew on the newspaper my circle size I wanted so I could use it to estimate how many toilet paper rolls I would need to cut and to base my heart size off of so that when I did add the hearts it would be sized appropriately.

While the paint dried I used some scrap paper to freehand hearts in different sizes. I then cut out those hearts and traced the shape onto scrapbooking paper I had (you could also use regular white paper and color the hearts in with markers/crayons and put cute words), cut and glued them onto cardboard to make it more sturdy. Then cut those out to use

When the paint was dry I cut the rolls into 5 pieces each as even as I could. I then laid them out to how my circle would fit. I then began gluing the toilet paper roll pieces end to end with my hot glue gun carefully holding them into place to bend them into the circular shape

After I had made my circle I let it rest to dry so as to not add weight to it too quickly. I then hot glued on my hearts and let it get sturdy. I hanged it up on my wall with simple thumb tacks in 3 locations to balance the weight.

I'm happy with the final product. I used things I had already available at home and I'm happy to use something as ordinary as a empty toilet paper roll and give it new life. Its always good to re-purpose things so I keep boxes and containers because at the end of the day its free crafting supplies and who doesn't love free?

Hope this got you in the Valentines mood! To check out another fun DIY Valentines craft head over to Mean baby to check out a DIY Valentines Day Banner ! This is a Blog circle so if you follow along blog to blog you will see links to other blogger fun DIY Valentines crafts.

Don't forget to check out My Valentines Day Pinterest board for more Inspiration! 

Check out my other Valentines Day Heart Decor 

Happy Crafting!  

My 2012 Journey

So I was sitting here thinking how A new year is about to begin and how to me its a clean slate. I get to start all over again and make the new year the best year possible. But before the New Year starts I was reflecting on my 2012. What happened, what I did, how its gone for me. So here is My 2012:

January: Start of 2012, My sisters 21st birthday (new Years baby), 2 special little girls birthday, my first hair cut in over 3 years! Yep! Wow! But I really felt like I had no time for it

February: Tax season craze! The people in costumes were always stalking us on the bus. We went to Seaworld opening day. We fed the dolphins! We turned all our family members into Bacon. Leap year (always great to get an extra day) and celebrated Valentines day!

March: Spring Break! See munchkin leaping off the floor playing with water, St.Patricks Day! (lots of green)

April: We had a great Easter! Check out my Easter basket cupcakes I made. I also made my own cascarones and rice krispies eggs! Sadly most of the month I had a horrible Bad ear ache that closed my ear and made it sound like a muffled hum mixed with ringing and pain and endless Dr appts! I spent so much time with my ear against a pillow.

May: Aquatica at Seaworld had its grand opening and of course we had to be there to check it out! Mothers day,  SOL (Seeds Of Learning) classes ended and we had a party at the San Antonio Childrens Museum to celebrate a good year (Thankyou to the museum for this amazing free kids program)

June: First official day of summer (Although in Texas it feels like Summer most of the time) so we had a lot of fun in the Sun!

July: We saw the fireworks at Seaworld 4th of July. Sadly I stepped on a nail when I was walking outside in my neighborhood and had to get a shot and antibiotics. It made me stay in alot the rest of the month so I could heal.  

August: Went to The San Antonio children's museum Free day with Sid the science kid (KLRN kids sponsor), My dads bday, We went to the Witte Museum to see the Darwin Exhibit which was amazing! (Thankyou Maker Mama for the Giveaway) and I officially started blogging (whoo-hoo)!

September: We started going to Play and Learn this fall, We went to the Witte again! We celebrated Grandparents day, started our alphabet journey. We went to Seaworlds Howl-0-Scream

October: We went to National Night out and Munchkin even got to take a picture with Mayor Castro! We went to Howl-O-Scream again, We went to Chalk it up for the first time and loved it. We got lucky to go free to the Botanical gardens and we saw the dinosaurs! We had fun at Treat street and Coffins on parade on the Riverwalk. Had a spooky Halloween! Most important of all we celebrated my munchkins 4th bday!

November: We went to Dia de los Muertos events and the Diwali festival of Lights. We went to Seaworlds Christmas Celebration, celebrated my birthday and my brothers. Had fun at The San Antonio Childrens museum. Got in the holiday spirit when we went to see Santa on the Riverwalk.

December: We went to the Zoo to see Santa deliver presents to the animals, We went to the San Antonio Museum of Art for a special book launch, Survived the end of the world again, and had a Beautiful Christmas! Now getting ready for a New Year!

I want to say Thankyou to my family for always being there for me. Thankyou to Colleen Pence for your kindness and for introducing me to such a beautiful group of Bloggers that have only made me grow. Thankyou to the readers who visit the blog. Thankyou To Play and Learn for all the fun and learning.Thankyou Seaworld for the amazing year with the Fun cards I won during the Flat Jack contest. They let us go to Seaworld all this year and it was awesome!

How was your year? Think back on this year and all the Happiness and tears you shared with loved ones and How this 2013 is sure to be an amazing new adventure too! Thank you 2012 for all the memories but I cant wait to make my mark in 2013! Hope you are all here to follow along in our journey and share it with us. Happy New Year guys!

Love Always

-Alvina

Not your typical Gingerbread house (Cardboard Box fun)

This week while getting ready for Christmas munchkin kept asking to make a gingerbread house. Well he doesn't like gingerbread or much of any candy really (except chocolate) and I didn't want to make one and then have it be wasted so I decided to think of a way to have him get his house without the waste. That's when I saw what we had at home to use and it came out great!

Materials:

• 2 Cardboard boxes (I used pull up boxes)
• glue/glue stick (glue stick works best)
• heavy duty tape
• multi colored paper
• scissors
• ruler
• Christmas coloring books
• plain white paper
• colors/markers/color pencils

Instructions:

1. Take your boxes and cut them at every major crease
2. Look at all your pieces of cardboard and imagine the size you want to achieve for your house. I personally wanted it big and didn't want to have to measure too much so I kept the sizes pretty as is long wise.
3. I then measured the main piece that would become my front of house with a ruler long wise so as to find the center point. Then I decided how tall I wanted it so i could make my border for the roof edges.  I used the center point to make the lines for cutting the triangular shape out evenly. Then cut it out according to the lines.
4.  I then got the 2nd piece of cardboard and traced the first front piece onto that piece, cut it out and that became the back of the house.
5. For the 2 sides of the house I measured the height of the corner before the roof starts on the front piece and made the 2 side pieces into rectangles to match the houses height.
6. I then used the heavy duty masking tape to tape  all 4 pieces together on the inside. I then traced along the edges of the bottom floor of the house on to a piece of cardboard  and cut it out and taped it onto the rest of the structure making it the floor base.
7. I measured with a ruler the length across from the back of the house to the front of the house where the gap for a roof was and cut a rectangle to to cover the left and then another to cover the right and made sure that when held together they closed up as a roof evenly. Then it was taped in place.
8. The rest of this is now mainly aesthetic. my box looked pretty good because I kept the cardboard pieces design on the inside of the structure as well as most of the tape. You can decorate it as you wish with various Christmas odds and ends that you may have had as leftovers from wrapping and decorating.
9. I used colored paper to make roof shingles that I saw here in a cute pattern. I cut them out and me and munchkin put them on the roof with a glue stick. I then used a solid color to cover the tip of the house so as to hide the cardboard.
10. For all 4 sides of the house I used white paper trimmed to size to cover the cardboard and give it a more clean look (glue stick works best).
11. Finally I made details such as windows and doors.
12. The last and the funnest part you can do with kids of any age is coloring! Grab some Christmas coloring books and color fun stuff. I found various coloring pages of candies, presents and Christmas trees and more to color with my munchkin. I then cut them out and glued some on as scenery's around the house. I then kept some just for the use of fun! I put a piece of not so sticky double sided tape on the back of Santa and other Christmas items such as gingerbread men so that he could just put them on and off of the house on various scenes. It was too cute and he loved it!

Keep in mind that you can make your house into any theme you want. One for Easter with a bunny and eggs to hide all over or a haunted house for Halloween. *future craft idea*

Happy Crafting & Happy Holidays from my family to yours!

My inspiration came from Say Yes To Hoboken. 

Christmas Tree Handprints & Lights

We needed some Christmas cheer in this house so I looked at different Christmas crafts we could do and found these fun and easy crafts.

Christmas Tree Handprints:

Materials:

• Green paint
• paper that you can tape together to make a big sheet (depending on your handprint size and how many levels you want to go)
• accessories like stickers of ornaments and gifts
• markers/color pencils to make details and ornaments
• Glitter for the Star and ornaments

Directions:

1. You glue together sheets of paper (depending on the size of your munchkins tree you want to make)
2. You color your munchkins hand green!
3. Then pick a starting spot and start making your tree layers with handprints (put them as close to each other as you want the green to go depending on your look)
4. You can now make the tree your own! Make a string of lights, ornaments, presents at the bottom, even a background like stockings. Ask your child to draw his family beside it or make it fun with Santa! Let your childs creativity run wild!

We hanged up munchkins Handprint tree on the door next to our Christmas Tree so its in a festive place. It makes me smile when I walk by it. You could even get a frame from Goodwill and make it into a keepsake!

We then made a simple and cute string of lights with fingerprints

Materials:

• Paper
• small amounts of different colors of paint
• A pen or a marker

Directions:

1. On your Piece of paper make a string with a pen or marker where you are going to attach the lights to. You can give it twists and turns or even tangles to make it fun and original
2.  Then take your munchkins fingers and start making some lights in various patterns or just one color
3. With a pen or marker attach the lights to the string with details or just leave it as is along the string.
4. You can display them as is or get a frame from Goodwill and keep it as a keepsake. I saw one person even used it as gift wrapping paper to add a more personal touch to the gift.

Here are my munchkins string of lights (we made so many of them)

I got the idea for the Christmas tree handprints on pinterest here and the string of lights I saw here.

Hope you have fun spreading the Holiday cheer! Happy Holidays!

Having fun with a Colortime Craft

This week we got a great opportunity to try Out a Colortime craft by making a unique pillowcase and we had a good time making one. Munchkin gets excited anytime he sees something big in the mail. So when he saw me opening the package and taking out some big chunky markers he was all gimme me! I told him what we were making and he already wanted the pillowcase plain as it was.

When I told him he could draw and color on it he looked at me like Huh? I think its because you get your kids use to the rules of markers go on paper and then now your telling them to run wild on this pillowcase so they hesitate a bit. Well it was only a little bit but then that changed and we colored on it and even drew on it(I didn't want it white). It only came with 3 permanent markers but we made it work by mixing them and we ended up with 5 different colors. Then after munchkin was done I worked on the back alone. We have been working on his alphabet so I wrote out the alphabet and some number and shapes on the back as a final touch. I love it! He can be showing me his letters on his comfy pillow.

As soon as it was done he wanted to play with it. First he said it was big enough to be a blanket so off he went to put it on. Then I put it on a pillow so he changed his mind and put it on the bed to get comfy on. The colors dry quickly so you don't have to worry that they will get on everything.

I think this would be a great project for kids to do for a sleepover! I'm already imagining munchkins first sleepover with friends. They can decorate there pillows and have there friends sign them so that it becomes a keepsake of such a fun night. But there are alot of other fun projects you can do with themes for boys/girls. Check them out and plan your next sleepover!

Disclosure: I was given a ColorTime craft to try out. All opinions are my own and may vary from yours.