The Art of Entertaining

...a 3 year old.

I have been working as a nanny to save up some money while I'm on the hunt for a job that actually utilizes this degree I spent the last four years picking up. I mainly watch a 3 year old on the week days, and sometimes his older brother and sister after school or on weekends.

It's probably not hard to imagine that a lot of three year olds are pretty curious and need something going on at all times to keep busy. This one loves movies, but I try to do some kind of craft or project on most days with him and not rely totally on the t.v. to do my job for me when we're not playing outside.

One of his favorite things involves making things with construction paper. It started with a dinosaur themed week suggested by my aunt who teaches preschool. I usually will cut out the basic shapes ahead of time and a bunch of random shapes from the construction paper and clearance scrapbook paper for him to glue wherever he wants. I also bought a little pack of googly eyes and some glitter glue (which he usually just wants to use AS glue, and not glitter...) to add at the end, and let him use crayons to color whatever else he wants on the pages.




He LOVES it and always gets really excited when there's some "NEW" project to do. We have also done fish, butterflies, and most recently a few little rainbow/leprechaun scenes for St. Patrick's day. Overall it's really not much of a mess if you keep everything organized, pretty cheap, and can keep them entertained for a while. The older kids even liked making their own, though since they can actually use scissors they cut most of the embellishments out themselves.


I'm not going to lie... I kind of love getting paid to do crafts, puzzles, and play outside all day long. It's certainly not the worst job in the world!

Throw Some Glitter, Make it Rain

This is what happens when you dye Easter Eggs AFTER you spend two hours at Happy Hour on $3 Thursday:

1. You don't make it to Hobby Lobby before they close to get intended decorating supplies, like feathers for making cute little birds.
2. You forget that last year you had TWO tablets of each color and accidentally water down the dyes too much.
3. You end up COVERED in glitter.
4. Or, in Kelly's case, you fall asleep and never even make it to the egg dyeing/glitter shower.
   

Adventures, as per usual. Here are some pictures of what we DID end up with:

Hey Lauryn, I don't know if you got enough glitter...

Jenna and Alex egg productions.
To quote Jenna, "I'm Jewish so I need special assistance."

See that egg in the middle on the left? We call that the Ke$ha egg. Mostly because it turned out all sorts of weird looking colors and we really had no idea what to do with it, so Lauryn just covered it with glitter and ta da... Ke$ha egg.

Lauryn's eggs.

Jenna was clearly exhausted from all the egg dyeing.

I've seen a few other posts about egg dyeing and everyone had some really cute/unique ideas! Did anyone else do anything really fun or crazy for egg dyeing this Easter?

Hand Made Christmas

I think maybe next year I'll start earlier and try to do MORE handmade things for Christmas, but this year I managed to get at least a few things done! I did two little paintings for my cousin (Ok actually I'm technically still working on one, and she took the other so no pictures of that. I'm infamously bad at being on time with presents), an IU blanket for my brother, and these wooden decoupaged letters for my friends Katelyn and Sarah for their new apartment. Actually, they haven't actually found an apartment yet but they'll get one eventually so I'm just starting their housewarming gifting now.

Sewing something it on by hand and making it come out completely straight is more difficult than it looks... I eventually decided it just made it look more "home made." Haha

Katelyn's favorite color is green and Sarah's are red/orange. Thank goodness they compliment each other so well!

I was also lucky enough to be the receiver of one of Kelly's HAND KNITTED HATS! Yay! I had asked her a while back if she could knit me a charcoal hat when she got the chance, and that was part of my Christmas hat! I love it, because unlike a lot of hats sometimes are when you buy in the store it is not too tight and it's so soft! I can't wait to get an outfit picture with it :-)

Now I'm off to visit family for the weekend to throw my cousin her baby shower, so you can be sure I'll have a picture recap with that along with some of the funny games we're doing. Hopefully inspiration for anyone else throwing a baby shower in the future! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Home-decorated Ornaments

This was a really fun but easy craft that could be done with kids or friends of any age!

I picked up the paper mache stars from Hobby Lobby... the small ones are 2 for $1.00 and the large ones are only 99 cents. I used acrylic paint, "glitter glue", and puff paint to decorate mine, but you could use just about anything and everything. They both come with a small gold string attached that could be sufficient for hanging but they twist up and make it a little difficult so I hot glued some ribbon on instead for the large one.






I think I might have to go back and grab some more to make for our tree and to throw in with other Christmas presents. Has anyone else been doing any kind of holiday crafting?

Picture Post: Halloween Social

I'll be back to a regular outfit post tomorrow with pictures of today's outfit (always a day behind, aren't I?) but I wanted to finish the Halloween series given Halloween was 4 days ago and I am still trying to get these up.

These pictures are from a social I hosted for a national honors/service organization that I am a chapter officer for. I basically serve as both the secretary and VP of public relations, so I get to do the social organizing! For Halloween, I knew I wanted to do pumpkin painting, watch Corpse Bride, and do a game called the Donut Dangle (You'll understand with pictures, but basically you're trying to catch a powdered donut with only your mouth while it furiously dances around from a stick). We don't always get a ton of members that actually show up, but the officer group has been about the same for a few years now, so we're all friends and it usually turns out to be fun nonetheless!

(Devil's Food cupcakes with Pumpkin Icing!)

(Lauryn's dog Dolce in his aptly chosen Satan costume)

Still planning on doing a giveaway very soon! I have been all kinds of a mess lately trying to get everything done, but after today's round of tests are over I should have a bit more free time to get some other things taken care of.

Picture Post: Pumpkin Carving!

I'm really behind on getting up some of the posts I have wanted to do... but here are the pictures from pumpkin carving! I loved how my little owl turned out, but I kind of messed up and didn't make the part where he was attached to the rest of the pumpkin big enough, so he became Franken-owl when I had to toothpick attach him back to the pumpkin. And of course he started shriveling up already the day after carving just because some of the sections are so thin, but oh well, he was cute at first! Now it's just turned around so the star side faces forward.

Lauryn's dog Dolce just wanted in on some of the action.

Kelly's Happy Little Jack!

How adorable is Lauryn's Hello Kitty Witch carving?

Wouldn't be pumpkin carving without toasting some salted seeds!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!

Halloween Crafting: Glittery Pumpkins!

I saw something similar to this on How Sweet It Is, and couldn't resist something combining both glitter and pumpkins. In fact, I was so into the glitter idea that I decided to just make the WHOLE pumpkin glittery, and then went out to get another just to make that one glittery too. I mean, as the woman in front of me at Hobby Lobby said, "Glitter just makes EVERYBODY happy!"

And obviously, you can take just about all the artistic freedom in the world with this one, so here are some guide lines, but have at it any way you please!

Supplies:

Glitter of your choice
Pumpkin(s)
Glue
Paint brush
Clear/Gloss Acrylic Paint if you want to cover the whole pumpkin

Newspaper/Plastic plate to combine glue/glitter

To entirely cover the pumpkin with glitter before adding details, I mixed a squeeze of acrylic gloss with a heaping amount of glitter. It works best to sort of "DAB" it onto the pumpkin, because otherwise the brush just drags the glitter around and doesn't really cover anything. After that I sprinkled the entire pumpkin with a little more glitter, just for good measure of course.

Wait for the base glitter layer to completely dry so the black does not get stuck anywhere other than where you want it to be! When it's ready, you can use a pen/sharpie to outline whatever design you choose.

Then go over the lines, a small section at a time, with the glue. Sprinkle the black glitter on to completely cover the glue, and then tilt the pumpkin so you can gently tap excess glitter off. It's good to have another plate handy to use to catch the extra and reuse them. Repeat these steps until all sections of your "design" are covered.

***Be careful to not use TOO MUCH glue, because if you do it will drip down the pumpkin. When I did the spider I propped it up sort of sideways so it was facing more upright and wouldn't drip down the side.


To cover the stem you can use either the method of coating the pumpkin by dabbing, or the glue/sprinkle method!

(Definitely check the link above for the How Sweet It Is blog when you get a chance, her blog is mostly made up of AMAZING and delicious looking recipes, but also has some other bits thrown in, and she is absolutely hilarious!)


Also- I want to thank you guys because SOMEHOW I have 100 (well, +1) followers!!!! I really can't even believe that many people care enough to even occasionally read this, but it has been great getting to know a lot of you and visit your blogs as well. I will hopefully have the "100 Followers Giveaway" ready to go soon! :-)

Brother Sister Craft Bonding!

Currently: procrastinating on packing for this weekend's Chicago trip, REALLY frustrated with my bank and the seemingly never ending troubles with this online banking system, and needing to take some advil from this ridiculous headache that has somehow snuck up on me in the last hour! A yi yi!

Ok, thanks for listening to that little vent... now onto something much more pleasant: CRAFTING! My little brother wanted to make a tie-up blanket for his girlfriend (I think, no one really ever knows if they're officially dating or not) for her birthday, so he had me help him with it. It was so cute, he came up with the idea for it himself and picked out the fleece pattern that he thought she would like! He even insisted on doing most of the work himself. I did the cutting to make sure that the ties would all be the same length, but he did all the knotting himself. Too adorable.

Penske getting in on the action, napping with all the scraps.

The blankets are really simple to make- I recommend doing a yard and a half of fleece for each side, in one pattern and one solid. You then just line the two pieces up together (Make sure they're about the same width and everything... it's ok if they don't line up exactly) and cut strips all along each side, and then knot all the strips together! Most craft stores also carry kits with fabric already cut and paired up, and these should have directions on them as well.

After I was done with the cutting I just had to take it for a test run and make sure it was comfy enough ;-)

This definitely had me wanting to make another one, because I haven't made one for years, and I think I want one that's a little bigger than the first one I ever made. Now just to decide on the pattern I want!!