DIY Fall Wreath for $5

All I used was my pool noodle wreath form/base. Then I picked up four bunches of flowers/fall foliage from the dollar store (sorry for the poor quality images. I also took these while my camera battery was missing).

I plucked, or used wire cutters to take off individual flowers. I also trimmed the leaves off the bunches of flowers.

Then I placed them around the uncovered pool noodle to get an idea about where I wanted to place them.

Then, I started gluing them with a hot glue gun, added some pine cones my kids picked up for me, and I was done!

I didn't know if I'd be a fan of the plastic flowers, but I really love it. I especially love how the magenta flowers add a burst of color. So there you have it. My first wreath made for $5. It definitely makes me happy!

Stamping with a Pool Noodle

Remember how I said you'd want to hang on to the excess piece of your pool noodles when making your wreath form? Just add paint...

and you have a fun little stamp. This works best with the pool noodles that are shaped like a flower, but I'm sure kids would enjoy stamping with a circle shape as well.

My youngest two kids are still learning about colors, so we had fun mixing primary colors. Red and yellow makes orange etc. It's a great way to mix things up and use a fun activity as a teaching opportunity.

Here's the results:

The kids were super proud of their art.

I should have a post up showing my wreath tomorrow. Till then, happy stamping!

DIY: Make a Wreath Base/Form for $1!

We've had a blast this Fall doing all sorts of crafts like this one. Besides finger painting with the kids, I also was able to make my first wreath! The best part is that I made it all for $5! I'll show the results in another post. Before I get some pictures of the wreath I made, I wanted to share how to make a wreath form for only $1. I learned how to do it when I happened upon this post, and I couldn't be more excited! All you need is a pool noodle from the dollar store and a dowel, or you can be more creative and improvise by trying to use a marker, or hoola hoop...maybe just some duct tape...

Before we move on, I apologize for the crappy quality of pictures. These were taken on my iPod because I couldn't use my camera since the battery was missing.

First, I decided how big I wanted my wreath to be and then I cut off part of the pool noodle I didn't need (By the way, If your pool noodle isn't completely round, save the piece you cut off for another fun craft you can do with your kids. I'll write another post on it soon) :

Then, I'm pretty sure you could just duct tape the edges together and call it good, or you could try to make it a little more secure. I wanted to make mine extra secure so I used a broken piece of hoola hoop. Snap off a good sized piece like this:

Then, put the hoola hoop piece (or marker) in both ends to see how long it should be. Adjust the size accordingly. Then, wrap and glue (with a glue gun) a piece of felt around it to make it a bit wider. After your felt is on, put more hot glue on the felt and glue it to the inside of the noodle. As a heads up, the glue will melt the pool noodle a bit if you squeeze the glue directly on it. Here's what the felt looked like:

After I'd glued the felt covered hoola hoop piece to both ends of the noodle it looked like this:

Normally, you could just secure edges with duct tape, but I skipped this part because I was already planning to wrap fabric around the whole form. So, I just bound the edges with fabric. Here's what it looks like so far.

And that my friends, is how you can make your own wreath base for a dollar!

All Things Fall

I love Fall! The colors of the leaves, apples, pumpkins, and so much more. This will most likely be the last Fall for us in the DC area. There is a chance we'll come back, but just in case we don't, the kids and I made a bucket list of all the things we wanted to do during this lovely season.

I was surprised and really happy that our oldest suggested we take family pictures. What kid tells their parent that, "We should take family pictures?" Apparently ours do. All the other kids enthusiastically agreed. Hopefully, they keep that attitude when we check it off our list. I just realized that taking pictures during the Fall season has turned into a tradition. We always take a shot near a gorgeous huge tree in our backyard with the woods as our background. We're going to miss the view of this backyard.

I'm definitely feeling nostalgic and excited about all the upcoming changes. While we haven't had our family pictures taken yet, we've had a lot of energy and have already crossed off a lot of items on our bucket list. One of them was to create a painting of a tree with the help of many hands (I guess I should say fingers):

I apologize in advance about the quality of pictures. My camera's battery was dead and we couldn't find the charger. Anyhow, I love how our craft turned out and so do the kids. I think it will help us remember of the times we spent here for the past two years. It will remind me of our beautiful tree. Here's how we made our fun painting:

First we painted the limbs and the details. I got the idea to do this project from pinterest (I'd have linked you straight to the source, but it's spam). You can see they didn't do any details on the trunk or limbs. I like both versions with and without the additional gray. Either way cover your trunk and limbs with tape. We left some parts (as seen below) uncovered so the leaves could cover parts of it. We ended up covering anything that wasn't covered with tape.

Then the kids and I rolled up our sleeves and we started getting red leaves on our canvas...

Then we added yellow, orange, green, and a little brown and tried to let it dry a bit.

Then we started to pull up our tape. By the way, we used both painters tape and duct tape and both worked just fine.

Almost done pulling off all the tape...

After we finished pulling off tape, we added leaves to the top where the one trunk was completely uncovered. We also added leaves to the sides of the canvas. After it was all dry, we hung it up. The kids were super proud and happy with their art work. If you have kids (or not) and are looking for a fun and easy craft to do this Fall, I'd definitely recommend trying this out. It's easy, fast, and a whole lot of fun!

DIY How to Make Hello Kitty Shirts with Freezer Paper

We just had a quiet little Hello Kitty Thanksgiving party here at home with family. While Daniel was busy cooking up a storm, and our youngest two were napping, the older girls and I had a blast making some Hello Kitty shirts. I did a free hand drawing on freezer paper and after getting approval and suggestions from the birthday girl, I cut it out.

Next time I'll be sure to not cut so liberally. If you notice how the freezer paper on the pink shirt is pretty thin on the outer edges? That made it very difficult to keep the paint from going beyond our Hello Kitty character. Especially with little ones doing the painting. As you can see, I got wiser when I cut out the blue one.

After everything was cut out, we ironed on the freezer paper and then painted Hello Kitty with acrylic paint. We'll definitely be making more shirts again!

Here's the end results:

 

DIY How to make a personalized Embroidered Christmas Stocking

One of the traditions I've started for our family, is making a personalized stocking. The first three I made were ones I picked up at a local craft store. The design and all the material came in a pack and it helped me learn all the tricks of embroidery. After making three, I decided I would try designing my own and it turned out beautifully. The best part was including caricatures of our family, which made it more fun and meaningful. The first design I came up with and made included a scene where our family of four was singing Christmas carols and I gave it to our youngest (at the time) who loved it.

Somehow, I got a bit behind and wasn't able to make a stocking for our son before our last baby was born. Since the baby would be using our plain stocking I decided I better get to it and make one for our little guy. I decided to use a snowball fight scene and love how it turned out:

If you're interested in making your own personalized stocking, but don't have much experience with applique, or embroidery, then you could start out with a kit that includes all your supplies, and instructions (like Bucilla's stocking kits), or if you feel brave you could try it on your own (like I did here). There's so many good tutorials and guides on embroidery that you can find on the web. So you shouldn't feel completely lost. Here's a basic outline of how I made mine:

First, I got flannel as fabric for the front and then cotton gingham for the inside. I already had a lot of leftovers of felt for my scene. You can find felt in any craft store as well as embroidery thread, beads, and sequins. After cutting out the shape (make sure to account for the seam allowance and cut it out bigger than you'd like the finished product to be), I sewed another piece of fabric so the inside would look nice, and so the goodies Santa brings wouldn't snag on embroidery threads. Just put right sides together and then later it will flip over so you'll have a beautiful seam. Only sew the top. Don't finish the sides until your design is complete.

Then I drew what I wanted the scene on the stocking to look like and cut out the background first (a sledding hill).

Then  I pinned where I wanted other pieces of the picture to go:

I'd then start to cut out pieces of felt to make the characters. Here you can see I changed how my arm and the position of the baby with the felt versus where it was in the picture. When the top part of the body was done I started the hair.

For the hair I wound embroidery thread around a couple of times trying to make it a tad longer than I wanted the length of hair to be. I then would stitch the thread to the top of the head (I wasn't too careful about how it looked since I knew the hats would cover the hair).

Since I was making it for a child, I made extra stitches to make sure the hair was nice and secure.

Once I was done I'd snip the ends to the desired hair length and would add a hat:

Here's how I made the pom pom on top of the hats. Grab the color/colors you want:

Wind the string around your finger. Do it loose enough you'll be able to pull it off. Then take a needle to the top or bottom of all the strings and tie them together a couple of times. Make sure they're all secure then snip the top to desired length and fluff the strings.

You'll wind thread to make bangs as well:

Then stitch the bangs securely in place and cut to desired length (see the bangs on the side haven't been trimmed like the bangs on the right):

Here's a trick I'd keep track of all the small felt pieces I'd cut out: I'd baste stitch on top of my picture and would adjust to how I really wanted the pieces. I also pinned the pieces to make it all really secure:

Here's how you can make curly hair: Double up a long piece of string as shown in the picture. Then, begin to twist the tops and bottoms in opposite directions...

Then push your ends towards each other and the strings will wind around each other even more like this (except you will have two hands since you won't be taking a picture):

I stitched the curls to the head leaving extra to hang over side so the curls would stay. I actually didn't cover this girls hair and just sewed it in place...

After all your caricatures are pieced and sewn together, you can add stitches to make the face. You can also add thread and sequins to add details to your picture to make snow flakes, Christmas lights, eyelashes etc.You can also add a little stuffing to add depth and a more 3-D feel.

My kids all loved that Daddy was laughing about a snowball getting him really good. Who do you think plastered him?

I like adding thread to the bottom of the scarfs for detail. I also did french knots to make polka dots. I've used french knots to make eyes before as well.

After you're done add your child's name to the top (examples on stockings below) and you're done! While it takes a lot of time, these stockings will be cherished and much more special than a plain ol' one you can pick up at the drugstore.

Here are the first two stockings I made from Bucilla. They came with all the supplies and explained how to do all the stitches. So, if you need a more in depth tutorial, or don't think you can come up with a fun scene of your own, these are beautiful and fun as well. I found that my own design went a lot quicker though since it wasn't as intricate as these so if you want it done before Christmas I suggest you get started soon!