Activity: Winter Playdough Development Fun! (With Printables!)

I have been swamped lately with all the crafts I am doing for both Bugga's Big Girl Room and the nursery for #2 (posts to come, I promise!), but in the midst of it all (and while currently 35 weeks pregnant), I am hosting a playdate this coming week for our little group of kiddos. I racked my brain to come up with something easy, and landed on PLAYDOUGH!!!! Who doesn't love playdough? Even the little ones can have fun squishing it in their hands!

I have a great recipe for homemade playdough that Bugga and I have used ALL THE TIME and lasts forever. I will post that soon too.

This post is about activities you can do WITH the playdough!

Now obviously, the kiddos are free to build whatever they want with the dough. For the playdate specifically, I am not about to run out and buy (like I have the time anyway) all the play-do accessories they have in stores that "help" kids play. Instead, I plan on using playdough mats!

These are a GREAT idea! 

The problem I found is that I didn't like the ones I was finding on the web, so I just made my own! And I included the links below so you don't have to do the fruitless searching either! Now, so you are aware, these are winter-themed, since we are in Canada and it is currently dumping snow on us every weekend. I will likely have posts in the future with other themes.

All you need to do is print out the PDF files, laminate the pages, and tape them down to a table - let the fun begin!

Download the Snowflake Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Snowman Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Snowy Hill Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Tree Playdough Worksheet here.

Project: Chevron Canvas

I recently posted what I am using as inspiration for Bugga's toddler room. Since then, I have been busy with various projects, which I will start sharing with the internet world. To start things off, I am working on a set of painted canvas pieces for Bugga's wall. The first one is a Flower on a Chevron Canvas, and I love how it turned out:

Below I will share how I created the Chevron Canvas, and in a separate post I will detail how to create the flower.

Chevron Canvas

There are several ways to get a chevron pattern onto a canvas. If you can find a piece of fabric that already has the pattern on it, you can simply staple that around your canvas and be done with it. If you go the painting route (which I did), you also have to choose to use painter's tape, or freehand it. Personally, I knew I would get frustrated with the tape, so instead I used a flat-edged foam brush to make the lines straight.

Materials Needed:

• Blank white canvas
• Acrylic Paint in desired colors
• Pencil with white eraser
• Ruler

Instructions:

1. Determine how wide you want your stripes to be, and balance that with the dimensions of your canvas. For example, I wanted 1" wide stripes. My canvas was 12"x12" so it was pretty straightforward.
2. Measure along each side of the canvas, making marks for the width of your stripes. Make your pencil marks lightly so that they can be erased as needed later. Then connect your marks across to the opposite side of the canvas, resulting in a checkerboard pattern.
3. Connect the corners of the checkerboard squares to create your chevron pattern. Erase the pencil marks within the chevron stripes as well as possible.
4. Paint your stripes. The foam brush with the flat edge will make it easier to create a sharp line. If you are using more than one color, I recommend painting with one at a time, letting the paint dry between colors. **There is a chance you might run into the same problem I did: I wasn't planning on painting the white stripes, but my pencil marks were stubborn, so I had to do some white paint touch-ups.**

Now add a gorgeous flower to your canvas!

Also, see the full set of DIY canvas art I made for my toddler's new room!

Project: Felt Flower on Canvas

If you have seen my inspiration page for my daughter's toddler room, you can see I am very much into the chevron pattern right now. I've seen some beautiful felt flowers on chevron canvas on Pinterest and Etsy, and I thought it looked like something I could make myself. So I did, and it turned out great!

What I had to do though is come up with the how-to part myself, as I could not find anyone else's instructions ANYWHERE. So...here are very detailed instructions on how to create a felt flower to be displayed on canvas.

Felt Flower on Canvas

Materials:

• Canvas for mounting (see instructions here for a Chevron Canvas, Striped Canvas, and a Polka Dot Canvas)
• Felt in color of choice
• Hot glue gun
• Scissors
• Paper
• Pencil

Instructions:

1. Create a template for the flower petals using a sheet of paper and pencil. For my design, I used a template shaped like a house, in three different sizes. (Click here for the template .pdf.)

2. Cut the templates out, and trace the templates onto your felt using a pencil. The mark of the pencil is likely to not be so dark on this type of material, but the scrape will leave a mark on the felt that will be easily noticeable as you are cutting out the petals. I cut out 10 petals of the largest size, 19 of the next size down, and 9 petals of the smallest size.

3. First I hot glued the 10 largest petals. I put some glue at the bottom center of each piece and folded it in half.

4. Once dry (doesn't take long - by the time you finish #10, #1 will be dry), pinch the spot where you put the glue, and fold back the outside edges of the petal. Hot glue the two edges of the other side of the petal to glue the petal to the canvas.

5. Glue 5 of the largest size petals onto your canvas in the pattern shown below.

6. Glue the other 5 of the remaining largest petals onto the canvas in between each of the first five petals.

7. Glue the 19 petals of the middle size the same way as in step #3, and then also pinch the glued spot, peel back the folded petal, and turn over, gluing the two outside edges of the petal.

8. Glue 7 of the middle size petals onto your flower, placing them closer into the center of the canvas as shown.

9. Glue another 7 between each of the first 7 middle size petals as shown below.

10. For the remaining 5 middle size petals, glue them down the same way, but upside down, and slightly closer into the center of the canvas. This will create a bit of a three-dimensional look that will help support the center of the flower.

11. For the smallest size petals, glue 5 of them like you did the larger sizes. Then place them even further in than the previous rows upside down, in between the lower petals where possible.

12. You will use the 4 remaining petals for the center of the flower. Fold two of the four petals and glue like the larger sizes. Snip a lower corner off of one of these two petals as shown in the picture.

13. Wrap the non-snipped glued petal around the snipped glued petal. Glue at the bottom.

14. Wrap the third petal around the two glued petals. Glue at the bottom.

15. Wrap the fourth petal around the three other petals. Glue at the bottom. Then glue the petal bunch into the center of the flower and you are done!

Let me know how yours turned out!

Can't get enough canvas art? Here are some others I just finished.

Project: Canvas Wall Display

I am making some pretty decent progress on Bugga's Toddler Room! (Check out where I started for her room inspiration.) I am very excited with each component I have completed so far. Today, I'm going to give a sneak-peek on the Canvas Art I will be displaying on one of her walls.

Here it is!

I painted four 12"x12" canvases in the room's main colors, and then decorated accordingly:

1.) A rhinestone monogram on white & purple stripes

2.) A pink felt flower on white & purple chevron stripes

3.) A pink felt Minnie Mouse (Bugga's a TAD obsessed with Minnie Mouse) head on purple with white polka dots

4.) A rhinestone star (after all, Bugga loves stars AND was born in Texas!) on white & purple stripes

I'm hoping to hang them this weekend, and then I can figure out where I want to hang the flower balls I made to match!

Why I Craft

Do you remember those random tests you took throughout high school to try to help you decide on the career you were destined for? I remember taking the one that told you if you were left-brained (logical, analytical) or right-brained (creative, musical). Well, I scored smack in the middle.

I am an engineer, which satisfied my left-brained-ness (my what?), but maybe because I spent so much of my education on that side, my creative side is always bursting to get out. I have found that even as an adult, I am in need of a creative outlet on an almost-daily basis. I typically have at least 2-3 projects on my plate to keep my right brain stimulated and satisfied. And being a mom is the perfect way to justify this need.

So, why do we craft? There are probably MILLIONS of crafty blogs out on the internet now. Apparently a lot of people feel like me for one reason or another. Here are MY reasons:

1.) It's cost efficient. This is where it began after I started living on my own after college and wanted to find a way to decorate on a budget. I started with sewing everything from clothes to curtains, creating my own holiday decorations, etc. It was fun to put my personal touch on things.

2.) I know what I want. I'm that girl who can speed shop through a department store because I know exactly the style and color of the item I am looking for, so I can quickly find it if it is there (or not). I took this to a new level with my wedding. Sure, I wanted to save money (and weddings are ex. pen.sive.), but in the end, I got exactly what I wanted, and I know if I had to pay for what I ended up with, the costs would have been seriously elevated. Here are some things I designed and made all by myself for the Big Day (and if you've been through planning a wedding, you know how big of a deal it is to add this to the planning plate):

I might have gone overboard, but I loved doing it all! From the top left, my custom designs included water bottle labels, sand dollar seating "card" magnets, family seating signs, menus, flip-flop favor labels, monogrammed centerpieces, (more) water bottle labels, ceremony programs, and favor tins with labels. 

These items went into the hotel bags. I designed Welcome Cards, bottle labels (those AREN'T regular Coke/DC labels!), and snack bag labels.

And if I did all that other stuff, you have to assume I did the invitations. Everything from the Directions card to the stamps.

3.) It's therapeutic. I often hear about Knitters. You know who you are. I might get there someday, but for now, my relaxation is in my crafting. A paintbrush, a glue gun, GLITTER...these things totally hit my Happy.

And lately, I have a FOURTH reason!

4.) Holy Canada. Now that we are living in Canada, if I get a decor idea in my head and I even ponder the thought of just buying it from somewhere, it pretty much has to come from the States as just about everything is imported up here. Which means so much more money is wasted on shipping, customs fees, taxes...not to mention it takes a riDICulous amount of time to ship anything here, assuming one of the few delivery services deliver the package to the right house (we've already had a LOT of issues after just being here two months). So the next best thing? MAKE IT!!!

What's your reason?

We Made it to One Year!

Patiently waiting for her party to begin. And yes,
of course I made her a tutu.  You can't resist
these things when you have a little girl,
no matter how much you think you will.

...well, I guess it's not like I thought we wouldn't make it to one year, but OH the year we had!!

And I hope you will forgive how long it has taken me to get to this post, but I wanted to make sure all the details were included (read: I had time to get the pictures off my slr).

Like all parents, I am confident that my kiddo is an overachiever so of course we had way more firsts during Year One than I ever expected, and what better way to commemorate all our learnings than with a fun birthday party.

Bugga's first initial decorated with a year's
worth of faces was hung over the main
food table.

Bugga was born in that wonky time period between holidays (well right behind Thanksgiving) so this adds a little wild card to who might be expected to attend birthday events between holiday travel, flu-season, and end-of-year budgeting.

The theme for this momentous event, was....wait for it..."Sydney is ONE!". I know, so far off topic. I saw a few fun ideas on Pinterest (of course) that got my brain churning, and it turned out to be a great way to incorporate all the fun pictures we had taken throughout her first year.

The food spread!

Cupcake "cake" decorated
with M&Ms in the shape
of a 1 (in case it isn't obvious).

We had the party at home, and I just made a handful of finger foods (including many that were toddler-friendly), barbecue sliders in the slow cooker, and a cupcake cake for the masses (seriously, we had a ton left over).

The biggest challenge was the "entertainment" for the party. It is not lost on me that a 1 year old could not care less what happens at her party as long as her basic needs are met (food and getting attention, of course). So I was torn as to what to have planned for the kids to "do" while the parents mingled and talked everything kiddo. Add to that the range of children's ages - we had 3-month-olds all the way up to 7 years. How the heck do you entertain this crowd? Off to Pinterest I went to find ideas.

I decorated with Bugga faces wearing party
hats all over the party space.

Bugga faces everywhere!

And we found the perfect one, and it was perfect for tasking my husband with so he could contribute to the party planning without getting caught up in the details he does NOT find enthralling. What was my solution? A cardboard maze! We still didn't have furniture in our dining room, so it was the perfect place to set up a giant cardboard monstrosity. And Mr. MOMba really got into it, adding skylights, and decorating with polka-dot duct tape and velvet curtains. And the kids loved it. Bugga loved it so much that we kept it in there for the next 6 months until we moved (yep, really slow to go after that dining room furniture, but I swear we will have some soon).

Anyway, enjoy some photos from the big event - maybe someone out there can use this for some planning inspiration! *OK, I really thought we had taken some photos of the cardboard tunnel setup, but I can't find them anywhere...I will update the 'ol blog with some pics should I ever dig them up. ** Update (10/6/2013): Found one!

She was very hesitant in giving her
cake a try. This is the before shot.

This is the after-shot! Not too
 much damage, actually.

Here's our "dining room" - you can see the cardboard tunnel
 around the back, with multiple doors, skylights, etc. - the kids loved it!

Magnetic Board Options

After my recent project creating Fabric Alphabet Magnets for my daughter, I of course needed to find a magnetic space for her to use her new magnets.

I saw this great idea on Pinterest to use an inexpensive oil drip pan that can be purchased for a low price at a local Home Depot or Lowe's. Perfect.

Except apparently in Canada they don't believe in these particular style of oil drip pans, so I hit a dead end immediately.

Then I thought, well, I'll just get a board cut to my specifications, and then use a couple various products on the market (specifically Chalk Board Paint and Magnetic Paint) and make my daughter her own customized chalkboard-magnet-board combo space. Genius.

Thankfully I did a little online researching before investing in any of the supplies needed. I found this and this which taught me two things: 1) There is a certain guy posting on every internet thread about his magnetic paint additive that is overall a pretty grouchy guy, and 2) Magnetic paint is a waste of time and energy.

OK so now what? I could buy a kid-specific magnetic board, but I really wanted something BIG and most kid magnetic boards I could find are somewhat teeny.

In the end, I went with a magnetic dry erase board (Michael's, ~$20). I will be no means be giving my 21-month-old dry erase markers anytime soon, but it works great as a clean magnetic space for her new magnets, and down the road she'll have fun with the markers.