Easter eggs

This week we painted our Easter eggs.  I was trying to figure out the best way to keep little fingers from getting too messy, and these bamboo skewers proved to be the perfect solution.

Hope you all had a nice Easter weekend!

Birthday crown

Friday was Will's birthday.  1 year old!  I can hardly believe it.  We didn't do anything too grand or glorious apart from the traditional present opening and cake gorging.  But we did make him a crown.  I really like the idea of helping the kids make gifts for each other.  It helps them think about the person, and is fun to watch how excited they get when they give the homemade gift.

For this crown, I sewed white fabric onto some vinyl and sewed velcro at either end.  Then I had the kids use fabric paint to decorate it.  I decided to go with something a little longer lasting than just paper.

And here's the birthday boy in all his glory!  It looks like he's super excited to be wearing his crown, right?

Well, truth be told, I think it stayed on his head for a total of 3 seconds before he found it, pulled it off and dropped it on the floor.

 

We did this about 20 times so I could attempt to get a picture of the beautiful crown, with pink hearts and all.  I guess if nothing else this crown gave us a good game to play.  He certainly liked it (the game).  The velcro makes the crown adjustable, so maybe we'll save it for next year.  I'm just sure he's going to love it.

Oil painting

For our Christmas homemade gift exchange, John drew Will's name.  I went over a few ideas with John, but he knew exactly what he wanted to do.  Paint a picture for Will.  He remembered the mobile we had made for Will before he born and wanted him to have something new to look at when he wakes up in the morning (those are John's words, not mine).



I bought some canvas and unburied my dusty oil paints that hadn't been used for probably 10 years (!)  John drew the picture with pencil first, then set to work filling it in with color.





I love the texture you get with oils.  But I do not love the mess that comes with them... we may just bury those paints for another 10 years or so.  Stick to watercolors and acrylics.



Will really does love the painting.  Although when I hold him in front of it, he always tries to grab it.  Such a naughty baby :)

Wood crayon holder

For our Christmas homemade gift exchange, Dan picked Joe's name.  When the kids are a bit older, we'll let them go at it on their own, but this year Pete helped Dan with his project.  They made a wood crayon holder.  I had originally seen one of these at an art fair and thought it would be easy to recreate.  It's simply a piece of wood with holes drilled into the top.  Dan made it a bit more personalized by writing on the side, then Pete traced his letters with a wood burner.



Now when Joe is coloring, he can see all the colors at a glance.  And taking them out of the holes and putting them back in is half the fun! 

Artwork

I originally hung up all of our Christmas cards on this door, then decided it would make a perfect place to hang the kids artwork after I took them down.  It's about as simple as it gets.  Twine wrapped around a door and clothes pins to attach the artwork.  Done.

 

Scribble drawings

This was a fun project for John and Dan while we watched General Conference a few weeks ago.  I originally found the idea for scribble drawings on the blog Maya Made when she did a review on the book Art Lab for Kids.  I don't own the book (yet), but that was enough to get us started.



I decided to have the kids do the drawings on white cardstock that was folded in half so we could use them for cards.  I love having homemade cards on hand to use for birthdays, thank you's, etc.



John and Dan have such different artistic styles.  It's fun to see what they create.



They didn't end up turning their scribbles into anything.  Just colored in the shapes that were created with different colors.