Elf on the Shelf 2013

It's that time of the year again and our Elf, Peppermint has brought a new elf into our home. His name is Jingle Bells, or just Jingles. If I thought one Elf was mischief, two elves is chaos! Because I wasn't sure we'd be able to tell them apart, one has added peppermint stripes to his hat, while the other has sewn a Jingle Bell onto the tip (get it? it goes with their names)

The first day they arrived after we decorated for Christmas on our tree (not pictured)


Followed by brining our Lego Friend advent calendar (alternative-chocolate count down) and a note saying to let the count down begin!

They borrowed my phone, changed its ringtone to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and added all of the free Elf on the Shelf games. They were caught playing.

Then they set up an elf help desk One candy got the girls a question answered, 2 got them a wish! (although nothing was ever answered, we've decided the elves wanted to just get candy from us!)

 

The following day they decorated the tree with what else? the girls socks and underwear (and toilet paper, of course!)

 

 

Then they went fishing in our sink

 

The original elf taped the new elf to the glass window (mouth taped, of course)

 and is shooting nerf darts at him (he is of course, blindfolded!)

 

 

 

We went to Grandmas and the girls were worried that our Elves wouldn't know where we were. Amazingly enough they showed up on the ceiling fan as super heros

 

 

 

We went to bed late that night and forgot to leave our shoes out for Saint Nick. Luckily Jingles and Peppermint were there to help the girls out!

 

 

The Elves then decided to individually wrap the girls lunches in left over Christmas wrapping, complete with joke and bow. I took this picture before it all went into the bags. The elves left a note saying " Don't worry about your lunches, we've wrapped it up for you!" They were so surprised when they opened their bags!

 

 

 

 Jingles got Peppermint back by playing operation on him!

 

The were trapeze artists

 

 

 

We finally got around to making the sleeping bags out of the fabric grandma got our elves. We found them the next morning camped out under our tree.

 

They decided to be famous cereal icons.

 

 

 

 Then they captured the Grinch (which is funny because that is my nickname). The "cage" is from Costco- the girls chocolate Easter bunnies came in them. I tied it to my doorknob.

I went online, found a Grinch coloring page, shrank it down to size in paint, added holes and yarn and I was done :)



They decorated our bathroom- the only room in the house not decorated. We have battery operated Christmas lights that are usually on the girls backpacks around the elves and toilet.

I used puff paint to write on the mirror and toilet-I couldn't find my window markers and I am fighting off a cold so I'm just lucky I did this..

 

They were confused on the Holiday and hid Easter eggs around the house
 

They made a Christmas list

The girls have decided these are the things Santa is bringing- I think they will be a little sad when they find out that we didn't get the Frozen Castle- too flimsy :(


After watching the movie "Elf" with Will Farrell, Peppermint and Jingles thought his spaghetti sounded good and wanted to try some for themselves

The note says "Buddy was right, this stuff is good" (yes, I purposely misspell every now and then and then)

 

(ingredients: pasta, a little sauce, marshmallows, jelly beans, m&ms, pop tarts if you have them-we used oreos, chocolate syrup and of course syrup!)

 

 

 They decorated our fridge like a snowman- they are on top of the fridge, but because our fridge is against the wall in an apartment, it was hard to get it all in.


Our friends made our elves some mittens, scarves and vests. So naturally our elves had to strut their stuff down the run way with the Barbies and Monster High dolls and other toys watching.


This is where I almost lost the game. Since my oldest doesn't always fall asleep before me (sad, but true) I don't move them until I get up (about 4-5am) and so they were still in her room when she went looking. I kinda convinced her that maybe they were playing a trick on us.

Here they are in the fridge building a snowman out of two cuties. I printed off an Olaf from "Frozen" because we love love loved that movie. The girls go around singing their songs all day :) Anyway I made a note saying "Do you want to build a snowman?"

The girls painted their noses with food coloring



They began drawing pictures of each other




And they are saying goodbye. Reminding us to leave cookies for Santa




 

Thanksgiving nails

My daughter decided she is getting "too old" to make the turkey by tracing your hand and foot, so we came up with this silly way to do it this year. We painted her thumb brown, the other fingers fall colors.  After the thumb was dry we added the eye the beak and the little red thing that hangs down.

Her toes were similar, except we made a whole turkey on them

To get the details we used toothpicks :)

Here is some of my older stuff:
 Turkey Hair
Simple 5 minute crafts

Lego Friend Costume

We are putting down our Mouse ears this year and going to Legoland instead. Through the Home Depot Kid Workshops we were able to get free tickets for the girls provided we bought our own tickets. Perfect!!  It was meant to be. After Doing some research I found out you can MEET the Lego Friend girls. (And after going to Legoland we were disappointed to find out they are only there Wed-Saturday...we went on a Monday) I'm a sucker for a kid in costume. Since we weren't going to be dawning on a princess dress I thought  the girls would look absolutely adorable going through the park dressed as the characters. I mean we were born to stand out.

WHAT YOU NEED:

Puff paint & brush (can be bought at Michaels, Jo Ann's-  Don't forget a coupon through the stores site-  and I think Wal*Mart) We bought ours with a 50% off coupon and it ended up being $3.49
Tank tops  We used some that we already owned. Which made this super cheap.
I also used skirts that we already owned in the correct colors (not really the right "style" but we like them. Again we're going for inexpensive).
I made the headband with the closest color to the shirt I could find.
Printed off shapes (Hearts, Stars, Music notes), in various sizes.
Pencil
Cardboard (from a cereal box)

Directions:

OLIVIA:

I started by  sliding the already washed shirt into the empty cereal box. I printed off the shapes i needed, cut them out and laid them onto the shirt based on where it was on the Lego herself.

 With my pencil I traced the images onto the shirt. Slowly I added puff paint around the outline of the hearts and began filling in the middle with the paint.

 

******* Now, I'd like to note that in order for it to be exact you'd have to buy more than one pack of paints. I didn't I just bought the one that had pink and purple and thought I'd be able to darken and lighten as I went- I was wrong.*****

 

STEPHANIE:

Stephanies was a little harder, because I had to free hand sketch the pink blob in the background of her stars,

Also, again I'd like to note I didn't have all the colors and so I made certain shapes just pink (they are supposed to be a darker pink)

If you like what you saw today, thought it was funny or helpful or cool. Please consider following me. I get lonely! Thanks

Superman Mug

For Fathers Day we decided to make my husband a mug. We went to Michaels with a 50% off coupon and bought a creatology mug. It came with paints and everything! It was only $1.07.

One side has the drawing her was actually looking for on it (in sharpie), but homemade because it was more meaningful. The other side we just couldn't leave blank. It was asking for us to draw on it. Since the girls are really into superheros right now we printed off the superman emblem. With a box cutter I cut the details out. Then taped it to the mug and traced over it all with pencil.

When I finished I went over it in Sharpie so that when the girls went to paint it they wouldn't erase the markings. I followed the directions for baking (place in oven and put in right away while heating up for 30 minutes. then let it cool down in the oven)

When it came out of the oven part of the cheap sharpie version had come off on the other side. and after baking the black sharpie wasn't as clear as we would have liked, so we went over it again. That's when we decided to add "Our Hero" under the Superman logo and it will be re-baked on

OTHER IDEAS:
Gift Bag
Fathers Day Cards

Wonder Woman nails

We are going through a super hero phase now. I like it. It's a bitter sweet end to the baby stage,but nice. We decided she needed to have wonder Woman nails to go along with her new  Wonder Woman Cuffs we quickly put together.

To make the nails we painted a white base, then a second yellow coat or yellow. We found that this makes the yellow stand out better than 2 yellow coats. With a toothpick dipped in red nail polish we drew stars onto the centers of each nail. 

 

For the thumb we painted it red and added a white "W" onto it. It's the best I could get with a wiggly 6 year old! 

the toes are blue with white stars (and polkadots) all over.

Memorial day tart

 

 Okay so mine is a little sweeter than other peoples because I used cream cheese icing. You can easily change the icing to whip cream, vanilla pudding, etc..

 

Ingredients:

• 1 sheet puff pastry (you could also do a sugar cookie dough or crescent rolls)
•  blueberries, washed
•  strawberries, washed & quartered
• Bananas (optional. I always find that the banana's brown before i can serve it- or i have to add a lemon juice to it and it's just not as good.)

• Icing:
• 
  
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup  shortening
• 3oz cream cheese
• 2 cups  powdered sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 TBL milk
• (Can substitute all this for just whip cream or whip cream and some powder sugar, a little vanilla)

Directions:

I used only one of the two sheets of the puff pastry. put my puff pastry directly onto a parchment papered cookie sheet. It's already a rectangle. However you might have to smush together seams Bake at 400 degrees until browned

After it has cooled, add on your icing and fruit into the shape of an American flag..Or any flag...OR just jumble the fruit on! Who cares? it tastes good :)

Amelia Earhart Nails

So for my daughters oral biography report, she got Amelia Earhart. We were busy  making the aviator hat and cardboard plane  we found on pintrest. The last thing we needed was some awesome nails.

What I did was paint all her fingers blue and her thumbs white. I let that sit. On the finders we took some white and made fluffy clouds. We were laughing because I made too quick of a movement on her pinky and the cloud ended up looking a little like a dinosaur.

 I thought the airplane was gong to be tricky, but it really wasn't that bad.

 

We decided to make both Amelia's planes; The Kinner Airster and The Red Bus). I made a circle for the front of the plane and two parallel lines on either side for the wings. I let them set. Then I took some black and added the strings to the plane, the propellers and a dot for the middle. For fun in the yellow one (The Kinner Airster) has a little brown blob to act as Amelia's aviator cap to make it look like she is flying it.

All the kids at school thought it was cute, and given that these are drawing on a very petite eight year old- I think it's awesome!

Saint Patricks Day Nails

Today we celebrated Saint Patricks day at school. We needed to paint our nails (as always) for the Holiday. One hand has  shamrocks , the other hand I called dibs on and wanted to try something new. This is what we came up with:

Using a couple of toothpicks, I made a rainbow on four of her fingers (and a small portion of her thumb). Then I made a black pot and we actually had gold glitter colored polish for the top.  It may not be as fancy as some of the other amazing nail artists out there, but they are working on adult fingers :)




MY OTHER SAINT PATRICKS DAY STUFF:
Irish Soda Bread
leprechaun visit
 Cupcakes
 rice krispies
leprechaun hand
Lucky Penny neckalce
Decorations
giant cookie

Leprechaun trap

This is only our second year actually making a trap for the leprechaun. All the years before that we decorated and the leprechaun would leave chocolate coins at the end of our rainbow from our Decorations.

To make our trap this year we used an empty coffee container covered in green construction paper.
From the previous decorations we had some rainbows that we taped to the sides. My oldest made the sign "The Lucky Charm Cafe"  and drawings of different lucky charms around it as well. To get up to the top, we made used our lego ladder pieces and taped it down.

We kept the lid and taped a lego made table onto it and filled it with Lucky Charms (just the marshmallows) Then we made a flap shaped cut in it and then covered it with a welcome mat. This way the leprechaun won't know and step on it, falling into our trap.


MY OTHER SAINT PATRICKS DAY STUFF:
Irish Soda Bread
leprechaun visit
 Cupcakes
 rice krispies
leprechaun hand
Lucky Penny neckalce
giant cookie

Lucky Penny Bottle cap necklace

This will give your little lad or lass that extra bit of luck during Saint Patricks Day.

What you'll need:
Bottle caps (any glass one works. I.E: soda, beer)
Drill and a 1/4inch drill bit
Penny
Chain or yarn
Your four leaf clover  picture

I took a 1/4 inch drill bit and slowly drilled a small hole into a bottle lid Next I took jewelry wire and wrapped it around the top and then looped it to make the spot for the chain or yarn to go through.

The next step was getting the penny secured in by super gluing it into the base. After it dried I added clear puzzle glue for an even more secure hold

 

Let it set while you work on the four leaf clover part for the front of your bottle cap. When you're done glue (or mod podge) the decal onto the front. Let it set and then string your yarn or ribbon through the hole at the top.

Multicultural Week Door Decoration

As part of our celebration for Multicultural week at our school we need to decorate the doors of the classroom. When I think of Multicultural and kids the first thing that comes to mind is "It's a Small World" from Disneyland. It's both my daughters favorite rides and always the first thing we go on when we arrive at Disneyland.

To recreate this timeless classic I started at the school. I e-mailed (and in more cases physically went  up to) and found out what country or countries best represented the childs family. Then I went and printed off tiny coloring page versions of that flags along with the word "welcome" in that language.

 I colored them by hand because although it takes more time, it also costs more in ink. Something the schools do not reimburse for (nor do they give you to opportunity to use theirs, especially colored)- so I went the less expensive route.After that I took regular printer paper and cut it into 4 squares. I wrote each childs name on the paper and glued the corresponding flags to them.

BOAT and PEOPLE:

for the boat I took red and orange and gave it an angled look at the top. I lined them up together and glued them down. I then took the purple for the top.  I added a wave to give the bottom of the boat a less square look.

For the letters: I used the schools die cutter- super fun to use :)

To recreate the children on the front of the boat took all weekend. First I took different skin colored papers and traced circles using my daughters plates (salad size). From there I found the other colors I would need for hair, necks, clothes and cut them out according to the picture I found online of the kids. I didn't sketch it ( I typically don't) but that doesn't mean you can't. All you have to do once you have the head cut out it line it up over the next color and sketch around it.  I just cut it out by eying it.
When it was all cut out and glued on I used a sharpie to add the extra details.

Once the kids and words are glued on, take your name tags with the flags and "welcomes" and glue them all over the board.

Other ideas for Multicultural week include:
Having kids dress up in their cultures outfits
Potluck for either whole school or by classrooms--this is fun because you get to try new and exciting foods