Pirate/Fairy maps, yarrrr!

Blue is a huge fan of drawing up maps for our adventures.  There are no treasure chests on her map, oh no. Our goal is to get across all of the obstacles she puts in our way -  from stinky rivers to ogre dens or crocodile piles.  The maps come with us and she consults them regularly to make sure we are on track to... whatever our adventure may be.

So for Christmas, the girls got maps in their stockings. I was torn between having this be a craft project to work on with Blue, allowing her to create a more permanent map, or offering one as a surprise gift. I wound up making these on my own but will definitely be making some more with her :) After deciding I would make them more permanent maps, I looked around online and found a ton of great suggestions on how to go about it!  People have made all sorts of cool pirate maps - from brown paper grocery bags that to paper to cotton or canvas. 

Here is what we did:

Supplies

Canvas material. I just used an old Trader Joe's reusable grocery bag that I cut up

5 tea bags

Permanent marker

Paints - either fabric or acrylic. I used both.

Step 1. Cut up the canvas material to be whatever size/shape you want. Since I used an old grocery bag, I handwashed it with a bit of dishsoap.

Step 2.  Bring some water to a boil, add the tea bags and canvas. Let it boil for about 5 minutes. I didn't measure the water, but you essentially want enough water that will cover the canvas in the pot without diluting the tea too much. I used 5 oolong teabags because I wanted a bit of a darker tea stain (and we apparently don't have black tea)

Step 3.  Remove pot from stove and carefully pour out the tea water, fill pot with cold water so the canvas cools off. Once the canvas is cool, run it under cold water until the water runs clear

Step 4. If the canvas isn't already squished, squish it up a bit :) Then lay it out flat to dry (don't smooth it)

Step 5. Once the canvas is dry, use the permanent marker to draw your map.

Step 6. Using fabric or acrylic paints, paint in where you want details. I watered my acrylic paints down a bit so that lines were still visible. I wanted to use watercolors for a more watery look but am not sure how they'd come out on the canvas

Step 7. Let dry :)

The edges of my canvas aren't finished or seamed or anything else except for the edges that already existed on the bag. They're unraveling a bit. I think that adds to the charm, but if they unravel too much I may just put a bit of fray stop spray or glue on it. 

Is Christmas Here?

The day started in the wee hours of the morning as I finished sewing a hat onto a snowman:

Then, at a far more decent hour, we finally took down our fall season wall so that we can start our Winter and holiday crafts. I have a pretty grand idea for our "tree" but I need to get to work on it. Hopefully I will have it up in a few days :)

Beyond the tree, though, we have lots of winter crafts planned, plus our ornament advent calendar.

Today, we started some snowflakes and a Christmas countdown chain. 

For our snowflakes, I got the idea off pinterest to use coffee filters. These work ok, though they're a bit too flimsy for young children. We'll probably do other ones with normal paper. Blue's scissors are missing, and her purple spring-loaded ones are not nearly as "preschooler-friendly" as they claim. So I let her use my scissors, under our sharp (pun intended) eye. She did good, but enjoyed hanging the snowflakes up the most. We put them up on the windows of the girls' room. Between those and the Christmas lights, it's looking quite nice!

While Blue and daddy worked on the snowflakes, Baby Bear did some coloring. She bored of that quickly, though, and moved onto tasting the crayons. So, we switched her to playing with the fall leaves we had taken down.

I worked on the Christmas countdown chain, with Blue helping me count. Blue is "getting" that Christmas "is coming." But is having a harder time realizing that we'll be waiting a few weeks... not hours. I think the chain will help with that, as well as making our wall even more festive :)

Halloween and Thankfulness

Happy Halloween 2012 from Blue and Baby Bear!

Blue had us worried she might be getting sick, and we weren't sure if trick or treating and other standard Halloween events would be going on this year. I had a full day/evening of "HouseAWeening" all planned - essentially our crafting and other activities all jammed together. But, Blue was fine and was able to go to her school parade, to her friend's Halloween party, and trick or treating! Mr. River even got the evening off early and joined us!

What a great way to end October!

We started November off with some family arts and crafts to think about, talk about, and celebrate being "thankful." It's a rare thing that we're all involved in the crafts, as we usually do them while Mr. River is at work. So we were thankful for that alone :)

Appropriately, we painted and assembled some turkeys to go up on out fall wall! Blue and I talked about what thankful means, and we both thought of things that we are thankful for - to put on her turkey. Baby Bear also had her turkey filled up - by Blue and Mr. River - of all the things she loves and is thankful for.

I think they turned out pretty cute :)

First we did the turkey bodies. Baby Bear tried to first color them, but then we turned to painting

Then we made the feathers. I first tried to cut feathers out, but they were too small to easily paint. So instead, we painted a paper first, then cut leaves from it :)

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Blue helped glue the finished feathers onto the turkeys

And then handprint turkeys!

Tada! I finished their small details and then we talked about things we are thankful for.

I think they turned out great :)

Autumn tree

So this is only about a month late in posting :) But at the beginning of September, we started an Autumn tree project. The goal was to make a tree that we could use as a focal point for arts and crafts we'd be making over the fall. The tree itself became a project, with several days of making leaves, gluing them on (even the ABA instructor helped), and finally putting it on the wall. 

So first, I cut out an outline of a tree and branches. Then we colored it. I didn't take pictures of this part.

For the leaves, we did all sorts of things. We used apple prints from the apples we picked. Blue fingerpainted some of them, colored some with crayons, and also colored some with markers. We also did handprints on a few. 

Finally, I cut leaves out of the painted pages, cut out the apples, and we glued it all together for a beautiful tree!