Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, we made it. I didn't post every day and I'm okay with that. I am sorry that I said I would, I should have realized that it just isn't in the cards for me to post every day.

In saying that though, I do have some posts lined up for Christmas. I won't promise daily posts, but check back sometimes since I think I should be able to post most days. For instance, starting on Saturday I'm planning to post a couple of Advent calendars that I like a lot. You wouldn't want to miss that now, would you?

Have a fabulous Thanksgiving. Enjoy your families and your dinners (it's okay if it's not in that order of course) and I'll see you soon.

I'm a big fan

of having my kids make and wear dorky turkey hats. I got them all into the Thanksgiving spirit with this one a few years ago:

Turkey Hat

I'm now wondering what depths I will have to sink to in order to get them to make and wear new ones. Hmmm. This is what makes holidays fun!

A cornucopia

I can't wait to make this with my kids. Every year we do a cornucopia craft, usually it's edible or it falls apart, but I'm hoping no one will eat this one:

Paper Cornucopia

I think it will be to hard for the little ones to make on their own, so maybe we'll make it together. I might sketch out the shapes first and just have the kids fill it in. Or maybe I'll have Harry and Sam do their own and help the little girls do one too.

Okay Guys

I think I missed a day--I'm sorry. I had an incredibly busy day yesterday and just crashed on the couch. Since I'm still recovering from the trip, a crazy day yesterday and Scouts today, it's just a link. But it looks so dang cute. And I was thinking it would be even cuter using an upside-down flower pot painted brown.

So here you go: Paper-cup turkeys

Handprint Turkeys

I'm a big fan of handprints. I love seeing how the kids' hands have changed through the years. It's also easy and fun.

Have your child trace his or her hand. Then make a turkey out of it. The thumb is the head so give it a beak and a smile. (He doesn't know what's going to happen later.) Also give him a comb. Then color each of the fingers a different turkeyish color. Don't forget his legs. He needs some way of running.

That's it. We do this every year, so I have quite a collection of turkeys. Once I can figure out how to get my pictures up so they don't look so weird, I'll post pictures of what we've done so far.

Welcome

A few years ago I made a Welcome Banner from instructions I found in a magazine. (I told you I liked magazines.) I can't find the instructions, but it was super easy.

What You Need:
A piece of burlap--about the size of a large piece of paper
Felt cut outs of the word "Welcome" (I decided how big the letters should be and printed them out on the computer. Then I traced the letters onto the felt and cut them out.)
Felt cut-outs of some leaves in fall colors, about 5 or 6 of them (print out the clip-art from familyfun.com and trace them onto the felt, then cut them out)
Glue gun
A dowel rod or long stick, longer than the width of the burlap
A piece of rope
5 Pennies

What To Do:
1. After you have the words and leaves ready, lay them out onto the blurlap. When you like how they look, glue them on. You are going to use the top couple of inches for the stick, so place them accordingly.
2. Put the stick or dowel rod across the top, fold the burlap over it and glue the burlap down.
3. Tie the rope onto the dowel rod or stick so you can hang it.
4. Glue the pennies along the back on the bottom so that it won't fly around too much.
5. Hang and admire your craftiness!

Now, if I can only find mine...

Fun for the Whole Family

One of H's Scout electives is to make a bean bag toss game. So I think we'll do this one:

Bean Bag Toss

It is a bigger project than most, but it might be fun Sunday afternoon family project.

Good luck. I hope it's fun!

Corn on the Cob

Indian corn is always cool. I remember trying to eat it when I was little. That wasn't one of my better ideas. but this is:

Stuff You Need:
green construction paper
paint in Indian corn colors
glue
another piece of paper to glue everything else on

What to Do:
1. Cut out the shape of an ear of corn from the green paper and glue it to the other piece of paper. The green is the corn husks so leave some room between the sides for the kernels.
2. Dip your finger into one of the paint colors and use it to print a kernel between your husks. Without washing your finger off, dip it in another color and do the same thing.
3. Do this until your Indian corn is finished.
4. Let it dry.
5. Be happy!

More Leaves

Remember how I said I love fall leaves? Well, I do and I have a very cool brother-in-law who sent me some genuine colorful Virginia fall leaves. So we all have Ryan to thank for this craft, which may be a lot easier for those of you in Virginia and Utah to do than those of us in SoCal.

Stuff You Need:
paper
brown marker
glue
dried leaves

What to Do:
1. Draw the trunk of a tree on your paper.
2. Put glue on the top of the tree where the leaves would be.
3. Crush up the leaves into small pieces. You want pieces, not dust, so be careful
4. Put the leaves on the glue.
5. Admire your tree.

You could also put some on the ground around the tree to look like the leaves are falling.

Leaves

Someday when you have an hour or two, I'll have to tell you all about my love affair with fall leaves. Leaves are fine the rest of the year, but in the fall...oh my! Sadly most of the leaves around here don't change colors, so I have to live vicariously through other people. It's just one of the sacrifices you have to make when you live in southern California. Anyway, I'm so excited to make these:

Salt Dough Leaf Prints

Oh so excited. I'll tell you how they end up.

Another Apple Craft

I love easy crafts and this one just works. I'm pretty sure that even my littlest could do it pretty easily and she's 22 months right now:

Tissue Paper Apple Tree

What you need:

a piece of brown construction paper cut in the general shape of a tree trunk
a piece of green paper, in the general shape of the top of a tree
lots of small pieces of red tissue paper to be the apples
glue

Okay, follow along, this is going to be tricky:

1. Glue the trunk shape to the treetop shape in the basic apple tree shape.
2. Give your child the small pieces of red tissue paper and let him or her crumple them into small pieces. Call those the apples, but don't let your child eat them. (They aren't really apples, we're just pretending.)
3. While she's crumpling the tissue paper, either dot the glue onto the tree where you would like the apples to be or cover the entire tree with glue, allowing your child to decide where the apples go.
4. Drink some apple juice or eat an apple while it dries.
5. Exclaim over and over again in a really excited voice how cute your child's apple tree is.
6. Watch your child smile.
7. Give your child a kiss and hang the apple tree on the fridge. If you don't have a magnetic fridge, hang it somewhere else. Maybe in a museum somewhere.


That's it. If you wanted, you could probably glue the tree to another piece of paper as a background, but you don't have to. I mean really, it's already adorable as it is.

I love magazines

Which is probably not a shock if you know me at all. It's a genetic affliction (thanks, Mom). But I try really hard not to buy every magazine I see. This is not easy, because I really do love magazines. Fortunately for me, the libraries around here sell donated magazines for either 10 or 25 cents. So occasionally I'll go a little crazy and bring home every magazine ever written. Except the ones with cars on the front. Those I skip. But every other magazine. And sometimes I even get lucky and someone has donated the most recent issue of one that I like.

Take, for instance, Family Fun. I like Family Fun--it does help my family have fun with the party, craft, and food ideas. But most of the time I don't feel like buying it retail because most of the craft, party, and food ideas are also found on their website, appropriately named familyfun.com. I saw the November issue at the library a few days ago and it looked great, in fact there were a couple of craft ideas I definitely wanted to use. But I didn't buy it. Mostly because I decided that I wasn't going to buy more magazines but also, at least a little bit, because I couldn't find it.

Today I found it--at the library! Yay. And I excitedly opened it up and found the craft I was dreaming about--Turkey Luminarias. They are prettier than they sound, honest.) Oh, it was exciting! Until I found this:

Turkey Luminarias

Fine, lesson learned.

Mini Yarn Apples and Pumpkins

This is a craft that I saw here:

http://www.makeandtakes.com/little-apple-yarn-favors

I don't want to repost the craft, so just click on over and check it out. It looks adorable and fairly easy. We're planning to do this tomorrow.

Somewhere else I found that another person had made pumpkins using the same method, just orange yarn instead of red. They looked cute too and I kicked myself for not thinking of that and buying orange yarn when I got the red.

Of course, there is so much you could do with the apple theme. Go pick some, make a pie or some applesauce, or a pie (that has Jason's vote).

Here are some apple-themed books.

How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
Apple Farmer Annie
Up, Up, Up, It's Apple-Picking Time

That's just a few of the ones out there. I know you probably already have your favorites.

I hope that helps make your fall a little more creative and fun. Enjoy!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Actually I'm not talking about Christmas. I love Thanksgiving. If I had to choose, I'd pick Thanksgiving as my favorite holiday. There isn't nearly as much stress and it's all about food and being together. And giving thanks, which really, we could probably all stand to do more in our lives. (And if you don't, that's fine, please don't take offense.) And while Christmas colors and decorations are prettier than those for Thanksgiving, there's something about the season that I just like.

So, we are big into Fall and Thanksgiving crafts around here. I've spent a fair number of hours searching around for my favorites--those that I can see actually doing with the kids. And even tossing some books into the mix. I will post one each day until Thanksgiving and then begin with the Christmas/Nativity posts. And this year I actually will do it--I've figure out how to use Blogger's auto post and will write as many up as I can and set them to post by magic!

So Enjoy--I hope this makes your fall a little bit happier.

Today's Craft:

Begin our yearly "I'm Thankful For..." Craft.

We always talk about what we are thankful for in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. And usually it's a tree of some sort. Last year we had a big tree on the wall of our family room with the leaves cut out of fancy paper and hung on it. The year before I think I just traced a tree on some paper and cut the leaves out of construction paper. The goal is to have the kids think about what they are thankful for more than creating a product.

This year I am putting yarn across our fireplace (which we've never used) and just hanging the leaves onto that. Or at least I will be, once I replace the tape the kids have decided to use. And by "use" I mean "pull off long pieces and twist them together until my Mom goes insane." Just to clarify. This year I plan to cut the leaves out of coffee filters for the kids to color with washable markers. Then the kids "paint" them with water and let them dry. The water mixes the colors and the end result is cool. You have to use washable markers or it doesn't work nearly as well. Once they are dry, they write what they are thankful for.

I won't post what the kids said tonight, but suffice it to say that we get some heart-warming ones and some where we look at each other and wonder why.

That's our craft for today. I will have pictures when I can buy some tape.