fun with googly eyes: part two

If happiness came in a bag (and it wasn't chocolate) I do think it may be googly eyes. There is just so much one can do with these little guys. It being fall and all and almost Halloween I think a little extra googly eye fun is in order. Yesterday's post is a perfect example of how easy it is to play with these kooky things. Today, I want to show you how delightful a pack of eyes, a few toothpics, glue and paper punches or scissors can be. Viola...googly cupcake toppers! So, what are ya waiting for? Whip up a batch of pumpkin cupcakes or gingerbread muffins and while they are baking, let your kidlets loose to make all sorts of spooky-fun toppers. It's an impromptu party! Yay for Halloween!

Materials
*toothpicks
*scrap paper, printed paper, newspaper
*paint of your choice
*paint brushes
*cup o water
*glue and/or glue stick
*various paper punches or scissors
*googly eyes
*markers (optional)
To make the same style of toppers I made here, set out newspaper or phone book pages and watercolors or other paint and have your wee ones paint away. Set aside to dry and let them give a stir or two to whatever cupcake or muffin you are baking. I made gingerbread cupcakes from this recipe. Make sure to work in an area that is happy for spills and mess, use a splat mat or wax paper to protect your table top if you need to.Once dry, use a large scallop punch to punch out newspaper shapes, set aside. You can let your kidlets go to town here or you can give your paper a couple of folds and punch out multiples at a time. Use a smaller circular punch to cut out shapes from your printed or scrap paper. A solid page would be better for this but you can use whichever you want. Colored paper would be nice, and/or cardstock. I used an old library brochure.Use the gluestick on the back of the scalloped circles and sandwich a toothpick between two of the. I found it easier to use a large gluestick and to put the circle on the gluestick rather than glob the gluestick all over the back of the circle. If your tots are going to use the gluestick like a pen, use a sheet of wax paper underneath to prevent extra sticking. Next up, repeat the gluestick process with the smaller circles, one circle per topper. You can do both sides but you don't need to.Finally, use a small dab of glue to anchor a googly eye or two to the center of each paper circles combo (try saying that three times fast). Lay flat to dry.When cupcakes are cool and yer ready to serve, plop a google-eyed topper into each cake and admire. Yay for impromptu party fun!

fun with googly eyes part one: paint swatch puppets

I absolutely LOVE these paint swatch puppets found on Hollis Queen's flickr stream. These would make perfect monstery puppets for Halloween, don't ya think? I have a bag of googley eyes sitting here for two projects and if I had some wee ones of my own, I think we would be making these up right now! Thank you for letting me share this project!

candy corn marshmallow treats

These just may be too much for even the sweetest of you sweet-toothers. Since chowing down on the mixing spoon, I haven't been able to touch another one. Oh the sugar rush! but if you like candy corn, these will totally make your day!
Materials:
*six cups rice cereal
*10oz marshmallows
*1 stick of butter sliced (1/2 cup)
*1/2 cup chopped candy corn plus a handful of whole pieces to garnish
*1/2 teaspoon of sea or kosher salt (optional)
*large baking dish
*large pot
*wooden spoon

First off, chop your butter up for easier melting. Your kidlet can do this with a blunt or plastic knife. Add to your big pan on low heat and stir, stir, stir away. You will want the butter to froth up and then brown a bit for an extra kick of flavor. When it browns, toss in a small bit of sea or kosher salt. while the butter is melting, pass off the wax butter wrapper (or small square of wax paper) to your tot and have them coat the inside of the baking dish.Once the butter is all melted, add your marshmallows and stir away. Mini marshmallows melt faster but large mallows look happier. You decide. I also have to be honest and tell you I added about 13oz of marshmallows as I like my treats on the gooey side. Stir until all your lumps are out or if you are impatient like me, allow for a few lumps.Pour cereal into melty marshmallow mix and give a stir. Before your cereal can soak up all the gooey goodness, make sure to plop your chopped candy corn into the fray. Chopping the candy corn allows for more biteability plus it melts a little so that the flavor can be detected throughout your final squares.

Scoop mixture out into buttered dish and push down with the spoon. If your mixture is too gooey you can use wax paper to flatten it down though I find that if it is too gooey for he hands it will prolly stick to the paper as well (unless of course, there is a non-sticky side, which there probably is but I just can't seem to figure it out).Press a few whole pieces of candy corn to the top for garnish and fun. Allow to set for a moment or too and then slice it all up and serve. You may want to serve it up with a cold glass of your preferred milk beverage. These squares are sweeter than sweet. A little goes a long way so you may wish to cut itty bitty squares.

pumpkin carving with kids

check it out over at craftzine!

halloween fun with scrumdilly-do!

*breakfast fit for monsters (mush)
*monster hands
*halloween wreath
*classic ghosties

a thought on creativity

When the nephew a-go-go was working on his mummy he became frustrated with the glue that stuck, stuck, stuck to his fingers. After he did the flap dance (trying to rid his hand of an object that stuck to it), and after many grunts and growls, he decide to make himself a glue finger, something that would help him hold down the glue-tacky strips until they held that would keep the glue from ticky-tacking itself to him. He eyed a piece of fun foam and asked me to pass the scissors and after two attempts/versions he made himself a glue finger. How cool is that?

When I was a kidlet, I didn't have a parent or adult to swoop in to correct me or "help" me when I became frustrated or kerfungled. There were adults around me but I was often left to my own devices. I like to think that these precious opportunities to discover on my own, to succeed or to fail, helped shape the me I am today. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of tears along the way (including and unfortunate episode, um, yesterday). I am an observer. I observe the world around me. Most importantly people and their actions. Especially the children. When it comes to a project, I like to present the materials and guide the discussion so that it ends with the project that is in my head. For example, mummies. When we made the mummies I had assembled an assortment of supplies and asked how could we use what we had to make a mummy? I didn't tell the nephew a-go-g HOW we were going to make mummies, I let him come up with his own ideas. He started out one way and we talked about what he wanted to do, after some trial and error, he would switch and then switch again until he made a (most awesome) mummy.

Previously, when I have taught art classes or led activities I would do the same, and the kookiest thing would happen over and over again. each time I would talk about the inspiration for the activity, guide the children to the supplies we had and just as the children were about to jump in, a parent, a GROWN UP would say "Wait! What about the instructions? How do they make a pig?" and each time I would say Iin their own way", and STILL the adult was confused. I know we don't want our children to fail or feel the odd person out. I know the intentions are good and true but when you give a child a box of crayons or a container of paint, they should be able to EXPERIENCE the materials they have, the moment ,and the process. When we put our children into a box, we are setting them up for the very failures we are trying to protect them from. This is true in so many areas but most importantly our public education system. I can go on and on and on but I am sure many of you already know this. I would however like to point you in the direction of an article that was recently published in Newsweek called The Creativity Crisis.

make a placemat tool belt

my mister & i were attending a shindig for a young miss who had, amongst other things, asked for tools for her birthday. i culled through my fabric stash and picked up an additional bit and pleaded with my mister to make her birthday wish come true. he is much better at three dimensional sculpture than i am. he hammered out, if you will, a most marvelous trio of tools per my design (wink wink). for my part, i whipped up a tool belt so that the young miss may have her tools at the ready for you never know when a princess (or a pirate) needs to fix something (like a bouncy house). it was easy-peasy, check it out.to make a tool belt you will need:
*placemat
*needle & thread (or sewing machine)
*pins
*ribbon
*velcro
*scissors
*scrap fabric

scrumdilly-do it:

the first thing i did was sew a fun little patch of fabric onto the top end of the place mat. or rather, the top end of the back side. place placemat in front of you horizontally, wrong side up. pin scrap of fabric to top right corner and stitch on using a zigzag stitch. this is for decoration only so you can add as many patches of color as you like or you can leave it alone and add none. next up i used a small straight stitch on the machine to affix a length of velcro from one end to the other. the velcro strip overlaps the fabric patch. the other half of the velcro is attached to the tools. if you are choosing to add velcro, make sure you have the right tack attached to the tools otherwise they won't stick and what fun would that be?flip placemat over with velcro and patch closest to you. fold up to about two inches from the top and pin in place. determine the center of your place mat and stitch from bottom of fold to a little past the edge.with placemat now tacked into a fold, line up edges on the right side using the corner of the mat. now, bring corner towards the center of the mat so that the top corner now lines up with the top of the mat. pin into place and repeat for other side. this is so the pockets have room for extra toys and/or the tools themselves.gather your ribbon and cut into two lengths at least ten inches long, there will be an excess of ribbon but you will want to tie it around your kidlet's waist securely. most placemats run about 19" across. you can trim after your final fitting. Pin ribbon to placemat under the diagonal folds you just pinned. stitch along the diagonal edge of the placemat keeping sure to catch the ribbon end so that is is anchored to the new belt.remove pins, trim ribbon edges, affix tools, tie on and enjoy!


*if you do not have a set of plush tools or do not feel up to making them, you can glue velcro onto light plastic toys and they too will stick to the belt.

refreshing pink

this is hardly the healthiest thing to make for yer kidlets but man it could be, kinda-sorta if you wanted to expand on it and use soy or yogurt though for the life of me i wonder why? save the healthy stuff for the rest of the time for now, all you need is a happy red fruity tarty juice (we like pom-cranberry and the tarter your juice, the more it tastes like a push-up, remember those?), gingerale (or fizz water), ice cubes (the smaller the better), half and half and whipped cream. throw in some happy straws and polka-dotted glasses and yer gold!

assemble glasses and add ice.fill halfway with juice & add some fizz.add a drizzle of half and half or cream (the fats may separate and appear to curdle but it's all good).finish with a dollop of whipped happy, add a straw and enjoy!

mummy makers

We went to see the Mummies of the World exhibit last week with our nephew as he has quite the thing for mummies (and zombies). Before we went, he and I sat down in front of the trusty laptop and did a little research. We looked at pictures and talked about the spiritual beliefs, the embalming process and the accoutrements that went along in the tombs and such. As we walked around the exhibit we all took the time to explain the different mummies, processes, eras and geography of what we were looking at. He surprised me by remembering much more than I did from our laptop research. I wanted to keep the mummy lurve alive (heehee) so when we got homeish (we're house sitting) I rifled through the materials on hand and proposed we make our own mummies. So we did.

What we used:

*popsicle sticks
*pipecleaners
*masking tape
*paper
*white glue
*corks
*poly blend "linen"
*burlap strands

How we did it

The first thing you need to do is come up with a design. Each one of us assembled our own mummies from the same materials but we tackled it in very different ways. We used the popsicle sticks for the bodies and legs and we used pipecleaners and borken sticks for arms.The two corks became heads and since there were only two corks, I used wadded up paper for my noggin. More crumpled paper was used to fill out the bodies (I wish I used more on mine) and masking tape was used to anchor the mess together.The paper we had was the thin newsprinty paper we used in grade school to practice our writing. We tore long thin strips from the sheet and twisted them up all wonky so that they would be creased and look a little bit like bandages. The boys twisted theirs up tight while I took the scrunching method and applied my pie fluting skills to the whole shebang. Once the paper was good and scrunched, we unraveled it, added a dab of glue to one end, applied it to the body and wrapped.We continued wrapping until we were happy. Now it was time for finishing touches. You could stop right there if you wanted but to add a little more "authenticity" we tore strips from a piece of faux linen and pulled out strands from a chunk of burlap.
mr. a-go-gos mummy became a cat mummy using twisted paper and a few threads tied about. My mummy used the paper and then had a few threadbare strands of linen wrapped here and there topped of with a few strands of the burlap as well. The boy-ago-go used paper and then a large width of linen followed by a few thinner strands and some of the burlap. So there you go. I think we made some awesome mummies. Why not rifle through your craft boxes and junk drawers to see what you can come up with? I can't wait to see! Add your pics to the flickr group and maybe you'll see them here! More Egyptian fun:
Woodlands Mummies
The University of Chicago
History for Kids

Oh and we love, love, LOVE the Eyewitness books by DK Press.

Cupkins!

Punk Cupper

Captain Cup-Beard

Robocup

Clown Cup

Harry Cupper

Materials:

• 
  
  unwaxed paper nut cups (also called souffle cups or baking cups, these come in various sizes and are easy to find in the baking aisle at Target or the grocery store, as well as in [cheap] bulk at places like Smart & Final)


• 
  
  sharpies


• 
  
  scissors


• 
  
  clear-drying school glue


• 
  
  glue-ons, including but not limited to: yarn, pom-poms, dry pasta, toothpicks, cardstock, googly eyes

Set out all the funness in a mess friendly zone and let the cup-antics begin!