4th of July Hair Bow

This 4th of July we will be spending time with my husband's entire family. That means my little one will get to see all 10 of her cousins (all under the age of 8!) There are 8 girls. I decided they all needed matching hair bows to mark the occasion.

What you need to make the hair bow: 

• plain barrette 
• wooden 1/2-inch dowel rod (I used 3 wooden skewers)
• clothes pins
• 3 colors of ribbon (1/2-inch thick)
• 3 inch long (not curled ribbon)
• needle and thread
• hot glue gun
• oven

First get out your ribbon and secure it to one end  of the dowel rod with clothes pin and wrap it around. Secure the bottom end with one more clothes pin. (repeat for all ribbons you plan to use)

Place in the oven at 220 degrees F for 15 minutes.

Once cooled down, unwrap ribbon. 

Cut it into 3-4 inch pieces.

Collect 3 of each color, curled ribbon and stack them, so they are flared. 

Use needle and thread to sew the center, so all the pieces stick together.

Use the 3 inch long ribbon and hot glue one end where you just stitched.

Wrap it around and secure with more hot glue.

Place a drop of hot glue on the center of the barrette and attach the center of the bow. 

Wrap the straight ribbon one more time, this time including the barrette. 

Secure with hot glue. 

Let cool!

Here are all 8 of them:

Have a happy 4th of July and enjoy the fireworks!

A Lions World: A Preschool Activity

I was given the challenge of creating a therapy session at school, so naturally I tried it out on my daughter to see how it went. She is obsessed with lions, so I decided to take that theme and run with it! Really. She often roars and shouts, "I'm a lion, I'm so scary!"

So today, we were lions!

We used our imaginations (an important preschool/ life skill).

We created lion masks.

We colored, then cut- both important fine motor (finger) skills.

And lived in this lion den for the day.

We had to think really hard to plan out how to make the fort. Then there were the decisions of how big to make the fort, what it would be made out of, and what would go in it. We picked a whole bunch of items with different textures- great for sensory.

 Then for added fun we read lion books, and watched The Lion King (but not the scary parts, of course).
Now I'll send you back to Passionate and Creative Homemaking!

I have decided that I think I could enjoy being 3 again!

Now I'll send you back over to Crayon Freckles

Wedding Rehearsal Ribbon Bouquet

My best friend got married last January.  As part of my duty as the “Matron of Honor” I decided to create a mock flower bouquet for her to practice with during the rehearsal out of all the ribbons used as wrapping from her bridal showers. I searched and searched to figure out how to do this, but I didn’t find any tutorials (print or internet) that actually worked for me. I kind of played with the ribbons for a VERY LONG while and made a bouquet I am quite happy with, despite the colored ribbon I was working with due to the large number of gifts purchased from Bed Bath and Beyond. Here’s what I did.

Need for 1 flower:

• 22 inch ribbon
• Floral tape
• Fabric glue
• Floral wire

Directions:

• Get a ribbon about 22 inches long.
• Tie a single knot at one end leaving a little extra hanging off

• Twist the longer end away from the knot, adding a dab of glue, and wrap around the knot

• repeat prior stem until there is just a little bit of ribbon left
• Take floral wiring and push it into the knot, where the stem looks like it should come from

• Wrap excess ribbon around wire and secure with floral tape

• Create as many flowers as you would like and wrap all the stems together with floral tape
• Then wrap ribbon over floral tape and secure with fabric glue
• Then you have yourself a wedding rehearsal flower bouquet! 

Children's Art Gallery

My daughter's room was starting to look a little bare as soon as we upgraded her to a big girl bed. Then I realized thats because she did not have ONE SINGLE THING on her walls in her room.

Then I realized my kitchen was covered from top to bottom in her art work. So I solved two problems in one!

I bought 5 solid wood frames from good will for $9. I took out the glass and painted them white.

Then I bought some rolled up cork for $8, with a 40% off coupon from hobby lobby. I ironed out the cork (yes with an iron), cut it to fit the frames and glued it to the backing of the frames.

After letting it dry, I displayed some of the art work with push pins.