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Thu
14 ^th

Egg Carton Cars

Posted by Pinparent — 3 Comments

My daughter has the most magnificent imagination. It is fascinating to watch her play. She loves to build villages & towns with her blocks & she picks up random odds and ends around the house often to incorporate into her pretend worlds.

We painted some egg carton pieces & toilet paper roll earlier this week to keep for future crafts. We started playing with the painted pieces & we thought of a great craft that she could use later for her pretend play.

We made these simple egg carton cars. All you need is buttons for the wheels & some foam pieces or construction paper for the windows and headlights. Use a Sharpie to draw in the doors.

These were quick and easy to make and made a fine addition to my daughter’s block city. “Look mama, I parked all the cars in the parking lot.”

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Tue
05 ^th

Jeweled Cardboard Mirror Craft

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

Every little princess needs a magic mirror. Your little princesses will love making and playing with this jeweled mirror craft.

Tue
07 ^th

Polymer Clay Cupcake Craft

Posted by Pinparent — 1 Comment

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I recently discovered my love for polymer clay. My daughter and I play with Play-doh & homemade salt dough often & we love it, but I just love the feel & look of the polymer. My daughter has been loving playing with it too.

One of her favorite things to make which her doughs & clays is pretend cakes & cookies. She loves to play bakeshop.

We had some mini cupcake liners. We used them to form our clay cupcakes.

We both pressed a clump of clay into our liners. We pressed it in tight, so that the liner would make an imprint on the clay. I kept the liner in a stack so that the liner would keep its shape & not spread out while we worked with it.

We used another color & formed a flat circle to lay over the top of the first layer.

I rolled out a clump of clay so that it formed a long strand & then I circled the strand in a spiral around the top to form the frosting.

The fun part is decorating your little cakes. Add little clay specks for sprinkles or a circle for a cherry, form flowers or anything else that you & your little baker can come up with.

My little baker threw her original design out the window & opted for a fancier cake, complete with lady & handbag on top. She put it in a larger liner & then told me that her cupcake could eat my cupcakes. That gave me a chuckle.

Next, we baked our tasty treats per package directions. These will all make a great additional to my daughter’s little bakeshop.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.
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Sun
29 ^th

Outdoor Ice Play

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I don’t know how the weather has been where you are, but the past few days here have been hot, like really hot. I love the outdoors, but am not a fan of the heat. We made some simple sidewalk paint out of cornstarch & water & were eager to play with it. Because of the heat, I packed a big bowl of ice just to help keep us cool. It turned out that that giant bowl of ice turned into a day of icy fun. I took a few cubes out & put my bare feet on top of them to keep cool, but my daughter grabbed some cubes out of the bowl & started creating.

She formed a flower with some ice cubes & then grabbed our sidewalk paint and painted the cubes. She was very excited about how pretty her flower was. I grabbed a couple of leaves & a stem to finish it off. She loved it.

She continued to form designs with the cubes. She dipped the cubes in the paint, she painted them with her brush & we even had ice cubes races to see which colored cubes would melt the farthest.

We went through many bowls of ice cubes. Since my daughter loves vinegar & baking soda, we added some into the mix & made icy baking soda eruptions.

After we used up our last bowl of ice & all of our baking soda, we finally used our paints for a few sidewalk designs.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Sun
22 ^nd

Egg Carton Crown

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We use recycled items in our crafts all the time. It is very difficult for me to throw anything out. This has crossed over to my 4 year old & my husband as well. My daughter will save bottle caps & other random things & tell me “This will be good for a craft” & my husband won’t throw anything away without asking me if I can use it first.

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Our craft room has bins of recyclables, but most prevalent in our collection is egg cartons. We have piles of them. It was time to put some of them to some good use. Here is a great craft that parents can do for their little kings & queens.

Egg Carton Crown

What you will need:

Egg cartons

Glue gun (Use caution when operating a glue gun. Low heat guns are recommended for children.)

Acrylic Paints

Buttons

Pom Poms

Directions:

Egg Cartons do come in a variety of different shapes. We used a family sized pack that looked like this inside.

Cut through the egg carton the long way. You will want to cut through the centers of the 2 spiky portions running along the middle of the carton.

Your cut piece should look like this.

Cut through the middle of your cut section the long way until you have two halves.

Use a glue gun to glue the two pieces together to form one long piece. You should be able to get the spikes to match up so that they blend when gluing them together. Depending on the size of your child’s head you may need to glue on a few extra spiked sections.

When you reach the desired length, bend the long piece of egg carton to form a crown shape & then glue into place.

Paint your crown in the color of your choice. My daughter wanted red for hers.

Use buttons & pom poms for embellishments or add on whatever you like to create your crown.

My daughter loved her crown. It fit her head perfectly. She had a crown fit for a queen.

Thank you as always for reading. Please visit us on our Facebook page as well.
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Fri
29 ^th

Pizza Making Play Dough Activity

Posted by Pinparent — 2 Comments

My daughter is obsessed with Play-doh. She just loves it. She loves mixing the colors together, sculpting with it & she even loves those Play-Doh videos all over Youtube. *This post contains affiliate links*

Last year we even made her a Play-doh themed birthday party. Last night while playing with a new variety pack, she asked me for a paper plate. I grabbed her one & asked her what she was planning on making. She said she wanted to make a pizza. “Can you help me, mama?”

Of course! This sounded like a fun project.

Start by pressing a light tan color into the center of the plate & then using a rolling pin to spread the dough out.

Next , pinch the edges of your rolled out dough to make the crust.

Smooth on your sauce with your fingers, utensils or use the rolling pin.

Tear off small pieces of white dough & drop onto your pizza. Add pepperoni or any other toppings. As you can see by my silly girl’s face, she had a ton of fun making her pizza. Here she is rolling out broccoli for her pizza.

My daughter had a brilliant idea. The play dough pizzas were the perfect recipe for a fun evening together.

Thank you as always for reading. Please visit us on our Facebook page as well.

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Sat
16 ^th

Exploring Shadows

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

When I heard the weather report for this weekend, I was overjoyed. I could not wait to get outdoors with the family. I asked my daughter what she wanted to do & she wanted to bring her building blocks outside & play. We brought them out & began to build with them in the driveway.

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Thu
24 ^th

Salt Dough Mosaic Frames

Posted by Pinparent — 3 Comments

We love clay & play dough projects in our house. My daughter just can’t get enough of it. We make new dough every week, sometimes even a couple of times a week. We are just about settled into our new home, but are still missing pictures on our walls. I thought it would be fun for us to make some homemade frames together.

We started with a simple clay recipe.

2 1/2 cup of flour

1 1/4 cup of water

1 cup of salt

1 Tbsp of oil

1 Tbsp of cornstarch

Mix all the ingredients together & then knead with your hands. My daughter always loves this part. You may need to add less or more water.

Roll out your clay.

Cut a few long strips out of your dough & then cut into small squares.

Cut out a shape for your frame & then cut out the inside window. Use a photo as a template to know how big to cut your window.

Lightly wet the top of your frame. Press the squares on top until the frame is covered. Press the squares in enough so that they stick. For my frame, I etched designs in with a toothpick. Since Mother’s Day is nearing, I thought that a Mother’s Day themed frame would be a good choice. Mai chose to draw in her designs after.

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees. Bake for 1 hour & then flip your frame & bake for another hour. Depending on the thickness of your frame, you might need more or less bake time. When hardened, remove from the oven & let cool.

Paint your squares with acrylics or glaze.

After the paint dried, Mai used a marker to draw in her designs. She wanted to write letters & numbers on hers.

Glue yarn or a ribbon to the back to hang & glue a picture to the back. (We used crazy glue. Let adults apply crazy glue.)

My daughter was so proud of her finished project. She asked that both be hung in her room.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

Sun
20 ^th

Plastic Easter Egg Cars

Posted by Pinparent — 2 Comments

Easter will be here & then over before we know it. Many homes will be dealing with the aftermath of Easter grass, jelly beans & all of those left-over plastic Easter eggs. I for one love those left-over plastic eggs because there are so many fun things that you can do with them.

Sat
19 ^th

Egg Slime

Posted by Pinparent — 4 Comments

Easter is only a week away. We have been shopping & preparing for the holiday. I have a ton of plastic Easter eggs lying around waiting to get filled. I should rephrase that, I had a ton of plastic Easter eggs. My daughter has been slowly depleting my supply & using them in her play kitchen.

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She pretends to crack them open & throws the empty egg shells in the trash. I had to give her a pretend trash because she was throwing them away for real. She take pretend play very seriously. She has been having a lot of fun mixing up her air eggs, but since she likes the realistic, I thought we could add a little something extra to her pretend egg scrambles. Here is what we did.

We made up a quick batch of slime.

Ingredients:

2.5 oz of clear school glue

2.5 oz of white school glue

1/2 cup of liquid starch

Water

For Later:

Yellow Play-doh

Extra-large plastic eggs

Directions: Pour all of the glue into a bowl. You can use all clear or all white glue, but to achieve the look I was going for I used a mixture of half & half.

Add the liquid starch in very small increments at a time. Stir it well as you go. It will thicken quickly. Be careful not to add the starch too quickly.

When it gets to thick to stir, you can use your hands to knead it. I used just shy of the 1/2 of liquid starch & then added spoonfuls of water at a time until I achieved the consistency I was looking for. My daughter helped.

Use the Play-doh to form little yellow balls for the yoke. Flatten them out a little with your hand.

Grab a handful of your slime & add a yolk to the top for a realistic looking sunny side-up egg.

Or you can put the slime & yolk into an extra-large plastic egg for a fun egg cracking experience.

My daughter thought that this was hilarious. “Mama, it looks like real eggs.” It turns out that just like with regular eggs that she does not like the yolk, so she pulled those out & just played with the whites. Like I said, my daughter likes to keep things realistic.

Thank you as always for stopping by. Please follow us on Facebook as well.

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