Milk Jug Ghost Luminaries

Last year I saw the coolest idea for a decoration on the Family Fun website.  I never got around to doing it but I made sure to bookmark.  Early this year as I was cleaning out my bookmarks to transfer them to Pinterest I came across this decoration idea again.  I bookmarked it my mind and when September hit I started saving milk jugs.  We quickly accumulated enough and I set Russ to work with his wonderful doodling skills.  Lily helped me fill in all the doodles.  This was REALLY exciting for her since we let her use a permanet marker {I know, we are crazy!}  One string of lights later and we had made...

Ghost luminaries!  The girls loved running outside at night to check and see if they had turned on.  We enjoyed them and apparently so did some of the Trick or Treaters.  We caught a few parents taken photos of them!  These guys will definitely be making a reappearance in the years to come.

Creating an Ocean

A few days before we went to the beach last month I saw THIS cool tutorial on one of my favorite crafting blogs.  I asked the girls if they wanted make an ocean and they enthusiastically said YES!  It took a few weeks after going to the beach to actually get this project done, but we finished it today. 

Me help!  Adding the food coloring to the water.

Allie really enjoyed putting the shells in her bottle.  She completely focused on it.  Eventually we had to take them away or else the whole thing would have been shells!

Lily chose hers very carefully.  She only wanted the really pretty ones.

When finished we of course had to test them out in many different ways!

Upside down...

In our mouths...

Oh and don't forget to put a bracelet on it!

Bubbles, bubbles...

We love our oceans!!

Christmas Wreath Craft

If you can't tell by now, I LOVE crafts.  It really doesn't matter what kind of craft it is, I'll usually try my hand at it.  As Russ decorated for me this year, I realized that I only had one Christmas decoration that I had actually made.  That Christmas decoration was made when I was 12!!!  I began to get bummed out be this until I remembered that I had saw a Christmas wreath that I had wanted to try and make.

Even though I still haven't been feeling 100%, and probably shouldn't have gone to the store without Russ, I was DYING to buy the Christmas bulbs I needed to make my wreath come to life.  That fact led me to only go to one store, where I was disappointed that they didn't have the color of bulbs I wanted {silver}  So I settled for some pretty green, red, and white bulbs.  Later that night, I conned Russ into holding the wire for me while I meticulously threaded all my bulbs on it.  It was a little tricky and took a couple small "do-overs", but I was pleased with the finished product.

I ended up hanging this on our bedroom door mainly because I was too lazy to go back to the store and get a metal door hanger.  The plastic one we have makes it difficult to close doors.  I plan making more of these next year when we are in a house.  I thought a silver one would look beautiful hanging above a mantel.  Call me a dreamer, but I hope I have that mantel next year!

I saw the tutorial for this on another blog, but I'm not going to give the link.  The tutorial that the person wrote up was TERRIBLE! If anyone wants directions on how to make this, leave a comment and I'll post them on here.

Painting Pumpkins

Soon after I got my crafty glitter pumpkins done, Lily started begging to paint her pumpkins.  I kept putting it off, because I honestly didn't know why I had let them by pumpkins to paint.  I didn't want to make a big mess with them doing that!  Ugh!  But then I had a conversation with a lady that I walk with this morning.  We discussed how we should make life enjoyable for our kids, and what kind of things we could do to make their time on earth enjoyable.  After that conversation I vowed that we would paint pumpkins TODAY. 

I was a little nervous giving Allie a paint brush with actual paint on it, but I just reassured myself that I would watch her REALLY good. I was surprised when Allie took the paintbrush dipped it in the paint and happily painted her pumpkin.

What mom?  You thought I would eat this stuff? {Evil laughter}  Not even two seconds after I took this picture, Allie put the paint in her mouth.  She realized it was gross, spit it out, and didn't do it again!

Close up of the chubby fingers at work

Allie was done with her pumpkin after three minutes or so. Lily on the other hand took about 30 mins.  She had to try every color we owned on it!  But she was so proud of her pumpkin. Look at her smile over it!

 

Stupid me didn't take a finished picture of them, but I have a few more pumpkin projects coming up.  When they are all finished I'll take a "group" shot with these darlings in them!

Glitter Pumpkins

When we were at the pumpkin patch, I bought four pumpkins for me to decorate.  It didn't take me long to get crafty!  Here is a step by step process of how to make glitter pumpkins!

Step 1: 

Gather your pumpkins.  I would suggest using small pumpkins if you are going to use real ones.  If you're going to pick up the fake craft pumpkins, get them on the larger side!

Step 2:  

Get some fall colored glitter.  I chose orange just because this was my first time around.  Next time I might add in some gold, green, or purple!  My bottle of glitter is 4 oz.  I used half the bottle to do my four pumpkings.

Step 3: 

Gather craft glue, an OLD sponge paint brush, wax paper, and brown lunch bag.

Step 4:

Place wax paper on working service.  Pour out a large amount of craft glue on you paper glue.  Grasp stem of pumpkin in hand.  Use other hand to dip sponge brush in glue, and then proceed to "paint" the glue on your pumpkin.  Do LARGE sections of the pumpkin.  I suggest 1/8th to 1/4th of the pumpkin at a time.

Step 5:

Sprinkle glitter all over glue area.  Pat glitter into the glue.  Resprinkle with glitter, pat glitter with glue. {NOTE:  I do not have three hands ;)  My daughter was shaking the glitter!}

You can also sprinkle a fair amount of glitter out on your wax paper, then roll the pumpkin it.  However, I still suggest doing the two coats of glitter.

Step 6: 

Repeat process of glue and glitter around the rest of the pumpkin.

Step 7:  Display and enjoy your glitter pumpkins.  {NOTE:  These should last through Thanksgiving!}

Look at what I made!

I made this over a month ago but kept forgetting to post the picture. It is a ribbon holder for all of the bows that the girls have. I LOVE this thing. No more searching in drawers for matching ribbons. It was really easy too! I think I even got the lines fairly straight on both the fabric and the ribbon. Yipee for me!