Pet Rock

For Fathers Day we decided to make fun pet rocks! I brought a bunch of rocks from my garden and had the kids paint them.  Afterwards the kids let me know what they wanted to turn their pet rocks into.  Some students chose animals or bugs and other students chose objects.  I love the one below! This student loves cars! I just love the google eyes!

Note: I wanted to make sure everything stayed glued on so I used a hot glue gun and the students let me know what they wanted glued on.  They were the designers and I was the sticker!

I traced the saying To Dad, You Rock! onto a card for the students who have trouble printing and then I got them to trace the words and print their own names.

Cupcakes!!

I'm absolutely obsessed with cupcakes of all kind! I love eating them and I love creating them! I'm not the best at it but I'd like to improve so I practice a lot :) I made these cupcakes recently for a friends bridal shower. Their red velvet (yum) with cream cheese frosting (double yum!) You can find a recipe through google or pinterest! I bought pretty cupcake wrappers and ring toppers from Michaels and silver edibles balls from the bulk barn to add a little bling!  I need to work on my icing technique but they tasted pretty good!

Hey, Little Ant!

We used this activity for our ant unit, but it could also work really well for a persuasive writing unit.  Because it's harder for kindergarten kids to understand persuasive writing it would be an age appropriate alternative! We read the book "Hey, Little Ant" by Phillip and Hannah Hoose.  The book poses the question whether the main character should squish an ant or leave him be.  After we read the book we talked about what the students would do in the boys position.  After going through some different ideas I let the kids know that they would get to choose for themselves! They really enjoyed this activity.  We used a ton of different leftover scraps from various art projects, basically whatever we could find! I made an outline of some glasses (like the main character wore in the book) and made enough copies for each student.  I cut them out ahead of time for the students as it's harder for them and very time consuming.  They added everything else to make their faces (hair, eyes, mouth, etc).  Then they had to circle yes or no and explain their choosing.  To do this I wrote some students answers on sticky notes for them to copy and the more advanced students use sight words and dictionaries to put their sentences together.  It turned out great and the kids reasoning's were awesome!

Materials:

- orange paper

- eye glass template

- question and answer sheet to guide students (mine said Would You Squish The Ant? and Yes or No option below. I also added lines so students could explain the reasoning behind their answers.)

- round pieces of white paper (enough for each student)

- leftover craft scraps (yarn, paper, beads, etc)

Parking Lot Bingo

I saw a similiar bingo game on pinterest (surprise!) and I decided to make one of my own that the kindies could use to learn their sight words or high frequency words. It was easy enough to make and the kids really enjoyed using the cars to play the game!

Shoes!

I am a huge shoe lover! I feel you can never have too many! I made these shoes as a birthday present for a friend.  I bought the shoes from Walmart (they have the cutest bows on the backs!).  I bought the jewels from the fabric store and the dollar store.  I also bout gem glue from the fabric store and some crazy glue as back up.  I used tweezers to pick up the various gems and just glued them wherever the fit best. I love the finished product and my friend really liked them too!

Sorry for the dark lighting :(

Summery Sangrias

I'm completely sad that summer is coming to an end.  It means the end of summery, yummy drinks and all those other amazing things summer brings with it! Anyways I am obsessed with sangrias of all kinds.  Heres a couple of different sangria recipes I tried this summer. And hey its not completely over, still time to make more cold drinks!

I usually just buy frozen fruit with fresh limes and lemons.  The sangria above has rasperries, peaches, mangos, strawberries, lemons and limes.  I used a rose wine to make it a bit sweeter and I added some seven ups.  You can tweak them however you'd like depending on how sweet or mild you like them.  I don't like them too sweet and I find the pop makes them sweet enough so I don't add any sugar.  They make a perfect and pretty drink to bring to a party or when you have company. DELIC!!

These sangrias are made with white wine and again 7Up. You can really add any kind of fruit or pop you want.  I would recommend a pop similiar to 7Up or maybe even cream soda! Yum :)



Family Photo Wall

This is the first thing we did in our new house, as soon as the paint had dried! I bought a cheap pack of matching black frames from Walmart (about 20 dollars I think). And I purchased the wall decal quote from Etsy.  The shop was called Design Divas Vinyl Lettering & Wall Art.  They shipped it right away and were very friendly! I kind of just hung the pictures where ever they looked right! I think it turned out great :)

Chalkboard Paint Gone Crazy!

After my adventure with chalkboard wine glasses I decided I would use my leftover chalkboard paint on...the WALL! I thought it would be neat to have a clkaboard in the kitchen for notes, reminders, shopping lists, etc. I started by taping off a big square on the wall. Then I just started painting!

Heres the board still wet

After the board dried I hung a picture shelf from Ikea under the board.  I also bought a pack of three small clay pots from the dollar store.  I decided instead of just leaving them plain I would paint the rims of them with the chalkboard paint so I could label them accoring to whatever I ended up putting in them!

And heres the finished product. The cutie note is from the boy :) (sorry for poor lighting)

DIY Chalkboard Wine Glasses

My first official blog post! I have just recently started "diy-ing" ?? haha! I really enjoy making things myself and because I'm such a cheapie I like to do it on a budget :) who doesn't like saving money right!? Anyways I started using pinterest (as many people have) and I love all the amazing ideas people come up with! I had been planning my step-sisters baby shower and needed gifts and prizes to send home with the gifts.  I decided I would (try!) to make chalkboard wine glasses which I had seen a few different times on pinterest.  I was on a budget though so I wanted to do it for cheap! I went to the dollar store and bought wine glasses for a buck a piece.  I ended up buying a can of chalkboard paint at the hardware store for just under 10 bucks.  I had seen on pinterest one idea of dipping the bottoms of the wine glass into a bowl of the chalkboard paint.  However, the paint was super goopy and thick so I thouhgt it would be easier to tape off the stem of the glass and paint it instead! This method was super easy, I definitely recommend it! After letting the glasses dry I took the tape off and there was a perfect line! I threw a couple pieces of chalk in the glasses and wrapped them up in some clear cellophane paper with a pretty bow! I also made tags that said chalkboard wine glasses on them out of some scrapbooking paper I had lying around. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the tags (oops!). The glasses turned out great and they were a BIG hit at the shower!!!
Check out the pictures below :)