Summer Fun!

Summer is finally here for my family! We've said good-bye to homework, teachers and PTA meetings and hello to more crafting and family together time. I really am not a huge fan of the Summer season (Florida = way too hot!) except for the fact that schools out and we get to do more things as a family than we normally can do in any other season. 

I've been planning our summer happenings ever since we got back from vacation in February. I like to have a good box of things to do that the kids can rummage through and find an activity when they want. I also like to plan different outings and special days as well. 

So for this summer I once again got items for our "Boredom Boxes". Individual crafts (kits to make masks, necklaces, origami etc.) new small toys (new building materials, doll outfits, water toys etc.) and art materials (popsicle sticks, glitter glue, paint etc.) fill two large bins in our living room. These items are not for all the time, I make sure the kids have plenty of reading and writing time and structured play but sometimes there's a good span of free time where the "I'm bored" whining can start. That's when the "Boredom Boxes" come in handy.

Yesterday my three youngest girls decided to pull out the new "Floam" that we picked up at Dollar Tree. This stuff is sticky and fun to build with. There's recipes on how to make your own, but sometimes being able to just open a package and start playing is best for us. The girls used some of their play dough tools such as different roller and stampers and had a "bake off" to see who could make the best Floam "cookie". Hours of fun were had!

The girls also wanted to get some water beads started so they could play with them. These we found at the Dollar Tree, but you can also order them online in larger quantities.  We like to store ours in a covered bin and use pay teacups and containers for lots of pretend fun. Our beads turned out beautiful and the girls love squishing their hands in the bin and feeling the beads on their skin. They do turn into jelly if squeezed too hard, so be careful!

Swear I Haven't Been Slacking (Much...)

I hate when I have a long period between posts. I try to remind myself to post more and when I'm doing crafts and projects I'm constantly commenting on what a good blog post that craft or project would be. But it seems I'm cursed with forgetfulness, and blessed with too many kids to keep a good blogging schedule. So, while this post won't be some amazing tutorial, I will show you what I've been doing in this long period of blogging dead air.

Firstly, I was fortunate to be able to be on our school's PTA Board this year, serving as the Fall Festival Chair. I truly love the Fall Festival that our school puts on every year. It's one of the best events in our community and I've been on the planning committee for the past four years, but at the end of last year I was asked if I wanted to take up the leadership role for the committee and at first I was hesitant because I'm truly a better minion than leader, but I'm really glad I said yes. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of work, and a learning process, but in the end the results were FANTASTIC! I had a great group to help and we did a lot of DIY games and photo props.

Photo props made to go in the Pumpkin Patch

I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without my husband!

      

The Plinko board all done!

The start of the Plinko board

After the Fall Festival was (finally) over, our focus moved towards Halloween. Every Halloween our kids are spoiled and get to wear multiple costumes for multiple events. My reasoning for this is because I want their costumes on Halloween to be as pristine (ha!) as possible. This year we did go to two extra events, so my costume load was quite heavy. I did end up doing the unimaginable and buying a store bought costume, but I had a great reason. It was a costume from my favorite Halloween catalog Wishcraft (by Chasing Fireflies) and I found it at a kids consignment for 90% off what it normally retails. How could I pass it up? So I didn't and for the first time in forever (thank you Frozen) my 2nd oldest got to wear a store bought costume to a couple of events.

So now here I am, 2 days before Halloween and with 2 out of 4 costumes completely finished. Does this mean I'll be on a better blogging schedule? Nope, probably not, BUT it does mean that I have all the intentions to try to blog more and to hopefully increase readership. Because as of right now, it's like I'm talking to myself :)

Halloween on a Budget

Yes, it's true, I am obsessed with Halloween. It's the best time of year for me. I get to make stuff, get to dress up my girls (and hubby when he lets me) and pretend that the cobwebs in my house are part of the decor. Sadly, that last part isn't as much of a joke as it used to be!

The bad part of Halloween is that so much of it is so commercialized and expensive. Have you seen the cost of store bought costumes and decorations? Unless you want super cheap (and not so impressive looking) Dollar Store stuff, be prepared to shell out a pretty penny. But, there's good news! It really doesn't have to be expensive to have awesome Halloween props. 

For example this year I decided I wanted to do some sort of Halloween village in a small alcove in my house that sits empty most of the year. I went to Goodwill and found a small wooden house that someone had probably made as a hobby. It had broken doors and windows, and was painted light blue and white, but I thought with a little work I could transform it. And I did...

All it took was a can of (cheap!) spray paint and some acrylic paints and I turned that pretty little beach house into my very own haunted house! My oldest daughter and I then added some pumpkins we created with baking clay and moss and tree we found at Dollar Tree. Voila, the start to my Halloween village! Not bad for a total of $5.88.

My 12 year old made these, not bad!

These were way too much fun to make!

Halloween Crafting

Halloween is my most favorite time of year. I'm not too much into the gore, but pretty much everything else Halloween (and Fall!) related is my cup of tea. Not sure if it's the fantasy of being anyone you want to be for one night of the year, but I think I might love Halloween more than Christmas (shocking right?!)

I'm always on the lookout for an easy (and cheap!) DIY project for costumes and decorations. I happened to stumble on this project on the Better Homes & Garden website and thought that it looked fairly simple and decided to give it a try. I ran out and got my supplies ready, a medium sized cauldron and can of foam spray. I'd never used foam spray before, but I had a general idea of what it did and knew it might get messy so I made sure to grab some newspapers and gloves from the garage before I got started.

First I grabbed some extra newspapers and balled them up loosely to fill the bottom of my cauldron. This will allow the foam spray to have a base to sit on and you won't have to buy extra cans to fill up the whole cauldron. Once you've filled the cauldron with newspapers, grab your can of foam spray and carefully start spraying it on. It shoots out of the nozzle pretty quickly (to my surprise), so be careful of your aim. If you wish to have some "drips" down the side, make sure you make contact with the cauldron while spraying, as you can see some of my drips made it all the way down. No worries, I can hot glue the "bubbles" back on once they've cured. 

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

Once you're happy with your foam placement, allow for about 5-10 min for it to start setting. At this point you can poke in spiders, bats and other wee beasties to make your concoction especially frightening. I happened to have a pack of critters left over from last Halloween (this is a good time to use all those spider rings and such) so I randomly added them in. 

Eek!

Critter Soup

You can definitely stop at this point if you're happy with the way it looks, or if you're like me, you can paint it with acrylic or glow in the dark paint. Voila! You know how your own bubbling and boiling cauldron full of icky creatures. The Sanderson Sisters would be so proud!

Not bad for an evening's worth of work and less than $10

Blogging (again...)

Ok, so I've started a blog...again. I figured I might as well have an outlet for all of the fun, crafty things that my girls and I do (plus I'm pretty sure my friends and family are tired of seeing all of my craft pics on FB.) I really didn't plan on blogging again. After a fit of frustration caused my last blog to be deleted, I truly had no plans to ever venture into the blog world again. Plus, after I had to close down my shop, I really had no plans on venturing into the craft world again either. Period. 

But, the call of creativity just wouldn't let me be. I missed being able to show off the projects my girls and I had been working on. Call it narcissism (c'mon, blogging is pretty narcissistic) or call it boredom, honestly it's probably a mixture of both. So here I am, restarting from scratch, but keeping my expectations low. I have no plans on being the next Martha (or Bloggess) but hopefully whoever out there decides to read this likes what they see and read and gets inspired to go out and create something with their families, too.

The inspiration behind Four Girls Crafts, my beautiful daughters!