You Put the Candy in What?

The post that I was going to share today has been pushed aside so I could share this cute idea with you that I found at Surviving a Family of NINE. I love that this is a family tradition for her. I saw it just this morning before I was going to the store to buy things for Easter/General Conference gifts for the ladies I visit teach. I changed my mind and went to C-A-L Ranch to buy this chick feeder (less than $4) and I just happened to have the quart-size mason jar at home that I screwed on. This was a little over two bags of Skittles, but you can use any kind of candy. It is a little difficult to remove the candies when there isn't a lot of candy in the feeder, so I guess you'll have to keep it full. (Good excuse, huh?) I gave them this along with little bags with notebooks and pens for General Conference notes. (That ribbon looks white, but I had one white ribbon and one light orange one.) I love that it is unique and unexpected.
While I was at the store, I saw several metal tubs of live little chicks. So after I picked the kids up from school, I took them back to the store to see the chicks. They weren't allowed to pick them up, but they loved watching them and didn't want to leave. Even though it's snowing outside, Sabrina asked if we could go to Thanksgiving Point Farm Country since that's the only place we usually get to see farm animals. Now instead of asking for a dog, the girls are trying to convince my a chick is a great idea. I don't have the allergy excuse with this one. But I did say we'd have to learn a lot more first before I'd even consider it. Chicks don't stay chicks for sure.

But they sure are cute...at least until they peck you.

Cute Valentines

When will I learn??? I had been bugging my girls to decide what kind of valentines they wanted to make for school for a while. They both said they didn't want to make any, just buy them. I found several different kinds online and kept showing them, but they didn't find any they wanted to use. Of course, Thursday when they came home from school I told them that we needed to go buy their valentines (whatever is left at the store the day before), but wanted to show them one last valentine online. Of course, they loved it and wanted to do it. So we had to run to the stores, buy all the stuff and then actually put them together. Everything always takes longer than you expect and this one did! But now they are both at school with their valentines and will be having their party soon. Next year I think we'll have the rule that valentines have to be started at least one week before the party day.

First I'll show a few of the ones they decided not to use. I know it's too late for your kids to take them to school this year, but maybe to use on Valentine's Day or next year. And besides lots of these blogs are great.
Cute and simple from A Little Art and Lots of Love

My girls actually liked this one, but we didn't have enough time to do it. I thought this one was way fun and unique! Start with your child posing, holding nothing and then pop on a lolipop. Found it at Golden Moments and then I found this adorable one below at Design Mom.
And Gabrielle (AKA Design Mom) also came up with the one below.
Blonde Designs. actually also had the cute photo lolipop valentines, but first I found these felt bracelet Valentines there. Hearts for girls and arrows for boys.

You don't even have to include candy with this one I found at View from the Prairie Box.

I like this one so much that I think I'll try making one like this for my hubby. See what you do? Isn't that fun? I found it at Ullabenulla.
Ulla is an artist and has a fascinating blog. And this is totally off topic, but check out these paper shoes from her etsy shop. She sells the tutorial for them. Wouldn't they be beautiful for an inviation to a girl's birthday party? Just glue the info inside the shoe. Okay, back to Valentine's Day...

Cute clothespin Valentines at Keeping It Simple

Love Bug at Kaboose

Purr-fect Kitty Valentines at Blissfully Domestic

Homemade Marble Paper Butterflies at Roots and Wings Co. (Sorry no photo. Their pics are copyrighted.) If you've never been there, check it out!! They have tons of awesome Valentine's Day stuff and year round fun.

Owls at The Life of Being Me

Here is what they ended up doing until 10:00 last night. We found these ice cream cones filled with cotton candy valentines at Just a Country Girl Lost in the City.

Elisa made the tags on the computer and then they both signed their names on the back. We were watching Sabrina's friend so she got to help too.

They are bigger than the flat valentines and hopefully they'll all make it to their friends' boxes without the cones turning to crumbs. It was fun, but I wouldn't recommend doing them all in one afternoon/night.

Baby Step Crafting

I very rarely even start a craft on my own, let alone finish one, but after seeing so many awesome Christmas decorations my friends have been making, I decided to try an easy one, a very easy one.

I have been motivated by a website that I mentioned before Dollar Store Crafts to try to do a craft with supplies from the dollar store. So I took off to Dollar Tree, the dollar store in my town, with a few ideas in my head. I hoped to find wooden blocks for a few different crafts, but they didn't have any. I did find these styrofoam blocks though and decided I'd use them for the Christmas countdown blocks that I've seen. I had the foam brush and the black paint (which I found on sale for 39 cents at JoAnn's yesterday). I didn't buy the scrapbook paper at the dollar store, but they might have some there. Or if you're like me, you have a bunch at home already.

I painted them black and let them dry. Then I tore scrapbook paper (or you could cut them into squares) and Mod Podged them on. I don't have a vinyl machine and didn't find cheap stickers of the numbers I needed so I just printed them from my computer. I used the Victorian font. Make sure that the font you use has a 6 that you can turn upside to use as a 9. Then Mod Podge those on too. Easy peasy!!!

One of the blocks needs to have these numbers: 0,1,2,3,4,5

And the other block has these numbers: 0,1,2,6,7,8

I shopped for, started and finished a craft all by myself. It's a basic craft that a child could do, but it sure felt good to see the finished product. I have a couple of other crafts I will be doing soon and I can't wait.

More Than a Little Late!

I know that it seems like I don't have much to post lately, but really I have so much to say! I just have been busy and unable to sit and think to formulate posts. I apologize to all of you, my wonderful readers, for posting this after Halloween. I meant to do this more than a month ago, but kept forgetting. I wanted you to be able to use these for your Halloween decorations if you wanted to. But you can still file it away or make them now and have them ready for next year.

I found something so easy that even I could do. Yep, craft-challenged me. See?

I found these totally awesome labels from Love Manor's Potion Labels. Check out their cool blog Love Manor too. Very spooky stuff. You can just print out the labels on white paper, then Mod Podge it on or use Craft Bond Spray Adhesive. Simple!

Here are a few things that I did, but I'm sure you can figure out some great stuff all on your own with these fun labels.

For the Swamp Fog, I used an olive oil bottle when I was done with the oil. I rinsed it out with a little water (no detergent) and poured out almost all of the water. The water stays on the oils all over the inside of the bottle. It doesn't really look like fog, but it's not too bad. The Life Renewal Potion bottle was lotion from Bath and Body Works. Pretty color, huh?
I know this is too late for Halloween, but you can use some of these for your New Moon party. I stuck some Halloween spiderweb decoration in the Werewolf bottle. But I'll be on the look out for a stuffed animal at a yard sale or somewhere that has werewolf-looking fur because I'm not happy with it that way. I don't think you can see the "blood" very well in the Vampire Blood bottle, but it's there. I was almost out of Winger's Original Amazing Sauce (a hot wing sauce from a restaurant called Winger's) so I took off the label and put this one on there. I turned it upside down for a while before taking the pics. When I turned it the right way, the sauce slowly oozed down the bottle. Perfect! I didn't get to finish all the bottles. I was going to put twigs in the small Twisted Twigs bottle, dirt in the Moon Dust bottle, and these worms in the Earth Worm bottle (in the back in the top picture- that you can't see very well). Ewwww! I'll try to do all that next year now that I already have the bottles ready and packed in my Halloween storage boxes, along with a few other labels I printed.

Candy Bouquets

Last month, I saw great photos of cute candy bouquets on Fun Snacks 4 Kids. Then with the bake sale coming up, I decided to put some together to sell there since it is something I can put together ahead of time and isn’t perishable. I looked for the book that Rach mentions using, but Barnes & Noble didn’t have it and I didn’t have time to order it. So I just bought lots of glasses and sundae cups, a variety of candy and craft supplies (including a hot glue gun). Then several of us got together and put some bouquets together just using our own creativity. Unfortunately, I didn’t take photos of the individual bouquets, (I was so frazzled with everything that I wasn’t thinking ahead to a blog post. What was wrong with me??!) but I do have a few photos. In the photo above, Elisa made this first one and I made the other two quickly as demos right before I took everything to church to put them all together.

It’s hard to tell how cute they are with them all close together, but they really were! Before taking them to the bake sale, I wrapped them each in cellaphane and tied each with a ribbon. That made them extra special.

They were very popular at the bake sale. We made 23 of them and sold 22 (and gave the last one to the family who we were doing the bake sale for). I’m sure we’ll be doing more of those for parties and gifts, but next time bigger and better! Thanks to Elisa R., Denisse, Veronica, Elisa M., Alexander, Margarita and Jocelyn for putting them together with me. You guys were so fun and creative!