She's Crafty

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I don't even know how to tell you how excited I have been to create these Pretty Parrots with my boys! I saw it over at Tippytoe Crafts and knew it was a MUST to go along with our bird theme.

Aren't they darling??!!! You can read Tippytoe's Tutorial HERE or I'm going to give the steps to how we created ours. Ok, it's practically the same steps, but I want to properly give credit where credit is due!  :)

1. I started by letting the boys pick 3 colors which I painted onto their hand and then they pressed their hands down on a white sheet of card stock paper. We did this at bedtime so they could dry completely overnight. In the morning when they were dry, I cut them out like pictured below.


2. Next you will need to create your parrot pieces. I looked at Tippytoe's and drew out my own to look just like hers. Now just in case the task of creating your own pieces seems daunting, I went ahead and created a little pattern that you can print off HERE to make it easier.

3. Trace the parrot body pattern onto a sheet of card stock paper (I let my boys pick what color they wanted) and then have your child cut it out.

4. Trace the beak and feet pattern pieces onto an orange sheet of card stock paper and cut them out. I did this step because the pieces were curvy and smaller.

5. Once all the pieces are cut out, glue the beak and legs to the parrot body.


6. Glue the handprints (wings) to the parrot body. We also glued on a large wiggly eye at this point. Tippytoe had her students draw their eye on, but since I am obsessed with wiggly eyes, we went that route.  :)


Ok, now they are totally adorable already, but there is one last step to complete them.


7. Pick 3 different colors of tissue paper to use as the tail feathers and cut about a 3/4" x 5" strip of all 3 colors. Then glue them to the bum of the parrot.  :)   After we completed our parrots I looked at Tippytoe's tutorial and realized they had glued their tail feathers on before their handprints. So you can do it either way you want.

This is totally unrelated, but look at this steal of a deal I found at Ross of all places....A HUGE pack of tissue paper of like 15 different colors. I know, who goes to Ross looking for craft supplies, right? I DO! Ha! I thought I died and went to heaven when I saw it.


After you are done gluing on the tissue paper feathers, your pretty parrot is complete! Now just stand back in amazement at the beautiful colors and then laugh at your children's parrot voices when they pretend they are talking.



We didn't read a specific parrot book to go along with this craft but we've been reading billions of about birds books that talk about parrots. Here are a couple:



Happy Crafting!!

Linking up to THESE fabulous Parties!

PS-Tippytoe Crafts guest posted a couple days ago here, showing us her adorable Cardinal Craft. If you missed it, you can check it out HERE.

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First of all, I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all those who entered the giveaways! I really appreciated all the support!  :)

Here are the Winners (chosen by using Random.org):

Musings of Me - Fall Book PDF File
Comment #16

Learn and Grow Designs - Educational Printable PDF Files
Comment #17
Comment #4
Big D and Me said...I follow your blog:)

Plucky Momo - Baby Announcement Poster
Comment #1
Carrie said...I follow you!

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My house may be a disaster, but by Golly, we have a Halloween wreath, and that my friends, is something worth celebrating....hahaha!

It doesn't hang on the front door, but rather on a hook (nail) in the space between our front door and our front window on our porch. I think it works rather nicely there since our front door has a storm door on it anyways.

To make the wreath I just started by wrapping a straw wreath (leaving the plastic covering on the straw) with the orange yarn. I picked a dark orange color instead of bright. Then I did a cross pattern around the entire thing with black yarn. I found the "happy halloween" foam sign at Dollar Tree and just glued the ends of "halloween" to the sides of the wreath and used the black string on the ends of "happy" to attach it to the back of the wreath.


I got the styrofoam skeleton head at Micheal's and actually cut the back half of the skull off to make it flat so I could glue it on the wreath. My children exclaimed that I had "cut out his brains". hahaha!


I bought the bat at Michael's too and splurged on it ($2.99 yikes!) because I thought it would work so good on the wreath. Some times you just have to make the splurge people when it comes to crafting!  ;)


The spiders were actually spider rings that I purchased at Dollar Tree. There were like 100 in the package. I just cut off the ring part and then hot glued them on the wreath.


After a long stare at the wreath they both declared their approval. Why do they look a bit frightened?? Well, I may or may not have told them that the creatures on the wreath actually come alive at night....hahahahaha!  totally kidding.

Happy Crafting!!

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We took a trip up north to visit some of my family on Monday and Tuesday and had planned on visiting the Bird Refuge while we were up there. They have a 12 mile loop you can drive through to see birds in the wild. Unfortunately, we found out it was closed for repairing the road this week. I was soooooo bummed! Even more so than the kids (hahaha)...Last time I was there (like almost 15 yrs ago), I remember being so amazed seeing pelicans swimming around, and I really wanted my kids to get that experience. Next time....

My Sister was so sweet though to watch Lila for me for a couple hours so I could still take the boys to the Visitors Center.

They had some pretty  impressive displays inside that we enjoyed.




We found out Andy has the wingspan of a California Gull (our State Bird). I was a Bald Eagle but I'll spare you from sharing the picture so you won't be mortified by my saggy upper arms, hahaha LOL!


Luke wanted to see a Bald Eagle, and even though it was taxidermy, he got his wish.  :)


We got to touch and feel some real feet....(Not for the squeamish)


Touching some Beaver fur...


Although not as impressive as alive and in the water, I got to see my Pelican .  :)


Outside the visitors center is a 1/2 mile walking trail along the wetlands. We saw some bird nests.



We spotted this little guy...



We heard lots of frogs and toads and saw some jump in the water.




Other than seeing one duck flying overhead, there were no birds in sight...But it was educational and we still had fun!!

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We read the fun book "Owl Babies" by Martin Waddell several times last week and I thought it would be fun to do a craft with the kids about it. I found the idea for this craft from Blue Moon Palette.

This story is about 3 owl babies, Sarah, Percy and Bill, who worry about their mother while she is gone on her night flight. It's a really simple story. My kids got a kick out of Bill because he says "I miss my Mommy" throughout the entire story and I said it in a pouty voice every time which made them chuckle.

One of my favorite ways to craft after reading a book is by simply re-creating a scene in the story. Here is what we came up with. This is my picture, because you know, I can't resist being childlike with my children!  :)


Normally I post pictures with my tutorials but I was so absorbed in doing the craft with my boys that I literally forgot to get out the camera. I know, RARE for me, but I have to admit it was great just creating and not worrying so much about getting a photo of every step. So here's the low down on our craft:

1. We started out with a black sheet of card stock paper. I wanted the background to look like there were stars so I poured some gold glitter glue in a paper bowl and diluted it down so the glitter wasn't so concentrated. Then we used a circle foam brush to dab all over the page to create stars.

2. While the glitter glue dried, we tore off a piece of brown paper to use as our branch for the owls to sit on. I happened to have a piece of brown packaging paper so we used that, but any piece of brown paper would do. If I wouldn't have had the packaging paper I honestly would have used a brown paper bag. We kind of crinkled up the paper a little to make it look more real.

3. After gluing the branch on the bottom of our paper, we each used a black marker to create lines and knots in our wood. I thought the boys did such a good job with this, I was really impressed!


4. To paint our owls we used a pom-pom attached to a clothespin for a brush. We dabbed the brush into white paint and onto our paper. We tried to make them small, medium and large, just like in the story. Luke got a little carried away with his largest owl, but I can't blame him really because it was so fun painting with the pom-pom.  :)


5. Before we started the project I had pre-cut circles for the eyes and triangles for the nose to glue on. The brown circles were 1" diameter, black circles were 1/2" diameter, and the white circle is just a hole punch. I could have easily just had the kids cut out their own circles with the paper but since there were so many different steps involved I didn't want them to get too burned out and bored with the craft so I did it in advance.

6. After the white paint was dry we glued on the eyes and nose.

7. We finished by using a yellow crayon to draw a moon in our picture.


Happy Crafting!!

Linking up to THESE Fabulous Parties.

Giveaway Party going on RIGHT NOW! Come Enter to Win some amazing prizes! Click HERE to see the Links to the Giveaway Posts!

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I have such a great bird craft to showcase today and it comes from Betsy at Tippytoe Crafts. I know I've mentioned Betsy's blog before, but it is seriously a hidden gem! I have pinned so many things from her blog on Pinterest and I can sit browsing through the history of her blog for hours upon hours.

One of her most recent crafts she completed with her preschool class was their "Fall Reflections Pictures".

Hi there! I'm Betsy from Tippytoe Crafts. I am honored to be a guest blogger on I Heart Crafty Things! I've been reading Rachel's blog for awhile now and was so excited when she found me and my little ol' blog! I'm pretty sure I blushed when I read her first comment to me. So what is Tippytoe Crafts? Well, I'm a Pre-K teacher in a child care center and I share all the art projects and other activities I do in my classroom. I've always found such wonderful crafts online and decided to throw mine into the mix. Rachel's theme is birds right now so she asked me to share one of my bird crafts with you today. It was difficult to choose because I like them all, but my favorite would have to be the cardinal. You will need:

• Red, black, white and orange construction paper
• Wiggle eyes
• Red feather
• Red paint
• Glue
• Scissors
• Pen or Pencil
• Markers or Crayons (optional)
• A Child (not required, but it's more fun with one!)

You start by tracing your child's shoeless foot on red paper. (Warning: your child might giggle because it tickles!) Cut out the foot. This will be the cardinal's body.

Then your child makes handprints with red paint onto white paper. These will be the wings.


For the face, we used wiggle eyes, an orange triangle for the beak, and small black "splotches."


We also used a red feather for the crest and cut legs from orange paper. Once the handprints are dry and cut out, your child can glue everything together to make their cardinal.



You could stop there or you could do what we did. We glued the birds to white paper and then drew in a background. The kids in my class got really creative!



They turned out so cute! I hope you enjoyed my cardinal craft today. Please stop by my blog to see my other feathered friends! Thanks again, Rachel. This has been a wonderful opportunity!

Happy Crafting!!

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I will be the first to tell you how adorable my little girl is. Just look at this cute smile....

She already loves to draw on this little Doodle Pro so I'm hoping that means she likes to learn and create things as much as her brother's do.


But on closer inspection, you will quickly see that she is actually quite the menace. Like the fact that she removes all of the shoes from the basket one billion times a day and tries every single one of them on.


Or the fact that these little things...


Well they are supposed to be on the end of these door stops, but as you can probably guess, Lila has discovered how to remove them and will literally go into every room in the house, shut the door behind her and remove these little rubber things and place them directly in her mouth.


Unfortunately, they have all been removed now so if anyone slams the door there will be a mark left on the molding from the door stop. Sigh.....But even more of a disaster is the fact that at 13 months she has mastered climbing onto the couch with ease and going up and down the stairs.


You'd think I would be happy about this since it would decrease the necessity of using a baby gate, but nope...For one, this little girl thinks she's Super Woman. She loves to take death defying leaps not only off of her little rocking chair, but also off of the back of the couch.


And as if that isn't enough to deal with, one day she found a tiny piece of drywall hanging off the wall going down the stairs and this is what happened after 5 minutes of me not having my eye on her.


Oh, the horror! It was not a good day to say the least, and this is when her nickname became the Menace. It doesn't matter what steps you take to keep her out, she will find a way. Even with the baby locks on the kitchen drawers, she still manages to put her tiny little arm inside and pull out a hundred sandwich baggies on a daily basis. And I'm certain she throws her food off of her highchair on purpose in the hopes that she will have reserves for a snack later in the day. I'm telling you people, I sweep the kitchen and dining room floor 5 times a day, and it still is a disaster. A DISASTER!

In her credit, there is one thing that she does that has become quite the lifesaver to this family. You know that little crack between the back of the couch and the wall (the one that is there because of the air return vent behind the couch), well, she can squeeze right through it.


And now we can rely on Lila to retrieve the sneaky Wii remote that always falls behind the couch with ease...



Well, because we LOVE watching "Real Monsters" on Netflix of course, and this cannot be done without the Wii remote. Bwhahahahaha!

And in case your wondering, I really do clothe my child...She just always happened to be in a diaper every time I took a picture. hahaha! And in most cases that is right after eating in her high chair because she refuses to wear a bib so I just remove her clothes before feeding her. Not that I need to explain myself or anything. Ha!

These really are the Best days of my life!  :)