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It seems like at least every other day my boys end up with a bump or bruise on their head or some other place on their body and I often find myself running to the freezer looking for a frozen bag of peas for them to hold on it. Does this sound familiar?? And let's not get started on how much of a fight it is to get them to actually hold the peas on the bump. Let's face it...it ain't pretty!

If you are that parent going through the same exact thing as I described, you have got to get your hands on one of these fun Jelly Pals Ice Packs by Streamline.  FINALLY, someone created an amazing product for those bumps and bruises we are ALL familiar with! The Organized Parent sent me this darling pig-style ice pack to try out and I LOVE IT! You simply pop it in the fridge and the next time your child encounters one of those bumps, you reach for it and it soothes perfectly. It is less cold than ice and isn't wet so no more complaining and fighting from the kids. Plus, since it's so cute, your kids will love getting the chance to hold it.

But wait, the best part...put it in sunlight for a couple of hours and it gently glows in the dark. What kid doesn't love glow in the dark objects? Look at all of their cute styles and they are so affordable at only $4.95 each.


GIVEAWAY:
Streamline makes several other fun and useful products as well. The Organized Parent has provided me with a Sleeper Peeper Eye Mask to give away to one I Heart Crafty Things reader.
These masks look so cute! They can help kids to nap when away from familiar home surroundings, or even at home. They would also be fun for your family photo album to take a photo when they’re asleep.  They have several other fun and whimsical designs.

The Organized Parent is offering all I Heart Crafty Things readers a 15% discount on all Streamline products through February 15, 2012. This is an amazing discount considering how affordable their products already are. To use this discount, click on the banner in my ride sidebar and use discount code 21649 at checkout.

1. Follow I Heart Crafty Things via Google Friend Connect, Facebook or Twitter and leave a comment on this post telling me which Sleeper Peeper Mask style is your favorite.
2. For an extra entry: Like The Organized Parent on Facebook. (Make sure you leave a separate comment for this extra entry.)

 Good Luck!

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In honor of Groundhog Day on Thursday, we made Paper Plate Groundhogs yesterday. Technically I think they could pass for Beavers also, but they all pretty much look the same, right?!  :-)

Materials You Will Need:
Paper Plate
Brown Acrylic Paint
2 Large Wiggly Eyes
Black Marker
Ears, Nose and Teeth pieces (pattern found HERE)
Craft Knife (Used by Parent, obviously!)
6 Toothpicks

Directions:
We started by painting the bottom of a paper plate with brown acrylic paint.


When the paper plate was completely dry, we started assembling it together. I free handed the ears, nose and teeth for the groundhog and made a pattern you can print off HERE. The nose will need to be on black card stock paper, ears on brown paper and teeth on white paper.

First, attach the black nose in the center of the paper plate. Then, glue on the wiggly eyes. Our wiggly eyes were graciously given to us by Craftprojectideas.com and they can be purchased at your local Walmart. Next, glue the ears to the back of the paper plate.
 


Here is a picture of the mouth after I had cut the slits with the craft knife.


After the teeth were in place, the boys used the black marker to draw on eyebrows, make a line in the ears, and add hair between the eyebrows.


The final touch is adding 3 toothpicks on each side of the nose for the whiskers. If you have the flat toothpicks they are better, but since all I had was the round pokey ones, I just cut the ends off so they weren't dangerous for the kids.


He sure is a cute little guy! Let's hope he blesses us with an early Spring on Thursday.  :-)

Happy Crafting!!

I like to link my posts up to THESE fun link parties.

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I don't know if my house has ever been in such a state of chaos...I thought about tackling it yesterday but after I saw this idea on No Time For Flashcards, I decided it would be more fun to make Chinese New Years Dragons.  hahaha  :)

We made a much smaller version of the craft and instead of making it a combined family craft, each of my boys completed their own. We used bubble wrap to paint the dragons. Love this technique. It is so fun and fast!


Since I decided to add feet to the dragons, I ended up having to cut them out for the boys after the paint was dry. We cut out different colored triangles to add spikes to the dragons. We also added a googly eye to him and finished him off with crinkled red and orange tissue paper glued to the back of his mouth for the fire. They turned out super cute! If you are interest in making this craft, I saved my dragon pattern and you can find it HERE.


The best part about this craft was that knowing the Chinese New Year was coming up, I picked up some dragon books at our trip to the library last week.

Max's sister takes him to the Mall with $5 to buy a new pair of pants since his are frighteningly overused. Max keeps saying he wants a dragon shirt instead but his sister insists they only have $5 and that's how much new pants costs. His sister takes a detour to try on dresses and while she is out getting a different dress to try on, Max wakes up to find his sister gone. He slips out of the dressing room to find her, following a girl in a yellow dress (that he thought was his sister). He puts on a dragon shirt he finds in the boys section and when the girl in the yellow dress turns around and it isn't his sister, he screams. He ends up sitting with the security guards eating ice cream waiting for his sister and ruins the dragon shirt. Long story short, Max ends up getting a $5 dragon shirt instead of the pants he desperately needed.

After a group of Preschool students finish reading a book about Dragons, they go into the art room to make decorations for Mei Lin's Birthday. They soon discover that they can use their imagination and put the decorations together to make a big dragon. When their dragon is complete they take in on an adventure outside in the playground. I love the imagination in this book. I recommend it for ages 3-5. I thought my first grader was a little too advanced for the book.

This is a HUGE book talking about different kinds of dragons and offers pages that fold out with life size images of what size dragons would be. My boys have brought this book home several times from the library in the last year. They love this book!

Happy Crafting!!

I like to link my posts up to THESE fun link parties.

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Have you read this fun book? It is about a girl who really loves to eat Lima Beans, but since someone told her that was uncool, she decided she needed to stop eating them. One day she woke up in the morning with a bad case of stripes (see the cover of the book). She has not fever or other symptoms other than the stripes so she is sent back to school the next day. Every time someone in her class says some type of pattern her skin changes to it.  After specialists visit her and no one knows how to cure her, an old lady shows up with the cure--to eat Lima Beans. The girl soon discovers she shouldn't fret over what others think, she should just be happy being herself.

After reading this story  I thought it would be so fun for my boys to pictures themselves having a bad case of stripes. I found a picture of them from this past Summer wearing shorts and faded it using the Sketch option in Picnik. This way the skin became more white and would be easy to color. My boys got out their colored pencils and colored themselves a good case of the stripes. It was so much fun!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I couldn't resist but get in on the good fun. Here is my completed picture of the boys.  :)


I told Luke to make sure to color lightly on the picture but he loves to color dark so there was no stopping him. They are both so pleased with their pictures and they got such a kick out of getting to color each other with the stripes and not only themselves.

Happy Crafting!!

I like to link my posts up to THESE fun link parties.

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I am so excited to show you my Valentine's Monster Box today. I made some for my boys a couple years ago (which we still use each year) and decided it was time to make one for Lila this year. Here are pictures of my boys Valentine's Monster Boxes.



I started out with an empty shoe box, cut a rectangle hole in the top for the mouth, and then completely covered the outside of it with felt. I used a gluegun to attach the felt to the box.


Her is the underside of my lid. I wrapped my felt underneath the mouth and glued it so you couldn't see any edges of the box peeking through.


To make the fur on the monster you will need to buy a roll of Fun Fur. I got mine at Walmart in the yarn section but I've seen it at Michael's too. They have lots of different colors to choose from. I picked a striped pattern for Lila's box.


I used a glue gun to attach the Fun Fur to the box. I wrapped my Fun Fur over the top of the box, while adding a dab of glue at each end as I wrapped it. After I had made several rows, I lifted up the Fun Fur and put a line of glue down on the felt underneath it to hold it in place more. I usually put a row of glue in the middle and one on each end. Hope that makes sense.


When you get to the opening in the mouth, go ahead and keep wrapping the Fun Fur along the left side of the mouth and down the rest of the box, and then go back and do the right side of the mouth. You can see in the picture below what I mean.


After putting Fun Fur over the top of the box, I went around each side of the lid and did the same thing. After you are done adding the Fun Fur, it is time to add all the Monster features.

I started with the eyes. Glue down 2 extra large pom-poms for the eyes with a large googly eye in each. Then add a medium sized pom-pom for the nose.


I have to say that my most favorite feature of this Monster box is definitely the jeweled eyelashes. Aren't they adorable???!! LOL  Craftprojectideas has the cutest package of Heart Acrylic Jewels at Walmart and that is what I used. For my boys' boxes I used the same exact jewels, but Luke's had flower jewels instead of hearts. I simply hot glued the jewels along the top of the eyes to make eyelashes.


I also curled two pipecleaners around two fingers and then glued them on the side of the eyes to make fun antennae.


Then I cut out teeth and a tongue out of white and red felt and glued them around the Monster's mouth.


To finish the box I used glitter glue to write "Feed Me" on the front of the box and glued on some more heart jewels. On the boys' boxes I used foam stickers but I didn't have any so I improvised. On Luke's it said "I'm Hungry" instead of "Feed Me".


These boxes have held up sooooo good! This will be our third year using my boys'. We usually have to form the antennae again, but other than that, they are like new. And did I mention how much my kids LOVE them?!! They are so cute!


We are trying to eat healthier around our house so this year I think I'm going to start a week or two before Valentine's Day and feed their Monster's sweet notes telling them how I'm proud of them or what I love about them. If you make these I would love to hear about it.

Happy Crafting!

I like to link my posts up to these fun link parties.

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My boys love crocodiles! I was so excited when Luke picked out Lyle, Lyle Crocodile from the Library so we could make a crocodile craft. We decided to read a couple more stories and spend the week learning about alligators and crocodiles.

Lyle, Lyle Crocodile by Bernard Waber is the second in the Lyle the Crocodile series. It is about a crocodile who lives in the city with a family named the Primms. The family's neighbor Mr. Grumps dislikes Lyle because he scares his cat and he ends up having Lyle thrown in the local zoo. Lyle is surprisingly freed by his old performing partner, Mr. Valenti, and when they got back to the Primms home they find Mr. Grumps' house on fire. Lyle rescues Mr. Grumps, is declared a hero, and is allowed to stay with the Primms.

Tina receives a big egg from her Uncle and is so excited when it hatches into an Alligator. She names it Alberto and it loves to dance the tango. It soon grows big enough that it has to live in the bathtub, but one day as Tina and Alberto were dancing in the bathroom, they slip on a bar of soap and Lyle slips into the toilet while Tina accidentally flushes him down. This is a rather silly and fun story about how Lyle has to find his way back to the right home by coming up the toilets through the sewer system. Tina eventually guides him back to their home through Alberto's favorite tango music. I must say we rather enjoyed it!

We also enjoyed some non-fiction reading, Alligators and Crocodiles from the Zoobooks series.
This is a great read to understand the differences between alligators and crocodiles. My kids asked to read it almost every day last week. They are huge fans of non-fiction books.

Our crocodile craft was inspired from a craft by Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational. They used a painting technique to make scales on the reptiles with a shower poof and I just had to give it a try.


To make our crocodile I found the perfect pattern HERE which you can print off on card stock paper. The pattern only came with one leg, so you will have to trace another leg onto the paper for the crocodile.


We started out by painting the pattern green with water colors. I was worried some white would show through when we painted the crocodile, that's why we did this step. However, I'm not so sure it was really necessary. You will see why in the next step.


To finish painting the crocodile, take a shower poof and rip a large strip out of it.


Lay the netting over the crocodile pattern and dab paint over it to make a scale texture.


As my kids got to dabbing I started realizing the netting worked better if you lightly dabbed it with paint. I was worried that by my kids using lots of paint, the texture wouldn't show through, but as you can see in the picture below, it did. You can also see how unnecessary the water coloring was.


After the paint is completely dry, cut out all the crocodile pieces.


We attached the tail to the crocodile body with a metal brad. This way the kids can move the tail around.


Next I hot glued two clothespins to the back of the crocodile so he would be able to stand up.


Glue the feet to the front of the clothespins and your crocodile is complete.


My boys just love how these stand up so they are easier to play with. It's fun to make crafts and art to display, but even more fun sometimes is to make crafts that the kids are free to play with as they may.

Happy Crafting!!

I like to link my posts up to THESE fun link parties.