Homemade Valentine's Day cards

One thing I love about Pinterest is the plethora of ideas around the holidays!  As Valentine's Day approaches, I thought I would give DIY cards a try this year.  I found these adorable Valentine's Day cards on a blog via Pinterest (http://adamandhaleykjar.blogspot.com/2011/02/homemade-valentines.html).

This is my second Arts & Crafts attempt to get LJL to paint.  We let him play with the paint first and then tried getting his handprint....



A couple things I learned....
- The plastic basters from the kitchen drawer make great paint brushes that are easy to clean up! (I think these red ones are from Crate & Barrel).
- Although washable finger paint was easy to clean up, it didn't make for very good handprints
- A sweet treat helps bribe an 18 month old to participate
- You can never have enough spare paper towels around

I used a variety of scrapbook paper that I had in my craft box, craft glue, markers, and pictures of LJL which I edited to black and white in Picassa.

 I can't wait to send these out to our family! xoxo

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letter game

I have a 4 year old niece and 5 year old nephew who are learning the alphabet and enjoy reading.  I found an activity on Pinterest for Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and I thought I would give it a try for Christmas.



Supplies:
- Construction paper in assorted colors of brown and green
- Craft glue
- Baking sheet
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book (I purchased the board book version since it is a bit more sturdy...I found it at Toys R Us)
- Alphabet letters (these were a bit tricky to find...see my note at the end of the post!)

I cut various shapes of leaves using the picture on the book cover as reference.



I arranged the pieces and started glueing...

I typed up instructions and glued them to the top of the letter box.  Here is a picture of the box with instructions and the text...

"As you read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, pick the magnet to the letter you read

in the book.  Then, place the letter magnet on the coconut tree. As you

continue reading the story, you will soon have every letter on the coconut

tree.  And then UH-OH....all the letters fall off the tree! Help push them off of

the tree.  The story continues with the alphabet one more time, so you will

get lots of practice finding all the lowercase letters.  Have fun!"

AND the letters...I went to craft stores, dollar stores, toy store, searched online...all in search of these letters! I found some online on Amazon but I was convinced I could find them cheaper (and I refused to pay shipping).  I found the first set of magnetic letters in the $3 bins at Toys R Us.  They weren't really what I wanted but after searching 5 stores with a 1 year old, I gave in and just bought them.  After putting the whole project together I was still not satisfied with them!  I took one last trip to The Chalkboard, an educational store.  I found this bin with letters that were too cute and the right size.  I splurged on these letters ($9.99 per box) but I thought it was worth it since they were a better quality and the right size.