Gingerbread House Craft

My 3yo daughter really wanted to make a gingerbread house, and this seemed like a great alternative to messing around with frosting, plus it'll last all season! The whole craft only took about an hour and was really hands on for my daughter.
 
These are the supplies I used: 2 cereal boxes, brown and white construction paper, a glue stick, scissors, crayons and lots of stickers.

  

After dismantling the cereal boxes, I ended up with 4 large panels, the front and back from each box. You should end up with 5 cardboard pieces: 4 walls and the roof. 

From one panel, I cut out 2 square-ish shapes that would be the sides. From the second, I mostly just trimmed the sides, folded it in half and made the roof. The last 2 panels made the front and back of the house. I traced the side panel and roof angle to make sure everything was about the same size.

Front of the house

All 5 house pieces

I then used the glue stick to adhere the construction paper to the cardboard. 

The 2 house sides

I did the 2 smallest pieces first, so that my daughter could start decorating right away. I just let her go to town with the stickers and crayons, although she did want me to decorate one side with her. :)

All the finished pieces

Once everything was decorated, I taped the wrong sides of the walls together to make a square. I then flipped it onto the roof and taped that down from the inside too. (I free-handed the whole thing, so it isn't squared. Next time, I'll use my paper cutter to make neater edges.)

Inside the house

 

My completely "unsquared" sides

I cut some wavy edge pieces out of the white construction paper for the "icing." I taped the eaves sides onto the edge of the roof without overlapping it. I taped the top corner together for a cute finished look. The sides are overlapped, so only half the edging peeks out.

Taping the top of the eave

 The finished house is adorable and surprisingly sturdy feeling. My daughter absolutely loved making it and is already showing it off to everybody!

 

The finished house!

ATC Time

I've been really active lately on swap-bot and have had a blast trying out new craft mediums. Currently, I've been working on ATCs and getting pretty good at them (in my opinion.) They're pretty addictive, and I'm having a great time with them!

I'd love to hear what others think of them!


Java Series:

Love Song

 

On the High Seas Series:

 
And a pumpkin Zentangle I made and wasn't able to send out. I think he turned out adorable! 

The New Influenster!

I checked my email yesterday and was super excited to find out that I was a winner for 2 brand challenges from my Influenster VoxBox. I'm a huge fan of the Influenster program, so this was an awesome surprise! I won a SheaMoisture Raw Shea Bath & Body Gift Set and an EBOOST box of enery boosters and an EBOOST Kor water bottle! I'll share pictures when they come in!

Exciting stuff!

I'm really impressed with the new Influenster layout. It's so much easier to navigate than the old site, and it has a lot more information and interactivity. I also like the new rating system, which seems a lot less arbitrary than the previous one. The only thing I dislike is the current review system. The number of current products is really limited, so you aren't going to be looking at a product page unless you're familiar with the product. This means that the helpfulness rating is pretty useless. Also, most of the reviews I've seen are along the lines of "Awesome product!" It seems like Influenster will have to put more guidelines into their rating system to make it useful.

I also like the new badge system. It's nice to have badges relevant to me and to share more about myself and what I know with the expert badges. It's a great idea and pretty well executed. The only drawbacks are the amount of time needed to get a decent score and the reliance on social media friends to actually respond to posts online rather than just reading without commenting or commenting in person. 

It really is a great program, and, if you're interested, you can sign up here or request an invitation from me.

 

Craft Stick Spiderwebs

Late October, my daughter and I made some awesome little spiderwebs for Halloween decorations. I know it's a bit late, but these were too cute to not share. Wrapping the web was good practice for her hand/eye coordination and each one only took 5-10 minutes for her to make. I also had all the supplies on hand already, always a plus!

First, I gathered up everything we needed. I let my daughter pick out all the craft stick, yarn and pipe cleaner colors for all of the webs. I also used a hot glue gun for all the gluing. I glued 3 sticks into a star shape and then glued  the start of the yarn to the center. I found that foot of yarn was all my daughter could work with at a time. if she needed more, I just added more when she ran out.

I let her wrap the yarn however she wanted and secured the end with hot glue when she was finished. I then went back and glued down the last loop on the each spoke of the web since she couldn't pull the yarn very tight. My web didn't need this step, and it could probably be skipped for older kids also.







I then cut 4 pieces of pipe cleaner, 3 at 1.5 inches and the 4th slightly longer. I used the longer one to tightly wrap the other 3 together. I then spread out the legs and shaped the spider.

 I used a huge dollop of hot glue and smooshed him onto the web. I'd have to say the spiders are my favorite part; they turned out so cute!



















 This was a really cute craft, and I may make it again for winter using blue craft sticks and white yarn to make snowflakes.
  

Pumpkin Streamers

Our littlest pumpkin streamer.

Halloween is in full swing here in our house. Most of my decorations came out of the closet about a week ago, so now we've been working on our own. My daughter is 3 years old now, but she still has trouble with most of the advanced crafts. I saw a cute tutorial for a ghost windsock on Pinterest, and decided to try out something similar, a pumpkin streamer.




I found a cute, basic pumpkin outline here and rotated and flipped it to make a pattern. This pattern fits on an 8x11 paper, but it's easy to play around with the dimensions. It was the perfect size for my daughter to color, but I like the larger one for decorating. For them, I blew up the image to take up the entire sheet of paper. I printed them all on orange computer paper... mostly to use up my orange paper.

After printing up the pumpkins, we colored them and added faces. It's much easier for a preschooler to color on a whole sheet and cut the image out after. When all my pumpkins were cut out, we cut out crepe paper streamers also. Three to four feet is a good length for the streamers; shorter is easier to handle indoors. I then used a permanent glue stick to assemble them. I glued the streamers about halfway down the pumpkin, covered the other pumpkin in glue, and then sandwiched them together. After they were dry, I added a grommet to the top of each one. This gives them a nice sturdy hole to hang them by.

Large Pumpkin

DD's Pumpkin

This was a really fun, easy craft. My daughter got to color and then helped me pick out all the streamer colors and helped assemble them. They can also stay up through Thanksgiving too, which is nice!

All the Pumpkins

CleanWell Natural Hand Sanitizer Wipes

The final complementary product I received in my Naturals VoxBox was a sample of CleanWell Natural Hand Sanitizer Wipes. Having 2 small children in the house, I knew it wouldn't take long for a chance to try them out.

My daughter had chocolate all over her face, so I wiped her up with one of the CleanWell wipes. It cleaned her messy face well, comparable to using a baby wipe. The wipe itself has a light citrus fragrance and feels very durable, almost like fabric.

What makes these better than baby wipes is the fact that they're antibacterial. That also makes them a great choice for wiping off toys or restaurant high chairs. There's no alcohol in them, a feature I really like, especially in drier months.  My hands get really dry sometimes, and I like the idea of a sanitizing wipe that won't sting or worsen my dry hands. No alcohol also means it won't sting cuts when cleaning up boo boos.

I had never heard of the CleanWell brand before receiving my VoxBox, and after going to their website, I was surprised at the extensive product line they have.  I'd love to check out their portable sanitizers as a product for my first aid kit. I also learned on their site that the wipes are biodegradable, another feature that's important to me and would make me feel better about purchasing their packaged wipes.

LypSyl Intense Protection LypMoisturizer

I've been using LypSyl Intense Protection LypMoisturizer for a few weeks and really enjoy it. I tend to like beeswax products, so I was excited to try this out.

The tube is larger than most lip balms, and I have to say that the little bee on the side is my favorite part. You slide the little bee up and down to change the height of the lip balm, so adorable! I use lip balm throughout the day and found myself not having to reapply it constantly. I can easily go 2-3 hours between applications.  

The LypMoisturizer works great and has a smooth buttery feeling, not sticky at all. It also doesn't have a strong scent or heavy flavoring which is really nice. There's no color either, so it's great for my whole family to use.

I received my LypSyl Intense Protection LypMoisturizer for review as part of my Naturals VoxBox from Influenster.

Saguaro National Park

Two weeks ago the family took an overnight trip from Phoenix down to Tuscon to visit family. On our way home we took a detour through the Saguaro National Park. Both girls were asleep, and it was a nice drive for my husband and I to just take in the scenery. 

The park is best known for its saguaro cactus forest.

Despite living so close, neither of us had ever been through there before! It's amazingly beautiful there and is now on our list of places to camp, especially with family nearby to babysit the girls if we'd like.

The park also has many miles of trails to explore.