Daily Vegas ~ Wordless Wednesday!

Christmas Eve Service

Elmo Christmas Underwear

Thomas Love

Other Wordless Wednesdays:

Parenting By Dummies
5 Minutes for Mom
A Beautiful Mess
Angry Julie
To Be Thode

Recycled Christmas Cards Placemats ~ Green So Easy

I keep all the Christmas Cards we get every year. I keep the photo ones, and the regular ones.

This year I noticed my stash of cards was getting a little thick, so I decided we should make a craft from them.

Since I was going to be hosting a Christmas Dinner, doing place mats seemed like a perfect idea!! I hope you enjoy Squish's Recycled Christmas Card Place Mats!

We started with some Recycled paper. I bought a big roll of it. I plan on using it for all of our wrapping and crafting needs.

I laid it our on our floor, and taped the ends down. I then laid out some colored paper.

I cut some shapes using Christmas Cookies and Sponges. I actually will probably use thicker sponges next time, but in a pinch this worked okay.

I made sure I had a bath ready to go. (We were painting right outside the bathroom too so I was sure to contain the paint to one main area.)

I then stripped the Squish down to his diaper. In the future I will either use a disposable for the craft, or if I am not going to take pictures, I may just let him go at it sans clothing.

I released the Squish, and let him go to town. I got in on the fun too, and we had a blast. The paint was washable and non-toxic.

If you are going to do this project with a child as young as mine, I say embrace the mess and just have fun!

After a bath and a day to let the paper dry, I folded the brown paper in half, and cut it into 3 segments. I then cut those segments in half using the fold as my guide.

The nice thing about this project is it really is a kids project, so perfection isn't needed!

I selected 6 cards from our stash to use for the place mats, cut some ribbon, and glued them on.

I took them to a Office Supply Store, and trimmed them down, then had them laminated in an 11x17 sheet.

I am pretty happy with how they turned out!

I know my guests and family also enjoyed them. I love how you can see Squishy's footprints on them too! Fun times!!

We can use these for years to come. And as we have more children, we can add to our collection of Recycled Christmas Card Place Mats!

Thanks for reading my Recycled tutorial. Green so easy, even a Toddler can do it!

This week I am joining in Skip to My Lou's Made by You Mondays. It is my first time linking up, but I hope it isn't my last!

Daily Vegas ~ EPIC SANTA FAIL

Squish 100% did not like Santa one bit. He saw Santa earlier on the Santa Train, and didn't like him then, but he FLIPPED this time. I have never seen him have such a reaction to any person like this before. He was so NOT a fan.

(But I love the pictures!) (Don't worry I gave him extra hugs and kisses afterwards.)

He did however like the 4-Wheeler... and despite the fact that my Hubs would love to get him one, we will be waiting a bit longer!
(Don't know what happened with his eye in the picture...)

Merry Christmas ~ Happy Holidays

Have you done your Christmas Cards yet? Now that the Hubs is home, I can't wait to get ours done FINALLY!!

But in honor of our first family photo taken yesterday - I give to you:

Family and Life in Las Vegas 1st ever Christmas Card!

I can't believe Christmas is already only 25 days away!!

Toddler Wonderland Tutorial ~ Nikki @ The Perils of a Working Mom

Are you ready for a fun craft to do with your toddler?

Nikki from The Perils of a Working Mom has a fun craft to do with your little one! It's super easy and inexpensive too!

Craft time can be a fun way to spend a cold winter day with your toddler. However, if you choose and activity that is too difficult or requires too much adult participation, your toddler is likely to get bored or frustrated very quickly.

Crafts for toddlers are usually best if they don’t have a lot of specific steps or a lot of wait time. No doubt, if you have a toddler, you’ve noticed that they don’t have a lot of patience, so having to wait for paint to dry to move on to the next step may cause a melt down, and I’m not talking about a hot glue melt down!

Basic art activities, such as finger painting are usually a fun activity for toddlers because they are usually very much into tactile experiences at this age. (Have a paint brush handy, just incase you have one of those toddlers that doesn’t like to get dirty!) Spreading glue onto paper and sticking items (foam shapes etc.) is a good activity that also helps to develop fine motor skills. And of course, the old stand by of coloring is always a hit if you aren’t into anything more involved!

Your child’s masterpieces from any of these activities make great gifts for grandparents and other relatives. Put a piece of artwork in a frame with a photo in one corner and it is something that grandma will cherish forever. Painting and colorings can also be cut into smaller holiday shapes and used to make holiday greeting cards.

Here is an easy craft; that anyone, of any crafting ability can easily do with a toddler. Most of the items required you may already have at home, if not, a quick trip to your local dollar store and you will be set!

Holiday Sun Catcher

This craft can be modified for ANY holiday, celebration or theme that you desire.

Materials:

Cardstock or construction paper

Colored tissue paper or other type of semi transparent paper, cut or torn into small pieces

Glitter (optional)

Clear contact paper

Scissors, pencil

Adult Preparation:

1) Draw a simple holiday shape in the middle piece of paper.

2) From the center of your paper, cut out the shape, leaving the outside of the paper intact to form the frame of your sun catcher.

3) Cut 2 pieces of contact paper, each slightly smaller than your paper.

4) Remove backing from contact paper and adhere to one side of paper.

** If you aren’t ready for your child to do the craft right away, reapply the contact paper’s backing sheet to protect it until you are ready.

This is what your prepared Sun Catcher should look like. (With backing paper in place)

Directions for Child

1) Give the prepared sun catcher to your toddler. Remove backing paper. Show them that the opening is sticky.

2) Give them a pile of tissue paper pieces. Show them how to stick it to the contact paper.

3) Allow your child to put on as much or as little tissue paper as they wish. It doesn’t have to be all flat or completely stuck.

4) When they are finished, you can add glitter if you want. Assuming that you don’t want your entire house covered in glitter for all of eternity, I recommend that you apply the glitter or put it into a saltshaker for your toddler to shake on!

Adult Finishing Touches

When your child is finished, cover the tissue paper and glitter with the second piece of contact paper to hold everything in place and protect the masterpiece.

Hang the sun catcher in a window for all to admire!

I hope that you enjoy doing holiday crafts with your toddlers this year! Happy Holidays to everyone!

Head over to Nikki's Blog and let her know how much you enjoyed her project. Then come back to this post and let me know you did so. You can have 4 extra entries into Toddler Wonderland for doing so!

Toddler Wonderland Tutorial ~ Schnitzel and Boo

Toddler Wonderland: Crafting a Christmas Ornament-and-Card Combo

By: Schnitzel & Boo

www.schnitzelandboo.etsy.com

www.schnitzelandboo.com

www.schnitzelandboo.blogspot.com

I have an almost-two-year-old daughter named Remy who loves to do anything creative: dance, scribble, hop, sing, wiggle, twirl etc. I was excited to try this project with her because this was the very first time that she had ever done anything like it. This was basically her very first art project. My mom did something similar with me and my sister when we were close to Remy’s age. Because this was our first time getting artsy-craftsy together, I enlisted my mom’s expertise. It was a lot of fun for all of us to recreate something that I did as a child.

For this project, we chose toddler-friendly crafting materials to help ease any frustrations that may arise. We wanted to keep the ornaments simple, yet engaging for the child-something to help encourage that proud feeling of accomplishment. We decided on chenille sticks, round rhinestones, multi-colored mini puff balls, snowflakes and sequins. You could also use buttons, scraps of felt or fabric, confetti, pieces of ribbon, beads etc., anything that you have in your craft supplies.

Gather your supplies, you will need:

-Pen

-Craft Foam or Felt

-Tablecloth, newspaper or a work mat to cover your crafting surface

-scissors

-glue

-blank folded cards

-tree template

-snowman template

-hole punch or Crop-O-Dile and eyelets

-double sided tape

-sequins, rhinestones, chenille sticks, buttons, puff balls etc for decorations

(OPTIONAL SUPPLIES)

-ruler

-magnets

-ribbon

-clear vinyl

-popsicle sticks

-felt scraps

Set up your supplies while your toddler is occupied with someone else or having a nap. This will help make sure that you have everything that you need and you won’t be running off in the middle of the project to grab the glue.

Trace your templates onto the back side of the craft foam and cut out before introducing your toddler to all the shiny, pretty things on the table. They’re like magpies and you’ll end up doing what I did: performing fancy save-the-flying-rhinestone maneuvers with a pair of sharp scissors and a half cut foam tree in your hands. Not exactly a smooth move on my part! (Cut the circle out of the tree to turn your ornament into a picture frame. Just glue a piece of clear vinyl to the back of the tree, add a picture and then attach a second tree to it.)

Punch a hole in the top of the tree and, if you’re using a Crop-O-Dile tool, set an eyelet in the hole for reinforcement. Hopefully, the grandparents will go bonkers over this super cute little work-of-art that your toddler is about to create and the tree (or snowman!) will hang proudly on the Christmas tree for years to come! Tie a ribbon through the eyelet and you’re ready to start!

Have your child decorate her tree or snowman with the decorations you have set out. I put a variety of decorations in my hand and let Remy choose which ones she wanted to use. It was easier for her to pick them up from my hand than it was to try and pick them up from the table.

Allow your child to put her decorations wherever she wants them on her tree. It is so much fun for them and for you to see their creations come to life. They don’t care if the sequins are all on top of each other, or if a rhinestone is upside down! They are using their imagination and creating an endearing keepsake.

Have your toddler decorate as many trees and snowmen as they’d like!

When you’re all done, glue all of the pieces down and admire your Toddler Picasso’s work!

Attach the ornament to the front of a blank card for a card-and-gift in one! Her grandparents, aunts and uncles, family friends and neighbors are going to love it!

Thank you to much to Kristi for this wonderful and creative guest post!

Make sure you check out her sites for more goodies! If you leave her a kind comment - come back to this post and let me know you did. You can then have 4 extra entries into the giveaway of your choice!!