Angry Birds Turkey Thanksgiving Craft

There are a lot of things I love about my job as Editor of Fun Family Crafts. I've told you how much I love creating round-ups, but what I haven't mentioned is how inspiring it is to see all the crafts that our readers submit. When a submission comes in, I am the one who visits the site to see if the craft is something we want to feature. I'm primarily checking if there is indeed a tutorial (versus just a photo of the finished project with no materials list or instructions) and whether the craft is kid-friendly (99.9% are, but the 0.1% keep the job especially interesting). If it's a go, I edit the text, categorize the post by age range, holiday/occasion, and materials, tag the post with all relevant search terms, and schedule it to run. 

I love seeing all the creativity out there and sharing it with our readers! Occasionally, I like a project idea so much that I make my own version. Such was the case with this Angry Birds printable. Here's what I made:

As you can see, I didn't actually use the printable. I loved the idea of making an angry turkey and took it my own direction. An angry turkey seems fitting for Thanksgiving, doesn't it?

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Angry Birds Turkey Thanksgiving Craft

Materials:

• cardstock
• scissors
• craft glue
• masking tape

Steps:

Basically, do whatever you want. Angry Birds come in all sorts of shapes, so anything goes. Use your creativity! Read on to see how I made mine. 

Cut a teardrop shape from brown cardstock. Add a face. The eyes are two white circles with small black circles inside. Glue one in place, then layer an orange beak over the top. Put a red wattle next to the beak, then place the other eye over it. Add thick black eyebrows.

Cut a pair of wings and a pair of legs from the leftover brown cardstock. Glue the legs in place. I used the rest of the scraps to add dimension between the body and the wings. 

Cut turkey feathers from browns, reds, yellows, and oranges. Arrange them to form the turkey's tail, occasionally placing the body on top to check the spacing. Glue the feathers to the background paper. If your design is perfect and you don't want to risk messing it up by lifting each feather to glue it, use masking tape to join the feathers together. Lift the whole thing, add glue, and stick it to the background paper. 

Glue the body on top of the feathers. That's all there is to it! 

Trevor had a different vision for his turkey. He was adamant that Angry Birds don't have wings or legs, which is true of the game but not true of the movie. 

Here's his wingless, legless turkey. It's awfully cute. 

What a fun project! Make your own this Thanksgiving!

Craft Roundups

Time to share another batch of craft roundups!

First up, a roundup of Pizza Crafts and Recipes. Two of these are mine, both from Trevor's pizza-themed birthday party.

I don't think I've ever crafted with denim, but there are some really good ideas in this denim roundup.

This candy corn round-up was so much fun to make. The collages come together so quickly when the color scheme is obvious.

I had a lot of skeleton and skull projects to choose from for this round-up. Two of them are mine. 

Next, witch-themed crafts. We have over 50 on Fun Family Crafts. One is mine and it's in the collage. 

The Frankenstein crafts were really fun. (Yes, I know that technically these are Frankenstein's monster.) One of them is mine.

Dracula crafts and recipes! One of them is mine. I'd forgotten about it. Rediscovering older projects, both mine and other people's, is another thing I love about doing these round-ups.

I'm a huge fan, so putting together a round-up of Muppets crafts and recipes was great fun! None are mine. 

I was proud of myself for thinking to turn the title of this Airplane round-up into an airplane banner. Skywriting would have been cool too.

How adorable are these Sesame Street crafts?! None are mine. I did make an awesome Cookie Monster cake once, but I didn't write it up as a tutorial so it's not on Fun Family Crafts. 

As always, I made these round-ups using PicMonkey. It is really easy with almost no learning curve. They are adding new fonts, design elements, and themes all the time. I don't know what I'd do without it!

Giving Money as a Gift: A Notebook of Money

Twice a year, I rack my brain to come up with a creative way to give money as a gift for my nephew, Timothy. I'm not out of ideas yet, but now that he lives 1000 miles away, I have to consider portability. This severely limits my options. I'm not mean enough to make him board a plane with 4000 pennies or a gigantic money tree.

For his 17th birthday, I decided Timothy needed a notebook of money. I played off the word 'Notes' by using patterned paper with musical notes (affiliate link) and filling it with bank notes, aka dollar bills. He can pull out bills as he needs them and the rest will stay nicely bound in the notebook. 

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A Notebook of Money

Materials:

• Mint condition dollar bills 
• Chipboard, cut to the size of a dollar bill (2.61" x 6.14")
• Patterned paper, also cut to the size of a dollar bill (2.61" x 6.14")
• Binder clips
• White glue
• Foam brush
• Letter stickers

Steps:

Gather supplies, avoiding security incident if possible.**

Line up the patterned paper, dollar bills, and chipboard so that they are flush. Use the binder clips to hold everything securely in place. 

Use the brush to put a thin, even layer of glue across the exposed end. Let it dry, then add another coat of glue. I did a total of four coats and it held nicely.

When the glue is dry, use the letter stickers to spell out 'Notes' on the cover.

I paired the gift with a pen so that it looked more like a regular notebook. It was hilarious watching Timothy inspect the pen for more money. None hidden there... this time!

Now it's time to start thinking about his Christmas gift. Haha! (cackling and rubbing her hands together...)

** The Story of My Bank Security Incident

When I've given money gifts in the past, I've gone to the bank, asked for, and received $100-worth of mint-condition $1 bills. Easy. This time, however, I went to two different banks, neither of which had mint bills on hand. It would take over a week to order them and I wanted them sooner. Unwilling to traipse all over the county to banks that may or may not have the bills, I phoned branches until finding one that did. I told the man on the phone I'd be right over. 

It took about 15 minutes to get there. I stood in line and asked the teller (a woman) for $100 of mint-condition bills. Her eyes bulged out and she said that may be a problem. Annoyed, I told her I'd just spoken to someone 15 minutes ago who said the bills were on hand and that it wouldn't be a problem. She tells me, "OK, but I'll have to alert security."

Then she grills me about who said this wouldn't be a problem. I hadn't gotten his name, but was able to describe his voice well enough that she figured out who it was. At this point, I'm totally confused. Why is this such a big deal?! She calls security, then starts tapping away at her computer like crazy. Then she announces, "OK, security will be here soon. One hundred mint condition hundred dollar bills." 

Wait, what?

Not $10,000! I want $100! She looks at me, confused. The man who I'd spoken with on the phone comes out, also confused. He'd prepped my $100 and had no idea why she was calling security. Pretty much everyone was confused. 

The story ends uneventfully. I left with my $100 and all was well. 

Exploring Pennsylvania Through Little Passports

Trevor and I always enjoy working our way through a Little Passports kit, but it's particularly fun when it's a state we've visited. We had a great time in Philadelphia, Easton, Hershey, and Hanover last month. How neat to take a virtual trip to The Keystone State as well! 

We started off with a maze activity that taught us more about transportation in Lancaster County. This reminded Trevor of the craft he made for Ohio's Little Passports! We learned about the regions of Pennsylvania, discovered the origins of the state's nickname, and did a word search for Pennsylvania's historic locations. We read all about the famous events in Pennsylvania history and did a matching activity about the important people who lived there. There was even an activity about Punxsutawney Phil!

The science experiment was about electricity, inspired by the many experiments and discoveries of Benjamin Franklin. Trevor followed the directions to fill a tray with a mixture of salt and pepper.

He rubbed a spoon vigorously with a piece of felt, then held it over the tray. Nothing. Hmm...  

Perhaps the type of spoon makes a difference. Sure enough! When he rubbed the plastic measuring spoon with the felt, the pepper leaped up toward it and stuck in place on the negatively-charged spoon. Neat!

Next we built the model of the Liberty Bell. 

The next day, we jumped back into Little Passports with a fun Battleship-inspired activity related to Hershey's Chocolate. Then we enjoyed a logic puzzle about the how coins are made. We'd learned all about that in Philadelphia at the US Mint.  

Finally, we worked on the Water Ice recipe. We tried two different flavors in Philadelphia and it was delicious! How fun to make our own! Trevor chopped strawberries and put them in the blender, then combined them with simple syrup and a little lemon juice.

He put it in the freezer, scraped it with a fork to break the ice crystals, then put it back in the freezer. After another round of scraping, we had the most delicious strawberry water ice ever!

Trevor and I really enjoyed our virtual travels in Pennsylvania through Little Passports. I strongly recommend it for the child in your life. 

Pennsylvania Barn Quilts

Are you familiar with barn quilts? Trevor and I first learned about them while working on the Pennsylvania Little Passports journal, which I'll share on Monday. We kept our eyes peeled as we drove through Pennsylvania and managed to spot quite a few! (No photos due to highway speeds and rain.) It was really cool to see the different designs, patterns, and colors adorning the barns. Our family doesn't have a barn, but Trevor and I decided we could make our own barn quilts and hang them on our bedroom doors. Affilate links below. 

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Bedroom Door Barn Quilt

Materials:

• 12" square piece of chipboard
• ruler
• pencil
• acrylic paint
• paintbrush

Steps:

Use your ruler to divide the chipboard into sixteen 3" squares. 

Draw lines dividing some (or all) of the squares into triangles. Most, but not all, barn quilts are symmetric. 

Choose your colors and start painting, using your lines as guides. It's easiest with a flat brush.

Continue until all the squares are painted. 

That's my barn quilt at the top of the post, ready to hang on my bedroom door. Trevor pointed out that I used a very similar palette to the last time we made quilts together. Sure enough! The patterns are very different though, even down to the fact that this is a 16-block square and the other has four 9-block squares. 

Now that Trevor is blogging, he's shared his barn quilt on his own site, Trevor's Adventures. Check it out!