My favorite kids' crafts:
My favorite layouts:
It's always so fun to go back at the end of the year and marvel at how much I've created in 12 months. Overall, I'm happy with what I made.
12/29/17
The Best of 2017
As the year comes to an end, it's time to look back over the projects I made during 2017 and pick my favorites. As usual, it was hard to choose.
Cindy deRosier has a masters in Education and taught 4th and 5th grade for 11 years. She uses that experience to blog about crafts and family-friendly educational travel. She spent many years as the Editor of Fun Family Crafts, a website with over 12,000 kid-friendly craft tutorials. Cindy is the co-author of "What Would Jesus Patent?", does freelance writing and designing, loves jigsaw puzzles, is an avid scrapbooker, and has been to all 50 states.
12/20/17
Craft Categories and Christmas Break
December has been a little crazy for me. I have been hard at work making Christmas gifts (which I'll share in upcoming weeks), preparing for my AFCI presentation, and doing a massive reorganization of all my craft tutorials. Remember the HUGE undertaking I did back in June to create the US Travel page of my website? Well, this is bigger. Much bigger.
If you click on that photo, it will take you to a page with photos of my Christmas crafts, with links to each individual photo. But that's not all. I've done the same for the rest of the holidays and seasons. It's still a work in progress, but I will eventually have a gallery-style index of all my craft tutorials. It's been a ridiculous amount of work, but I am so happy with the results. Check out the progress of my Crafts by Holiday/Topic page!
I will be taking a week-long break from blogging. Merry Christmas to you all! And thank you for supporting My Creative Life.
Cindy deRosier has a masters in Education and taught 4th and 5th grade for 11 years. She uses that experience to blog about crafts and family-friendly educational travel. She spent many years as the Editor of Fun Family Crafts, a website with over 12,000 kid-friendly craft tutorials. Cindy is the co-author of "What Would Jesus Patent?", does freelance writing and designing, loves jigsaw puzzles, is an avid scrapbooker, and has been to all 50 states.
12/19/17
Popcorn Box Macaw
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First a clown, then a cockatiel... what's next? A macaw, of course! He's a bird, but he looks a little sheepish.
First a clown, then a cockatiel... what's next? A macaw, of course! He's a bird, but he looks a little sheepish.
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Macaw Popcorn Box
Materials:
- World Market popcorn box
- Kunin felt (white, blue, yellow, black)
- Fiskars scissors
- large googly eyes
- Martha Stewart craft glue
- Orville Redenbacher popcorn
- Wilton Candy Melts (yellow, green, blue)
- parchment paper
Steps:
- Cut the white felt to size and wrap it around the popcorn box.
- Wrap yellow felt around the bottom 2/3 of the popcorn box.
- Glue the eyes onto the white felt.
- Cut a black beak and glue it where the white and yellow felt meet.
- Cut a pair of wings from the blue felt and glue them to the sides of the box.
- Pop the popcorn. Place each color of candy melts in a separate bowl and melt them, following the package instructions. Pour popcorn into the melted coating and stir. Spread the popcorn onto parchment paper to dry.
- Fill the popcorn box with popcorn. When you reach the top, arrange the colors so that yellow is on the outside, then green, and blue in the center.
Cindy deRosier has a masters in Education and taught 4th and 5th grade for 11 years. She uses that experience to blog about crafts and family-friendly educational travel. She spent many years as the Editor of Fun Family Crafts, a website with over 12,000 kid-friendly craft tutorials. Cindy is the co-author of "What Would Jesus Patent?", does freelance writing and designing, loves jigsaw puzzles, is an avid scrapbooker, and has been to all 50 states.
12/18/17
Cake for Dinner
Have you ever had cake for dinner? I'm guessing most of you have, at one time or another.
But that isn't actually cake. Did it fool you? It's cornbread. I used the mixer to whip a ton of air into a pat of butter, then spread it on the cornbread just like frosting a cake. Serve it on a paper plate and stick a fork in it and it looks just like a piece of cake.
This cornbread was 1/3 of a cake-themed dinner that I made for Jonna's birthday. It was the most successful, appearance-wise, of the three dishes I attempted. Would the other two "cakes" have fooled you? Any guesses what they are?
The 'cake' on the dark blue plate is meatloaf and mashed potatoes. I used this recipe. It tasted great, but as you can see, it doesn't quite pass as cake. That is because I put it together while the meatloaf was straight out of the oven and mashed potatoes were really hot. There's a reason you cool cake completely before frosting it. If I'd let both components cool, I could have made a passable cake, but then we would have had to eat cold meatloaf and mashed potatoes. No thank you.
The 'cake' on the light blue plate is a parmesan spinach cake, 'frosted' with whipped ricotta. Rather than letting the spinach cool completely, I immediately covered it with ricotta. And, of course, the ricotta did not want to spread beautifully on a 400° spinach cake. Nor did I want to serve cold spinach cakes. Trade offs.
I highly recommend having 'cake' for dinner sometime!
Cindy deRosier has a masters in Education and taught 4th and 5th grade for 11 years. She uses that experience to blog about crafts and family-friendly educational travel. She spent many years as the Editor of Fun Family Crafts, a website with over 12,000 kid-friendly craft tutorials. Cindy is the co-author of "What Would Jesus Patent?", does freelance writing and designing, loves jigsaw puzzles, is an avid scrapbooker, and has been to all 50 states.
12/15/17
Exploring Arkansas Through Little Passports
Our next virtual adventure through Little Passports brought us to Arkansas. I've never been there and know very little about it, so I found it especially interesting. Trevor and I started off by building a model of a fiddle.
You have to supply your own sound.
We learned about Bathhouse Row, the fancy old houses next to Hot Springs National Park. Trevor did an experiment to learn about dissolved minerals in water. He put equal amounts of water into two containers - one with hot water, and one with cold water. Then he dropped sugar cubes into each until no more would dissolve. Just like the mineral-rich water of Hot Springs National Park, the hot water was able to dissolve far more sugar than the cold water.
We read all about the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, then followed instructions to decode one of Arkansas' nicknames. We read that Little Rock got its name from a rock located at the spot where early explorers started a settlement. We learned that there are 52 state parks in Arkansas with a wide variety of outdoor activities to enjoy and solved a maze about mountain biking in the Ouachita Mountains.
Next, we read about famous events in Arkansas history. We did a crossword puzzle about the Ozark Folk Center, and learned that Arkansas has an official state cooking pot. (It's the Dutch oven, familiar to Boy Scout Trevor.) We solved a math puzzle based on The Crater of Diamonds. Trevor said that when we travel to Arkansas someday, we're definitely going there! We learned how to draw a razorback, the wild boars that are common in Arkansas.
The recipe in the Arkansas journal is inspired by the Pink Tomato Festival that takes place each year. Trevor made a sandwich spread in the blender...
... cooked up cornmeal griddle cakes on the stove...
... and sliced tomatoes, then assembled the whole thing into a sandwich.
Delicious!!
As always, Trevor and I learned so much during our virtual travels. We're both really excited about planning a visit to Arkansas in the future. Huge thanks to Little Passports for teaching us so much about this interesting state!
Cindy deRosier has a masters in Education and taught 4th and 5th grade for 11 years. She uses that experience to blog about crafts and family-friendly educational travel. She spent many years as the Editor of Fun Family Crafts, a website with over 12,000 kid-friendly craft tutorials. Cindy is the co-author of "What Would Jesus Patent?", does freelance writing and designing, loves jigsaw puzzles, is an avid scrapbooker, and has been to all 50 states.
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