What do Giants eat?

I had the Giant party yesterday. It was a giant pain and a giant success. When the kids arrived we secured their little feet inside file boxes. These were their giant shoes. Next they wore dish washing gloves for their giant hands. We played a few games in this getup then let them take them off to smash the giant present pinata. After eating a giant slice of pizza I revealed what giants eat.

A giant hamburger, fries and a drink. This was large version of Bakerella's mini burgers. Eat was so easy to make.

What a cake!

I am so glad the boy is 6 and the party is over.

Rock Star

This past Saturday I attended a baby shower for one of my little cousins. I say little, but of course that is just my perspective. Oh I am getting older and none the wiser. Anyhoo didly doo, it was great to see my cousins. While there my cousin (hmmm, I didn't ask to use her name) S, showed me a cute little rock covered in melted crayon. So cute, so fun and of course cheap and easy.

For this activity you will need to send your kids on a rock hunt. Just about any rock will do. However, a smooth rock looks better.

Place rocks on a baking sheet. Heat rocks in oven until they are hot. I just put them in while the oven was pre-heating to 375 degrees, then removed them when the oven had reached it's goal.
Give each child a piece of wax paper. After giving a lesson on not touching hot things, place the rock on the wax paper and give your little artist some crayons. This is a great way to use you broken crayons.

The crayons will melt as soon as they touch the hot rock. Caution: the rocks stay hot for a long time.

Even Baby Bug (2) was able to color a rock.

My kids had a blast and I hope yours will too. Thank you Cousin S!

By the way, if you do any of the crafts, activities or other idea's be sure to let me know. I would love to see what you have done.

Candy countdown

Wild Child received this cute candy countdown chain from her Pre-school teachers. It had five treat chambers on it when it was first given to her. She gets to eat one treat everyday until school starts. What a cute why to avoid the when does school start question.

This could be adapted for a Christmas Advent Calendar. It would be a great gift for friends with children.

Cut it out.

Summer break might be over, but summer boredom may still continue. You can adapt this activity to almost any age that is able to use scissors. I am sure you or even your kids have made a collage. Here are a few idea's to stretch the collage idea and the imagination:

Make a Christmas wish list

use only one color (do a collage of just orange cut outs or all colors)

Alphabet ( a collage for each letter including pictures)

Alphabet ( Cut out the ABC's out of the letters you find in the magazine)

shapes (how many squares can you find?)

Make an alien out of bits and pieces of pictures

A monster

Create your own animal ( this is great if you get hunting mag.)

Make a menu (Let your kids create a meal out of pictures, then serve that meal.)

You get the picture. Use your imagination and your old Magazines.

Dollar Frames

I love the dollar frames at Michaels. You have probably seen the frames that I Mod Podged craft paper onto to. These frames I painted and cut out shapes with my cricut and glued them to paper. (the paper is the same color of my walls) Simple, cheap and easy.

My girl loves skirts

Ashely @ Make it and Love it had a tutorial on how to make this skirt out of worn out jeans. Since she has taken the time to type out the instructions I will just let you check out her post here for the details.

Here is my attempt. Luckily you can't see it up close, but for a gal who doesn't know how to sew, I think I did a decent job. Now I need to learn how to make fabric flowers to gussy up the shirt.

Restaurant bag

I recently posted about giving ordinary and somewhat tacky canvas bags a face lift. Just after that post more bags began to turn up. Click here for previous post.

This little beauty was transformed into.....

My new restaurant bag. Handy Andy and I rarely go out to eat without the kids. So it has become important to keep entertainment with us. The best toys for a restaurant are small and engaging. Match box cars, paper and pens, Polly pockets, Pet Shops etc. Our favorites are magnadoodles, play dough (there is a large assortment of travel packs), I found a little wooden tic tac toe board at Target, small puzzles and Legos (I love the small pack pictured below!).
Lego Creators make can be used to build more than one thing. Love it!!!!!

This Playdough set even comes with a play mat.

I like to keep our bag in the Van (oh yes, I am that cool, I drive a Minivan.) so we have it anytime we need it. The bag is also great for Doctor appointments.

I have a few more idea's for your bag. Keep a look out for future posts.

Be sure to scroll down to the frame post and sign up for the give-a-way. Today is the last day to get entered!!!!!

The Great Outdoors

We just got back from camping yesterday. Could you tell that I was gone? I hope not. I just love scheduling posts. It took me a while to get it right.

Every camping trip we look forward to the animal hunt. My MIL buys 100+ little plastic animals and stretchy frogs and hides them in our campground for the kids.

After finding them the kids play with them, wash them and sometimes hide them again. When we get home I hide them in our yard in the morning and let the kids go out and find them. They also love to play in the tub with them.

Both kinds of animals can be found at most Dollar Tree stores. The stretchy animals can also be found at Walmart in their dollar toy section. Wouldn't they be great in a Pinata!?!

Our last day in camp, my baby SIL, found a tiny container. Inside of it was a paper scroll about 2"x 1.5' long. It hand the signature of every camper that had found it. After you signed your name you re-hid it in the campground. We thought that was so clever.

After thinking about at home, I thought it would be fun to do the same thing inside my house. I am going to use a clear film container and hide it where my kids can find it. Maybe in a toy box or a sock drawer and so on. I hope that in years to come they will be excited to visit my house with their kids and find the container and write their names and date on it. What a fun tradition that will be.

A hunting we will go

Here is another quick and easy summer activity. On you of those days where you don't have time to plan, set up and execute a great activity, just get out a piece of paper and write a list of things your kids can find in your yard. Be creative for this scavenger hunt. A few examples are: something red (list many colors), something plastic, a flower, leaf, a bug, a stick (specify length), a circle, triangle, square, something from up high, something edible. You get the picture. Go ahead and make your kids as busy as you want them to be. You could even arrange a photo scavenger hunt with older kids. Consider having your older kids write a list for the little ones.

Without a trace

We are right in the middle of summer. I am sure many of you have already heard I'm bored or have seen the clear signs of little hands having too much time.

My mom had a stack of pictures that she would have us tape to our sliding glass door and we would trace the pictures onto plain typing paper.(oh yeah I said typing!) You can use a coloring book. You may have to help young children remove the pages. Tape the original first to the glass window or door.

Then tape a plain sheet of paper to the window.
Then let your little ones go! After they trace their picture with a pencil or pen, they can color in the rest. My brother and I usually skipped the coloring, but we would trace for at least an hour.

For new visitors to Bloggin' it be sure to check out past posts for activities found on the right side bar in the labels section. There are a couple of gems looming about this blog.

Cute slice of summer

I had this cookie mix that I needed to use. So I dreamed up a summery way to use it. You can use a homemade dough or even ready made dough for this recipe.

One pouch made enough dough to fit one mold.

So you will need:

Sugar cookie dough

Homemade mold(see below)

Chocolate sprinkles

Red and green food coloring

For a mold I used an empty Crystal light container. I liked this container because I could put the lid back on it to give extra support. However, a toilet paper or paper towel roll would be better in size. You could use masking tape over the open top for more support to keep the shape. Whatever you use cut of 1/3 of the top.

Dye 1/3 of the dough green and the rest red. Place wax paper in mold. Then press green dough into mold, pushing dough up the sides. Fill with red dough.

Cover and freeze for 1/2 hour or refrigerate until firm.

Remove dough from mold and cut into slices.

Bake as directed in recipe. (I love parchment paper for baking.)

During the last 30 seconds of baking sprinkle the red part of the cookie with chocolate sprinkles.

Yummy, it's like little slices of summer.

Fourth of July Fairy

My good friend Layla asked me to do a tutorial on how to curl ribbon. I was in the process of preparing photos when I saw Little Birdies Secrets had done a wonderful tutorial on these little princess wands. They do a good job on explaining curling ribbon here.

I love the wands and wanted to make some for my girls to hold at all of the Fourth of July Parades and Fireworks.




I love them. My son, age 5, wants a wand too. We have been watching a lot of Harry Potter movies lately. So, tomorrow I am painting a dowel blue or black and coating it with the glitter paint for him. I know, someone is going to get their eye poked this weekend. It will probably be me.

My next post is my 100th post. I will be holding off until Monday to announce my give-a-way. Meanwhile, be sure to become a follower to be entered to win.

Beary good

It doesn't take much to turn a simple ball dough into a fun edible friend. I used Rhodes Roll dough, which is so easy, oh so easy! With just a few pinches and a little manipulation you can give your kids a tasty pal to eat with their dinner.

Hmmmm, reminds me of my own tummy, which oddly enough also rises on a warm day.

Now your little carnivores can bite the head off of their lovable friend.

Scrappy Paper Dolls

To celebrate going dot com the Tip Junkie featured a bunch of posts about parties. One of them had a link to this post on This Mama Makes Stuff. It was an American Girl themed party and she had Kit paper dolls. I couldn't find a pattern for them so I made my own. Get all of your ribbon, lace, fabric scraps and any beads, paper or embellishments you don't need anymore and let your girls have a blast designing clothes for their own paper dolls.

My oldest daughter is 4 and she was able to do a lot of it on her own. She and her friends, ages 5 and 7, played with the scraps and dolls for over an hour. I think had they all been 6+ they would have play even longer.



This is a great summer activity.

Cool Trick Cool Treat

I am loving food on a stick and it doesn't get better than chocolate. Don't let this summer go by without try this little trick. Push a lollipop stick into a large or small candy bar.

The wrapper will create a barrier between the chocolate and the kid. Hopefully reducing a melty mess.


For a even better cool summer treat. Place candy bar pops in the freezer and serve frozen.

At the kids next lemonade stand have them sell these frozen little cuties. To help make pushing in the stick, prick the wrapper and bar with a sterilized needle and use as a pilot hole.

Father's day

I don't have many idea's for Father's Day. I don't get men and won't even pretend to. Here is a quick and affordable gift for you kids to give good old Dad. Buy a book about dads. I bought the I Love You book from Wal Mart for $2.50. Then write in the cover the date and what your child likes to do with dad or a favorite memory from the past year. Give it to Dad, then update the book every year on Father's Day.