Nativity Finger Puppets

A couple years ago, I saw this little pocket nativity set in the Deseret Book catalog:

I put it in my ideas notebook to do sometime. The "sometime" has finally come! :)

I drew all my own shapes, but used ideas from all the figures they had in the set.

Along with the Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, cow and angel, they had in the set, I also wanted to have a wise man,

And a shepherd and sheep.

I made all of the figures out of felt with regular thread or embroidery thread to sew it together and decorate. I especially like the metallic silver thread on the angel's halo.

They are all ready for little fingers to play with and tell the wonderful story that is the reason for the season!

SNOW!

It snowed at our house today!

Since it hasn't really snowed around here yet, we made our own snow. :) We made these snowflakes out of coffee filters. I saw this idea here the other day, and had to try it out. I have seen a lot of kids' crafts made out of coffee filters, but since we don't drink coffee, I never had any. But I thought these snowflakes looked so easy to do with the coffee filters I had to buy some. I got a pack of 160 at the dollar store. These make cutting snowflakes super easy! I just folded them in half and then in thirds, and let my son cut away.

I had to make a couple myself, too.

My son can't get enough of them. I think he will cut up all 160 in the pack if I let him! We've got a couple dozen already.

I really does look like it snowed in our house! :)

Fall/ Thanksgiving Decorations with Kids

We went for a walk the other day, and my boys started gathering leaves that they liked. By the time we got home, we had a huge handful of leaves. My 4 year old thought we should makes something with them.

First we made some turkeys. Nice and festive for the upcoming holiday!

I helped tape the leaves down. My 4 year old drew the face of the turkey on this one:

I drew the face on this one, and my almost two year old kind of helped color it :)

The rest of the leaves we bunched up and made a pretty centerpiece for our table.

We have been enjoying a beautiful fall and are looking forward to Thanksgiving!

 

Baby Gifts

Here are two baby gifts I made recently.

Little shoes for a neighbor's new baby girl:

Shoes and matching onsie dress for a cousin's sweet baby girl:

Fall/ Thanksgiving Banner

I took down my Halloween Banner, and needed something for the rest of fall. My friend had a bunch of this garland stuff around her house that looked so fun. She said they saw something like it at some store, but decided they could make it easily themselves. I decided to copy her idea! :)

To make it, I cut 1.5 inch strips from fall colored cardstock and cut the strips into 1.5 inch squares.

 

I made way more squares than I needed for the one banner. I will have to make a couple more! Then I just zig-zag stitched through the paper, overlapping slightly, hooking them all together in a line.

It really was simple to make, and I love the beautiful fall colors!

Halloween Costumes Part 4- Robin

This costume ended up being my favorite of the bunch. Maybe it is just because it looks so cute on my almost 2 year old. Just about any costume looks adorable on little kids, I think. They are so much fun to dress up! :)

So here is my little robin.

He was very good at flapping his wings and "caw"-ing like a bird.

We had people ask us if he was an owl or a Hokie (even more than 3 hours away, we are still in VA Tech country!). I think he is the cutest little robin ever, not that I am biased or anything. :)

The base of his costume is a brown hooded jacket. I just basted the face on the hood, which will be easy to take off, since I kind of like the jacket and will probably use it on its own. I cut out the wings, tail, and tummy out of some brown knit fabric (actually from a shirt I got at the goodwill outlet for less than a dollar) and some dark red fleece. Both fabrics don't fray, so I didn't have to worry about edges. Inspired by this cape on Etsy, I made the wings hook onto the tummy part. One of the shoulder straps velcros on, and it ties in the back at the waste. I put loops of the brown knit on the ends of the wings to hook onto his wrists. The wings are pinned to the top of the jacket so they wouldn't fall down, and the tail is just pinned on, too.

 

Halloween Costumes Part 3- Penguin

Here is my husband's penguin costume:

I found him a black coat at the Goodwill outlet (I only paid a little over a dollar for it). I was inspired by this costume on sale on Etsy for the hat. I found a black hat at the dollar store and sewed on scraps of fabric and ribbon that I had on hand. Pretty easy, and cheap!

Here's a better shot of the hat:

In case you missed them, you can see my son's bat costume here, my cat costume here, and come back tomorrow for my baby's robin costume.

PS Kathryn guessed our theme, batman, but with out the 'man' (or woman). :)