Handmade Christmas Gifts

My boys and I made a few handmade Christmas gifts this year.

First, my gift to my parents was a set of place cards. My mom likes to set out name cards for meals whenever she has lots of us visiting. I designed them on Photoshop, printed them out and laminated them.

Each of my siblings' families has a different design. Six of us, plus a different design for my parents. I also made two blank ones that can be written on in dry erase marker if they have any visitors. I wasn't sure how the laminated paper would work to fold, but I just scored one side lightly with my scissors and then folded them over and they worked great!

My 11 year old son has been wanting to learn how to embroider. I taught him as we made these pillow cases for his grandmas. I thought he did a really good job.

Besides a basic stem stitch, he also learned a french knot for the eyes of the penguin and the berries around the wreath, and a detached single chain for the leaves.

He was going to do the sewing too, but we ran out of time. So, I sewed up the pillow and made the pillow case an envelope back.

My 8 year old son made these ornaments for his grandmas. He did most of the sewing by hand by himself.

A Christmas tree for my mom:

A Mickey Mouse gingerbread man went to my mother-in-law who only has Disney ornaments on her tree - he wanted to make sure it would fit in!

My 5 year old also wanted to sew something for his grandmas. He's just learning, so I just taught him how to sew on buttons - to make a penguin and a snowman. I did the rest of the sewing.

The last ornament I made out of felt for a neighbor:

PJ Mask Birthday Party

My preschooler turned 5! He has really gotten into PJ Masks lately and wanted a PJ Mask party. 

He had already decided to be Catboy for Halloween, so I made him his costume early (more about that later).

He wanted a PJ Mask cake with all the symbols of the characters on it. 

The kids made bracelets with their favorite character: catboy, owlette, or gecko. 

We made a cardboard box HQ so they could use their super gecko strength to lift it. 

HQ had been taken by Romeo and they had to carry it back across the city.

I didn't get pictures of the other activities, but they also used their super catboy speed to run and diffuse some bombs planted by Luna Girl (they had to pop some balloons with candy inside). Then they flew like owlette to save the city from the night ninjas (they shot nerf guns at some blue balloons). 

Fall Leaves

It doesn't really look like fall here the desert, so we had to make our own fall leaves. 

What started as a project with my preschooler, was joined in by my older boys, too. It's always fun to find something they all like to do. 

We cut coffee filters into leaf shapes, colored them with markers, then lightly sprayed them with water to get the colors to blend together. 

Then I taped them on a string to make a nice little fall banner. 

We even got a couple of Jack-o-lanterns 🎃 in there.

Letter I

Letter I is for igloo and icecream.

Letter H

Letter H is for hippo, and a happy hairy horse (had to get some good alliteration in there. ;) )

Letter G

Letter G is for gumballs and guitar. 

My son loves the little green dot bingo marker we have. You will see that show up on a lot of his crafts. :)

Letter F

Letter F is for feet and feathers.

Summer Fun Activities

Here are a few activities my kids wanted to do this summer.

We finally jumped on the slime bandwagon. We used the recipe from Elmer's.

We made blue slime with glitter in it.

We made some oobleck.

We actually made this several times. The bowl of cornstarch would dry out and we would just re-hydrate it and play again. I love it when something is fun for all of my boys to play. Both the slime and the oobleck was enjoyed by all three of them.

We made some fireworks in a jar.

It was fun and cool to watch, although it didn't last as long as playing with the slime or oobleck.

Letter E

Letter E is for elephant and Elmo.

Letter D

 D is for Darth Vader and dinosaur.

Letter C

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Letter C is for caterpillar and cat. #lettercraft

Letter B is for black bear and blue bird

Letter B is for black bear and blue bird. #lettercraft 

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Letter A is for ants and apple.

I have done letter crafts with all of my boys as preschoolers as they have started getting more interested in letters and their sounds. I started with son number 3 a few months ago. Letter A is for ants and apple. #lettercraft

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Window Collages

This was a fun afternoon activity for my two boys.

Window Collages:

To make, I cut out squares of clear contact paper. Then, I drew a shape for them to fill in. Then I let them have at it with a bunch of flower and star shapes I had cut out for scrapbooking, sticking them on the contact paper. You could easily use regular hole punch circles in different colors, too. Then stick them to the window.

Olympics Crafts

Lower Case Z

 Little z for zipper: