We Put Some Paint on Canvas...and it came out Awesome!

Sandra and Bryson came to visit us for about a week over the summer.  With their mother also being military, they don't live close enough to us, anymore. Which means that we don't get to see them nearly as often as we would like to these days.

When they come, we always try to make the best out of every trip.  We take short trips to theme parks, we go to the pool, go to the zoo, to the park, movies, whatever.  We just try to have as much fun as we can in those few short days with them.  The Sophster is always elated to have them here and then on the flip side, she is always devastated to see them have to go back to their mother's house.

We wanted to do something memorable for all of the kids while they were here this summer.  Something that they could take home with them and something that The Sophster would have here.  A reminder of the closeness of our family, even when we are far apart.

We decided on painting some canvas together.  I saw this idea on Pinterest a long time ago.  I think I even pinned it with something like "Will have to do this when the older kids are here", or something.

I showed it to The Mister, and of course, he decided that we could do it better.

So we did.

I ran out to the store to grab some canvas, which turned out to be on MAJOR sale!  I scored two 16x20 canvases for less than $6! Yes!  Then I came home and The Mister and I started brain storming about what we wanted to put on each canvas.  We knew that the canvas for Sandra and Bryson would hang in their play room at their mom's house, so we wanted something inspirational for them.  We decided to put "Dream BIG" on theirs and The Mister wanted to do an ocean scene on the other.

Sometimes that guy blows my mind with how crafty he can be!  I would have just sloppily put the masking tape in shapes of letters all over the canvas....he had another idea.

He took a piece of board that we had laying around, put a double layer of masking tape down, and carved the letters/shapes out with an exacto knife!  Clever guy, that one.  Knew I married him for some reason!

Next, we got the tape placed where we wanted it on the canvas.  He did a pretty awesome job, right??  I mean, can you believe that he cut all of that stuff out by hand?!  That dude is GOOD!

Can you just picture how great these will be??  I'm so excited right now.

We put some newspapers, cups of WASHABLE paint, and paint brushes down on the floor.  Then we put the two canvases down and let the kids go crazy!

After a minute, they were over the paint brushes and onto full on hand painting!

Almost done!

These are the hands and faces of some kids that have had a GREAT time making something together!

Remember how I said that the "Dream BIG" canvas was going home with Sandra and Bryson?  We thought it would be a neat idea for all three kids to put their handprint on that canvas.  So we painted a white hand on each kid and had them place their print down.

Then we wait for the paint to dry....we waited for what seemed like a lifetime....oh the anticipation could have just killed us.  The Mister did cheat and pull some tape before it dried....bad Mister!

Here's what they looked like after they dried and we peeled the tape...

Oh but we weren't done yet!  We took the "Dream BIG" canvas outside for a smelting of glitter!  The Mister outlined the words and patterns with some glue and made a glue border.  Then we gave each kid a cup of glitter and let them, once again, go crazy!  

Ready to see how it came out???  Of course you are!  Left is right after they threw the glitter on, and the right is after we shook it off {the final product!}.

Crappy cell phone pics aside, it looks AWESOME, right??   It now hangs proudly in the kids' playroom at their mom's and they still talk about how much fun they had making it.  Win!

As for the one that would stay with us, I carried it upstairs to my crafting area and hot glued some seashells all across the bottom, so it could have a sea floor. :)  

As most parents would be, we are so proud of the art that the creative minds of our children created that day!  The ocean canvas hangs right above my crafting/our office space, and we get to look at it any time we are here at our computers, or upstairs playing/crafting with The Sophster.  They are very precious works of art. :)

What are some of your favorite crafts?  Do you think this might be something you would do with your kids?  What are some favorite things that your littles have created for you?

Fall Tree Craft: Bringing Nature Indoors

Oh hello there, readers of this blog.  You may have all thought that I disappeared into the abyss, but alas, here I am!  Actually, if you've been following this blog you will know that I take time off occasionally.  Either way, I took the latter part of the summer off and now....cue music....I'm back!  From outer space!

Anyway, it's Fall here in Northern Florida, and by Fall I mean that the leaves are falling down and it is still 90 flipping degrees outside every.single.day!  Do you think some of you could send some cooler weather this way?  My boots and sweaters are BEGGING to be worn!

We did get one nice cool day....one.  I quickly threw The Sophster into a pair of leggings, boots, and a {light weight} hoodie and she was actually able to stay in it for most of the day!  We spent the day outside picking flowers and playing in the yard at Granny's.  :)

We have also been to a couple of pumpkin patches this year.  The Sophster is seriously so so much fun right now with all of the Fall/Halloween festivities.  I'm saving most of the news on this for another post {that's right...I'm not doing one post and then disappearing again! You've got me for at least three...lolz}.  I do want to share a couple of my favorites from the first "Puntin' Patch" {<~~Sophster}

Family Pic {I'm in so much love with this!}:

The girl with her cousin.  Belly laughs are contagious!

But that's not what you're here for, is it???  You want to see what we did for our favorite fall craft, don't you?  Ok here we go, then.

Fall Tree Craft:Bringing Nature Inside

What you'll need:

• Leaves, twigs, acorns, whatever you want to bring in from outside.  I don't recommend squirrels. Those bastards are crazy.
• Washable paint {for the tree trunk/branches}
• Paper
• Glue
• A toddler looking for a good time

So we went for a walk one day.  We had to be on base for some reason or the other and The Sophster wanted to go play in the field full of old airplanes and helicopters.  She loves that stuff.  We played there for a bit and then she decided she wanted to go to the playground, which was just a short walk.  So we set off on foot.  The pathway to the playground is lined in several different types of trees and they had all started dropping their leaves, so of course we had to stop and investigate!  We found leaves of different sizes and colors.  Even found some baby acorns on twigs and an oak leaf with a little fuzzy thing on it!  Anyway, I had no idea what we would do with all of these leaves {I'm not crafty by nature}, but The Sophster insisted that we bring them home....and I hate to disappoint that girl, so bring them home we did.

They sat outside on a shelf in our garage for several days when I thought I remembered seeing something somewhere about using your kids arm/hand as a paint brush and making a tree!  Heck yes I did!  This is what we were going to do!  Oh man...The Sophster was so excited when I told her we get to paint her ARM!  WOAH!  

Here's what we did.  I sat her at her table in the middle of the room, painted her forearm and hand with brown washable paint, then pressed her arm/hand down onto the paper.  Then, I had her do a couple more handprints to make the branches of the tree.  I ended up going over the "trunk" more with a paintbrush because Sophi's arm is so tiny that it looked like some giant branches on a wimpy little tree.  No, my kid's arm is not really that fat. ;)

At this point, you kind of let your toddler take the reigns and get creative on where and how each piece of nature will be placed on their paper.  The Sophster loved picking on her own and telling me exactly where each thing would go.

We have used the glue stick many many times, but this is the first time that The Sophster has used a bottle of glue.  I have to say, I was pretty impressed with her ability to hold the giant bottle of Elmer's, glue a straight line onto a leaf, and hardly make a mess!  

This was a relatively quick craft to do, but we had so much fun!  

Once the glue dried, I made sure that all of the pieces were secured, The Sophster helped me pick out a nice spot on her playroom wall, and we hung it.  We actually did this craft a couple of weeks ago, and she still wants to show it to everyone who comes over! 

The final product, on the wall:

What do you think?  Does this seem like something you would do with your kids?  What kinds of fall crafting projects have you been up to?  

Spring Wreath Making: Our First Pinterest Party!

The Sophster and I had so much fun last week! We got together with a couple of our fellow squadron wives and had our first ever Pinterest Party! We made Spring wreaths, got caught up on life, laughed, let the babies play and definitely got some good quality girl time in. It's always so nice to be around grown people, especially these girls. I feel so refreshed today and can't wait to see what our next Pinterest Party will be!

Have you done a Pinterest Party? What theme did you go with? Do you plan on doing another one? I would love to plan some type of Pinterest Party link up, if anyone is interested. We are talking about doing our next one in April some time.

Also, check out my sweet friend, Lashon {pictured here} over at My Crazy Life as a Navy Wife for lots of great inspirational posts. :)