Lemonade Stand

 

For K*'s 8th birthday, I talked my father-in-law into helping me build a lemonade stand using Ana White's plans lemonade stand for Grace's town collection.

 

It took about 2 hours and 45 minutes from start to clean up to build.

I mainly stood there trying to look useful while my father-in-law did all the work; but it was fun to be a little bit helpful at times.  He built it just how I was picturing it, I'm so happy with how it turned out!

 

 

I had him modify the plans a little as you can see from the photos.  A 1x16 was used for the top and sides to give it a little more depth.  We cut the sides at 29" tall so that it is just under 30" high and can be used with a regular chair.  The shelves are 1x6's since we made it a little deeper.  The banner posts are 1x2's that are 6' tall.

It seemed to take a lot of time to fill in holes, sand, prime and paint over a couple of days as I had time at night or while K* was at school.  Maybe it was the drying time, it was so humid out.

 

 

 

I plan to make several banners, both paper and fabric, for various stands.

Ice Cream Shoppe, Bake Shoppe, Flower Shoppe, Café, Paper Creations....

 

All the banner supplies are from Hobby Lobby.  The font for lemonade is Frosty.  The letters are about 3" tall.  The pennants are about 6 1/4" not counting the tabs.  I cut it all out on my silhouette.

 

Father's Day Scrabble Board & Tie Card

 

Father's Day scrabble board.

 

For an activity days activity earlier this month, we made scrabble boards as a Father's Day gift.

Using foam boards I cut into 10 x10 squares, the girls cut 12x12 scrapbook paper down to size and glued it onto the board.  Then using a planning sheet I printed out, they figured out what words they wanted to use and how they wanted to lay them out.  The tan squares are 1 inch square written on with a black marker using scrabble letter values with the letters and adhered with a foam sticker thing to add some dimension. All the supplies needed were on sale at Hobby Lobby, yay,  so it didn't cost much.

 

Some ideas here, and here.

 

We also made tie cards.

Directions here and here.

I used the printout from A Day in My Life so that the girls could make them at home too.

 

There are some cute google card ideas here and here.

Easter Banner

Easter banner made by my mom.

It's so happy, bright and colorful! 

If I weren't trying to figure out an Easter dress for K* I might have made one for myself.

Photo Booth Props

 

Last week my friend came over and we cut out photo booth props for the upcoming Spring activity at the elementary school.  She took most of them home with her, but I snapped a shot of the few I finished up after she left.  She's going to laminate them and then attach them to sticks. We cut out hats, cowboy hats, lips, mustaches, crowns, glasses, bow ties, ties and thought bubbles {she's going to laminate those and then you can write on them with a dry erase marker}.

This blog post by kensi kate is where all of the fun & free prop images came from.  I traced them with my silhouette software and cut them out on card stock.

Valentine's 2013

 

o "fish" ally the best idea from eighteen25.

I formatted my own, but she made a printable you can use. 

And a great compilation of valentine ideas at simply kierste.

ah-MAZE-ing valentine printable from balancing home. 

This is what S* & K handed out to their classes.  K* wanted to add hearts to the pencils to make them look like arrows {like they do on balancing home} but I was feeling a bit lazy, so we just did plain pencils.  I did happen to have 4 boxes of 12 pencils already in my office supply stash, so no running to the store was necessary to make these.

 

And some more fun Valentine decor my mom made:

Chore Card booklets

 

During January, we talked with S* & K* a lot about being responsible.

 

{I deleted a long winded few paragraphs here.  It felt good to type some thoughts out, but then I decided to keep them to myself so this post wouldn't be so long and boring.  Mainly, the classic struggle of parenting and that I don't want to disservice my children by not letting them learn to be responsible and motivated in life.}

 

So, I made up these chore card booklets for them.

 

I thought it would be helpful to have down what is really expected of them each morning, afternoon, evening, daily, weekly, etc.... I also thought that they might like to have a place listing various activities they have, what time they need to be ready so we can leave and what they need to have with them to be prepared.  I don't have to tell them, they can look ahead and know.  Hopefully this will mean I won't be "nagging" or "refereeing" as much.  And that I will have to let the natural consequences of not being prepared teach them lessons instead of me always trying to make it all perfect.  This of course assumes they will even look at the booklet and want to mark things off.  The booklet lists several things in certain areas because I want them to feel like they are making progress each day by being able to check things off.  Who doesn't love checking things off on a "to do" list !?! And hopefully in the future, they'll do these things automatically out of habit{most of the time anyway}.

 

 

With some of the leftover paper scraps I made these bookmarks with my silhouette and a Patty Young bookmark file.

 

Which, I then placed in these Valentine's mailbags{another item found in storage!!} that I made previously.  I tie them on the backs of S* & K*'s kitchen chairs at the beginning of February and they have fun putting little notes in there for each other. I try to put little things in there for them to find after school most days.  I just LOVE Valentine's Day.

There is something in each day

 

Covered 3x5 spiral memo books with some scrapbook paper with a printed quote (love ya like a sister is the font) and tied some green raffia around them for our activity day activity later today.

 

We are going to be talking about "before you speak THINK" and how our speech reflects the kind of person we are.  Along with that, being grateful with a challenge to write something they are grateful for every day for the rest of the year.  I printed off this handout here for the girls to put somewhere to remind themselves to think about the things they say each day.  We will also give each of the girls a few note cards to write thank you notes throughout the month.  If there's time leftover, we'll play some sort of Article of Faith game.

 

"There is something in each day that can bring gratitude and joy if only we will see and appreciate it" is from Dieter F. Uchtdorf's Of Regrets and Resolutions.

 

 

Goldfish Valentines

got the idea for these goldfish valentines at faboolous

Last week I bought some mini bags of goldfish at Target for the kids to hand out at school on Valentine's day.  I was looking for swedish fish, but decided this would be a better option.  On Friday I figured I better get going on the valentine part, so I turned these drawings into silhouette files for my silhouette to cut out using the trace function.  I've never done that before and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  I finally created my own silhouette file!  I started out with it as a fishbowl card, but that was going to use up a lot more white paper, so I made tags instead.  And it was really nice to not cut out 40 fishbowls & water and 80+ small goldfish by hand.  The font for "glad we're in the same school" is pea noodles.

Saturday, I had the kids write their classmates names on the front and then their own name on the back under the "school" saying.

Staple them to a valentine mini bag of goldfish and we're set.

Some free printable ideas here, here and here.  I know there are loads of other ideas and freebies out there, but I thought I'd just mention these few since they were found through the site I got the goldfish idea from.

Oh Yeah.  I also made these two valentine cards really quick Thursday (15 minutes before school got out) so my kids could mail them to their aunt on our way home from piano.  I copied a pin on pinterest to make them(or see below).  I can see how red (or any color) not white is a better choice for the paper the peeks through the hearts.  But they were quick, easy and cute as I was heading out the door.

Thankful leaves banner

I saw the idea for this thankful leaves banner on Carina Gardner's site a few days ago.  Today, I sat down and made it with the kids before lunch after making Indian headbands with paper feathers.  I cut the leaves out by hand out of yellow, golden yellow, orange and red card stock using the template Carina provides.  It didn't take long to make. K* was taking her time writing on her first leaf and S* was busy in the living room, so I just cut them out myself.  And I just happened to have a stash of mini clothespins in my crafty supplies to use to hang the leaves up.  We decided to hang it in the window in the kitchen.  I figure we haven't been doing it all of November, but a few days the week of Thanksgiving break will still be fun.  I'm glad we sat down and did it this morning.

Some links to other fun thankful ideas I thought about doing, but never got around to.  A thankkful board. A thankful tree.  Another thankful tree. And another tree.  Some sort of thankful turkey would be a cute idea too!