Father's Day Car Massage

Benjamin was pretty excited when I told him what we were making Mike/Dad for Father's Day. It's hard for him to keep secrets and he almost lead his dad to the hiding place the day before.

We found this idea on Pintrest. It's a shirt with a road map on the back. The kids get to play on their dad while he gets to relax with a car massage. Mike thought it was a great invention.

Below is the print out of the road map with the shirt.

Here is more detail. I added a duck pond to give it an additional personalized touch for Mike.

The front of the shirt has a hand print of each of the boys. That was Ben's favorite part!

Both boys had a fun time with their dad. Happy Father's Day Mike! The boys sure do think you're the greatest!

Patriotic 4th of July Quilt

I am building my collection of themed quilts. I got the idea of this quilt on Pinterest, although I did lay out the squares in a different pattern.

I bought the fabric from JoAnn's. They had a nice selection of patriotic fabrics.

Putting the blocks together was very simple. I sewed strips together and cut into the size of squares I needed.

I tried laying out the blocks in different patterns and liked the way it looked with the chevron.

Again, this was a very easy pattern to put together.

Here's the finished quilt top ready to take to the quilter.

I had my machine quilter make a firework pattern with a variegated red,white and blue thread on the back. The backing is a white star on white, so the quilting shows up prettily with the simple fabric. Below are the details.

So happy that this quilt is done and I'm excited to display it come July.

Movie Tickets

I've been saving movie ticket stubs for years and I've been trying to think of how I'd like to display them for some time. I finally decided to search Pinterest for ideas and immediately liked what I found. It was going to be a lot quicker than the other project I'd been trying to formulate in my mind.

 

I bought a shadow box and 3-D stickers. I situated the stickers and tickets how I wanted for the background. Then I picked a few of the more memorable and colorful tickets to put in the front, and the rest are sandwiched in between. I'm happy about how it turned out!

 

Marble Paper Craft

Today we did a paper craft experiment with shaving cream and food coloring.

We put shaving cream in a pan and drops of food coloring. Ben mixed it in (I think his favorite part). Then got the card stock paper I prepped by putting tape on the backside.

He squished the paper in the shaving cream.

 Pulled it out and I scraped the shaving cream off.

We ended up with some cool marbling effects.

When we were done, Ben played with the leftover cream.

 He ended up with blue hands, but at least it was a clean mess.

Plus, I got a hand in the face along with a kiss and a hug for a fun time.

Valentine's Week

We had a week full of Valentine's fun and food. I let Benjamin pick the Valentine's he wanted to give to his preschool class and teacher. I tried to convince him to do something else, but he's a determined boy.

For his class, we made superhero lolly pops. I got to help out with the craft for his Valentine's Day party and helped pass out all the treats and cards. The superheros were a hit with all the kids. Benjamin knew what would make his classmates happy.

His teacher got a bouquet of cake pops. I've never made cake pops and after reading a few pins on Pintrest I figured I could manage my way through a batch. They are fairly time consuming, but not as complex as I thought they would be. I have dipped chocolates before, so that was helpful.

Benjamin did help by eating the sprinkles that didn't stick to the chocolate. He also helped bag the cake pops and eat a few of them.

The finished product was very festive.

 Our next project was to make some sugar cookies. We made a big one for Mike.

Ben helped draw the heart and spell his name.

We enjoyed several treats. Mike got me strawberries and a cupcake from Cravings. Yum!

We then enjoyed our traditional heart shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's. Throughout dinner Benjamin came around giving Mike, Levi and me hugs and kisses. I'm so happy that I have my family and hope they enjoy these memories we create together.