Oh goodness

We have had a couple of projects that we have worked on that have turned out a touch on the 'eh side.

First off we made Peepshi right after Easter (when there are loads of Peeps on sale). We found the idea at Serious Eats. Perhaps you are asking - what is Peepshi? Why duh. It's Peeps Sushi. And the thought of it amused me to no end.


Above is the picture of Serious Eats Peepshi. Very, very very lovely.

Here is our day of peepshi making:

Pretty sticky and I think the girls were fairly frustrated with the project. Worse yet. After about 20 minutes of working on this, the child that is not my daughter realized that since she just got spacers, she would not be able to enjoy the creation (due to all of the stickiness). Which, of course, made me feel horrible that I planned a fun thing that she could not eat.

The next craft that I thought would be super dooper easy. Ha!

Jelly Bean Bracelets.

Jelly Bean Day was the same day as Earth Day. Since I am not the hugest fan of nature (see Pave the Earth), I came across this activity when I was trying to figure out what else I could celebrate. The directions and fantastic pictures can be found at Sarah J.

Even as an adult I found the stringing of the plastic thread and the needle difficult. The girls found it more so. As indicated in Sarah J's post, you really do need to use the table to get the needle through the jelly beans. This put the girls at a disadvantage pretty quick, as you needed a moderate amount of strength to get the needle through.

The final result? Above. Very cute (Jelly Belly's have such prettttty colors).

Both were the sort of craft that look awesome -- but perhaps not for the younger girl.

Thanksgiving Fun

We are hosting Thanksgiving at our house. And that means the peanut and I must be kept occupied while the husband and my mother actually make the food. What are we going to be doing in the lead-up time? A whole lot of fun things.


I found these printable Thanksgiving themed fortune cookies on Kind over Matter. Being that it's Peyton and me, we will likely put something silly in there rather than nice, happy Thanksgiving messages.


The child will love the tiny cornucopias I found on My Insanity because they are the perfect size for her American Girl dolls. I think they are highly amusing because of their tiny-ness.


Oh Martha. These are a perfect centerpiece. Very retro. And, for once, it's a Martha Stewart project that I may have patience to make.


I believe the Oreo Truffle recipe that I found on Skip to my Lou is for kids. But I am reading the title as Easy Oreo Truffle for Andrea. This will be my second food contribution to Thanksgiving.

Craft 12 of 50. Decoupage Soaps

Oh this has to be about my favorite project to date. And soooooo easy too. As a matter of fact...everyone we know can expect a gift of soap in the near future. FINNALY a use for all of those hotel soaps I have taken over the years!

We found this project at CraftBits.


Glueing pictures we found on the interent to the Dollar Tree purchased soap.


Daddy even got into this one!


The final soaps!

As far as the girls review of the craft, the girls indicated that they felt this would be a better party favor than party activity. I would tend to agree unless all of the girls were going to print the exact same items on their soap.

Craft 11 of 50 American Girl Doll Shoes

Finally...we are back onto the summer of crafts...whoo hoo!

With the Emily Rose @ Home American Girl hullabaloo around the house I felt compelled to make an American Girl doll craft. We, and by we I mean I, settled on the shoes...we found this craft on the Doll Diaries site.



Some foam bottoms and some pretty ribbon.


Construction of the shoes.


A finished pair. Whoosh!

The girl thought this would make a great party activity if all the shoe and ribbon colors were the same, so other girls would not argue over colors.

Party Craft 10 of 50 Decorated Notebooks

Ooooh Boy. The altered notebooks were also inspired by Craft Bits
Walgreens is having a sale on little notebooks, so I picked up a few to decorate.


The girl picked out the scrapbooking paper they wanted to use and cut the paper down to size on their own.


In addition they were allowed to rummage through all of the craft materials and stickers in the house to use on their notebooks.


The final products. This took about 20 minutes, and they probably would have kept going if I wouldnt have kicked them out of the house to play outside in the sun.

Both girls found this project enjoyable and really like have notebooks they decorated themselves. They both indicated this would be a fun craft to make at a party.

Party Craft 9 of 50 Button Bracelets

This party craft was inspired by a suggestion from Craft Bits.


I purchased a bag full o' buttons from Crafts Etc in the scrapbook aisle. The bag provided brighter colors than I had at home and the bag provided so many more buttons than I would have been willing to spend money on should I have purchased the sewing department's buttons.


I would suggest dividing the buttons before setting them in front of the girls, otherwise you are setting yourself up for the "It's not fair she has____" mantra.


Putting the buttons on was the easy party. Tyeing the knot, meh, not so much.


The finished result.

I received mixed reviews on making the bracelets. One of the girls said it was fun and she loved the bracelet. The other one indicated that it was "too hard". I am not particuarily taking stock in that review as she seemed to be enjoying the project while we were in the middle of it.

Craft 7 of 50 Foaming Monster Puke Bubble Bath

The girls loved the name of this one, which is why I think they chose it. Even though all three are girlie girls, they still really enjoyed this project.


We found this party craft at Craftbits. All of the ingredients were available around our house and therefore a rather inexpensive craft.


The girls were able to measure out the main ingredients of liquid soap, olive oil and honey easily.


Plus they really enjoyed watching the different weights of the liquids blend, which honestly surprised me.


The final add-in was bugs (as monsters were not readily available). The review from the girls was that they would love to do this at a party and that it was very easy. I might suggest changing the soap colors for girls versus boys.

I look forward to how this actually works in the bathtub!

Party Craft 6 of 50 Flip Flop Decorations

I saved this project for visiting my parents so we could have other girls participate.


Flip flops and jewels to stick on the flip flops are very inexpensive at Michaels.


It's also one of the quickest party crafts known to man.


The flip flops can be personalized with each girls style


The review from the girls was that it was really easy and really fun, and that they would love to decorate flip flops at any party.

Party Craft 5 of 50 Ribbon headbands

These were easy and quick to make and the girls were excited to run out of the house wearing them. I do need to resolve how to keep the ribbon on for good however.


This project was inspired by the line in High School Musical 2 (Fabulous). We were initially going to use Tiffany color ribbon and make "Tiffany" headbands.



We did realized pretty quick in that we need to use all the kids hands, plus all of the adults that were in the house. This would make for a great parnter project, as basically you take ribbon and spin it around the headband. One person hold the start of it and the other wraps the ribbon.


The girls all indicated that they really like this project and that they would be really excited to make this at a party. I thought it was an inexpensive item that could work for a vairety of ages.

Lip Gloss Craft 4 of 50

This craft is from Family Fun

I wasn't very impressed with the final result this project. The girls, however, enjoyed making it AND have indicated they like the final result.


The girls liked mixing together the honey and shortening AND the kool aid and water.


With this project I let them do more of the measuring and mixing than I typically do, which could be one reason why they enjoyed it.


As you can see the final result is sort of a Kool Aid shortening blob. Perhaps if I had been able to locate some sort of dish or cup to place them I would have been happier. The girls greatly enjoyed putting the lip gloss on.

Body Glitter Craft 3 of 50

When my daughter got wind of Liiby Lu closing she was very distraught and I promised her we would mangage to figure out how to make everything that could be made at Libby Lu. This is the first item. The directions we used are somewhat based on an article from Suite 101.

The directions provided were much higher maintenance than I needed them to be, so I simply bought inexpensive aloe vera (which already includes gycerin) and was colored green.


I had the girls stir pink glitter into the aloe vera. Which made for a nice preppy look.


This was a fairly messy project, however the girls loved getting the body glitter all over themselves.


All three girls indicated this is a great party project. The project took about 20 minutes to make.


As far as storage I would have preferred some sort of cup with a cap, but we made do with the plactic capsule shown above.