Art Club: Salt dough and Sharpie Doodle Shirts

For our second Art Club we started with making sharpie dyed shirts. This is such a super fun technique! And so great for kids (and adults!) of all ages.

This was a practice/example shirt I made.

Seriously, I could sit around doodling on shirts or my socks or pillowcases or...well, just about anything....all day. Really. Give me a few snacks. Pop in a fun movie like My Big Fat Greek Wedding or, my latest favorite, Austenland. And hand over the sharpie. Yep. I'd be set for a doodling marathon.

You can check out my tutorial for this project here. The only difference is that while some of the kids used cups, others drew free hand. I loved seeing what they came up with!

Next we got busy with salt dough. Oh! This stuff makes me feel a bit nostalgic. My mom made this for us all the time. In fact, I don't think she ever bought store bought play dough. But she was always mixing up a batch of this stuff for my friends and I. 

Have I mentioned how awesome my mom is? Yep. She really is. 

Salt Dough 

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 water

Mix it all together. Voila! You've got salt dough. Tough stuff, right?

For Art Club I made a giant batch of this stuff. I think I used about 8 cups of flour, 4 cups of salt and 4 cups of water.

I got out a bunch of rubbers stamps, play dough tools, rolling pins, toothpicks and other random things we found around the the house and let the kids go wild with them. 

I lined cookie sheets with wax paper and the kids put their projects on them to dry when they were finished. 

We had a few minutes left at the end so first we played a few drawing games. The blind drawing game is definitely a favorite. 

And then we broke out the pipe cleaners again.

This Art Club thing is so fun!

Invitation to Play: Straw Rocket Races

Now this was fun. 

I mean, of course rockets are fun. Duh. But I had no idea just how much fun the kids would have with this project. I mean, I think they would've made rockets all day if possible.

I set everything up for this Invitation to Play on the table and told the kids when they were done with their chores and stuff (they each have a list of things they need to do each day) then they could come make straw rockets. 

Later, after their dad surprised them by coming home with his horse to give them and some friends rides in an empty field nearby, the kids got busy. 

And their friends joined in on the fun!

Everyone made their rockets and then they lined up in our living room. I said "Ready, set....blow!" Sam was the first winner. 

Then they all scurried off to make improvements to their rockets or make new ones. I gave them a certain amount of time to work and then we had another race. Over and over again. It was so great! 

There was a lot of laughter. And cheering. And busy hands being creative. 

Which is lovely. 

Straw Rockets

Straws

Tape 

Crayons

Paper rectangles (wide enough to wrap around the straw and as long as you want) 

Color the paper rectangles. Form into a tube. Tape together. Fold down the top and tape. Slip your straw rocket onto your straw and blow! 

Try experimenting. The kids cut slits in the bottom of their rockets. They tried using two straws. They attached a small paper airplane to a tube. See what you can come up with! 

Sam is a little red in the face since he was chopping weeds
right before the big races.

Tie Dyed Fireworks Tee

So. 

We don't often go out in public in matching shirts. For that matter, we don't usually do it at home either. 

BUT when an arts project results in awesome shirts like this...then, yes. We're going to strut around town in them.

Please ignore my we-are-going-to-be-late-and-lose-our-good-spot-mom hair. With a pen sticking out of my ponytail, too. *sigh* It's a miracle my family allows me to be seen in public with them.

Anyway, yesterday was Pioneer Day! And if you live anywhere other than Utah...you probably don't have a clue what I'm talking about. 

It's a lovely day full of bonnets, wagons, throwing candy and remembering the hard work and sacrifice of the Mormon pioneers who made the long trek to settle in Utah. Yep. Because nothing says, "Thank you, pioneers!" quite like chucking candy at small children. 

In celebration of this important holiday we made fireworks tees. We tried this technique at Art Club recently and I thought it would make a fun patriotic shirt, too. This idea came to me on July 4th when I was perusing their aisles and saw the t-shirts on sale. Too bad I didn't think of it, say, on the 2nd, eh? Oh well, there's always next year. 

(If you want to skip past all the chatter to the instructions for making these awesome tie dyed fireworks shirts, go ahead. I won't judge.) 

One of our fun traditions for the fourth of July and Pioneer Day is to go a little bit early for the parade, grab our favorite seat and then eat a picnic breakfast together. This year it was bananas, yogurt, juice and powdered donuts. 

I think Molly liked the powdered donuts.

That picture is what happens when I let my teenager use my phone. Wow. Such a nice and flattering shot of me, son. Thanks. 

I love watching the sweet relationship between my oldest and my youngest. Imagine a world where every teenager had to help take care of a wee little sibling AND was also fiercely loved by that small creature. That would be amazing. 

Ok. Onto the instructions....

Tie Dyed Fireworks Tee

Supplies: 

Cotton shirt

Red and blue sharpies

Rubbing alcohol

Rubber bands 

Eye dropper or snot sucker (hmmm...I'm not sure what the real name is of those things) 

Disposable cups or yogurt containers in various sizes

This is such an easy project. Take the cups and put them into the shirt, maybe about three at a time. Pull some of the fabric over the cup and then use a rubber band to hold it in place. 

Now color the fabric circle with the sharpies. Try lines, squiggles, dots, hearts....anything you can dream up! 

After you're done with a circle, drop rubbing alcohol on in the middle of it. Start with a little and go from there. The alcohol will probably spread farther than you think it will.

Let it dry, take cups out, move to a new spot and repeat until you have as many fireworks as you want. 

We found that lines and dots end up looking like fireworks the most, once they've had alcohol put on them. But random scribbling is fun, too!

Now, to set the colors. We tried heat setting some different shirts we did and then washing them. But....sadly, some of the colors faded. So, I'm going to try ironing our fireworks shirts really good to see if that helps set the colors better. 

Every now and then we even get my cute husband to do art projects with us....

Dying Patterned Fabric

I am a huge fan of Refashionista's blog and the crazy incredible things she does with a pair of scissors, a sewing machine and loads of Rit dye. I mean, seriously, that chickadee is amazing. 

My favorite thing I've learned from her is....

You can dye patterned fabric!

Ok. The rest of the world is probably thinking, "Well, duh." But this was news to me. I mean, I'd just never thought about it. 

So, when I stumbled across this fun skirt at a thrift store today for $5 (sorry, blurry pic)....

and it fit and I liked the styl and I can never have enough skirts, but I wasn't super keen on the print. So, I grabbed two bottles of denim blue Rit dye at Walmart...

headed home, popped it into a small load in my washing machine with hot water, threw in the dye and two cups of salt and...

Voila! I love it. (Although it's not this purple in real life!) 

I can't wait to wear it. 

Art Club

I have been wanting I do more art with my kids for awhile.

So, I started an Art Club. 

I was pinning and pinning and pinning all sorts of fun and artsy projects. I'd been collecting arts and crafts books for ages. And I'd done a fair amount of projects with my kids. 

But every summer I planned to do more.

And then I didn't. 

But art is soooo important! I want my kids to have the opportunity to create and dream and express new ideas, to work on something that doesn't have a right or wrong answer and to gain confidence in their creative choices. 

An awesome friend of mine, Elaine, started a super fun book group for kids last summer. I'm thrilled my kids get to be involved in it. And not only do they get exposed to new and interesting books and get to participate in fun book-related activities, it got me thinking...

What if I did something similar? But all about art? An Art Club? I could invite some of their friends. Then it would be on our calendar. I'd be commited. 

And because I'm impulsive, I jumped right into it. I sent Facebook messages to the mommas of my kids' friends. Kids came. And we made art! 

For our first meeting, I decided to start small. I wasn't totally sure how many kids were going to come.  We began with some drawing games.

I love drawing games! 

The first one we did, The Scribble Game,  involved scribbling all over a piece of paper. And then they passed that paper to their neighbor. Next they looked for images in the scribbles. You know, like when you're staring at a textured wall or floor with random squiggles and suddenly you realize a face is staring back at you? Your brain has organized the mess into something? Right? (Or is that just me?)  And when they found something, they outlined it with a sharpies.

The other drawing game we played, which produced a lot of giggles, was the Blind Art Game. Everyone closed their eyes and I described a scene...

Draw a house. Add the windows and the doors. Now draw a tree and a bird sitting in the branches....

I loved the moment when they opened their eyes and looked at what they'd created. Ha!

Next we made mosaics of our names using bright pieces of torn construction paper.

Next I gave each of the kids a paper divided into triangles (sorry! No picture of this one). And then I told them to fill in each of the triangles with drawings to represent the things about them that makes them special and unique. 

When there was about twenty minutes left, I got out a big drawer full of pipe cleaners. We sat on the ground and made stuff. 

I loved watching what the kids came up with! Crowns, hand cuffs (or ankle cuffs), people and unicorn horns. 

Then one girl started making guns from Despicable Me. And they were off....fart guns, freeze rays....you name it, they can probably make it out of pipe cleaners. 

I love, love, love how a group of kids (or adults, for that matter) feed off of each other's creativity. You never know what they'll come up with next. For instance...

Here's Sam as an undercover unicorn Greek god. Awesome. 

doodley embroidery

I love to embroider.

But I'm a total beginner. I've embroidered, like, 3 projects in probably 10 years. It's just not something I've made time for, but I love the look of it and I'd love to do more (loads and loads) of it.

A few years ago, on a whim, I bought this fun book...

Doodle Stitching.  And it is awesome. I love the fun projects. And I love Aimee Ray's approach to embroidery. Doodling. Brilliant. 

And I love to doodle, as illustrated by my latest writing notebook. 

So, months and months (and months) ago (before Rory was born), I took a jean jacket of Zoe's and got busy. I didn't plan anything. I just started doodling. With thread....

It was super fun! It's an excellent thing to do while watching a movie. And isn't this such a great way to upcycle a coat? Or imagine what you could do to jean pockets. (I'm kind of excited by the possibilities. Yep. I love embroidery.)

Next...that jacket got plopped in a plastic box and shoved into a corner. We had Rory, school started, I attempted to shower more than once a week (sometimes failing), winter came, Christmas chaos and then, finally, a few weeks ago I worked on it some more. 

I'm happy as a lark about that butterfly. Oh, and I love how the words turned out there above the sun. You can't see them too well in the picture, but it says, "hello sunshine". 

It's not done. I still want to add all sorts of things to it. I want it to be really colorful and fun. But Zoe wanted to wear it anyway. 

She told me after the first day she wore it to school, that she went around showing everyone the back and saying, "My mom made it." 

Cute girl. 

Molly is anxiously awaiting for me to start hers. Luckily, I have a jean jacket all ready for it. She's requested a mermaid and a girl playing on the playground. Hmmmm. This will be interesting. 

our present ball tradition

A friend asked me about this funny tradition of ours the other day. After telling her all about our present ball she decided to try it this year. And I thought it would be a great thing to blog about, just in case anyone else wants to give this nutty, chaos-inducing tradition a shot.

So, here's the general idea. We save all the wrapping paper from holidays and birthdays all year long, wrapping and wrapping it all around a present. And then on New Year's Day we make a game of it and tear it open.

Now for more of a detailed explanation. 

On Christmas we save all the paper and ribbon. We stuff it in bags or boxes and then it gets shoved to a corner in the food storage room in the basement. Then I forget about it for awhile. But when I run downstaris for a can of corn or black beans I see the bags and remember. At some point I actually think to pick up prizes for the middle of our new ball. (Obviously this may not be the best way to go about doing this.)

Finally I take some time and get wrapping! And our new present ball is begun.

Then throughout the year I continue to add to it. After someone's opened all their birthday presents, we stuff the used paper into a bag. Sometimes I ask the kids to add the next layers. They quite like it!

Finally, on New Year's Day we play a crazy game.

You'll need:

Pair of dice
Two cooking spoons or oven mitts
A massive present ball


Gather your posse in a circle. The first person rolls the dice, hoping for doubles. If they don't get them then they pass the dice to the next person. The first person to get doubles gets to start opening the present ball. But, of course, if they used just their hands it would be waaaaaaay too easy. No, this needs to be a challenge. We've been saving that paper ALL YEAR! We're going to make this game take a bit more time.

So, they must either don oven mitts or use spoons (or maybe even both!) to unwrap the present. While they're going to town, tearing paper and throwing it willy nilly through the air, the rest of the eager participants continue to roll the dice, hoping for doubles and then passing them onto the next person.

Whoever gets the next doubles gets to take over the fun task of relieving the ball of its paper. This continues until, finally, someone manages to get to the middle. Then...Eureka! Whoever gets their first, wins the contents.

Now, a word about that center. It wouldn't be too much fun for all the participants if just one person won, right? So, we like to put some suprises in the center for everyone and then one fun thing for the winner. This last year I put punching balloons, chocolates (this would not normally be the case....but I didn't get the present ball wrapped until...THE DAY WE DID IT! Yes. That whole having-a-baby-thing put me a bit behind last year.) and a package of scented markers.

So, who won this last year? (well...it was New Year's Day....so, this year!)

It was Molly.

And there just might have been a bit of help from her cute brothers in that matter.

one of the happiest families on earth

Holy Hannah! We were so excited to get to this place. We started planning this trip early on last year. I didn't want to buy the kids loads of things for Christmas, toys and more clothes and all the other stuff they don't really need. It all just ends up under their beds or pushed into closets anyways. I wanted to take that moula and put it towards a fun trip to Disneyland instead. I'd much rather have great memories than more things. Luckily, I got Ryan on board with the idea. And then it was easy peasy to convince the kiddos. 

But we didn't want to go at Christmas time because it would be way tooooo busy. So, we went at the end of January instead. 

And, boy, did we have fun!

Molly didn't remember our last trip, so this was like her first time! She was over-the-moon, bouncing-off-the-walls excited.

First up, Space Mountain!!! Yes. We were slightly thrilled about this prospect. Oh my. This is our very favorite ride! Sadly, Molly was still too small for it. And since Ryan gets motion sickness, he held Rory (although we got him on it later on in the vacation and it didn't make him sick! Although...he didn't want to go on it again). 

We must have jumped on the Haunted Mansion, at least, a thousand times. Seriously! I have no idea how many times we rode this. The kids love it. And it's one we could all go on, Rory included. Although I'm 

not so sure how much he loved it. 

Especially when we got stuck on it for about 15 minutes. Ack! We were right near a ghost jumping up from behind a grave, too. Molly just stared at it. It was totally freaking her out! I didn't want to go on that thing again. And I didn't think she'd ever want to, either. But she did! The very next day we were back on it again. 

It was so great going at this time of year! We walked onto most of the rides. There were hardly any lines. It was awesome!

The kids got into a bit of pin trading. That was something new for us and totally fun. 

Grizzley Rapids. Weston's favorite ride at California Adventure. He went on this with a lot...with his brothers, with everyone and even running off to go do it by himself a few times! 

Molly wasn't tall enough though. So, we watched for them. And, of course, I took pictures of her....

I asked each of the girls what kind of princess dress they wanted me to make for them. Molly chose Ariel's pink dress. 

This little girl was (mostly) so good and patient about the rides she couldn't go on. I think it helped that we prepared her for it. I showed her pictures of the rides she could ride and we talked about them. And I warned her there were some she couldn't do. 

The Ladybug ride was the one she was most excited to try! And look at that face! Yes. She was definitely loving it.

Zoe asked me to make her Sleeping Beauty's dress. So, our girls were very very pink for one of the days. 

Oh! I love this family of mine. I love that we were able to take this crazy fun trip together. And I love the memories we built.

We splurged and took the family to Ariel's Grotto for lunch one day. The girls loved meeting so many princesses at once. They chatted with each of them and got their autographs and pictures taken with them. It was great!

Although Rory wasn't too impressed with those sparkly-dressed ladies. 

Maybe it's crazy to bring a baby along to Disneyland, but I think he had fun! In other news, I have no idea what Ryan was looking at. 

California Screamin' Oh my! Zoe was really looking forward to this. She was finally tall enough for this ride and she could. not. wait. And her brothers were pretty excited, too. 

And I think the next picture speaks for itself about whether or not they enjoyed the ride...

We even managed to convince Ryan to go on that one later. And he loved it! It didn't even make him sick! So, he went on it again. I was so happy he could ride it! 

I love this blurry shot of my little princess. This was her for almost the whole entire trip. She practically danced everywhere! I have this lovely, snapshot of a memory of her walking down the Disneyland Main Street toward the exit on our first night. All the bright lights were shining. We'd had a great day. And we were definitely under that magical Disney spell. Molly danced and twirled down that twinkle lit street, parading along, happy as a lark. Everything was completely perfect and wonderful in her life. It was the best.

These boys went on the Grizzley Rapids quite a bit together. I love that they were able to spend time together, laughing and having fun. 

Family trips are the very very best.