Dinosaur Eggs

I made some dinosaur eggs for the kids' Easter baskets and they turned out really cute.  I used this basic recipe:

1 cup used coffee grounds
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup sand
3/4 cup water

Then, because I had more dinosaurs to hide than this batch would make, I added about the same amounts of everything, but omitted the coffee grounds because I was out.  Once I shaped the "egg" around the little plastic dinosaur (purchased at the dollar store) I placed them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and baked them in the oven on 175 for about an hour.  It dried out the tops nicely, then I flipped them over and tried to get the bottoms to dry.  When we opened them, we discovered that the insides were still a little soft, but they were still plenty difficult for the kids (ages almost 5 and 2) to break into.

The dinosaur eggs in the Easter basket.

First, we tried banging them on the driveway.

Then we discovered that standing on them worked better to crack them.

Dorothy tries the brute strength method.

Malcolm shows off his first discovery.  He was pretty unimpressed with having dinosaur eggs in his Easter basket (where are the toys?) until he discovered there were things inside.

Dorothy finally broke one of hers apart.

Once he figured out how to get them open, he had no trouble.

One of my favorite things was when the kids were shouting out, "Parasaurolophus!" when they would uncover that kind of dinosaur. Please excuse how silly I sound, but here is a video.

Animal Headbands

Dorothy loves to accessorize, so for her birthday, we are giving her a dress-up box with lots of fun accessories.  In addition to sunglasses, bracelets, and necklaces, I made her a set of headbands so that she can be some of her favorite critters.

Once I figured out the templates, these were surprisingly easy to make.  I drew out the shape that I wanted, then added a half-inch rectangle to the bottom.  I placed the rectangle on the fold of the felt and cut out my shapes.  The ears wrap around the headband.  I stitched along the headband first, then around the outside of the ears and I hot glued the center part of the ears.

Since her birthday isn't for about two weeks, I enlisted Mr. Bear to model the ears.

Meow.

The rabbit ears have a pipe cleaners in them to help them stand up.

I wish I had put the mouse ears a little farther apart, but they are still cute.

The lion one cracks me up.  Roar!  It's going to be so cute on her.

I had one headband left in my pack and some fake flowers left over from another project, so I broke out the hot glue gun.  Not my best work, but something frilly will be fun too.

View from the top.

Non-Obnoxious Alphabet Magnets

I was inspired by this blog post to make some non-obnoxious alphabet magnets. So simple! So cute! So, why hadn't I thought of this yet?

I drug the kids out to the craft store with me and purchased my supplies. I even found the perfect color of yellow spray paint, on clearance for $2. Excited to get started, I sprayed one side of the disks as soon as the kids went down for a nap.



I used a black metallic spray paint that we already had, leftover from another project I hope to someday finish and then blog about. Then I flipped them over and sprayed the other side yellow.





Once they were dry, I pulled out my rub on letters and got to work. I had never used rub on transfers before and was pleasantly surprised at how easy they were to work with. I've been dreaming up all sorts of projects where I can use rub on transfers. The next night, I glued magnets to the back of the disks, and they are done! I used a stronger magnet than the tutorial called for. I'm tired of our fridge magnets sliding down and I am going to replace them all with these nice strong ones. How do I feel about our new alphabet magnets? I...



I'm going to give these to one or both of the kids for Christmas. I haven't decided who gets what yet. They might each get a set in their stockings. I did both upper and lower case and made a few extras of the letters in their names. My transfers came with lots of E's but not many O's. I bought an extra sheet so they can both spell their full names at the same time.

I did not distress mine like in the tutorial, but they still have a rustic charm about them.  I didn't spray a protective coating on like I thought about, so I expect that they will become distressed with use soon enough.  I didn't do anything special to the edges.  They are a bit uneven from whatever spray paint happened to reach them, but I liked how they looked, so I left them alone.

Flower Fairies

I'm not going to make my goal of an entirely hand-made Easter this year, but there are going to be several hand-made items in each of the kids' baskets.  Last night I made these little flower fairies for Dorothy. They are just pipe cleaners, beads and artificial flowers, but they are sort of cute. I used the instructions on this page.


Here are all three. It took well under an hour to make all of them, and that includes the time I spent getting up and hunting down supplies I forgot to gather before I started.



This was the first one I made and I got a little carried away with her hair. I going to leave it for now, but she may receive a trim in the future. I have some more supplies and I'm wondering how one with really short hair would look. I might need to try that.



This one turned out the best of the three. Her hair is in proportion and her face looks nice. I vote that Dorothy will either ignore this one or lose her immediately.



This was my last try and I got a little creative. I had some small white flowers with blue tips, so I added one to the white mum I already had. It makes her skirt flip up in a funny way, but I sort of like it.  Unfortunately, her eye looks funny because the ink ran into the wood grain of her bead head.

Overall, I'm very pleased with this project both in how cute they turned out and how simple they were to make.

Raffle Items

Try not to fall over from the shock of two posts in two days.  What can I say?  I've been busy in my sewing room, but also not blogging as soon as the projects are completed.

Malcolm's school is having a raffle tomorrow after a talent show. (What talents do 3-6 year olds have anyway?  I've seen the "shows" my kid puts on and no one but parents or grandparents would be willing to sit through them.)  Anyway, they asked for donations for the raffle prizes and I made a basket of kid kitchen items.  I think they turned out very cute and hope that they do well in the raffle.


First, I made an apron using the tutorial found here.  It turned out very cute and was incredibly easy to make.  The best part was that Malcolm could take it on and off all by himself!  The elastic neck strap and the velcro side closure were great touches that made it fit very well.  If you make one, you might want to make it an inch or two longer if your child is tall.  He was a little sad that he doesn't get to keep it, so I think I will let him pick out some fabric and I'll make him his own apron.





I also made some doughnuts from some fleece fabric that has been hanging around my sewing room for a couple of years now. Usually, they would be made out of felt, but the fleece worked well and I like the softness of it better.


Putting the "sprinkles" on was very time consuming.


I also made a set of tea bags like I did for Dorothy's play kitchen.




Lastly, I also made another set of salt & pepper shakers.

Bean Bags

I'm terrible at documenting my work, but I finished up a project tonight and took photos right away this time. I've missed going up to my sewing room a couple of times, but I have also been doing a little prep work getting ready for a big(ish) project that will use up a lot of my scraps. I've been digging through my scraps and getting them cut to size.

Another scrap project I just finished is a set of washable bean bags. I made 10 and think I will put five in each kid's Easter Basket. If I get everything done, I'm going for an almost entirely hand-made Easter this year. I filled these with poly beads so that the bean bags are washable.


All 10 stacked up.


The upper right one, with fruit, is the same fabric as the curtain on the kitchen set we built.


The blue and white starfish fabric was from the first clothing item I ever made Malcolm.

Play Kitchen!

We built a play kitchen for Dorothy's birthday and it actually was done on time!  (Though it was a close call.)  The inspiration for our kitchen was this site, but we customized it to what we liked.  Here is the completed product.  The fridge is sticking out a little far because there is an air register behind it and it can't be pushed back any farther.  We will need to re arrange the play area a bit, but it will have to wait until after New Year's.




Kevin did all of the carpentry and I did all of the painting and other details. I also made a bought a few accessories. We are very pleased with how it came out and how much we spent, especially compared to the new play kitchens we thought about purchasing. Most importantly, the kids seem to really love it and I hope that they both have many years of creative play with it.

We were able to keep the cost really low by buying used pieces and salvaging other parts. The sink and oven unit is a former nightstand that I bought for $10 at a battered women's resale shop. The doors for the refrigerator and freezer were a dollar each at the Habitat for Humanity ReSale store, and the white handles were also purchased there for a dollar each. The hinges were still attached to our dollar doors, so we reused them, but painted them because they were incredibly ugly.

I found the faucet in our neighbor's garbage one morning while walking my son to school, and the bowl of the sink is a $2.00 bowl from Goodwill. The oven and burner knobs are from a dresser that we recently replaced the knobs on and the timer knob is the original knob from the nightstand. The rest of the sink/oven unit was constructed with scrap wood from the basement. The lower door was cut from the original drawer of the nightstand. The curtain was made from a scrap of fabric from my sewing room and I just happened to have snaps that matched the shade of blue we used.

I used up a lot of odds and ends of paint from our basement. The only paint we purchased was the exterior blue color, and that was only $10 on clearance. I had it custom mixed, but had been checking the "oops paint" section of several stores and did not have any luck. I did buy an additional can of white spray paint for the interior of the fridge because time was running out and spraying was faster than brushing it on.

Here is the original nightstand and the doors:





This is after Kevin did the construction work to the nightstand. He added a decorative back-splash and was excited to get to use his router. We decided to attach the curtain rod to the cabinet so that it couldn't be removed and used to poke each other.



Painting the oven cabinet was more of a challenge than I originally planned. There were lots of grooves, crevices, and alcoves that were difficult to reach. Because I was painting details like the oven door and the burners, some things had to be done in a particular order and I had a couple of times where I had to redo part when the spray paint or roller splatter got on a part where it should not have been.


Primed with the oven door painted.



Kevin had to build the box for the refrigerator which took a little figuring out since he had to make the face plate first to fit the doors, then build the box to fit that. He did a great job and it looks great.




Interior with a few accessories. I'm glad Kevin insisted on using the clear shelves; it looks nice. I bought the blue glasses, the white bowls, a baking pan, muffin tin, and red colander for only $5 at the dollar store. I love how little I spent, but that they have "real" accessories to play with.


The curtain snaps on to the rod so that I can remove it to be washed. I made the salt & pepper shakers out of wood candle holders and balls from the wood craft section of the hobby store and some paint that was in our basement. I used a sharpie for the "S" & "P" and very fine point sharpie to make the holes in the tops.

The burners don't show up well in this picture, but they are silver spray paint. Then I used a role of duct tape and just held it down and painted the blue around the roll. When it was dry, I used a sharpie to draw on the burner grates. We decided not to make it three dimensional since there is no real counter space, so the stove can also be used for prep-work.


We got lucky. We didn't really plan the size of the oven well and just happened to find a baking pan that is a perfect fit.

For the timer, I found a photo of an old fashioned timer, printed it out, and decoupaged it onto the back-splash. I poked a hole in it so that when we added the knob it wouldn't rip.

I also made a set of tea bags that are washable out of scrap ribbon, fabric, and poly beads (to make them "dip-able"). I saved a tin after we drank the tea to keep the pretend tea bags in.


The one on the far right was my prototype. I made some changes, and the next 3 turned out much better, but the kids don't seem to mind.

It was a lot fun of to make and to work on it with my husband. The kids are having a blast with it and I hope it remains a favorite for a very long time. 

Final shot of it in use.