Valentine Printable Joke Notes!

By popular demand I created some printable Valentine Joke Notes to go along with our Back to School, Halloween, and Christmas jokes!

These are so fun to stick in lunches, print out for a little joke book, add into class Valentines, or just read and share! I may make some more if time allows but we are also working on a printable Valentine gift to share with time to spare for Valentine's Day.

You can print your own set HERE (for personal use)

Enjoy!

New Year's Eve!

Instead of a "best of" post I thought a few New Year's Eve ideas for kids would be fun. We've always spend New Year's with our kids and I love some of these ideas I've seen.

I love the idea of countdown bags. First seen on Hoosier Handmade - Organize and Decorate Everything shared some of the things she put in her bags!

Tatertos and Jello has some fun game night ideas!

If you haven't already started might be hard to make this big of a spread but I love the inspiration from this party at Tabletops for Tots

I think I'll surprise my Disney fans with this quick and easy Mickey New Year's ball from Spoonful

Actually Spoonful has TONS of New Year's inspiration I love the idea of a wish jar for kids. No more puppies in this house though! lol!

A fun balloon pop every hour from Real Life, Real Estate, Real Dana

 I REALLY love these New Years Resolutions kit just available from Run Lucas Run

Visit Run Lucas Run to download your own!

How will you ring in the new year?! 

Fort Friday

Happy Fort Friday! If you celebrate Christmas I hope you're more ready than I am!

Dad built forts are the best - check out this pirate ship built by these pirates' Dad!

 

This fort from ArtBar gets me in the fort building spirit for sure!

This is the perfect time of year to stick lights in your cardboard fort. I love doing this! from Babble

Here was our holiday fort last year - complete with cotton ball snow. 

And are you ready to see the BEST holiday card/video? Of course any video that includes forts is good right? ;) Melancholy Smile does a video instead of a card every year and I was so excited she let me share it here!

The snowflakes, the fort, shadow puppets - so. much. fun. Thank you SO much for letting me share! Check out Melancholy Smile for past videos - they'll put a smile on your face :)

And since I can't send each one of you a hard copy of our card this year I'll post it here. Have a great weekend!!

Paper Snowflakes

The simple, but fun, winter craft - paper snowflakes! I like this method of folding because you can cut anywhere top, bottom, or any side and your snowflake turns out - the less rules the better right?!

You'll need a square sheet of paper. I like to cut a stack of papers into squares with my paper trimmer ahead of time.

First you fold the paper in half to form a triangle

and in half again

Next you're going to take the open end and fold it towards the other side about 1/3 of the way in

fold the other side over the top of that one

Now you're going to cut off the "tails" at the bottom. If you turn it over you'll have a nice straight guide.

Now the fun part - cut away! Cut triangles, squares, wavy lines - whatever you like

The fun part about folding this way is that you can cut whatever side, top, or bottom you like.

.When you're satisfied with your cuts - carefully unfold your masterpiece.

Ta Da!

The boys made a ton of snowflakes and wanted to know where I was going to hang them all. I think I found the perfect way and now they are itching to make more!

I'm sharing how I like to hang their snowflakes over at Modern Parents Messy Kids - come stop by!

Our Envelope Advent

A couple of weeks ago I shared the activity advent calendar we did last year. This year I made one on a bit of a smaller scale. I made up an envelope advent book. Each "page" is an envelope that has the # of days until Christmas on it and inside each envelope is a card with an activity for that day.

The post from last month has a list of activities and I can add the card in each night depending on how our schedules change for the next day. If I decided to get them a small gift instead I put a clue as to where it's hidden or one day just told them that a secret prize would show up at some point during the day and to keep their eye out.

This is my boys' favorite activity of the season. They love the intentional time spent with them.

More Winter Play

My boys love(d) doing themed activities especially this time of year. Here are some fun winter crafts and activities to keep you busy!

Last year Kristen from Busy Kids = Happy Mom shared this fun activity on our blog using the Model Magic clay

Love this Winter Diorama playset from One More Mushroom on Bloesom Kids

I don't know what it is about these but my 8 year old likes making things out of paper bags. This Reindeer on Kaboose is pretty cute

You could make a snow monster for your winter scene! From Preschool Crafts for Kids

Make a winter playmat from Pink and Green Mama

Winter Games

I ran across ThinkingIQ blog on Pinterest and wanted to share some ideas they had for winter games. I never really thought about doing winter games before except maybe if I was hosting a winter kids party but looking over my calendar for the next month I'm not even sure where that would fit in!

The first one is like the game HedBanz (that my kids love) but you make your own winter or Holiday themed cards!

The next post I really liked was a list of Snowball Games

Like the Snowblower game where you race to see who can blow the most "snowballs" into their cup

A snow shovel race is played with cotton balls and a spoon to see who can scoop up the most snowballs without using their hands (they have to put the spoon in their mouth) You could do this with toddlers as well, allowing them to use their hands.

The snowflake race where you race around a racetrack with a paper snowflake on your head trying not to let it fall off.

A lot more ideas on the Thinking IQ blog - these are all great activities for your advent calendars!

If you aren't connected with us on Facebook I thought I'd remind you here to print out your winter/Holiday themed jokes! These are great for lunches, advent calendars, for your kids' friends, or for class parties!

You can print this and the 2nd set of jokes HERE (PDF to download and print)

*Post contains an affiliate link

Kids' Artwork Gift Wrap Garland

 KIDS' ARTWORK GIFT WRAP GARLAND

This is a fun way to incorporate kids' drawings into packaging that also doubles as a keepsake AND your kids don't have to draw them over and over.

I tend to shop in the remnants section in the fabric department of our craft store so my fabric was just chosen from whatever I had on hand! But first you'll want your kiddos to draw their best little holiday pictures. They don't have to make them small you can do that on the computer!

Next you'll scan their images into the computer.  You can resize the images in your choice of software - there are SO many choices with image software so I wouldn't be able to touch on all of them. Some of the things you may want to do is resize/cut out and place the images all on one page/increase the saturation a bit if they used crayons/ and if there are words written you'll want to flip the images at this point so they are backwards usually it's referred to as "flip horizontally" in the photo editing software. 

Print the images onto Iron on T-shirt transfer paper and cut them out.

I cut my fabric into little triangles to form a garland. Then I ironed the transfers on using a sheet of cardboard underneath and a kitchen towel on top to protect my iron just in case!

Last they all get sewn together (or you can iron them into some fabric binding as well). I used a black fabric binding for mine and sewed the triangles in. I just eyeballed the spacing - not much perfection here. And if you're like me you'll be sewing late at night when everyone else is sleeping!

Then you're done!

Cute little gift wrap that can double as a keepsake decoration for the recipient. 

We've also done something similar on the reusable canvas bags. Instead of the transfer paper I used the printable fabric for that one.

How do you incorporate your kids' artwork into gift giving? Kelle Hampton made some super cute ornaments

Post contains affiliate links