The Finished Car Play Blanket

Thought you might want to see pictures of the finished car blankets.  I have made two of them so far for two little nephews.  I plan on doing another one for my son's birthday in February.

 

 

  

Blanket 1 has Nana's house, a playground, a school, outdoor eating area, and baseball field to customize it

Blanket 2 has a construction zone, field with sheep and pond, and Home Depot to customize it.  Both blankets have a barn, castle, cave w/dragon, gas station, forest with hidden animals, zoo, fountain, fire station, hospital, police station, ice cream store, coffee shop, church, grocery store, and two apartment buildings (one of which can be on fire).

I LOVE how both of these blankets turned out.  They are so interactive and colorful and fun and cuddly!  I am hoping both recipients enjoy them for many years.

Little Christmas Gifts

I made a couple cute little Christmas gifts for my cousin's kids.  One was a mini dinosaur world in a Christmas tin I got from the dollar store.  The other was from Gulf Coast Crafts on Etsy.

This was a fun and easy pattern to sew!  I made the unicorn look like the one from Despicable Me :)

Inside the castle

I added glitter glue to make the fire sparkle

I also added flowers in a vase

I didn't like the original hair, so I made up my own.

Car Play Blanket Tutorial

 Do you have someone in your family that loves cars?  Do I have the coolest idea ever for you!  I have two little nephews that are big car fans and a son who likes "biiiiig trucks!"  For Christmas this year, I thought it would be cool to give each of them a car play blanket.  However I couldn't find any patterns to make one.  No problem - I'll just design it myself.  And of course, share the pattern with you :)

So, I got a yard of 60" green fleece fabric ($5.59 a yard and then used a 40% coupon for a total of $3.35)

I laid the uncut pattern pages on top to make sure it would all fit.  Yes, it totally IS a lot of pages (25 to be exact) but it's worth it (and it's not a lot of ink, so it could be worse :)

I got a yard of gray 72" craft felt ($3 a yard) and cut out each of the road pieces.

Then take the pattern paper off and pin those suckers down GOOD.  Seriously, use a LOT of pins.

Even a novice seamstress like me was able to sew down each piece using my sewing machine.  Actually it took less than an hour.

Here is a picture of the finished roads!  As you can see, it already is getting some use :)  You can also just barely see my son's car mat that we got for free at a yard sale.  He LOVES it, but I wanted something he can use in his bed for nap time, thus the blanket idea.

I have great plans to add a farm, castle, dragon in a mountain cave, zoo, fire station, house on fire, nana's house, etc.  So much sewing and so little time!  I also got glow in the dark yellow fabric paint to draw lines on the roads.  I will keep adding posts as I finish things on the blankets, but I thought if anyone was looking for an inexpensive and cute gift this definitely qualifies!

Here is the pattern if you would like to make your own car play blanket

If you do decide to make one, I would love to see pictures of it when you finish!  I hope you have as much fun putting this together as I did.

Awana Sparks Bingo

This week was the first week it was too cold to let the Sparks play outside.  They have 5-10 minutes after Handbook Time to do an activity so this week I put together Sparks Bingo.  My boys LOVE playing bingo which is awesome for practicing concepts in school.  I used bingo chips (from Sing Spell Read and Write Curriculum :) for two teams & pompoms for the other two because I had them handy.  I am going to get bingo chips for all the teams since this was SO popular they played it after Handbook Time AND at the end waiting for their parents to pick them up.  One kid even told her mom she couldn't leave yet because she hadn't won bingo!
If you need something easy and fun to occupy your Spark team, I have the download for you!  I used images from Google, so just use this game for personal use so we don't break any copyright laws :)

 

Bingo Card Master
Bingo Card 1
Bingo Card 2
Bingo Card 3
Bingo Card 4
Bingo Card 5

Instructions for Bingo:

Give each player one of the five bingo cards that say Sparks Bingo and a handful of bingo chips, pompoms, cheerios, peanuts, pennies, or whatever you are using to cover the squares.

Cut around each of the master pieces on this document and put them in a bag.

The leader picks out a master piece and tells the kids what to cover – (Everyone find and cover Sparky!)

There are two ways to win – either 5 in a row OR blackout where you have to cover ALL the squares.

Have Fun!

I have been busy!

So, here are the projects I have finished recently.  First, my niece had a huge birthday party and I made a dozen robes for her and her friends.  Unfortunately the only picture I got was with my phone and I can't figure out how to get it from my phone to the computer :(  (technologically challenged!)

Right after I finished the robes for my niece's birthday, it was time to get ready for my brother's party.  He chose a Robin Hood theme so my husband made 10 bows and 60ish arrows using the tutorial from here: http://www.ikatbag.com/2012/09/archery-party-scenes-from-shooting-range.html

I also used her tutorial for making quivers.  Then I made Robin Hood hats and costumes as well.  It was a lot of work, but SO worth it!

This is some of the boys figuring out how to shoot their bows and arrows.

After all of that, I have been deep cleaning and moving stuff around in my house, so I haven't really done anything crafty for a few days.  I am hoping that after I get my craft stuff moved into their new area I can work on some more quiet book pages.

Happy Easter!

Here are the Pinterest inspired Easter projects I did this year.

For our Easter egg hunt this year I didn't want to overload my kids with candy so I made these cute bunnies and lamb finger puppets to go in some of the eggs.

  I also made these adorable goldfish "carrots" for my boys for Easter.  They love goldfish more than candy!  I got the goldfish on sale and then just improvised and used items I had on hand to make them. 

Here is one of my precious little Easter bunnies with his carrot!

We had a fabulous Easter!  I hope you did too!  HE IS RISEN!!!!

Easter Paint Fun

I was looking for a fun "artsy" activity to do with my boys today and came across Marble Painting & Painting Easter Eggs with q-tips.  I had all the stuff on hand so I sat them down and let them paint.  Little did I know how much they would LOVE this activity.  They literally sat and painted for two hours solid.  Guess I should do art for school more often!

I love his face in this picture - lol!

He is making "Aslan" from Narnia :)

Wasn't as much cleanup as I thought it would be!  Don't let paint scare you off - it's a perfect rainy day activity!

Picture Tutorial on Installing a Grommet

I got a comment on my Wheels on the Bus page asking if I could give directions on installing a grommet.  Since I personally am a visual learner I thought I would put up a picture tutorial on how to install a grommet.

Hopefully this makes sense and is easy to follow!  I picked up this package of about 20 grommets and the top and bottom nail piece at my local Joann Fabric store for like three dollars.  Please let me know if you have any questions!

Organizing Lego Instructions

Legos are a big deal in my house.  A very big deal.  My boys may be below the recommended age for most Lego sets, but their enthusiasm rivals the most ardent collector's.
As such, we have already collected (thanks to gifts, Ebay, garage sales, friends, and their Dad's childhood) quite a few Lego sets.  I am still working on the best way to organize Legos and still have them available for easy play.  Right now we have a couple large plastic tubs - one for smaller pieces and one for bigger.  It works for now.
The instruction manuals are another matter though.  My boys like to follow the instructions and build and rebuild their sets in addition to free play.  However, the flimsy paper manuals, especially from the older sets have seen much better days :(
This is my solution.  I got a three ring binder and my trusty laminator (This is the one I have - it was twenty bucks at Costco).  I carefully took apart each one of their Lego manuals and laminated them, punched holes, and added them to the binder.  Now all their Lego instructions are in one place, lay flat, and won't get ruined.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

After our Lucky Dog Math Game the other day I printed the End of the Rainbow Game from Criss-Cross Applesauce.  Math with food just makes life more fun!

 I also made a fruit rainbow for our St. Patrick's Day dinner.  I used marshmallow clouds, strawberries, cantaloupe, mango, grapes, blackberries, and rolos.  It was a huge hit :)

Lucky Dog Math Game

I downloaded, printed, and laminated this fabulously fun math game from Criss Cross Applesauce.  It's FREE!  It's called Lucky Dog and it helps with number recognition up to twenty.  We finished the Saxon kindergarten math book on Monday so I figured we would play fun math games for the rest of the week as kind of a break before we start the Saxon first grade book.  ANY math that involves food is good according to my boys :)

Afterwards we painted rainbows for St. Patrick's Day which is why the watercolors are in the picture too :)

Our Baby Chicks!!!

This week I have been working on a new project with my family: setting up our brooder for baby chicks! We have decided that it would be a good experience for us to try and raise chickens for eggs. So, we did extensive research (mostly via Pinterest), put together a brooder, and purchased baby chicks yesterday from Southern States.

Aren't they just SO cute? I just love their little peeping noises! We got five Americana/Easter Egg breed and five Rhode Island Reds. They are nice and happy in their new home. My husband is going to build their chicken coop (which he designed, of course) in the next week or so & they will move into it in about six weeks.