Showing posts with label How-To Tuesday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How-To Tuesday. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

How to {Tuesday on Wednesday...oops} Turn Your Children into Willing Slaves

Our house has gotten a bit messy lately.  And when I say a bit, I mean a whole lot. So, on Monday I came up with a brilliant plan.

I decided we'd have a home movie night with concessions.  In order for them to earn money for their movie ticket, popcorn or candy they had to do things to help the family like sweep, fold towels or vaccum.


I cannon believe how well this worked. It was crazy cool. I had willing slaves sorting laundry, picking up toys, scrubbing walls and emptying the dishwasher. It was so TOTALLY AWESOME!


When it came time for the movie I pretended to be working at the movie theater and selling tickets and concessions.  The kids loved it.  My oldest son was able to get a lot more than his younger siblings.  It was a great learning experience for them.  "Hey...wait a minute.  Look how much Weston got!" Yep. Because he kept working kiddos.

We will definitely be doing this again.  Family fun? check. M&Ms with popcorn? check. Cleaner house? check.  A definite success. 

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

How-To {Tuesday} Give Your Children Superpowers

Zoe was invited to a cute little superhero birthday party on Saturday and I thought it would be fun to whip up some fun superhero masks for the birthday boy. 

These were so easy.  No! Really, they were (friends are always giving me a hard time about saying everything is *so easy*)

I found the templates at Homespun Treasures (as well as a whole ton of other awesome tutes). I've made masks for Halloween before so I was familiar with the technique but I gave the instructions a quick glance over.

I decided to make mine a little different.  I used knit so I wouldn't have to do the satin stitch around the edge and...erm...well, that's pretty much all that was different I guess!

So, first off, I printed out patterns.  I adjusted the shape of two of them, making them bigger and giving the one more of a cat eye look.




Then I traced patterns onto the non-shiny side of really thick interfacing.

I fused this with the iron to the wrong side of my fabric, using a scrap of fabric between the iron and interfacing.



































Following my traced lines, I cut the masks out. And then cut the eye holes out, too.


















Then I ironed the other side to another piece (wrong side) of fabric. I hadn't bought double sided interfacing(at least I don't think it was...), but I noticed when I ironed them the first time, the interfacing kind of stuck to the scrap cloth I'd placed between the interfacing and the iron.  It peeled off easily but I thought this would be easier then trying to just pin the layers together and it was.  So much easier.















Next I trimmed this layer of knit down to the mask shape. 





































Ack! Aren't they so cool?!  I love them. I wonder if wearing a superhero mask would go with my own style? Hmmm, would that look odd?  Me, walking the aisles of Wal-mart sporting a pink mask? Maybe I'd be able to get through the place Super fast. heh heh.

Ok, so then I measured how much elastic I needed by having one of my sons hold the mask up to his face. I peeled back the stuck, but not really stuck side of fabric where the elastic needed to go and slipped the ends of the elastic into the sandwich on each side of the mask.

And then all that was left to do was to stitch around the edge of the whole mask, including the eyeholes, trim the thread, wrap them up and slip the pink one on my sweet little superhero. 

I was in a hurry to get the party and forgot to take some pics of the other masks! Snap.




































This was such a fun and easy (and cheap!) birthday gift! I need to whip up some more of these masks to go in our dress up box.  I think we need one in every color! And, of course, one for myself.

I think I'm need a purple one.  Maybe with yellow lightening bolts on the side. 

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

How To Serve Octopus For Lunch

Mmmmm, octopus. Sounds yummy, right?

Well, it is when it's served like this...

A hot dog octopus, with mustard features swimming in a blue ramen sea.  Delish! Well, at least this cute girl thought so.  She especially enjoyed biting the octopus's head off.  Er....sweet girl, right?

As I was searching for Cinco de Mayo crafts and recipes last week I stumbled across this fun blog, Muffin Tin Mom...



I have never heard of muffin tin meals. They are a simple idea.  Basically you make a little meal in (usually) a six-cup muffin tin.  Some people make it even more fun by using bright colored and shaped silicone muffin cups. This seems like a great idea, especially if you have a picky eater. On the Muffin Tin Mom's blog she also shows fun ways to present food sans muffin tin.

So, as I was rumaging around for lunch for my monkeys last week I remembered something I saw and thought I'd give it a shot...



Molly didn't take much time to enjoy the presentation though...


I used to do fun things with food for my oldest when he was younger. But these days managing to just feed all these monkeys, well, that's a major accomplishment! Alright, it's not that bad. Although sometimes it feels like it.

I'm going to try harder to be more fun though, to add more fun to my kid's days.  And lunch is a great time to do it!