Painting Party Part 2- Homemade Paint

I didn't want to spend a ton of money on purchasing paint for S's pary so I looked around for some homemade paint recipe. It was very hard finding a recipe but I found one that was a no cooking one. 

It's just a few basic ingredients so making this paint should be FREE!

All you need is:

Water

Flour

Food Coloring

Mixing Bowl

Spoon

Mix together the water and flour until you have the desired consistency. Add food coloring until you have the right color. That's it!!! It's so easy! I found that the Wilton Food colorings made a nicer color but regular food coloring worked well. 

S and I tried it out. She had so much fun using it. We went through about 10 sheets of paper.

The paint came out like a water color consistency and was a little grainy. On the plus side, it seemed to dry faster than regular paint does!

Birthday Idea- Painting Party! Part 1

My daughter choose a painting party for her third birthday. I got the idea from this Parents Magazine article.

It was a fairly cheap and fun party to prepare for. The color scheme was the primary colors- red, yellow and blue. I bought majority of the paper goods from the Dollar Tree. I bought red, blue and yellow plates, cups, utensils, table clothes and balloons.

I also found paper gift bags at the Dollar Tree in the colors I needed. I wrote each child's name on them and placed them on a table with a red tablecloth. I used the bags to put each child's artwork in as part of their goody bag.

 Decorating the "art studio" was fun! I had planned for it to be an outdoor party but unfortunately, it poured on S's party day. Nevertheless, the party went on. We ended up using my parent's garage so that we didn't make a mess in the house. 

I bought clothes line and clothes pins from the Dollar Tree. I hung the line up around the garage so that when kids started making pictures, we could hang them up to decorate the place as we went along. It was also great to have a place to hang the wet paintings so they dried before the kids went home. I wrote Live, Laugh and Create on 3 sheets of paper and hung them up on one line and it looked really cute. 

The kids started off coloring with markers and crayons. I bought crayon and paint pads at Target for $1.99 each. Next, the kids painted with a cool hopmemade paint recipe that I will share in the next blog. Then, they ended with playdough. I also made the playdough from scratch. I used this recipe from teachnet.com.

Kool-Aid® Play Dough

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 package unsweetened Kool-Aid
  
• 1/4 cup salt
  
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
  
• 1 cup water

Mix flour, salt, cream of tartar and Kool-Aid® in a medium pot. Add water and oil. Stir over medium heat 3 to 5 minutes. When mixture forms a ball in pot, remove. Knead until smooth. Put in a plastic bag and refrigerate.

 

After the kids were done with the play dough, I separated them into sandwich baggies and gave each child a bag to take home. For more favors, I also included recipes on how to make homemade play dough and homemade paint.

The big hit was the cake I made myself. First time that I ever made a cake for a birthday party. It came out awesome and I'm really glad I did it. I'll write a larger post on how I amde the cake, the icing I used and how I made an art easel out of clothespins to hold the "Happy 3rd Birthday S" sign. 

 

Monday's Etsy Find

Etsy is an awesome place to purchase handmade items. I've decided to feature a new Esty item/ shop every Monday.

So this Monday's feature is stunningannak!

She has some very unique items that caught my eye right away. All the items are very reasonably priced. Her items range from fabric brouches and headbands to soldered charms.

This is one of my favorite items from stunningannak's shop.

It is a beautiful orange and yellow fabric brooch.

 A few other samples from her shop

Chicken Wire Hot Pink Flower Headband

This one made me laugh...

Sisters are Chocolate Chips Soldered Charm

 (Front)

 

(Back)

 haha! Isn't that cute?

Please visit stunningannak's shop here!

 

(If you would like to be featured on my blog, send me a message with a link to your shop, a little note about why you should be picked and a pic of your favorite item. Your shop will be featured from Monday to Sunday. I just ask that you promote the feature on your blog or facebook page)

Using up Produce Idea

I really hate throwing away produce because we haven't used it enough time. Unfortunetely, that tends to happen a lot in my house. I'm trying to be more conscientious of this. So when I saw that we had a few tomatoes and some chopped up onion, I tried to figure out what I could make with them.

I went to my favorite online recipe site All Recipes. I love that they have a section that you can search for recipes by typing in the ingredients you want to use. Well, bruschetta came up and I knew I had to make it as I also had a loaf of french bread that was going to be stale soon.

Bruschetta Recipe
chopped tomatoes
chopped onions
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of Italian seasoning  (I actually used the Partylite Two Sisters Gourmet seasonings)
1 loaf of French or Italian  cut into 1 inch thick slices

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, combine tomatoes, onion, olive oil, and seasonings Place bread on a baking sheet, and top with tomato mixture. Sprinkle with Parmesan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until bottom of bread is browned. Allow to cool 5 minutes before serving.

It came out amazing! I've been making it a lot and it's also very cheap to make. One loaf will make a lot of servings.

Enjoy!

Windowsill Garden Part 2

After your home made flower pots are dry you can continue on to this step. Haven't made your flower pots yet? Read back to HERE to see how to make one.

For this project we are going to be filling the pot and planting the seeds. Very good project to tie in science and math with the little ones!

Materials Needed:

Finished Flower Pots from THIS project

Potting Soil

Seeds (I chose tomatos)

Water

First, fill the containers with the potting soil following the directions on the bag. Some brands may call for you to mix the soil with water. Make sure to keep the soil loose and not have it packed in tightly so that the roots will be able to grow.

Have your child help you make a few holes in the soil using their fingers. Be sure to space the holes by the amount suggested on the seed packaging. Next let the child count out the correct amount of seeds and have her place one seed in each hole.

Lightly cover the dirt. Do not push the dirt down, you will need it loose so that the seed will be able to push it's way through it. 

Water and place the pots on a sunny windowsill.

That's it! Your done! For older kids, have them talk about what they see happening to the plants every couple of days for a science lesson for them too!

Cost of Project: $3.19

Potting Soil at CVS- $2.99

1 Seed Packet from Walmart- $0.20

Flower Pots- Free

Plus, you will be getting vegetables in a few weeks from this project so that is an added bonus!

Windowsill Garden Part 1

S and I decided to try to make our own windowsill garden this year. For a few days, I collected some plastic containers to use as the pot of the plants. It saved me some money so that I didn't have to pay for a bunch of plant pots. Plus, the containers are all plastic so that if S accidentally knocks one over she won't hurt herself on shards of ceramic. The first thing we did was decorate the recycled containers to make them look a little cuter sitting on our sill.


Materials Needed:
Recycled Containers
Glue
Water
Paintbrush
Colorful Tissue Papers
Wax Paper (not shown)

Make sure you have all of the supplies ready before you get your child at the table to help!

Add a little water to the glue and mix well. This will make the glue more see through so you will see your paper better. Cut the tissue paper into squares. For toddlers, I would recommend larger squares as it will take them a long time with smaller squares. (Believe me, we started off with small squares and I quickly learned my mistake!)

Now your child can join in. Have him or her paint sections of the container with glue and then add a tissue paper square on top.

Keep layering the tissue paper until you can no longer see the writing on the container. Add different colors on top of each other for a really cool stained glass look!

Keep Going! Make sure you leave the bottom of the container blank. You don't want the glue and paper to stick to your windowsill!

Ta Da! The finished product

Put the pots bottom up on a sheet of wax paper to dry. Plan for it to dry for at least 24 hours before adding potting soil so that it doesn't stick to the tissue paper.

Cost of Project: FREE!
I recycled the containers. I already had brushes, glue and wax paper. For the tissue paper, I used some that I had been saving from a gift bag.

Coming back after a long break

Ok well, I am hoping to get the blog rolling again. I had a lot going on in my personal life and I'm finally at a point where I can start up again.

Get ready to see some new craft ideas and some new money saving deals! Please bear with me as I change my blog layout. I think it's about time that I get rid of the santa background! Haha!