Archive for 2012

{Starburst Mirror} Seattle Area Lifestyle Photographer

March 17th, 2012

This is something a little different, a post not about my kids! I have always adored those large, funky sun/starburst mirrors I see in store. However, I did not adore the $200-$300 price tag that usually accompanies them. When I saw this cool DIY tutorial for a sunburst mirror from Dollar Store Crafts and also [...]
 

This is something a little different, a post not about my kids! I have always adored those large, funky sun/starburst mirrors I see in store. However, I did not adore the $200-$300 price tag that usually accompanies them. When I saw this cool DIY tutorial for a sunburst mirror from Dollar Store Crafts and also this cool DIY tutorial from the Small Home Love blog and this cool DIY tutorial from Apartment Therapy, I knew that I could make one for my home.

My inspiration from Lamps Plus ($239)

Materials:

  • bamboo skewers, or small craft dowels
  • 4″ mirror (you can use any size mirror in the middle, I used a 4″ one)
  • Krylon Silver Metallic Paint – Use Krylon, we also tried Rustoleum and it was a very dull silver
  • small beveled mirrors (I got mine online from JOann’s) –  pack of 25 for $1.99
  • E6000 glue or gorilla glue. Be forewarned, if you go with gorilla glue, it does EXPAND so put that into your considerations.
  • cardboard rounds
I had the dowels, spray paint, and glue on hand. I just had to buy the mirrors so I spent less than $10 on this whole project. SCORE

First, I spray painted the dowels with the paint

Then, I cut TWO cardboard round to match my 4″ middle mirror. One for the dowels, and one for the mirror. You can cut it to match the shape of whatever size mirror you pick. I also marked it so I knew where to lay down my dowels when I glued.

 

After the dowels dried, I glued them to the cardboard round with the markings. Not pictured: I glued the mirror to the other cardboard round, then glued it on top of the dowels here. Then I laid a book on it overnight for it to dry and set.

 

I then glued all the little mirrors to the dowels. This was pretty easy, the glue set pretty quickly so I didn’t have to hold them to make sure they didn’t fall off.

 

And voila! The finished starburst mirror! I am really pleased with how it turned out. Please excuse the tape, we were figuring out the best location to put it and the tape was to make sure it wouldn’t fall off the wall.

 

And how it looks above our bed. You can just see the size of it from here – it’s also fairly lightweight. Hooray for DIY craftiness!

 

So there you have it, a fairly easy and cheap way to make a big, showy piece for your home. I leave you with two dancing boys, because I can’t have a blog post that doesn’t show off my cute kids. :)

This was shared at Get your Craft On! Go check it out to see all the fun crafts featured each week! For more fun link parties, go check out my Link Parties! page

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{Wordless Wednesday} Seattle Area Lifestyle Photographer

March 14th, 2012
 

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{Spring is in the air} Seattle Area Lifestyle Photographer

March 11th, 2012

We had a gorgeous day on thursday this week, with the sun shining, and spring in the air. The buds are beginning to come out on the trees, and our plum trees were blooming as well. I saw this cool craft on pinterest painting blossoms with the bottom of 2 litre bottles, and thought it [...]
 

We had a gorgeous day on thursday this week, with the sun shining, and spring in the air. The buds are beginning to come out on the trees, and our plum trees were blooming as well. I saw this cool craft on pinterest painting blossoms with the bottom of 2 litre bottles, and thought it would be a fun craft to do with the boys. Of course, this weekend has been grey, mucky, and rainy, but we got to bring a little bit of spring inside our homes yesterday. This craft is also part of the Kids Weekly Coop at Lets Lasso The Moon! Come check out all the other cool crafts and science ideas there!

 

What you need:

  • paint (we used blue, black, and pink)
  • 2 litre bottles
  • brushes
  • straws
  • paper
Our inspiration, our blooming plum trees

 

For our first painting, we started off with a blob of black paint. I think I thinned ours down with water a little bit too much, you want to thin it a little bit so it’s easy to blow, but not too thin

Then, I had the boys blow the black paint around to make a tree

This was the fun part. Then, I let them splatter the pink paint onto the canvas to make blossoms. They totally LOVED doing this. WARNING: this is a messy craft.

Splatter splatter splatter!

Our finished splattered trees. It looks very abstract, and the boys loved making it. Here was my six year old’s finished painting

 

My three year old’s splatter tree.

 

For the second painting, I had the boys paint the background a sky color. I let them choose how much they wanted to cover the paper.

 

Then, we painted on trees and used the 2 L bottle as a blossom print maker.

 

And our finished print blossom trees. Here is my six year old’s project.

 

Here is my three year old’s painting.

 

Overall, these were two really fun projects to do, and the boys heartily enjoyed themselves. Yes, they got very messy, and I had pink paint splatters everywhere, but the glow of pride in their faces seeing their finished paintings was worth all the mess. We’re going to be hanging these little windows of spring around our house to enjoy to counteract the greyness outside. I hope you guys have fun with your own little ones doing this project!

 

Lasso the Moon

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{Up, up and away!} Seattle Area Lifestyle Photographer

March 10th, 2012

This is part craft, part science experiment, and 100% fun. We did this last summer, to learn about equilibrium. The boys had a blast figuring out how best to balance the balloon, and had so much fun floating it around in the backyard. The balloon only lasted a day, but it was a fun day [...]
 

This is part craft, part science experiment, and 100% fun. We did this last summer, to learn about equilibrium. The boys had a blast figuring out how best to balance the balloon, and had so much fun floating it around in the backyard. The balloon only lasted a day, but it was a fun day while it lasted! (or, at least until I fell off a ladder, but that’s another story). I got the idea from the lovely BookHaus Crafts, who always has fun and interesting ideas!

What You’ll Need:

  • large helium-filled balloon (I got mine at the party store, filled with helium for $2)
  • small basket (I used a plastic strawberry crate)
  • Netted  produce bag or ribbon/yarn (we used yarn)
  • toys
  • Scissors
  • tape
Things I learned:

  • you can tie the ribbon/yarn to the netting for the top of your balloon, or just tie ribbon/yarn. We used yarn, and taped it to the sides of the balloon to make sure it didn’t move around
  • do the balancing indoors first before you take the balloon outside, it will save a lot of time
  • have your kids chose an assortment of toys to put in the basket, both big, heavy, and small. make sure it covers the bottom of the basket though, so it doesn’t tip over
  • check out if it’s windy and how the weather is outside. in our case, it was very windy and muggy so when we went outside the air expanded inside the balloon causing it to float up much higher
  • believe in the equilibrium. no matter how far up the balloon floats, it will come down
  • this might be better to do indoors if you have high ceilings, although my kids did have a grand ol’ time chasing it around the yard
  • do NOT, under any circumstances, try to get the balloon if it gets stuck in a tree. the balloon will come down on its own
  • if you are unlucky like I was, you can turn the lesson about equilibrium into a lesson about gravity instead

 

We found out that pink Domo Kun was a perfect fit to achieve equilibrium. this was after many tries with other toys. I do not recommend anything small and rolling, as the basket has a hard time staying level.

 

My youngest doing the first launch

 

And there it goes up!  Look at the excitement on his face.

You can see it’s starting to float back down again here

And floating up again. You can see how we taped the yarn to the sides of the balloon here

My oldest does a launch as well.

 Up, up and away!

 

So starting with it on the ground, you can see how easily the balloon floats up and down with its Domo Kun passenger

 

And another look at my youngest launching the hot air balloon. Such a fun craft!

 

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{May the Force Be With You} Seattle Area Childrens Photographer

March 7th, 2012

My boys love Star Wars. For Christmas a couple of years ago, my husband kindly bought me Lego Star Wars, which I deemed safe enough for the kids to watch. Besides, LEGO!  Have you seen how cute those little LEGO figurines are of Han Solo, Obi Wan, and Yoda? Now, my kids haven’t even seen [...]
 

My boys love Star Wars. For Christmas a couple of years ago, my husband kindly bought me Lego Star Wars, which I deemed safe enough for the kids to watch. Besides, LEGO!  Have you seen how cute those little LEGO figurines are of Han Solo, Obi Wan, and Yoda? Now, my kids haven’t even seen any of the Star Wars movies, but my oldest became obsessed. For his birthday, we did a Star Wars theme. I scoured the internet for days beforehand, trying to find the best ways to have a low budget yet still cool, Star Wars themed party. (For future reference, there are actually Star Wars Party Book, and a Star Wars Craft Book which I did not know about until after the party. Hopefully these links will help another hapless parent out in their party planning.). A few weeks of planning, some sleepless night, and 31 kids plus a very happy birthday boy later,  seemed to thoroughly enjoy all our hard work.

This year, we told him he had to limit the amount of people to how old he is turning.  :)

So onto the party pictures! I included links to everything, and hopefully this can help some other parent with a Star Wars obsessed kid. **WARNING** This post is long and picture heavy!

1. The Invite

I just used evite, but I found some cute wording and the invitation stated this:

In a Galaxy Far, Far away… A boy of destiny was born. The Jedi council named him {NAME} and they knew that he was the chosen one.

In the six years that has followed his birth, he has been learning the powers of the force. Recently though, the Jedi knights have called upon young Padawan {NAME} to seek out Future Jedi.

Your presence is requested on sunday May 1st for Padawan {NAME} birthday party! The trials will begin promptly at 11:30am at the Jeidi Training Academy (aka our home). Please Advise the Jedi council as to whether you will be accepting the challenge of the trials. Future Jeidi siblings may also partake in the trials. May The Force Be With you!

 

2. The Lightsabers, aka what I used instead of giving out goody bags.

I will admit, I kind of hate goody bags. My kids have food allergies, so if it’s candy often they can’t have it, and if it’s a toy it just ends up broken in the car on the way home from the party. So I found instructions on how to make foam light sabers, and made them as party favors. Simple and inexpensive! Cut a pool noodle in half, slap on some duct tape and electrical tape, and you’re golden. Bonus is, they don’t hurt when your kids beat the tar out of each other in preparation for Jedi Training. :)

Seriously, who doesn’t love a lightsaber?

I put them in buckets for the kids to grab, along with some neon colored labels and a sharpie to make name tags. 

 

3. The Imperial Decree

I wanted to make sure the kids kept the lightsabers OUTSIDE so we made up this sign, one by the lightsabers, and one by the door at parent-height. I downloaded the Star Wars Font to make the sign.

 

4. The Padawan Robe

I googled around, and this Star Wars Robe tutorial was the easiest one I found. For 3yards of fabric, I was able to make two small robes (one for each of my kids) for less than $5 total.

my son loved it so much he would wear it everywhere, even to tae kwon do.

 

5. Death Star Pinata

We couldn’t find an actual Death Star or Star Wars themed pinata, so here is what we did instead. I bought a baseball pinata (any round pinata shape would do, actually), and my husband spray painted it silver. To cover the hole we had to cut in it to put in candy, we put an upside down coffee lid.  He added on details with a black sharpie, and it turned out pretty well!

 

6.  The Cake

The cake was extremely cool. I found this tutorial on how to make an R2D2 cake. My fabulous friend Auntie Heather’s Fancy Cakes made the cake for us.  I made the inside cake (dairy and nut free!) and she put it all together. It was glorious and oh so amazing.

 

Details of the cake.

This thing was incredibly awesome. People couldn’t believe it was cake! Here’s a picture of the cake cut apart, poor R2D2 is getting devoured by my youngest.

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

 

7. Star Wars Cooler

My husband’s coworker graciously loaned us his R2D2 cooler, which we used as a prop and to store “adult” beverages. My kids loved it and kept hugging it.

 

 

8. The Games

We played Jeidi vs. Bubbles (I had two parents with bubble machines, and the kids were fighing all the bubbles), which the kids really enjoyed. I made an obstacle course the kids had to run in, where I had parents holding lightsabers out either above head level, or low enough so the kids had to duck or jump over it, which they all LOVED. We also had Star Wars Bingo and a Pin The Lightsaber on Yoda game, but we didn’t get around to either of them. Mainly, this is what the entire party looked like.

 

 

Overall, I think everyone (parents, kids, birthday boy) had a great time, my son thought we were the coolest parents ever, and all the kids of all ages had a ton of fun chasing each other with their lightsabers. I hope if you’ve read this through, you got some good ideas for your own Star Wars themed party!



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