December Daily 2012

I can't believe December is literally days away!!  December is my most favorite time of the year.  It truly is magical feeling to me.  There's just something about it.  Maybe it's the feeling of being a kid again, or maybe it's making others happy.  Regardless, I love it.  Every.Single.Minute.

And I love documenting the days leading up to Christmas!!  I'm so excited to start my December Daily album this year.  You can click here to see my December Daily from last year.

Below are a few peeks of my album.  I decided to keep it pretty simple by using a lighter patterned paper, a doily and a glitter star.  It turned out a little more "muted" than I had originally hoped, but I know it will work.

For the inside this year, I've decided to just create several different pages that could be used for any day of December.  Last year I followed Ali Edwards' lead and had each date ready to go by December 1st.  I'm sure it will be a little more work this year, but I'm looking forward to playing around with all my supplies!

Here are some of the pages I've made so far.  My sewing machine is probably my favorite crafting tool for making mini albums!!

Lots of gold and white this year!!  Bring on the twinkle!!

Anyone else doing a December Daily?  I know a few joined in with me last year!!!

Our Christmas Advent Calendar

I've decided to do something new and fun for our advent this Christmas.  Last year we put small toys and a piece of candy in our advent calendar, but I thought it would be fun to make little packages for the kids to open each day of December.  We'll still have a piece or two of candy in our advent calendar house, but these little treat bags will hold an activity and some Christmas goodies.

The bags were so easy to make using some large paper bags that I receive from Studio Calico each month.  I was able to get six bags from each paper bag.  You could always use just a regular old brown paper lunch sack, which are really inexpensive and available at most any grocery store.

Each bag will contain an activity for us to do as a family.  Most of them are things that we do anyway during December.

After cutting out my bags, I used my sewing machine to stitch all around with red thread.  Then I stamped the numbers 1-25 on the corners of the bag.

And then the fun part came.....

I stuffed the bags full of goodies....our activity of the day, Christmas erasers (from the dollar store), Christmas stickers (I just cut several strips from a pack of stickers, some confetti, a few small ornaments and some Christmas jokes).

Anna helped me sew up the bags "without peeking", she said, and she's so excited for December to come!!  We all are!!

Turkey Handprint Picture

Our "Sunday Funday" consisted of lots of arts and crafts!  This was one of the super cute things we made!  They are proudly being hung in our house (and even sometimes worn as necklaces!!).  Thanks again to Pinterest for the awesome idea!!  

The kids started by painting their picture boards (just cut down cardboard) all different Fall colors.  

Drew loves to paint!!

While we waited for the cardboard to dry (it doesn't take long if you do a thin coat), we made our hand print turkeys.  Lots of laughing from the tickling of the paint brush!!

And while everything was drying, Anna helped me finish up the little "Happy Thanksgiving" cards and  lace the pasta on our strings.

When all the paint was dry, I attached the pasta laced string to the cardboard and glued down our turkey hand print, added nose, eyes and legs and little label.  I love them so much!

Thanksgiving Turkey Magnet

This is such a simple little craft but my 3 1/2 year old really enjoying making it so I thought I would share!  

This little guy is hanging proudly on our refrigerator right now and keeps getting moved around by some little tiny hands!!  

Supplies needed:

Wooden discs of two sizes (or circles cut from cardboard)

Brown paint

Feathers of various colors

Googly eyes

Red and orange construction paper

Tape or glue

Start by painting your wooden discs or cut circles brown.

After your paint has dried, add the feathers to the back of the larger disc.  We are all out of liquid glue...akkkk..so we used washi tape.  It worked great!

Then add your smaller circle, googly eyes, triangle nose and waddle.

I attached a little adhesive magnet to the back of our turkey so he could hang on the side of our fridge.

Happy crafting everyone!!

Preschool Painting Fun

I'm sure it's no surprise that Anna loves to paint and do crafts.  She would do them all day long....picture after picture, craft after craft.  Sometimes, though, I don't run out of ideas (like after the 10th activity of the morning) or either I just don't feel like getting all the stuff needed together.

Thankfully, I found Learn.Create.Love.  It's an amazing site with awesome painting printables.  Anna actually asks to browse the site by name to see what she feels like painting.  Below are just a few of our recent creations.  You just have to check out the site!  It's a go-to when I need something quick, easy and relatively mess free for my preschooler!!

Marbled Leaves

More shaving cream fun here!!

This week we decided to make leaves.  Shaving cream is always fun!  Anna squealed when I got out the cans!  

Click here for more directions and see how we do shaving cream art!!

It's beginning to look a lot like....

Christmas!

My favorite time of the year!

I count down the days until December 1st starting January 1st.  Shh...don't tell my husband!

I have my Christmas shopping mostly done, Christmas music on my Pandora station and I'm dreaming of my December Daily album.  Although I document our everyday with Project Life, I love love love the December album.  It truly is magical....just like the season.

I'm trying to get everything in order for this year since we have a super busy December coming up full of trips to Disney World, 2nd birthdays, a girls trip to NYC, cookie parties and preschool Christmas shows.  

For most of my album I will be sticking with the kit from Studio Calico.

Beautiful, isn't it???

Anyone else doing a December Daily album?  I'd love to hear from you!!

Making Mini Books

Anna is really into storytelling right now and is starting to make up her own stories.  Most of her stories closely follow other stories that we have read or she has heard....and most of them are about Dora, the Snow Princess or Mariana the Mermaid (all from Dora books).

I want to continue to encourage her storytelling so I put together these little mini books following this simple tutorial from Playful Learning.  

After the books were assembled, I invited Anna over to make up some stories with me.  We talked about how stories have a beginning, middle and end and we talked about some of her favorite stories.  Of course, all the Dora stories were the top of her list so she told me a few stories and I wrote them down for her.

She wanted her little books to have a picture on the front so we looked online and I printed off several pictures that correlated with her stories.

Below is the story of Dora and Mariana the Mermaid.

Anna carries these books with her everywhere and reads them to anyone who will listen.  She's quite proud of her books and I love that she loves them.  We will definitely be making many more!!

Rocket Ship Name Craft

Anna loves spelling and writing her name right now and Drew loooooves rocket ships, so when I saw this cute little name craft on Pinterest, I thought it would be lots of fun for my two.

I started by cutting up some squares of construction paper and two triangles for the top of a rocket ship.

Then Anna wrote her name on the little squares.  I wrote out Drew's name.

Next we put our names in the correct order and made our rocket ships.  For Drew, I tried to work on color recognition.

We finished them off with some "fire" and stars!

Preschool Journal: R is for Rainbow

Anna is still loving her preschool journal.  She carries around with her most places and asks to write in it a lot.  I let her draw, color or whatever she wants in it any time, but I'm always trying to think of new and creative ideas for her to incorporate into the journal.

One day last week she was really obsessed with rainbows and wanted to put one in her journal so I decided to cut out some shapes for a rainbow and let her put them in the correct order.

She loved gluing them down (she loves gluing anything).  My shapes aren't obviously the best, but she didn't seem to mind!!

After she put together the rainbow, I had her write a letter "R".  Below the rainbow is her "R".  I don't really correct her as she's writing her letters, but sometimes I will have her trace the letter after me so she can see how the letters are made.  I'm not that concerned about how she writes them.  I just love that she loves to write, color and draw.