St. Patricks Day Chalkboard Wall Theme

My Beautiful Farm Table

That my wonderful hubby built with his bare hands. I love the finished product. I cant wait to have so many family dinners, game nights, holiday dinners, breakfasts here at this table for generations to come. :) What an amazing Christmas present.

Indoor Halloween and Fall Decorating Ideas Using Dollar Tree Items

Spider webbing with orange and purple lights placed on top of the bar. 

Tape on cute jack-o-lantern heads. 

All of the cute things on this foyer table came from the Dollar Store! 
 

Dollar tree vases with dollar tree leaves placed inside to make a cute table display. 
 

Another view of the cobweb/lights display, all from the dollar store.

It's October! Countdown to Halloween Chalkboard Wall Idea

I used youtube videos to be able to draw the spider web and witches hat! :)

DIY Initial Autumn Wreath

This wreath was relatively inexpensive and easy to make. My friend came over and we had a craft day pow wow as we like to do for each themed holiday in a month. You can get the wreaths at any craft store and they are usually under 5 dollars. Also you can get the letters, leaves and accessories for the wreath at the same craft store. We used a glue gun to really make sure our leaves stayed inside the wreath. Add some accessories and paint/glue on your name initial. So cute!

Our Finished Marbled Autumn Leaves! We Put Them on the Backsplash, They Look So Cute!

Autumn is Here! Marbled Leaf Craft

And what better way to celebrate than with a fall leaf craft! 
This one was pretty simple. I printed out some leaf templates on the computer and then cut them out to their leaf shapes. Then I placed some shaving cream in a box and mixed it up until it turned white. Then I dropped in some yellow, orange and red food coloring to create a marbled look. Then I had the kids drop the leaves into the mixture in the box and press down. Once they picked up the leaves they had a beautiful blended color to them! We placed them on the counter to dry, and then we hung them up in the kitchen. They turned out really cute! 

Welcome Fall! Autumn is Here, and Another Reason to Draw on my Chalkboard Wall! :)

Rainbow Fish!

H made a beautiful rainbow fish today. I cut out a fish shape for him, then cut some long strands using tissue paper. He glued the strands onto the fish to make it very colorful!

Make Your Own Volcano

We used a yogurt container covered with different colors of playdough as our "volcano." Then we mixed vinegar and water together and poured it into the container almost all the way to the top. Then we put red food coloring in so it would look more like "lava." Then we added some baking soda to the mixture in the container and boom! The volcano erupted! Great activity to do outside on a warm summer afternoon!

Chalkboard Wall!

Emi writing happy birthday to Brayden! 

We picked a wall in our kitchen that we wanted to use as our chalkboard wall. We bought the chalkboard paint, which was only about 15 dollars. Then we painted the wall after we wiped it down. We did not have to use primer. Then we let it dry/set for 3 days. Then we covered the entire surface in chalk, and then washed it off with a damp cloth. After that it was ready to use! So fun.

Kinetic Sand!

This was so fun and easy to make, and you can store it after you are done playing with it! Find the recipe here: http://www.pbs.org/parents/crafts-for-kids/diy-kinetic-sand/
 

Easy Experiment to See How Rain Goes Through Clouds

Just take a clear glass, and pour water into it. Then take some shaving cream, and pour it over the top. Then take some blue food coloring-add it to the top of the shaving cream. After a few seconds, the blue dye starts to go through the shaving cream or "clouds" to make "rain."

Moon Rocks, Using Household Ingredients

First mix in a Tupperware bin, silver and black glitter, along with some baking soda. Then pour in some water so it gets a nice gooey consistency, but watch how much water you put in-because you dont want it to get too thin. Although you could always add more baking soda if you needed to. Then mix in some black watercolor paint. We used this kind of pain because it is washable. 

Once you get the mixture to where it will hold together using the water, baking soda, black watercolor paint, and black and silver glitter-form them into little round balls. This part is fun for the kids. They like to feel it on their hands to feel the consistency. 

Then you take some vinegar-white vinegar is what we used-and you don't need too much either-and pour it over the "moon rocks." The baking soda and the vinegar will react to each other and will make the moon rocks "bubble up" or "erupt." Really cool and fun!

The kids loved to put together this science project!

Frozen Block of Ice Treasure Hunt for Toys!

First you have your kids pick out the toys they want to put in the bins. We just used regular tupperware bins. Then they add water to the bins with the toys in them that they've picked to freeze. Then place them in the freezer and wait for the magic to happen! 

Once the bins of water have completely frozen, take them out, and they will be a block of ice! It's actually easier than I thought it would be to get the block out. 

You can use any types of tools you want to try to get the toys out of the frozen ice! Just make sure if you use power tools to supervise! 

The kids loved "rescuing" their toys! 

My kids loved this game so much that we have actually done it several times since our first try. The only thing I would say, is that it does take about 24 hours for the ice to freeze completely inside the bins. So if you are wanting to do this project, make sure you allot the time before hand! This is a great activity to do on a hot day because the ice will melt faster! The kids had a blast with this!

Hippo Looses a Tooth!

Another cute game we found to do, that's so easy that you could make from things you probably already have in your house! Just take a piece of pink construction paper, and cut it so that it looks like a mouth. Then fold it in half, and draw mini circles around the edge perimeter. Then place mini marshmallows in the circles, and take a dice-each player rolls the dice and whatever number the get-they take that number of marshmallows off their "hippo mouth." Whoever looses their teeth first wins!

Happy Birthday America!

Gathering sticks for our homemade American Flag Wreath. 

Cutting the sticks to be just the right size for the flag. 

Playing "War" with friends on 4th of July while we waited for the parade to start outside. Inside in the AC while waiting was sure nice. :)

Playing in the pool after the parade with our best friend, AKA Grandpa. 

These America flags were so fun to make! We gathered sticks from the yard, then cut them until they were all the same size. Then we painted them red white and blue, and added "stars." We glued them together with a hot glue gun, then finally we hung them with a piece of blue ribbon, but you could use red or white ribbon as well. Fun! 

Everyone say hot dog! 

Ready for our classic American grill fest! What a spread! 

Doing pop-it's in the yard while we waited to go to the fireworks! 

Hudson posing with a motorcycle, bc he has a slight obsession.
 

All American Stud. 

-=

Picture perfect setting, fireworks over the inlet, Murrells Inlet. 

Our patriotic cupcakes turned out so cute! They were so easy too. All we did was made cupcakes out of already blue dyed cake batter. Then we whipped up some whipped cream with whipping cream, vanilla extract and sugar. Then we cut the stem's off of some strawberries and placed them on top of the whipped cream topping, that we had placed on top of the cupcakes. So easy, and so cute! Happy 4th of July!