Cereal Box Sandals

Most of you know by now that Ella is in the summer reading-arts program at our local library. Today, we made cereal-box sandals. My friend Laura was intrigued by these (she totally needs a blog, by the way...hint, hint, Laura) and asked me how to make these sandals.

For once, I was actually just the watcher and not the maker of these things, so I was able to take pictures.

Here's what you need.

*Empty cereal box
*glue/tape
*scissors
*stuff to decorate the sandals with


Here's What You Do:

*Flatten your cereal box

*Trace your feet, and cut them out

 

 

*Using another part of the box, make straps for your sandals, and glue/tape in place

*Decorate!

*And voila :)

What to do when the weather is yucky....

North Carolina has been under all sorts of fun weather warnings, advisories and weather people basically telling you to stay inside.

So we have been.

In an effort to try to keep myself and Ella from having major cabin fever and going insane, I've been looking for the best activities to keep a kid (and her mom) busy.

Here is what we have found so far.

1) Movies...they are good, but you can only watch so many of them before it starts to feel like your brain is melting.

2) Cooking. Kids can help wash and chop veggies and stir things in a pot.

3) Snow cream. We have had a good amount of snow here. During one of the bigger snowfalls, I stuck a mixing bowl outside and waited for it to be filled with snow.  We brought our bowl of snow inside and added some sweetened condensed milk.

Then, we added some vanilla extract. Yes, I used imitation. It's what I had on hand. Don't judge.

Then, because it's way more fun for her, I had Ella mix the snow cream.

And then we ate it. Well, Gabe mostly did. Not because it isn't good but because he is Gabe and he tends to eat everything :)

4) Catch up on your sleep. Unless you have an early riser like me. Then, sorry about your luck.

5) Make Borax crystals. For those of you who don't know what Borax is, you can find it in the detergent aisle of any store and it looks like this.

Add three tablespoons of Borax per cup of very hot water and put your mixture into a container.  Make a shape out of a pipe cleaner (we made a heart), and suspend it from a pencil and two paperclips so it is submerged in the water. It should look something like this.

In about 6-8 hours (we left ours overnight), it should look like this.

Pretty cool, huh?

6) If it's cold enough, boil some water and throw it outside. These pictures are pretty lame, and it's way better in person.

If you look close, you can see the water turning into ice crystals.

7) Start a project. Ella is making a giant rubber band ball. I'll be periodically updating with pictures of its progress.

8) Play board games. Ella's favorite is Trouble.

9) If all else fails, and you have the option (and the guts!), GO OUTSIDE!

Gratitude Tree

I saw the idea for this on a few blogs, and decided that in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I needed to give this a try. Because, besides handprint turkeys, how many Thanksgiving crafts do you get to do with your kids?

We started off with a piece of posterboard. I drew a tree on the posterboard, and then cut it out. And yes, I saved the extra pieces of posterboard. Have I mentioned yet how cheap and stingy I am? :)

We put the year on the bottom. Ella drew a long-eared owl, because, what's a tree without an owl?

We stuck the tree up on our living room wall. I had some awesome leaf cutouts that my choir director was going to throw out after a church party. I begged him not to, because I had this project in mind.

I had her write her name at the bottom of a leaf and write one thing she was thankful for. Of course, I made sure I did one too, and Gabe will do a couple tomorrow. We plan to continue this until Thanksgiving and then go through our leaves, one by one, thanking God for all He has given us.

 

I'll be posting more pictures of our Gratitude Tree as the weeks tick by toward Thanksgiving!