Fall Days - Preschool Tree Time!

One of my all time favorite times of the year is the transition from fall to winter, the leaves changing color, the chill in the air, the holidays looming and coming and looming and coming, the children's crafts, the excitement, the giggles.... I could go on forever.  

Yesterday I wrote a post about taking advantage of every learning opportunity you get, but I should also admit that I do have a formal "preschool" time with my daughter, we attempt one to three times a week, sometimes we'll get in all five days and sometimes we'll skip a week entirely.  It's flexible because she is young, and because we're busy!  But I do have an entire binder that I have started to accumulate awesome homeschooling things within, things like free printables (http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/worksheets/) and crafts like the one we did yesterday which I also got from an amazing blog called Housing a Forest and a rough week-by-week schedule.

Anyways! On to the fun!  While these trees look awesome, and took a while, they were incredibly easy and the kids (ages 2 1/2 and 4) had a ton of fun every step of the way.  

The first thing I did was to shred up about 3 pages of each color of construction paper and put them in about 1 to 1.5 c. water.  This will start the paper pulp, but they need to have a good while to really absorb the water.  As we were doing a fall theme we chose red, orange, and yellow (like the example.) we loved it so much though we might do it in the spring time and do it with green and pink and make apricot tree blossoms.  

While the paper was soaking, we made the "Salt dough hills."  Salt dough is the easiest thing to make, 1 c. salt, 1 c. water, 2 c. flour.  If its a little too wet or dry add more flour or water.  Now I didn't know how well these would hold up, and I wanted ours to go on the mantle, so I used wide mouthed pint sized jars and we shaped the dough to fit into it.  (I will say when you bake there's a slight bit of relaxing, so make it a little smaller than the cup's diameter.  I ended up having to rip off some of the edges of their hills to cram them inside.)  The dough once baked however did appear to be strong enough to hold up the single branch trees,  I had also thought about putting them in little tins from the dollar store, but liked the mason jar look.  You can use whatever you want for the base. 

The kids helped with every step of this process from pouring flour to mixing to rolling and playing.  When they had the basic shape of their "hills" we stuck in our branch (just pulled from my own back yard.) to give it the general fit for the branches.  Then I stuck them in a 250 degree for about 30-45 minutes.  I wanted them to be dry enough to paint, but still moist enough to force the tree into.

While the dough was in the oven we worked on our ground covering - what else but a pile of leaves?  We took the colors and put them in the blender, (lightest first) and blended up the paper.  I found that I needed to add extra water to make a good pulp of each of the colors.

Once the pulp was finished I let the kids each have a color and we started pinching out paper.  I covered a plate with paper towel (to help with the mess and to absorb the extra water) and we each started pinching the leaves out.  For individual lives simply squish the water out and set them on the towel.  My daughter did this for a bit, before deciding she didn't like the individuals much and decided to roll it into a big ball and crumble it and squish it, honestly, it looked just as awesome and resembled more a raked pile that the kids had played in then the perfect ones.   

Baby B (though not much of a baby any more!) was much more precise and preferred to only take a few fingers to squish the leaves individually.  Both of them ended up getting some beautiful leaves and a good pile by the end because neither wanted to just leave the paper to dry, both wanted to play with the pulp a bit, and as it was their day I wanted them to do what they wanted to do.  

When they were done with the leaves I pulled the dough out and let it cool while we did lunch.  Once cooled the kiddos enjoyed painting their hills "natural" hill colors, browns and greens.  This also allowed the leaves the opportunity to dry while they painted.  When they were done with the painting we did some fun time away from crafts to let them dry.  When I could handle it I put them into the pint jars and pushed the tree into the dough.  I thought I would need to hot glue this, but it was a nice snug fit, I can only assume from the expansion while it cooked.  

Once the trees were in their jars it was time to start putting the leaves on the tree itself.  The fun with this was how random and easy it could be, you could put as much or as little on as you want, it looked good with the branches in bare and the ground leaves we'd done earlier in the jar.  I had to help B a bit to get the leaves to stick in the beginning, but by the end he was figuring it out and wrapping it well.  The thing I would recommend is that the older party help squeeze some of the water out to ensure the paper will stay on the branch.  If they got too big of a wet clump it would all fall right off. Also I have to agree with the Housing a Forest author - the more erratic the better.   

She-she's Tree.

Baby B's Tree

Once that was done we tied a bit of raffia around the pint jars and I set them on the mantle to dry. If you don't have / don't like raffia, fabric, burlap, ribbon, yarn.... pretty much anything to accent it would work.

It's Gorgeous!!! It's totally a craft that I want to display in my home. :)  It may even be a yearly tradition and at $0 a tree it would be one we can always do no matter what finances look like.  :)  For sure my favorite craft of the year thus far.

Cute And Girlie Closet

When we bought our house I was certain we'd have PLENTY of storage space, we'd never even start using the 2 walk in closets, the 2 "storage" closets, the guest room closet, the garage.  Four years later and I've become frankly overwhelmed with the massive quantities of things we have in our house.

So I decided in my quest to "conquer clutter" that I would hit up She-she's closet, since hers was the worst of all of them, stacked with things that really didn't allow me to use them.

I started by ripping everything out - I gutted it, removed all clothing, pulled all shelves, all "extra's" (As an artist she'd gotten a lot of my "supplies") then I went about sorting and trashing and organizing.

First I followed "The Saved Quarter's Blog by Penny Saver" tips when she discussed picking up kids clothes for next to nothing.  I organized She-she's clothes out into what we had - though I need to go through it again as this was almost a year ago when I went through everything.

I wanted her to have ample room in her closet for her clothing, since it was the only place I wanted her clothing.  Then I chose a color scheme.

Since my daughter is a very girlie-girl, (And I had several of the "totes" already) I chose pink and black.

After putting away all of her clothing I sorted Arts and Crafts, DVD's (She has many little videos for "nap/quiet" time) And blankets.  I also needed a permanent place for my scrap-booking supplies.

By following the simple color scheme the closet ended up having a cohesive look despite the fact that there was still a lot of different types of things in there.  You'll likely note the car-seat base, and possibly the luggage in the back corner beside her dresser.  The pink totes I picked up at Target in their $1 section.  I then took an old diaper box and wrapped it with the black and silver paper I had left over from a wedding.  The other pink totes were given to me from my mom and MIL while I was in the hospital with She-she.

Simple and cheap we were able to have access to her clothing and toys and my craft supplies at any point.

Fleece Blankey

Diffuclty Rating: 1.5 - Child's Play 

(Scissors should be used with adult supervision.)

She-she's bedroom started out as a "baby bug" room, particularly the "pretty" bugs like lady bugs, dragonflies, and butterflies, but as she's gotten older she's wanted more and more Tinkerbell.  We have a slightly "odd" bed for her - its dimensions are not quite toddler and not quite child, so i decided to make her a fleece tied blanket all to herself.

I took my sweet little girl to JoAnn's with me and we chose two fleece's - one of course with Tinkerbell, and one with the background.  I particularly wanted the little "bumpy" fleece as it was extra soft and cute, She-she chose the color.  

Now you've probably seen this before, as its incredibly easy and they were hugely popular some eight to ten years ago. but for a quick reminder this is how you do it:

Step 1: Choose two of roughly the same weight fleece fabrics. place them together right sides out.  There is no flipping reverse sides like regular sewing.

Step 2: Going in about 3 inches cut 3 inch long strips about an inch apart. I did the first few with rulers, and had the ruler sitting there to check when I felt they were getting a bit off.

Step 3: Using the front and the back strips (in my case Tinkerbell and the green bubble fleece) tie a simple square knot.  I highly, let me repeat that, HIGHLY recommend knotting every few strips.  A strong wind, playing kids, running cat or anything else could move your fabric so the front and back cuts are off and your ties will be all messed up. 

 Step 4: Repeat until you come to about 3 inches out of the corner, tie it snugly and don't worry about bunching you'll stretch it a bit later. When you reach the corner, simply cut the rest of the fabric off. (See photo.) Then continue going along the other side with the same knotting method you used, repeating the corner cutting until you are to your very first corner.

Step 5: You will likely notice that your fabric is incredibly bunched, this is normal and shouldn't concern you.  Simply grab it along one edge about 6 inches apart and pull it to stretch it back out to its regular grain.  You may hear a little tearing here, but that's normal.  Watch what you're doing however as it is possible to rip a knot right off, but its difficult. 

Step 6: Fluff the edges and tighten any that have gotten lose, once tightened they will do well for several years. 

In fact, I have a quilt my mother made me using this method when I was still in high school (I wont say how many years ago that was haha!), other than having to tie a few knots over the years its been fantastic, none of the edges have torn off and while some stress has been made to it, its still in very good shape.

So if you're looking for a sweet gift idea or a fun thing to do on a slow Sunday why not opt for a quick fleece quilt?