One of our favourite things to do on sunny spring and summer days is to cover our sidewalks in bright colours and patterns using homemade sidewalk chalk paint. The paint, which dries with a chalk-looking finish, is vibrant, easy to apply, and washes off with a couple of rains. Perfect, right? Almost! The only {petty} problems are that it’s best used during the warmer, drier months of the year, and the beautiful sidewalk art created cannot be saved in Miss G’s scrapbooks (duh!)
With both of those things in mind, today we did some experimenting with using the paint on paper! I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, but I’m happy to report that it worked wonderfully!
First off, after making many batches of sidewalk chalk paint, here is our easy peasy, minimally-messy method of making it. The key component? A blender! First off, it prevents the inevitable cornstarch poof that comes with whisking it, and secondly, I find that after a good long spin in the blender, the cornstarch doesn’t separate from the water nearly as quickly as when we hand mix it.
With our paints ready, we headed outside with a stack of black construction paper. I’m sure other papers would work wonderfully too, but I was kind of going for the old-school blackboard look. Now… I’m not going to lie. When we first started using the paints on the paper, I thought our experiment was going to be a total flop. So much so, in fact, that we ditched the paper and used our entire batch of paint on our front sidewalk instead. Going on, the paint looked like slightly muddled water… Not quite the look I was hoping for!
It wasn’t until every last drop of our paint was gone and we were beginning to clean up that we noticed how beautiful the paintings we’d banished over to the side were now that they were dry.
Instead of looking wet and barely there like this…
Once dry, they were bright, chalky, and vibrant like this! Cool, right?
With that, it was back into the kitchen to whip up another batch of paint. Together, we painted many more pieces, this time watching the transformation as they dried.
The other kind of cool thing we learned is that once your piece is dry…
You can use your fingernail or the edge of a popsicle stick to scratch off designs and patterns! Fun, right?
How did our afternoon of painting end? Hah! Like this! Miss G was done, dinnertime was nearing, and we still had some paint leftover, so out it went onto the sidewalk. Of course, which two year old can resist walking through regular puddles, let alone rainbow-coloured ones?!
Well, and because feet were okay, hands must be okay too, no?
♥
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Every once and a while, I seem to go through a paper roll collecting stage. I have no idea why, because I truly never have anything planned for them, but it happens none the less. When I noticed a little collection of them today during nap time, I decided we’d put them to use this afternoon.
Though we really haven’t done a whole lot of paper tube crafts, I remembered how much Miss G enjoyed the 
Next, came shaping them. The good news is that it wasn’t difficult. For the triangle, square, and rectangle, I basically made the required number of corners by folding the tubes, then played with the shapes a little bit until I was happy with them. You can see exactly how to form the heart shape 
At this point, Gracen was still asleep and I just couldn’t wait test them out. So I didn’t. ☺
When my little lady woke up, she quickly discovered the stamping station I’d set out for her, and she was thrilled.
She stamped away testing out each shape thoroughly… 
Her personal favourite? My impromptu bow tie stamp dipped in purple paint (of course). 
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While we should have probably had these done last weekend and in the mail days ago, Miss G and I just put together these little gifts for the grandmas today. (Sorry Grandmas! Here’s a sneak peek of what’s coming very soon.)
To get started, Gracen and I filed through my scrapbook paper stash and selected some paper colours for both of her grandmas. We talked about the parts of a flower, and as she described them, I cut them out. 6 petals, a ‘middle’, a stem, 2 leaves, and a background later, Miss G was ready to start assembling her first flower.
When I asked her if she knew what to do, she said she didn’t, but she got started independently anyways. She wanted to start with the yellow circle, and the only thing I helped her with was positioning it in a spot that would allow for enough room for both the petals and the stem.
She squeezed a dollop of glue on the back of each petal, then carefully tucked them underneath the centre piece, making sure that none overlapped too much.
When she was done with the petals, she glued on the stem and leaves.
Here’s her finished flower. Adorable, right?!
Once the flower had had a moment to dry, we sat down together and used the hand over hand technique to print ‘I love Grandma Sue because…’ in the middle of the flower. Then we talked about the reasons why she loved her Grandmas and added one idea to each petal. She was happy to help me print the first couple, but asked me to write down the ideas on my own after that, which I was totally fine with. This project is all about the ideas! I wrote down her phrases just as she’d said them, even when she told me that she loved Grandma Sue because of her nice feet and belly – hah! ☺
I swear, I’m not a hoarder. In fact, with something like 49 moves under my belt in my 31 years, it’s quite the opposite. I’d much rather toss/recycle/give something away than have to lug it to a new location. Buuuuuuut, the other day after juicing a bunch of citrus fruit, I couldn’t help but think that there might be something we could do will all of the empty rinds (please tell me some of you do this too). Not knowing what it was at the moment, I tossed them all into a container in the fridge and decided I’d figure it out later. Sure enough, a couple of days later as I was grabbing something from the fridge, I remembered the 
First, we gathered a few things from around the house… The rinds, some baker’s twine (
After threading our needle and tying a knot at the end, we pushed our embroidery needle through one side of our citrus cup, straight through the other side. I thought we may need the tack to start our holes, but we totally didn’t (though you might if you had a particularly tough rind). I did the poking, and Miss G did the pulling through part.
With the twine pulled all the way through, we pulled up the centre to create a long loop for hanging.
Next, we did a quarter turn and fed the needle straight through the rind again, this time perpendicular to the first set of holes.
Then we pulled the second centre string up to meet the first and tied a knot on the outside of the citrus cup in order to secure everything.
While she helped me ‘sew’ the first couple of rinds, Gracen discovered that she could make some pretty interesting creations with the extra citrus cups and pushpins, so that’s what she did.
This little lemon went from having ‘pokey hair’ to being an octopus, to being a porcupine, and many other things along the way.
When our citrus rind cups were complete, we focused on the food portion of the process. 
All we did was take some bird seed (we used a wild bird variety), and mixed in a tablespoon of all-natural peanut butter for every half cup of seed in order to give it some ‘stick’.
Then Grae carefully filled the cups with the sticky seed mixture one scoop at a time.
We used 1 1/2 cups of seed with 3 tablespoons of peanut butter and it filled 2 grapefruit cups and 2 lemon cups until heaping.
With that, it was off to hang the new feeders in the backyard. 
Gracen was very specific and knew she wanted one in our apple-pear tree, one in our fig tree, and one in our plum tree… And the other one got hung in our rose bush. 
Last spring, I bought a multi-pack of wooden spoons in order to make a bird feeder similar to 
To get us started, I put out some coloured Sharpies, some felt strips, ribbon pieces, pieces of yarn, googly eyes, sequins, buttons, gems, some glitter glue, and some craft glue.
We started off by attaching some googly eyes to the back of our spoons with craft glue, and then I encouraged Gracen to add the other details as she pleased.
Here’s her first puppet person.
After creating a few girls, it was time to create a boy. She asked me to cut out some ‘Papa hair’, a moustache, and tie for him, and then put him together, adding buttons down his front because ‘that’s how Papa’s shirts are for work’.
Here’s our completed wooden spoon puppet people family… From left to right, Daddy, Dah-fat, Fadeen, and my personal favourite, Fafee Cacus. (Oh, the names things are given right now…)
Later on, once dry, Gracen disappeared into her room with the puppets and I found her acting out a playground scene and making the mommy and daddy puppets kiss. ☺
I set up this little creative table for Miss G this morning and she was so over the top excited about it that she could barely contain herself.
It was very simple to set up, but still took too long for Miss G’s likes. All I had to do is cut out a few large egg shapes out of construction paper…
Then cut smaller ones inside, leaving an outline a couple of centimetres thick.
Next I stuck the egg outlines onto some clear contact paper, and trimmed off the excess.
I quickly filled up some little containers with our 
She got started immediately, diving into the pastel ribbons first.
And the messy stuff afterwards. ☺
She immediately completed two of the eggs, and left the third one to a complete a little later. As of now, Miss G’s eggs remain as they were when she finished decorating them, but we may cover her designs with a second sheet of contact paper in order to make them a little easier to store.
Last month, Gracen and I were lucky enough to receive a discovery kit from 
Gracen was thrilled to receive a bright and beautiful package full of fun goodies and I was thrilled with how quickly it arrived and how professional the package looked.
Sparked discovery kits come with everything you need to complete several projects right there inside the box – markers, paper, pencils and instructions included! Our kit was pirate-themed and came with four easy activities… A folded paper pirate hat to make, a wooden treasure chest to decorate, a treasure map to create, and a popsicle stick parrot puppet to assemble.
Grae was super excited to get started and chose to make the paper pirate hat first (talk about taking me back to my childhood!)
Though the finished product wouldn’t quite stay on her head, for us, projects like these are all about the process. We spent time together, we worked as a team, and we had fun together, and that’s what’s important. If we wanted to, we could attach some sort of elastic easily enough and add the hat to her 
Next up, Gracen chose to decorate her treasure box. At first she began adding splashes of colour here and there and then she requested that I draw some shapes for her to colour in. She thought decorating a wooden box was a blast and I loved that Sparked had included high-quality crafting products for us to use.
While we haven’t had a chance to make our treasure map yet, there are already plenty of things I love about Sparked Kids Crafts…
Back when we were living in Kuwait, I remember desperately longing for rain. The kind that lasts days and days and lends itself to cozy hoodies, movie afternoons, and pots of soup simmering on the stove. Well, I’m happy to say, I think I’ve officially had my fix. It’s been raining for several days in a row now, and though lazy afternoons on the couch watching documentaries and romantic comedies don’t exactly fit well with our current life, we’ve enjoyed the rain nonetheless. 
The project started off as a 
Grae decorated her coffee filters independently for a while, and then asked me to join her to finish them off. 
Afterwards, Miss G used an easy-to-squeeze spray bottle to soak the filters pretty thoroughly.
While waiting for them to dry, we began to work on our butterfly bodies. Using Sharpies, we drew little faces on the tops of the bamboo pins.
Here they are when done.
Next, Grae chose some pipe cleaners from our stash, we cut them in half, and bent them into little antennae shapes.
When we got back to our filters, they weren’t quite dry yet, so we took a blowdryer to them. 10 seconds each was all they needed.
To assemble the butterflies, we simply pinched them across the middle (Miss G did this job) and fanned the wings out nicely (my job).
Then Grae carefully selected a clothespin body and a set of sparkly antennae and we clipped everything together.
Here are are the two butterflies Miss G declared her favourites.
At the last minute, we decided to add magnets to the backs of the clothespins with hot glue (I also popped a little squeeze of glue into the tops of the clothespins too, just to hold everything together more permanently).
And here’s my proud little girl with her finished project.
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This creative table set up had a good long run in our house… It’s been worked on day in and out for over a week now, and I’m sure Gracen would still be adding to it if there was any sticky space left on the contact paper. 
When it began, it looked like this… A piece of clear contact paper, sticky side up, tacked down to one of our vintage apple crates (it could just as easily be taped down to a table top), and a few little jars of decorating goodies, as Miss G calls them.
Included were sequins, confetti, tissue squares, and a container of glitter.
Although I often set up Gracen’s creative tables while she’s sleeping, this time around she helped me set up, selecting the glitter (of course) and the sequins to be part of it.
When we’d finished gather our materials, she began creating without direction or instruction… Carefully adding each item, one at a time, and pressing them down onto the sticky paper.
The lovely thing about contact paper is that because everything sticks to it, projects (even when they include a full bottle of glitter) never get wildly messy.
Grae revisited it daily, adding a little bit each time, until today when we decided it was time to switch things up a little.
Now we could have easily called it quits at this point, because art like this is definitely about the process and not the finished product, but Grae had announced early on that she would be hanging her finished piece on her bedroom door. In order to preserve it a little better, we took out our contact paper once again and cut a piece the same size as the original one.
I then peeled the backing off of just the top edge of the new sheet, carefully lined it up with the art piece, and pressed the two sheets, sticky sides together, down. Afterwards, I pulled the remaining backing off in order to cover the entire piece.
Here’s what it looked like with everything sealed in. We could have left it as is, but Gracen chose to cut it into two hearts rather than keep it as one large rectangle.
Here’s the finished product. She very proudly hung it on her 
This afternoon Miss G made a little congratulations card for her sweet playmate Ainsley, who became a big sister 11 days ago. She decided she wanted to draw Ainsley and her new brother on the inside of the card, which was a big undertaking seeing as she’s only ever really drawn circles, triangles, squares, and happy faces. When she asked for help, I walked her through the parts we needed to add to her start of two smiley faces (“Okay, now what does Ainsley have on her head?”, “What about feet? Should we add some?”, etc.) and this is what she created. 
A couple of days ago as Gracen was emptying and restocking Grandma Charlotte’s pantry shelves just for fun (obviously), she came across a can of condensed milk. GC had no idea why she had it or what she’d ever do with it, but I had an idea… Shiny homemade paint!
Here’s what you need to start with… A can of condensed milk, some food colouring, some small bowls or cups (muffin tins work well too), and some teaspoons.
To get started, we poured a little bit of condensed milk into each cup.
We went with 5 separate cups this time around, but you can choose to do more or less.
Next, Grae squirted in about 5 drops of liquid food colouring (more for an extra vibrant finish and less for a more pastel look).
We stuck to the basics and added purple, but obviously you can create any colours you choose.
Then my little helper gave each a good stir.
Here’s what we ended up with.
With our new paints made, it was time to get creating.
I’d say she was pleased with the results, wouldn’t you?
The other fun part about these paints is that they drizzle really nicely due to their thickness… And who doesn’t love some messy fun, right?
Here’s the end result. A beautiful masterpiece created by our beauty. ☺