Autumn Crafts with Dollar Tree Supplies -- a Crafty Weekends Craft and Link Party

Disclosure: I will receive a small percentage from any purchases made from the Dollar Tree links. All opinions are my own!

This week I am sharing some easy fall crafts with supplies from Dollar Tree. They had some cute autumn ribbons. I chose a plaid. I also got a burlap ribbon spool and one of the adorable fall owls. I also used a 10-inch Styrafoam wreath form. I wrapped it with burlap ribbon and used a pin to hold it. Then I tied a bow with the plaid ribbon and hot glued the owl and a decorative pick (I bought elsewhere) onto it. I attached a loop of twine as well to hang it. I am going to give it to my parents to hang on their door of their new condo.

Easy Easter Craft

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Well today in the Northeast we had a blizzard. I was awoken by Hazel yelling when the power went off this morning. It came back on about an hour later and was on for about 40 minutes. Then it was off again for a few hours. What are to snowbound girls to do? Well after putting on some layers to stay warm without heat, we did our nails. Have you heard of Color Street nail wraps yet? We LOVE them!! I have four friends who sell them now. One of them gave me a set of Sunset Canyon and asked me to do a Mommy and Me picture with them. So we did our nails. These wraps are so easy Hazel can do them herself!! And there is no dry time. It literally takes about ten minutes to give yourself a manicure with them and then they are good to go and last longer than regular nail polish. Oh and they are regular nail polish. 

Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe: Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month

This is the third week of the Hispanic Heritage Month. We are participating in the Multicultural Kid Blogs Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Hop and Giveaway. You can enter the giveaway here by scrolling down as well. We are sharing something we have done to celebrate or learn about Hispanic cultures each week during the month. Today we are sharing the story of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. We discovered this story by reading The Beautiful Lady: Our Lady of Guadalupe by Pat Mora. There are however many books that discuss the story and the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We also have enjoyed thus far Tomie de Paolo's Our Lady of Guadalupe. Here are some other books we found at the library that share some part of the story or how the festivals are celebrated.

Beaded Crosses

The other week when we pulled out the decorations, we had hung our four yarn eggs on our chandelier, but our chandelier has eight arms. I wanted to add some crosses to tie in the religious part of it. I thought about painting some wooden ones, but I couldn't find where I had stashed them, so we made some beaded ones. 

Hazel decided to make a necklace and bracelet as well. She decided we were working in our jewelry store making all of our special orders. Oh, and we had to sing a little song we made up about making the jewelry. First I will share a tutorial for our simple crosses. You need some beads (we used wooden ones) and a pipe cleaner.  Cut the pipe cleaner so it will make a cross (roughly 1/3 for the horizontal).

Then choose a bead to be the middle bead. I experimented a bit and found the flatter beads to work the best. Stick both pieces of pipe cleaner through the middle bead.

Then position the pipe cleaners to make the cross you want. You should have a little more on the top so you can make a loop to hang it.

Now start beading each branch of the cross. On the top one stop a little further from the end and bend it down to make a small loop so you can get a string through to hang it.

On the other branches you will just fold a short end over the last bead. Then it is ready to hang.

Hazel made this one!

These were the first ones, but I discovered the bigger center beads did not work as well.

We also made some jewelry. I made us each a St. Patrick's Day bracelet.

And I made us matching rainbow bracelets.

Then I used a rainbow pendant and made her a matching necklace.

Then she made a necklace and wanted me to make another necklace with another pendant bead.

Now she likes to accessorize herself with all of them.

She gets quite the comments going out like this. It makes her very happy though!

Virtual Book Club for Kids Author and a Easter Craft

This month's author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids is Julia Donaldson. Before she was chosen for the book club, I had never heard of her. However shortly after the list of authors came out I checked each one out with a couple of books. We discovered Room on a Broom by Julia Donaldson. We will definitely be doing something with this book, but we are also loving so many of her books. Her picture books are all written in rhyme and so many of them have sweet messages to go with them. Julia Donaldson is a British author and you can learn more about her at her website. We will begin this month's blog hop on March 18th. I hope you will join us in discovering this wonderful author and find some great activities to go with her books.

Now for a quick craft to share. Last year, Kelly at Happy Whimsical Hearts shared some Easter candy wrapper art. Now I saved some wrappers from last year, but I don't know that we ever tried making any art. This year when I was pulling out the Easter decorations I found a basket full of wrappers and some plastic eggs. I got to thinking, I could buy a wooden cross for $1 at a craft store and wrap the wrappers (with the help of some glue to make sure they stay on) and make a very colorful and shiny cross decoration.

Hazel also loved making it with me. What a great use for those wrappers! Plus I love the colors. I cannot wait for spring to start!