Oriental Trading's Fun365 --a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: Oriental Trading sent me these items in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

Have you discovered Oriental Trading's Fun365?  It is a site that has different craft projects and articles. There are choices of Party Ideas, Craft Ideas, Wedding Ideas, and Classroom Ideas. I was inspired by ideas from the Craft Ideas and Party Ideas. I had so much fun exploring the many ideas there. I let Hazel look and help me pick what we would try. In the Party Ideas section there is a Rainbow Party and one of the crafts is a DIY Rainbow Coin Purse. Instead of doing the coin purse we used DIY Totes. (See current available totes here.)I asked Hazel to paint a rainbow on one for me. She wanted to use the Pearlized Acrylic Paint (available paint). Then she wanted to do a heart rainbow, but hers turned out more like a circle. She also did a square but wanted to use the pink on it.  I did a heart one for her as well as a star and an H. 

Friday Fruit Exploration: Pineapple

I have been a bit absent this week. It has been a bit crazy with helping a friend with a sick child, having a sick child and life in general. I am looking forward to escaping the chaos later today as I join some women from my church and head a women's retreat in Maine. I am only going for one night (and one full day) since I need to be back at church on Sunday and Hazel is having a hard time with me being gone already.

Getting ready for the Holiday Fair

Today I thank God for the beautiful leaves, plants, trees, flowers, animals, etc.!

This week has gotten away from me. Between meetings at church, starting my new temporary part-time job at church, and getting ready for the Holiday Fair at Hazel's school plus a few doctor's appointments and feeling a bit sick I feel like I haven't had much time for Crafty Moms Share. Today I share a few more of the felt crafts I made for the Wee Folk Shoppe at the Holiday Fair.

I shrunk the pattern from Betz White and filled with dry peas and lavender

Idea came from We Bloom Here

Patterns came from Wee Folk Art

Then Hazel and I made these for the Pocket Lady at the Holiday Fair.

Sharing Saturday will be up at its regular time tonight, however the features will be limited since I have not had a chance to visit them and will not have time today. (Today I will be taking a friend in for surgery and helping set up the Wee Folk Shoppe room and then going to the preview sale for adults of all the crafts.)

Autumn Nature Walks & Crafts

The last few days Hazel and I have taken nature walks. The autumn colors are so beautiful around here. We bring along her red wagon and a pail in which to put our treasures.

When she gets tired of walking, I pull her and she then takes any treasure I pick up and pretends I'm paying her and the pail becomes the cash register. 

One day it was particularly windy and Hazel commented on how the leaves were racing. I asked her which one was going to win, but she wasn't sure. We tried to get a picture of the leaves floating around, but had no luck. However we did get a pleasant surprise at the other end of the street.

Have I mentioned that Hazel loves cement mixers! And to watch the cement go up the big thing and back down to form the basement walls was really neat. We picked the perfect time to walk!

Now on these walks we have been gathering lots of treasures. Most of the treasures are leaves of every color. We bring them home and I have been sealing them with Mod Podge.

My craft room has several spots that look like this. Ugh!! The leaves are taking over and she keeps wanting more. Now we need to get crafting with them again. We made a few pictures.

Hazel's Leaf Fairy

My Leaf Fairy

My Leaf Owl

My favorite treasure thus far however is this huge pine cone we found. I have never seen one so big before.

We will share some of the pine cone crafts we have been doing at a later date. Enjoy!!

Fairy Garden 2012

Come to the side of our house, and you will be greeted by a lovely planter of flowers, but if you look closely you may see a little more.

 You may see the fairy house and pond and if you are really lucky you may see our little fairy, Elizabeth, (Hazel is naming just about everyone Elizabeth these days) dipping her feet in the pond to cool off or tending to her garden.

Last Friday I posted about The Magic Onions Fairy Garden Contest. Over the weekend, Hazel and I planted and started working on her garden. I love this idea of bringing some of the fantasy world to live. It gets her planning and thinking even more than she already is with her imagination.

First, we went to the store to pick out some flowers for the garden. She wanted a red geranium, some orange marigolds and various pink and purple petunias. We also bought a large pot to plant them in and start our fairy garden.

We filled the pot with dirt. and then found some sticks to make a fairy house and we used a piece of bark for the roof. We also used an old cupcake liner container to be a pond by the house.  then we planted the flowers where Hazel wanted. Then she added some rocks to be a path. We also added a small fairy that is meant to decorate a flower pot (she has a hook to hang from the edge on her back).

Hazel decided it needed some acorns and pine cones. We put the acorns around the pond. At this point Hazel got distracted and didn't really finish. She talked about pine cones and shells. So we waited a few days and finally added them.

We decorated with the shells and pine cones and we also used some shells as seats by the pond and in the flowers.

Now we will share at The Magic Onions to enter the contest. I hope you will join us in entering.

This is where I link up...

Nature Art and Activities

Hazel's Pine Cone Fairy

Today was a fun packed day at our house. Hazel did not take a nap, so it was also a long day. We started our morning with an early play date, though both kids slept in so it was later than usual. During which we played inside and outside. Hazel wanted to take a walk with her little wagon so she could collect nature treasures. Of course to her all the leaves are treasures so we didn't get very far.

After our playdate Hazel and I headed over to the Farmer's Market. I promised to buy her some apple cider doughnuts and some apple cider. It was the last week of the Farmer's Market in our town, so it was our last chance. Then we came home and had lunch and tried to nap. I almost fell asleep, but apparently Hazel didn't want to and decided she wanted quiet time today instead. Quiet time is at least half an hour of alone time in her room. She can play with her dollhouse or read her books in there, but shouldn't call me unless it is an emergency. She is getting much better at this. I feel it is important for each of us to have a little down time in our day and a change of pace as well as time to be alone.

Acorn and Pinecone Paintings

Then we started to do some crafts. (Well actually I guess we continued to do crafts since we had done some before our playdate this morning.) These crafts however were done in the garage. I would have done them outside, but after our Father's Day experience outside crafts do not work for us. We started with the acorn painting similar to what I saw on Tippytoe Crafts. However I didn't look to see what they did in awhile, so I went with my own intuition. We also did not have many complete acorns so we threw in some pinecones. We put a piece of white paper in a shirt box and then dipped acorns, acorn caps, and pinecones into fall colored paints. The result was interesting.

Hazel's Fall Treasure Wreath

My First Nature Person

Next we took some of those leaves, pinecones, flowers, acorns (well mostly caps) and glued them onto paper and a cut paper plate wreath.

My Maple Leaf Fairy

Our Oak Leaf Fairy

Then we decided to make leaf people which we then made into leaf fairies. Oh, and Hazel decided to use a pinecone instead of a leaf for one of them.

Then Hazel really wanted to go dig in the garden, so I let her. Yesterday she got to dig to help plant fall bulbs. And I was very glad she wasn't worried about getting dirty like she use to be.

Hazel's Digging Adventure

After digging, we decided to try some more painting. This time we used flowers, leaves and anything we could find as our brushes. We had a great time. Hazel got sick of the flowers, etc. and decided to use her fingers and hands.

Choosing a flower

Dipping it

The Result of Flower Painting

Painting with her hands

Her hands and painting

While she had her hands in the paint I pulled out more fall colored paper and got her to do her handprints for handprint turkey cards for Thanksgiving. I will stash them away for a bit. Then I hosed her off. She somehow ended up with orange paint in her hair. It was definitely a bath night tonight. We did some more painting and crafts, but we will safe those for another post. I figured while she was already dirty to do footprint paintings too. They are our Halloween cards. I'll share our Halloween crafts tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Acorns, Pinecones and Autumn Fairies

 

Today we worked on several crafts before heading out on our errands. We started by making two more wool roving fairies with an autumn theme this time. I'm going to put them on Hazel's nature table for now, but I know they will end up in her fairy garden once we decorate it for autumn.

Our Autumn Wool Roving Fairies

Flower Acorn Pine cone Fairies

Next we gathered our acorns and pine cones from our nature walks and back yard. Having seen this Blissfully Domestic blog when I was searching for acorn crafts. We created similar acorn fairies using an acorn and a pine cone for the body. The second acorn may have been a better option, but all of our acorns were small so we went this method.

Our Acorn Pine Cone Family

Then we ran out of silk flowers so we made pine cone acorn people. We will probably add more details to them, but we stopped to let the glue dry. Again I see these going on Hazel's nature table for the fall.

I hope all of you have a wonderful long weekend! I keep praying my dear husband will not have to work nights after tonight, but he doesn't know. He is guessing he will have to go in tomorrow night. This week of the graveyard shift has really done a number on all of us. Even the cats are missing him. Hopefully he (and all of us) will get back to our regular schedules and rest this weekend. Take care and be safe!