Christmas Crafts & More

Although I have not been sharing them all, we have been doing some crafts for Christmas. So for my Christmas Eve post, I thought I would share some of what we have been up to and a few other things we love for Christmas!! By the way Sharing Saturday is 2 weeks long and still going on. For Christmas Day there will be some Christmas themed features and the continued link party!!

Let's begin at the beginning of the season. In November Hazel and I purchased four rabbit ornaments for the Multicultural Kid Blogs Ornament Swap. I also made three (well five) ornaments from fabric.  

Sharing Saturday 13-22

I have a crazy day and a crazy week scheduled this coming week, so I am starting Sharing Saturday early and it will last two weeks! That way I will have two weeks to try to get the visiting done--especially since I cannot imagine getting much done the first week. There will be some features from last week this week as well as next week, so make sure you come back to see if you were featured. If you have not checked out the amazing ideas shared last week, you really should go and be inspired. Here are my features.

First I cannot let one of the farm playmats made from the swap I ran go by without featuring it. Look how great this one came out. (I still have a little more to do on Hazel's, but it is coming along.) This one is from My Rhythm and Rhyme in Motherhood.

Then there were a few themes from last week's shared posts. Today I am going to share some of the gardening themed posts.

1) From The Gift of Curiosity: Dissecting a Flower (I should note she also shared dyeing flowers last week too)

2) From Carrots Are Orange: Introducing Parts of a Seed to Preschoolers

3) From Fit Kids Clubhouse: Garden Math (I love that they are learning in the garden!! It is truly the best way to learn instead of cards and books.)

4) From Trillium Montessori: Flower Activities

5) From Making Boys Men: 5 Tips for Gardening with Kids

6) From Domestic Bliss Squared: Growing Potatoes in a Garbage Pail

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess: Another busy week but we shared an American South Cinderella--The Talking Eggs, our small world jungle playscape and a Minnie Mouse outfit.

 

Now for This Week's Party 
 
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Knitted Farm Swap Update

Sharing Saturday is still open!! Please come share your child-oriented crafts and activities with us! 

My current GIVEAWAY is still open!!

Do you remember the Knitted Farm Swap for which I was looking for participants back in March? Well yesterday, I finally received the last of the squares and organized them all and sent them out. (This is what I was doing instead of getting Sharing Saturday up and running on time.) Today, I'm going to share with you the squares.

Kids Valentine Swap

You may remember I put together a Valentine Swap for kids back around Valentine's Day. I was waiting for all the Valentines to arrive, but if they haven't arrived by now, they are not going to.

We had seven children participate in the Kids' Valentine Swap. One from England, one from Australia, and the other 5 from the United States: Massachusetts, Nevada (2 here), California, and Texas. There ages ranged from two to ten.

Here is a map to show you where they all came from.



To participate you needed to send a homemade Valentine to each of the other six children and a postcard of something from the area where you live.

From Massachusetts

From England

Two from Nevada

From Australia

From California

I know Hazel loved getting the mail and it was a lot of fun to see different crafts and different parts of the world through post cards.

Happy Palm Sunday, Everyone!!

Knitted Farm Swap

Please note: All of the pictures in this post are from Living Crafts Magazine and are used with their permission. Please do not pin any of them since they are not mine.

Some of the patches closer up (Winter 2008)

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Our mantle this morning

Happy Valentine's Day!! I hope you are finding a way to give and receive love today!! I have to say I am feeling well loved with the most entries EVER on Sharing Saturday. We have decided to end our Sharing Saturdays on Wednesday since people were not really looking at the entries added after that. So please feel free to link up today and tomorrow and go check out the amazing entries we have gotten!!

Today I want to share with you about our Kids' Valentine Swap.

We have six children participating including Hazel ranging in age from two to ten-years-old. One from England, one from Australia, and the rest from the United States. I know several parents have let me know that they have gotten them off late or have not mailed them, but we figured it wouldn't matter to the kids since getting mail is always exciting. All we asked was for each child to make a valentine and send it to each of the other's with a postcard from where you live. That way if parents want to do a geography lesson they have something more personal to use.

I gave Hazel several choices of cute valentines to make and this is the one she chose. She chose the one without candy (I was surprised) but made finger puppets.

Demonstrating how to use them

I cut out the hearts (using my scrapbook materials) and punched out the holes. Then we glued on eyes and added glitter glue mouths and stickers for cheeks, nose and ears.

On the back we stamped Happy Valentine's Day and signed her name. Then we attached a pipe cleaner for arms with a sticker.

We have only received one valentine thus far. It is the one from England. Hazel was so excited to get it.

Thank you, Annabel!!

We will share more pictures as they come in.

I also finally finished Hazel's owl last night and made her a quick valentine with it.

We have been doing some heart related crafts. Over the weekend, we made the marbleized hearts from Cheap Crafty Mommy that I featured on Saturday. Hazel's favorite part of the craft was mixing the paint into the shaving cream. After that she got bored (as she did with every craft we tried). I tried using card stock and foam hearts that we had. I discovered it didn't work well to scrap the paint and shaving cream off the foam, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Foam Heart

Oh, and we used pink, red and red glitter paint for colors.

I was happy with how they came out. Then I had to decide what to do with them. I made a mobile. For the two large ones I glued two of the hearts together and wrote God on them. Then on the small ones on the undecorated side I wrote words like: love, family, peace, hope, joy, faith. Then I strung them and hung it up.

We also tried the yarn hearts that I featured from Tot Treasures. Hazel's favorite part of this was cutting the yarn. She did not like getting her hands dirty with the homemade glue, so she quit pretty quickly on me with this one.

We also tried the bird seed ornaments that Verde Mama shared at a Sharing Saturday in January. We didn't have peanut butter since Hazel doesn't like it, but we used almond butter. It was a bit messy and liquidy at least more than I thought it should be, but that may be the almond butter. I'm not sure. Again Hazel didn't like get the mess on her hands and quit (but when I finished then asked to do another craft). We hung one outside already, but it doesn't look like it has been eaten at all yet, but our bird feeder is still more than half full (in the summer it empties in less than one day) and has been for weeks now.

I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day!!

Kids' Valentine Swap

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So I have been seeing such cute Valentine ideas all over the place. We don't really do much for Valentine's Day since Steve's birthday is the day before. We exchange cards and that is about it. And since we have school on Thursday I doubt there will be much done there.

I got to thinking, wouldn't it be fun for our kids to do a homemade Valentine exchange with maybe a postcard of some place around where you live. It can be a learning experience for the kids to see where they all come from and go and also it is always fun for them to receive mail.

If you are interested please send me an email: craftymomsshare@gmail.com. Let me know your child(ren)'s names and ages and address. I'll put together a list and make it a reasonable number and try to match ages, etc. Please feel free to grab a button and spread the word.

Also, if you need ideas you can check out my Valentine's Day Pinterest Board.

We are off to school today, I hope you are having a great day!
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