Sharing Saturday #43

Wow, I'm still catching up from last week! Then on top of catching up, sewing a Halloween costume Hazel once again got sick. This time with the highest temperature of her short life. She seems to be doing a bit better today though. Hopefully I will find some time to sew her costume today. Anyway, there were some amazing things shared last week. If you have not had a chance to check them all out, please go visit and leave some comment love since we all love comments. Today I am not featuring Halloween posts, but will later in the week (from this week and the last two), so stay tuned for those! If you are looking for some ideas there were plenty shared from costumes, recipes, gory decorations to cute ones and a party invitation. 

Also a huge welcome to everyone who joined us the last couple of weeks for the first time!! I have noticed several new blogs sharing with us! Thank you!! And enjoy!

We had a two way tie for most clicked:

From Adventures at home with Mum: Chill Out Corner--Positive Time Out (love this idea!!)

and 

From Making Boys Men: Painting with Cars (How fun!!)

A Few of My Favorites

1) From Art Club Blog: Pinterest Impersonation (A very scary true post about using her identity for a possible future scam! Thank you for sharing and warning us all!!)

2) From Everyday Mom: Free Form Mini Apple Tarts (Oh, these look so delicious!!)

3) From Happy Whimsical Hearts: Gnome Family (Ok, I admit I love this one because it looks like something Hazel would do. Dino Boy and Hazel are so similar--I love it!)

4) From Fresh Eggs Daily: The Float Test (How to tell if an egg is fresh or bad!! Something I know I sometimes need to know how to do!)

5) From My Little Bookcase: Millinery for Children (Oh,I so love the hat plus she shares a book to go with it!)

6) From Buggy & Buddy: Apple Tree Collage (Oh, I love their collage and another book to check out!)

7) From The Alchemist: Pumpkin Spice Breakfast Cookies (Cookies for breakfast--not much better!)

And since I didn't get to visit all the posts at Sharing Saturday #41 until this week, here are a few of my favorites.

1) From Little Owl Crunchy Momma: Nothing was working. (A post that reminds you what every mother goes through at some point with a young child at home.)
2) From Life with Moore Babies: Fairy Potion (Ok, I love the addition of glitter to make it fairy potion!)
3) From Sweet Boutique Home: Mussels Wreath (Just gorgeous!!)
4) From PlayDrMom: Playful Activities to Teach Kids about Feelings (A great list of ideas!!)
5) From Taming the Goblin: Pirate Ship Cake (Oh, I love it!!)
6) From Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk: Measuring with Dino Feet (Such creative fun!)

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

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From Your Hostess: Halloween Crafts: Ghosts & Others (including baby doll fairy wings)

And a History of Halloween!

 

Now for This Week's Party   

A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow both hosts via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. A reminder: Mia is taking a blogging break. Hopefully she will be back soon to host again!!

2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post.

3) Post the button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

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Disclaimer: By sharing here, you are giving Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart permission to use your photos for features and to pin your craft at Pinterest. 

All right everyone...This is a PARTY!! Have Fun!!

Halloween Decorations

Today I will share a few more Halloween crafts we have made. Now remember I hate the blood and gore and scary side of Halloween, so our crafts are much more friendly. Like these adorable black cats pictured above made from toilet paper rolls. I wish I could remember where I saw it. Sorry!! (If it was your blog, please let me know, so I can add a link!!) I had planned to make the adorable owls at Family Fun Magazine, but Hazel made one sort of that way at Sunday School on Sunday. We may do it still though.

Hazel's Sunday School Owl (studying Solomon)

Then we made an adorable mummy from a paper towel roll. We got this idea from All New Crafts for Halloween by Kathy Ross. It has beads on pipe cleaners (with straws to help stabilize them) for eyes. I wrapped it with crepe paper instead of toilet paper since it was already a nice width and I had some in the craft room.

Making Mummy

Hazel also decorated a foam pumpkin with some new glitter glues.

Hazel also informed me that her baby doll Pocahontas was going to her first Halloween party as a fairy princess. She had picked out a baby doll tiara and wand at the craft fair at the Pumpkin Patch this past weekend. We decided she needed some fairy wings to have a complete costume. So I took some floral wire (bought at the dollar store) and made wing shapes. Then we glued on some tulle to both sides. While the glue dried, Hazel decorated them with glitter glue. Then I cut them out the next day and tied a piece of elastic cord to them for her arm holders. 

So what do you think? It was a pretty easy costume for a baby doll. If I had been making them for Hazel I would have sewn the tulle rather than glue it, but we were looking for a quick way to make them.

Hope you will join us tomorrow night for Sharing Saturday!! Come share your child-oriented activities and crafts and get inspired by all that is shared!

A Ghostly Day

The past few days we have been finally doing some Halloween crafts. One of our focuses has been ghosts. So today I will share our ghosts with you.

Virtual Book Club for Kids--This Plus That: Life's Little Equations

As you may remember I joined the following amazing blogs to host the Virtual Book Club for Kids where each month we host a blog hop where we share an activity to go with a book by the author of the month. This month's author is Amy Krouse Rosenthal.

Toddler Approved - Rainy Day Mum - Adventures in Reading with Kids -
 3 Dinosaurs - Royal Baloo -  The Educators' Spin On It -  
Inspiration Laboratories - Pleasantest Thing - Edventures with Kids - 
Two Big Two Little - Playing With Words 365 - Kitchen Counter Chronicles - Outlaw Mom -  Mommy and Me Book Club -  No Twiddle Twaddle - 
The Good Long Road - Ready. Set. Read 2 Me - Reading Confetti - 
Mama Smiles - Juggling with Kids- Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas -  
Creekside Learning - Creative Family Fun - The Usual Mayhem - 
Teach Preschool - PlayDrMom - CraftoArt - Here Come the Girls -  
Being a Conscious Parent - Smiling like Sunshine - Crayon Freckles -  
Train Up a Child - Smile Play Learn

Last week I shared optical illusions introduced by Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. This week we are going to talk about This Plus That: Life's Little Equations. We really enjoyed this book! It goes through with pictures of little equations like "yes + no = maybe" and even the colors like "blue + yellow = green."  For our activity we made up some equations. Some we spoke and I put pictures to later and some she helped me find things to represent them. Here are some family ones that I found pictures (or took pictures) to make them.

Then we did some more basic seasonal ideas.

And one of my favorites, using her story stones:

What equations can you come up with for your life?

And of course for those of you who have children who know or are learning addition you could easily use numbers in your equations! 

Now it is your turn to share!! If you have a new or old post about an activity to do with a Amy Krouse Rosenthal book, please share below and grab the button and code if you would like to help us advertise! Also please make sure you visit the other blogs that are hosting to see what they have created with the various Amy Krouse Rosenthal books! November's author is Tomie de Paola!

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Happy Family Times #30--Visit to the Iron Works

Have you had a fun adventure with your family or a relaxing time? We would love to hear about it. Kelly at Happy Whimsical Hearts and I are collecting our family activities in hopes to inspire all of us to have more quality family time. Please share below!

Pop, Hazel, and Mimi waiting for tour to start

This week we had my parents visit for a long weekend. We did some fun things with them, but I think the most interesting was visiting the Iron Works. It is a National Historic Site. You may remember in September I blogged about going to an iron pour there. This time we went for the Industrial Site Tour. A group of tiger scouts went as well. They kind of took over the tour and Hazel did not have the patience for the entire tour, so we left a bit early. It was really interesting though.

Iron Works--View from above Blast Furnace

So the Saugus Iron Works is first place in America to use this method to make iron. It was started by Governor Winthrop who wanted Massachusetts Colony to be independent of England. Originally they tried to start one in Braintree, but that was a failure due to poor choices. Then they brought over an engineer named Leder to build it. He choose this site and got it working. He also insisted on bringing in people from Europe to run it which of course the Puritans did not like since they were not as strict about their lifestyle.

Blast Furnace

The most interesting thing is that this site is celebrated because it went bankrupt. As a result all the trained workers spread throughout the company starting new iron works and developing the iron and eventually steel industry in America. Going on the tour, they actually do have some of the wheels turn and do some of the actions of the iron works. All of this site is rebuilt. Since it went bankrupt, the original went into disrepair. They found the foundations and some parts and rebuilt it where the buildings actually were.

We also went into the Rolling and Slitting Mill. Here again they spun the wheel for us, but even more interesting was that they used the large hammer and anvil. We had to cover our ears.

After this Hazel got antsy, so we left the tour. We missed going into the Forge. We however got to enjoy looking at the map which is where the tour started but the tiger scouts were crowded around so we could not get close.

Hazel enjoyed feeling it. The Park Ranger had poured water in it to show us how it would have run back in the 1600's.

Overall it was a fun visit! We know we will go back again and see the rest of the tour. Check out the museum some more and go on the tour of the house.

I must say fall was a beautiful time to visit there though!

Saugus River

Now it is your turn to share how your family has spent some quality time lately.

~ please link up (family time oriented giveaways are ok, but please no Etsy shops)
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Ok, now for our PARTY!! Please share your FUN Family Times!!