As I mentioned previously, Hazel is going to a pirate themed birthday party this weekend. Since pirates scare her, I wanted to make a friendly pirate hat for her to wear. I used the tutorial on From The Hive. I sewed it on my machine and did the seam inside. Here she is modeling it.
My cute, friendly little pirate! What do you think?
So in the book we took out of the library on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it defined celebrate with the word party in it. That is of course what Hazel took as the meaning. So she wanted to have a party. She called Nonni and asked if they could have a party since Nonni usually has her on Mondays. Nonni planned a pizza party for them. I got to wondering about snack/party ideas. I googled and really only found ideas for classes like have everyone bring a different fruit for a fruit salad or doing an entire multicultural meal. I did not have time to plan this and wanted something fun to do with Hazel. I had been saving a sugar cookie mix from Trader Joe's (they only sell them around Christmas, but we love them). So we pulled out our hand cookie cutter (that I bought for our church's Stewardship campaign last year) and made some sugar cookies. Now with more planning I could have been more creative. Next year I am thinking we will do this but the colors will be frosting using the book The Colors of Us as a guideline. You know start with white frosting and make different skin tone shades by adding food color similar to what we did with paint in this post.
Our first task was to bake the cookies. I had pulled out our hand cookie cutter as well as a dove one. Hazel wanted to make more doves, but luckily I was faster than she was so we got more hands.
While the cookies cooled we organized our decorations which was a task in itself since they were all in one bag. I thought of using M&M's since they are one of Hazel's favorites. In fact I bought a bag or regular and a bag of Valentine's Day so we would have pink, white as well as the brown, yellow and red. But I got to thinking about how the red is so red and they no longer do the tan. Then I thought of the candy store at our big furniture store where you can buy M&M's by the color by the pound as well as jelly beans. Since they did not have skin tone shades of M&M's there, I went with jelly beans. (And yes one of the local furniture stores has crazy attractions in it. The one near us is themed as Bean Town and has a candy store, a local ice cream stand, liquid fireworks, Omni theater and more. The one near where I use to live was themed as New Orleans and had a whole multimedia show of Bourban Street and looked like a theme park.)
Then we got to decorating. We did one hand of each color and then we did some of mixed colors to represent mixed races. Then we decorated one dove in white. The rest I told Hazel she could do what she wanted. While she finished them, I arranged the hands and put the white peace dove in the center.
Then to make her happy we put all the birds in the center.
And a close up of her birds:
So next year we will do something similar but take the time to make the different shades of frosting. I am also going to think of some other fun foods/party foods we could make to celebrate the day. Do you have any ideas? I would love to hear them!
This weekend we are going to a birthday party for one of Hazel's best friends from school. He is a boy who has just about everything. Since his party is pirate themed, I thought I would make him a pirate ship and some peg pirates. I found some inspiration on Esty and then found some easy to follow cardboard ones on Molly Moo and Red Ted Art. I used Molly Moo's image as a pattern and cut them from cardboard. Then I cut wool felt a bit larger. I glued the felt to the cardboard and then started sewing the pieces together.
On one of the many sites I looked at homemade pirate ships I saw a neat storage compartment in the back, so I added that.
Then I used a 1/4 inch dowel for the mast and to get it to stand up I bought a package of these wooden wheels.
I covered it with brown felt by gluing it on and then glued it in place on the boat.
Then I cut a white mast from white wool felt and made a black flag with skull and crossbones to complete the look. I also used a paint pen to put the child's name on it as the name of the ship. Next it needs some pirates, so I painted with paint markers some peg dolls.
The captain I gave a felt hat, peg leg and a hook. The first mate has the eye patch and gold earring as well as bandana on his head. Now it is set to be played with. Oh, and did I mention Hazel wants a non-pirate ship done in blue with a pink flag. And I'm going to make a pink pirate hat for her for the party. I pinned lots of pirate ideas here if you are looking for any.
I considered adding a plank to the ship, but Steve didn't think I should. Since he is our model ship expert, I went with his opinion.
First I am going to shamelessly ask you to vote for me. I need as many votes as I can get to get near the top 25. Just click on the emblem above and then click vote at Crafty Moms Share. It only takes a minute and I would really appreciate it!! Next I am going to tell you about a really cool giveaway at Castle of Costa Mesa. I know Hazel would LOVE those dolls!! They would go perfect with her castle blocks and play mat from Christmas! Ok, now on to our simple Valentine's Day wreath. I was inspired by a wreath somewhere, but I don't remember where. Anyway, I cut many hearts out of scrapbook paper in different sizes. (I happen to have heart templates from my quilting days.) Then we took this Fourth of July wreath and removed the garland.
Then I traced it on paper and cut a layer around it so we could glue onto the paper and not ruin the wreath. I attached the paper ring with crepe paper leftover from Hazel's birthday and tape. Then we just glued the hearts on. I am happy with how it turned out. I do wish I had added the ribbon before gluing the hearts, but oh, well.
Now we have a bit of Valentine's Day on our front door!! More decorations to come I'm sure.
I join many other wonderful bloggers to bring you the Virtual Book Club for Kids. This month we have picked David McPhail as our author. So each of us has chosen a David McPhail book to feature and do an activity with and will share it in a blog hop. If you have an activity to go with a David McPhail book please join us in the hop this month!
Now I must admit I had not checked out David McPhail previously. After looking at some of his books we fell in love. I also am happy to find he was born and grew up on the North Shore of Boston in Newburyport and is still a New Englander. That makes it all the more special for us!
Our Waddles
This month we choose Waddles as our feature book. After all I have a daughter who loves ducks so it only seemed fitting. Waddles is an adorable book about the life of a raccoon who waddles due to his size and therefore is called Waddles. He lives in a park near a pond where his best friend, Emily lives. Emily is a duck. (Did I mention that Hazel's latest new doll is named Emily? She got her shortly after we read this book a few times.) Waddles and Emily spend each day together until one spring Waddles finds Emily sitting on a nest. She has laid her eggs. Since Emily cannot leave the nest, Waddles brings her food each day. Then when Emily is yearning to swim, Waddles sits on the nest for her. That is the point a red fox decides to come and get an egg. After Waddles scares the fox away the eggs hatch. Waddles now has six best friends--Emily and her five ducklings. Life is wonderful until autumn arrives. The ducks need to fly south for the winter. Waddles is heartbroken throughout winter. Of course spring does return and so do his best friends.
For an activity we decided to make some finger puppets. I had seen this duck finger puppet at About.com. I thought it would be perfect to make finger puppets and use up some old pill bottles. We found different size bottles for the different animals and used some felt. Now I am going to say that I let Hazel decorate them for the most part and let her choose colors. She cannot wait to play with them. For the heads of the bigger ones we cut felt and used a bit of stuffing. We tried to make the fox and raccoon noses as well, but they are not perfect. She loves them just the same.
Our Emily
Our Ducklings
Apparently all the ducks had to have red feathers. Now I will admit we are a bit low on feathers, but she for some reason really liked the red ones.
I had a bit of difficulty with the fox's head and didn't get it glued or stuck as well as I had hoped. I'll try some more later. Hazel is very excited to act out the story now. Now it is your turn to share any David McPhail book activities you have done. Or if you haven't, visit the ones shared here so you can learn about some more of his books!
So in the book we took out of the library on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it defined celebrate with the word party in it. That is of course what Hazel took as the meaning. So she wanted to have a party. She called Nonni and asked if they could have a party since Nonni usually has her on Mondays. Nonni planned a pizza party for them. I got to wondering about snack/party ideas. I googled and really only found ideas for classes like have everyone bring a different fruit for a fruit salad or doing an entire multicultural meal. I did not have time to plan this and wanted something fun to do with Hazel. I had been saving a sugar cookie mix from Trader Joe's (they only sell them around Christmas, but we love them). So we pulled out our hand cookie cutter (that I bought for our church's Stewardship campaign last year) and made some sugar cookies. Now with more planning I could have been more creative. Next year I am thinking we will do this but the colors will be frosting using the book The Colors of Us as a guideline. You know start with white frosting and make different skin tone shades by adding food color similar to what we did with paint in this post.
