Red, White and Blue Windsocks

We are in Red, White and Blue heaven over here in the Simply Crafty house, and loving every minute of it.

We have our flag flying proudly out front, little flags all over the yard, windsocks flappign in the wind, our banner draped across the garage, our Red-White and Blue Wreath on the front door and our
Welcome Sign out and that's just the yard!

Inside its just as patriotic and fun.

We added to our decor yesterday with these simple but fun
Red, White and Blue Windoscks. Grab a piece of blue contruction paper . .
We used a punch to make our stars but if you don't have one handy just use a white crayon to make your stars.
Your little one can put just a few stars here and there or cover the whole page like Taelor did.
After they're done glue on their stars flip the paper over, and tape on your streamer. (We used tape to put the streamer on because glue just wasn't working and was just making a glue'y mess)
After all their streamer are taped on, roll the paper into a tube and tape together, again we used tape because with the glue it just kept unrolling.
Finally punch two small holes on either side of the tube, its a blurry picture but I'm sure you get the idea :)

String a ribbon through the holes, hang and ENJOY !!
We also made some Red-White-Blue Cupcakes yesterday

Yummy !!!

Happy Red, White and Blue Crafting !!

Red, White and Blue Cream

Have you ever had your little ones paint with shaving cream ? ?

If not .. than I'll be honest it was
so much fun for the boys but a big mess for this mama.

But I do admit despite the mess, the end result turned out awesome. For this project you'll need : a can of shaving cream (I just got a cheap kind from the Dollar Store), a cookie sheet, white card stock, a spatula, and some paints.

Start off by squirting the shaving cream onto the cookie sheet, than use your spatula to spread it out a little bit. . Next, drop a few dots of paint here and there on the shaving cream . .
hand your little one a Popsicle stick and have them swirl the paint around a little bit. Be careful that they don't mix it in to much.
Things got a little messy with the next step and I forgot to take a picture (but its super easy) after they swirl in the paint, lay a piece of white card stock on top of the shaving cream. Don't push it down, just let it kind of 'float' on top, or just push slightly down. Than lift it up on and use your spatula to scrap off the shaving cream, which will leave you with a beautiful tie-dye- ish picture. And if you used only red and blue paint like we did, its perfect to hang them up and enjoy for the 4Th of July.

Happy Red, White and Blue Crafting.

U.S.A.

I love everything Red, White and Blue. Don't you ? ?

'Red, White and Blue' and an easy craft and I'm in crafty heaven.

I saw this project over on the Family Fun site and loved it but decided to mix things up a bit.

I started out by cutting my 12" by 12"Red, White and Blue card stock into little 6"by6" squares.
I than started rolling each piece of paper into little tubes, I used double sided tape to secure each tube. (pictured below)
After rolling, rolling and some more rolling I needed up with these . .
I used a scrap piece of card stock and used double sided tape to stick the tubes on.
Whipped out my cricut for the U.S.A. attached a ribbon to the back and Ta-Da !
I Love it on the front door !!

Come back tomorrow to see what Red, White and Blue project we made a mess with today. !!

Happy Red, White and Blue Crafting !!

Do You Have a Summer List ? ?

Happy Wednesday Everyone !!!

Sorry I've been MIA, Hubby had some time off work so we've been car shopping and yesterday we finally found one !! A Chevy Uplander. I love, love, love it. I love all the bells and whistles . . Dual Doors, how on earth did I live so long without them ! Enough about the mini van . . . Summer is well under way, and in full force here in Tucson, Az . . its been 100+ all week - Yuck! -

So with Summer here what are you planning to keep your little ones busy and the 'I'm boreds' away ? ? Here in the Harper household I came up with a Summer to-do-list.

75 Fun and Entertaining Bordem Busters.

Of course, 75 may seem like a lot but a ton of these are fairly simple things ie: baking cupcakes, color, noodle necklace etc.

Do you have a Summer to do list ? ?

I would love to see it .

Caterpillars * Recyclable Craft

I love recyclable crafts.

And even more I love the look on their faces when I set something like an egg Carton in front of them and tell them we're making Caterpillars. Have to love the "Huh ? ?" look. Super easy craft, take the bottom of an egg carton, cut in half and hand a half to each kiddo.
Than let them paint away . . .
They can take the Kasen route and mix all the colors !
Or the Taelor route and make a pretty rainbow
After they were done painting, I put them outside to dry, didn't take long here with the Tucson heat today.
After they're dry attach two googly eyes to the front. Next, for the antennas I simply cut a pipe clean in half, twisted around a pen and poked through the top of the egg carton. Easy Peasy .
We're in bug heaven over here ever since I got the boys bug catchers from the Dollar Store and these were perfect to feed into their Bug Lovin' .

Summer Calendar

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend.

Quick Side note: If your a follower in AZ I pray that your nowhere near the devastating fires and if you are or know someone who is, my prayers are with you and your family.

Such a sad site to watch every night on the news.

On to the project. . . So two things happened with this 'little' project here.

#1 I highly underestimated how big/ long of a project it was and #2 I messed up my little 'date' stars big time which = to even more time.

*Oh and sorry ahead of time for the crappy pictures, I decided to hang it right in my laundry room area and no natural light shines in there so hence the blah pictures.

But here she is . .

I started out want to come up with an idea to display all the fun stuff I had planned for the boys during the summer, initially my idea was just to come up with something small to hang on our fridge but nothing I could think of 'worked'. So last week when I was spring cleaning, I came across this huge piece of sheet metal (2.5 ft by 3 ft) and off went my crafty light bulb.

I used my Cricut to cut out the days of the week with vinyl and used strips of vinyl to make my calendar grid.

Next problem was how to display the numbers for the days. . I first I wanted to used bottle caps but we don't drink anything with bottle caps and I didn't really want to wait to 'collect' them . . I'm not a sit-and-wait- patiently kind of girl. So off to Joann's I went, where I found these adorable little wood stars for $4.29 (plus a 40% off coupon) and even better than came in a pack of 30 . . score ! I attached a magnet to the back and mod podge the number on the front.

So what happened to the stars you ask ... well I tried to use mod podge dimensional and I've never used this stuff before and now was not the time to test it out, especially since I didn't have any extra stars to spare (pack of 30 remember ??) Well, I obviously need a lesson in how to use this stuff because I ruined 10 of my stars big time.. again I need a lesson because I don't know if I used to much or to little but they dried all bubbly and had air holes, bottom line they looked horrible. . . Back to Joann's I went for another Star pack, this time only mod podging! While I was at Joanns I hunted around for something to use to represent whatever I had planned for our summer days. I found exactly what I was looking for in the wood craft aisle, There were tons of already made little wood pieces and than right next to those were raw -wood squares, circles, ovals, stars etc.

First thing I grabbed was the Elephant perfect to represent our trips to the Zoo,I grabbed a few more already made ones but for the most part ended up grabbing a bunch of the raw wood shapes and painted them once I got home, while I was waiting for them to dry, I wrote down a list of some things I had planned, picked and choose which ones to make magnets for. Used the Cricut to cut out simple words and mod podge them onto the painted wood pieces of the already made ones.

Below are pictures of all the magnets I ended up with . . I even made some to represent the events we attend with our play group, Meetup Moms of Tucson. (A rubber duck is our mascot)
I loved how it turned out and the boys love checking it out for our 'fun for the day' as Taelor calls it . . I love all the magnets and cant wait to make more for future holidays and other events.
Happy Crafting !!

Sneak Peak- Part 1

For the past week (well at least every chance I got this past week) I've been working on a project and although I'm not quite finish I thought I would give you'll a sneak peek .

Another sneak peek tomorrow, than the reveal Monday ! !