Egg carton flowers

In an effort to squelch the screaming and hitting-fest on this Monday morning, I searched for a quick craft for the kiddos that I had the materials for, was quick to set up, and would work for both an almost two and almost 4 year old. Here's what I came up with:

It might be hard to see in the photo, but we cut up egg cartons and used the little cups for flowers. A hole was punched in the middle for the "stem" - pipe cleaners - and I traced leaves onto green construction paper and cut them out - these went onto the pipe cleaner. The kiddos used crayons and markers to color the cups. Once we get enough made, we will put them in a vase for display. 

This idea came from Craftbits.com - http://www.craftbits.com/project/egg-carton-flowers

This held their attention for approximately 10 minutes....It was fun for me though!

Camping with children

After a one year hiatus, we will be attempting to camp again with our children this weekend. Just one night, mind you. We wouldn't want to do anything crazy, any crazier that is, then camping with an almost four and almost 2 year old. We will be staying close to home - 20 miles away approximately. It's hardly worth the packing up of all the camping paraphanalia and lugging to the campsite. Or is it?

There will be a total of 12 adults and 11 children, who will play with eachoter and get dirty until they fall over from exhaustion.

I'll report back....

Mapbooking

As seen in the July 2010 edition of Marth Stewart Living - I cannot find a link to the article, so I'll do my best to explain.

Weed out all the maps that are no longer valid (old maps, things change) and use them in scrapbooks to display photos. This method works nicely to commemorate a trip. You can use them as borders with photo corners (think matte), as the page background or as an envelope (trace another envelope for size) to hold mementos that you want to keep loose but secure.

A fun spin on this would be to make envelopes for mailing - just use mailing labels for addresses, or if the map is light-colored, try using a dark permanent marker so the mailing address is visible.

I'm going to try both of these ideas before the summer is over! I better get on that...