DIY Traveling Art Supplies Book

Art Supplies Book To Go:

My 5 year old loves creating, coloring, tracing, drawing, you name it; we go through paper so fast in this house it's ridiculous. As my husband and I were gearing up for a trip with the kids, I knew we were going to need something to keep our budding artist busy while we traveled. I figured that having his stuff with him would do the trick but I didn't want to just toss all that stuff in his bag and hope for the best. I saw a bunch of different ideas on how to organize art supplies, like these from Color Wheel Meals and One Orange Giraffe 

Color Wheel Meals

One Orange Giraffe

but I know my child and after using something like this the crayons, markers and pencils would all be mixed together and dumped in the bucket, making it pointless. On top of that I wanted something that we could grab and go with as well as something he could put out of sight when not in use. I found this great notebook idea. It's an art supply notebook, good for traveling and your basic everyday organization as well. 

I bought a few items that I know he uses on a regular basis: Crayons, Markers and Pencils ($5.29)

I picked up 4 clear binder pouches that fit in a 3 ring binder ($1.88)

A spiral notebook of wide ruled paper with his favorite characters on the front ($1) and I found a random 3 ring binder in our basement (Free).

I started off by placing the different art supplies into each of the plastic pouches. This helps if you're using the notebook for basic organization, it keeps the supplies separate, neat and easy to put away.

I ripped the front and back covers off of the spiral notebook and cut the spiral fringe off so that I could use it as the cover to the binder.

I took a few pages of the spiral notebook so that he could continue practicing his letters and writing his name while we were away.

I added some plain white paper, a copy of the flash cards we've been using for him to learn his sight words, coloring pages that I printed from the internet and the rest of the lined paper. I ripped the pages out of the spiral notebook because the wire took up too much space and I really just wanted it for the Avengers cover. Here are a few shots of the final project.

Once all of the items were placed in the notebook I just made sure it wasn't too heavy for him to carry in his book bag.

You can definitely use less stuff, especially if you're traveling (8 crayons instead of 28, 2 pencil not 7) but my child doesn't listen when I say "color lightly, you're going to break the point" so we're bringing extra.

I used a small 3 ring binder so there's not tons of stuff  in it. You can get very creative with these notebooks and pouches if you use a larger 3 ring binder. Other art supplies you can stash would include:
Scissors
Glue Sticks
Pencil sharpener
Protractor/Compass
Paintbrushes
Chalk

For Boy Who Loves Tea Parties

My son loves to reenact scenes from his favorite movies, so when he asked me if he could have a tea set to go along with his play food set to reenact the scene below from Toy Story 3, I thought it would be an easy request to fill. 

Toy Story 3 movie- Bonnie introduces Woody to her other toys as they sit around a table near her play kitchen.

I figured I could find a simple, gender neutral tea set at my local Toys R Us but when we got there all they had were frilly pink and white sets with hearts, flowers or “girl themed” characters. Needless to say we didn't leave the store with any of those as my, then 3 year old, son turned up his nose and said "mommy those are for GIRLS". They learn gender stuff at such an early age but I was determined to bridge the gap so I went into my crafty mom mode and figured I could make him a set he would LOVE.

As I started to move boxes around just to be sure I didn’t mess anything I saw this set:

Here’s a picture from the website:

It’s a simple grey and white set that has a heart pattern on it but it’s molded into the plastic so it doesn’t stand out much. When I showed him the set he perked up a bit but was still skeptical because it had two girls on the front of the box. I saw that he wasn't very excited about it but I tossed the set in the cart knowing that I could jazz it up once we got home with the help of some left over stickers we had.

About a year ago I had purchased 2 sets of these stickers from Walgreens for $1.99:

They have the characters printed on clear stickers instead of white so that they will blend onto whatever surface they are applied to. I hadn't opened one of the sets so there was just enough stickers for me to make him a custom Toy Story tea set.

I waited for him to take his nap and went to work on my project. When he woke up I had the set laid out for him and once he realized what it was, he got so excited.

He played with it a lot in the beginning but after a year and his new love EVERYTHING Avengers, it only makes an appearance a few times a month. One day he asked his uncle if he wanted to play tea party with him and when his uncle responded "tea parties are for girls" he said, with conviction, "no they're not, anyone can drink tea, see look at mine." My 20 something year old brother looked at me and then back at the tea set, knowing he was just trumped, took a cup and played. When he takes it out he still smiles and gets excited about it and my heart beams to know that little by little I'm helping my son stand behind what he loves and get passed gender stereotypes. I'm sure it gets harder as they get older but for now he's still a little boy who loves tea parties.

Here are a few shots of my final project.

Halloween Costume - Pregnancy Reveal

If you're pregnant and looking for a last minute costume idea, do I have an easy one for you.

Last year when we were debating how to tell people we were expecting I found this great idea on Make It & Love It and I wore it to my nephew’s costume birthday party and again on Halloween. It ended up being a great pregnancy announcement for family members I haven’t seen in a while. I wore the baby with the boy or girl symbol above (we didn't know the sex yet) and my hubby wore the burger, fries and beer. A lot of people thought the costume was store bought and my hubby got a lot of compliments for his stencil work.

This costume is an easy last minute (1-2 day before) job because it doesn't take many supplies to pull of but it does involve some prep work and patience.

I didn't use the freezer paper as suggested in Ashley's blog due to the fact that I couldn't find any near me so I just had my hubby cut out a stencil from poster paper, which he free-handed from Ashely’s pictures. I'm sure if you Google the images you'll find a bunch that you can copy. 

I taped the stencil down with painters tape and put a piece of cardboard inside the shirt just in case the paint came threw. 

Using white fabric paint and a fabric paint brush I blotted on the first and second layer, placing it in front of a fan in between coats to speed up the drying process. After it dried I removed the tape and used a black sharpie to touch up the edges.

Ashley does a great step by step tutorial here.

Happy Halloween!

Niki
 (If you'd like to read more about me visit my post on A Bit About Me).

Saving for Christmas Year Round

I come from a pretty big family and I married into an even bigger family, so for a while the Christmas holiday season started to stress us out a bit. One year we tried doing a Secret Santa gift exchange, another year we said we'd only buy gifts for the kids. Needless to say both of these ideas were a flop financially because we still ended up spending more than we had originally intended; there's no way grandma is not getting a gift when she takes care of our little ones M-F, rain, sleet, snow or sickness.

So three years ago we decided to start saving for Christmas at the beginning of the year in an effort to lessen the blow of the cost of gifts, food and holiday shenanigans we'd partake in. As we come close to the end of year 3, I'm so glad we did this.

It's really simple to do, every week on payday we set aside $12 as a priority for the holidays. We take the money out of our general account and put it in an envelope that we are not to touch, unless an emergency comes up of course. At the end of 50 weeks we've effortlessly saved $600. With that we buy gifts to donate to Toys for Tots, gifts for the family, take nice day long trip to NY to see the tree and lots more.

Two years ago we decided to bump it up to $35 a week and plan, not only for Christmas but for our kids birthdays, a fun summer event, and Halloween. 

We started off in January with $13 in the Christmas envelope, $13 in the birthday party envelopes and $9 in the summer fun event envelope and we gave a savings cutoff date for each, except for Christmas, which continues year round. Once one event passed, we moved the money to start saving for the next thing.

Here's the breakdown for the year:
$13/w Christmas (January 4th - December 20th)
$13/w Birthday (January 4th - August 23rd) then move this $ to Halloween
$9/w Summer Fun Event (January 4th - August 2nd) then move this $ to Halloween
$22/w Halloween (October 4th - October 25th)
Once all of the years' events are over we continue to save the $22/w in case of an emergency like when the heater decided to blow out in January

For some people $12 is lunch for 1 day, so bring your lunch one day and set aside that money for the holiday season. Before you know it you'll have a ton of cash and it won't feel stressful spending the mone wwhen it comes time to do your shopping. 

Give it a try it can’t hurt.

Happy Holidays

Niki
 (If you'd like to read more about me visit my post on A Bit About Me).