Faux Wood Heart

While out and about shopping for Valentine's Day decor, I've been really disappointed in what I've seen.  I guess I'm just not a bright red/pink heart with lace/glitter fan. As I was driving home after another disappointing shopping trip, I decided I should just make myself a decoration. I began thinking about what I already had in the house and devised a cheap, non-glittery idea for my mantel.
One thing I had on hand was cardboard and plenty of it. I also had some sheets of scrapbooking paper.

In a predictable move for me, I didn't even remove the packing material, I just started cutting into a box that was being used by the kids, then I just threw the box back in the pile ready to be used in more fort building. This was a very confusing development for Jellybean who couldn't figure out why one of her boxes suddenly developed a heart-shaped hole.

I glued my scrapbook paper heart and my cardboard heart together. Then I grabbed some twine (left over from the pine cone bird-feeder project) and some red felt circles (left over from my felt circle belt project).

I stitched the felt circles into some flowers and glued them on top. Okay, it's obviously not real wood, but there is something about a blue Valentine's heart that makes me smile. I don't know why. Plus, it still looks cute on my mantel. At least it was basically free and there wasn't any lace or glitter involved...

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

Color Sort- Let's Learn Colors

Jellybean has been having a little trouble with her colors. So, I decided to put together a simple game to help her. I pulled out some sheets of dollar store craft foam in red, yellow, blue, green and orange. Then I pulled out our tupperware of puff balls and asked the kids to sort the colors.

Yes, we were still in our pajamas. Why do you ask?

After the puff balls had been sorted, I asked the kids to run through the house and find two or three toys that matched each color.

They did an awesome job

and were pretty proud of themselves.

At the end of the activity, I asked Jellybean to name the different colors.  She now has Orange, Red and Yellow down pat (at least for now). We're still working on Green and Blue.  3 out of 5? That's a good morning's work in my book. When we were finished, Jellybean surprised me by breaking into a rendition of the Rainbow Song. "Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too."  This was also a good opportunity for Buddy to exercise his teaching skills. He loved helping Jellybean learn her colors. He's a good big brother.

Before we could clean everything up, the game devolved into "Dump the Puff Balls on Jellybean." It was a natural conclusion.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ