Craft Night - Week 1 - Pumpkin & Ghost Glo Jar

Tonight was kind of hectic as is pretty much every night in a house with full time working parents, 2 full time students, a preschooler and a dog...and a partridge in a pear tree ;)

Mike has had the flu for the past 2 days so I came home from work and took the kids out to Wal-Mart for a pumpkin carving kit and some ginger ale for the big man's tummy! We decided to grab some McDonald's while we were out and then headed home to get ready for bedtime.

When we got home I busted out some supplies for our first weekly craft night with the kids...the project? Lantern style decoupaged jars! They were all over this like a fat kid on a purple smartie ;)



Behold! the supplies...and Caleb!

So the kids started in with painting the jars with Mod Podge with foam paintbrushes while I tore up pieces of tissue paper to slap on. I couldn't find orange tissue so red it was but I was hoping once the little flameless candle was in there it would give off an orange glow....here's hoping anyway.

Very focused!

Making a ghost!

After I did some touching up with the Mod Podge to seal any tissue edges and make sure we had sufficient coverage we let them dry on the table for a little bit.

While we were waiting the kids covered the lids of the jars with green paint for the pumpkin top and white tissue paper for the ghost head.

Nothing like some big sister help :)

Excuse the messy house. haha

To speed up this process as bedtime was seriously approaching and I knew they desperately wanted to see the finished product I busted out the hair dryer and they were ready in no time. Taylor and Rachel then drew their faces on their creations and we were almost ready for the finishing flameless candle!

So proud!

TA DA!!!! We turned out the lights after Caleb put the candles in the jars, screwed their lids on and this is what we saw!!!

OOOOOOOOhhhhhhhhh!!!

We were so happy with how they turned out and the kids can't wait to put them out on the porch for Halloween!

Craft night #1 was a success and a great way to break up an always crazy work/school week!! It feels so great to enjoy doing things like this again :) Can't wait for next week!

Thanks for dropping by!

Lightbulb moment today!

So as I was busy at work (sort of) I saw on Facebook that my SIL had made these cute little Mind Jars for her kids...jars filled with water, glitter and glitter glue and it got me thinking...#1 - I totally need to make some of these for my little man since they are supposed to be awesome for calming the minds of children when they may be afraid, anxious or just having a rough day and need a distraction to zone out to...and #2, and most importantly, just because I don't have the opportunity to be at home with my kids on a full time basis doesn't mean that I still can't do these fabulous little crafts with them!

It's easy to get caught up in the "Life is crazy", "I'm too busy", "Must be nice to be able to do that" type of thinking, but as I learned at my last therapy session - Your feelings affect how you think which in turn controls how you behave. So, even though you can't necessarily control how you feel about something, you can certainly change how you think about these feelings and behave in a positive way.

Still with me?? Ok, so instead of me settling into the resentful feelings of "well, I'm not a stay at home mom so there's no possible way I could do that stuff", I had a LIGHT BULB moment and have decided to pick one SIMPLE craft that I can do each week with my kids. Not one a day or one an hour or anything ridiculously overwhelming like that, but something attainable that will help break up the weekly routine of school, work, repeat...

Enter Dollarama...we all love this store...it's amazing how much stuff you can buy for super duper cheap. So off my friend Tacy and I went on our lunch hour to make the most of it in the short time we had. I picked up enough supplies to complete 3 separate crafts with my kids and I can't wait to start!

The plan was to do the Mind Jars tonight but we had Halloween costumes to buy and figured since we are all under a severe snow warning I should probably get boots for the little 2. Needless to say, we didn't get back home until late so the jars will have to wait until tomorrow after work and before Parent Teacher interviews...oh the fun never ends!!

Crafting pics to follow when they are completed :)

Thanks for joining me!

Lots going on!!

Hello peeps! Long time no chit chat! Well there's been a lot going on!

First things first, I didn't have to go Hypothyroid after all since I found some of the elusive meds at the hospital pharmacy so that was a relief! But silly me decided to do the injections on the Monday and Tuesday of the week of Good Friday...at first this wouldn't look like a big deal, but when you find out that there is only ONE lab open in the entire city on Good Friday it becomes an issue.

But I asked the specialist if it was at all possible to get my blood taken on the Thursday before and he was cool with that, so in the end it all worked out....but now that I think of it, he didn't call me with the results....so...I should probably call him....hmmm...

Onto the next topic! We have sold our house and are moving! Where exactly is still kind of in the air since we haven't walked into a house yet that has screamed TAKE ME!!!! So the search continues...but we are very excited about this next chapter in our lives.

I have a cousin who has been diagnosed with a very serious cancer and so I have been trying to wrap my mind around writing him a letter so that has been pre-occupying my mind lately in hopes that he will actually read it and also try to come up with something that might actually help him, even in a little way...the letter is now sent and if nothing else he will know that he is being thought of...

On the crafting front...it's been nothing but crickets, but I have managed to add to "THE STASH" at a charity yarn/fabric sale that was brought to my attention via the classified ads at work...needless to say it was somewhat of a gong show but my SIL and I managed to score some pretty great (and some not so great) stuff for super cheap! Now to create!!!!

I will give my Dr. a call next week (maybe ;) and let you know what he says about my bloodwork!

Ciao for now!!