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!

February already???

How did that happen?? It's amazing how things just fly by. The older I get and the older my children get, the faster things seem to go. I went shopping with our lovely 10 year old last night and boy oh boy is she becoming quite the young lady...she went from loathing shopping trips and not really caring about hair, clothes or accessories, to picking out green skinny jeans, purple high tops and seriously loving belts right now. The discussions we have been having in the past little bit made reality hit me square in the face - she is embarking upon those lovely teen years which we all cherished (bwahahahaha!!!) Obviously it's only natural to get all mushy and nostalgic about when she was a tiny baby and all of her firsts but I'm actually quite excited about it...not the crazy mood swings, the bad hair days and the "my world is ending" part of what is coming up for her, but the anticipation of the next phase of our lives...

We are DONE here in the Ferguson household when it comes to all things BABY, so it's onto the next part...by the time fall rolls around ALL 3 of our beauties will be in some sort of schooling...yes, that's right! C will be in pre-school, R will be in Grade 1 and T in Grade 5 (Middle School!!!!!!!)

Over the past few weeks we have been working our little butts off getting rid of clutter in our cozy little abode hoping to list it in the near future so we can find a house where we AREN'T all living on top of eachother...sorting through all of this stuff is actually quite ridiculous! I can't believe how much STUFF we have been hanging onto for years! Well, tis the year to PURGE and it feels GREAT!! I used to be the Queen of holding onto everything (just in case) but throwing stuff out, bagging things for donations and doing dump runs feels fantastic! Almost like a new start...

Happy February everyone...