Elmo Birthday Party!

For my daughter's second birthday, we really went all out since we didn't have a party for her first.  She loved Elmo from Sesame Street and so I scoured the Internet looking for all the Elmo related things I could possibly come up with.  Most were commercially packaged and cost a fortune!  I decided to see what I could make instead.

Here is a small collection of the things we made for her party:

These upcycled soup cans were painted to hold utensils.  I did create a stencil for the mouth to keep things even. 

I bought the red foam visors at a craft store and used craft foams sheets to create the face.  They were super easy to make and were much better than paper party hats! 

These cupcakes were really easy to make as well.  The eyes are large marshmallows, the mouth is half of an Oreo cookie.  The orange candies came from Party City, where I dug through their jawbreakers and just bought the orange ones by the piece.  The red and black frosting came was the prepared stuff from the tubes.  

The veggie trays were fun to make but don't give too much variety as far as the veggies go.  An olive floating in the ranch makes the perfect pupil to the eyes. 

What should you do with all of the Oreos left over from the cupcakes?  Add cupcake toppers to them with a bit of left over frosting.  Super simple and cute!

Every little girl needs a party dress.  We measured around her waist and cut elastic just a tad bigger.  Sew the ends of the elastic together into a circle.  Cut the tulle twice a long as as you need it, fold it in half and loop it over the elastic until the tutu is as full as you'd like it.  

The bow was simple as well.  Wrap curling ribbon around a dowel and put it in the oven at a low temp for about 20 minutes.  The curl will stay in the ribbon once it cools.  Glue it to a barrette and you have a party outfit fit for an Elmo Princess!

Colored Rice for Sensory Table, Class Project, and Decorations

20 pounds of rice in 6-1 gallon baggies

At the school I work at we do Math Integration- basically this means that our specials teachers come into our math classes and we co-teach, integrating both their subject (Spanish, PE, Music or Art) and math together.  Having only 4 specials teachers and 12 regular classroom teachers, we rotate them through our classrooms.  I have had a lot of fun with this.  With PE we played a super fun game the kids named "Mathsketball", I have a great song the Music teacher and I are going to teach the kids and Art just naturally lends itself to this model, but how do you integrate Spanish and fractions?  Today, Senora and I came up with a super fun idea.

It starts with this idea on Pinterest (doesn't everything these days?) on how to color rice.  The lady on the blog layered it into a red, white and blue pattern for a centerpiece at her 4th of July party.  Hello flag idea!

We have decided that we are going to give the kids directions in Spanish to create a flag pattern of a Spanish speaking country in a jar using layered colors of rice.  They will use either measuring cup measures or fractions of the jar in the directions.  This is going to be an absolute blast!  Our student have limited vocabulary in Spanish so they will have to find and translate words they know and take the math vocab (in English) they are learning to try and figure other words out.  For example, un medio is 1/2 and the kids just learned that the median is in the middle; it may seem like a big leap for these kiddos, but somehow I don't think they will have any problem.  They will use the information they have to draw a rough draft before they are allowed to fill their jars.  Not only will they need to add fractions with unlike denominators to create a "whole" jar, they hopefully will gain an appreciation of how difficult it is to be somewhere and understand few words of the language.

Coloring the rice was SO easy.  Put rice in a bag, add food coloring and a bit of rubbing alcohol, and shake up.  When it is evenly coated, spread out on cookie sheets to dry.  We heat our house with a pellet stove, so I set the cookie sheets on top of that and 10 minutes later the alcohol had evaporated and the rice was done.  Click this link if you want more specific instructions.  The best tip: when you can't smell the rubbing alcohol anymore, the rice is dry.  I dyed 20 pounds of rice into 5 colors (+ white which I obviously didn't have to dye) in less than 2 hours while eating dinner and bathing the baby; the most difficult part was waiting for it to dry.

I'm very excited to see what the kids come up with and when I'm finished I'm going to pour the rice into a plastic box for my kiddos at home to use as an indoor sandbox.  This is going to be a winning activity all the way around.  I will update after we have completed the activity.

Update:
Both the flags and the rice sandbox are a huge success!  We had so much fun!

I LOVE Photoshop...

I began a relationship with Photoshop a few years ago when I started getting creative with photography.  Since I really didn't know what I was doing behind the camera, I learned how to fix some mistakes on the computer.  It was then that I realized all the wonderful things that you can do in Photoshop and print out at Costco.  (I like Costco because their colors are great and they are cheap!)

I just started messing around with it and over the years (and many Google Help searches later) I have figured a few things out.

You can do just about anything with Photoshop.  I have made business cards and printed them out at wallet-sized photos, thank you cards:
    (Print as a 4x6 and write with a Sharpie on the back.  We did these with a Wedding Photo as a Thank you then too.)

Valentine's Cards: 

Gifts: 

     (Print at 8x10 and frame.  Letters can be found here.)

Digital Scrapbook pages (Costco will print these at 12x12 for $2.99 in Colorado):

and latest, Birthday Invitations (of which I will make matching thank you cards after the party)  

I love that you can personalize everything and print out a 4x6 for $0.13.  It doesn't get much better than that.

Valentine's Day Cards

This year I decided to make my own Valentine's Day cards. I found this idea on Pinterest and instantly fell in love with it.

I took the photos, Photoshopped the text onto the pictures and then uploaded them to Costco Photo Center. For $0.13 a print, I had a very personal Valentine greeting for my daughters to give to their friends and for me to give to my students.

They turned out SO well that I'm planning a variation for Mother's Day, both from my daughters and my students! Yay!

Clementine Candle

I tried this candle idea that I found on Pinterest and it was a bit easier the first time than I thought it would be. I haven't been able to get the peel off another one correctly since! I thought the candle would have a smell, but it didn't really. It was super cute and burned for a few hours. Make sure you put the candle on a fire resistant surface!

Baseball Bracelets

I found and made this great bracelet on Pinterest. They were super easy to make and I'm going to try it with a softball next. The one piece of advice that I can add to her post is to try to find a genuine leather baseball as you can work the leather to be a bit straighter. The synthetic leather is harder to work to be straight.

Enjoy!

Pillow Loungers

I found this idea on Pinterest and I have already made three, with two more being made this afternoon during nap time.

I used a flat sheet from Target- I bought the entire sheet set with the thought that I would turn the fitted sheet into a storage bag and turn the pillow case into a bag. I have done neither of the last two things but will post pictures if I ever get around to making them. I cut the sheet at 84 inches with the first and last sections being 22.25 inches and the middle two at 19.75 inches. Her directions are incredible and the pillow beds are super cute and comfy. I can't wait for Christmas Morning!.

Pinterest

Addicted. That is the only word that I can use to describe my relationship with Pinterest. I used to be addicted to Facebook, but now Pinterest is my one and only (and my husband is jealous).

It has changed my life, well at least my Christmas. Almost everyone is getting a gift that I learned how to make on Pinterest; mostly with crap I already had laying around my house. I'm not going to go as far as claim I'm saving the world, one craft at a time, but I might be thinking it. Plus I'm a cheapskate and I love giving gifts that look like you spent a lot of time and money on them, but didn't really.

If you haven't tried Pinterest, go get a timer and set it for an hour and explore. You will be amazed at how quickly that hour is gone and how many times you reset the timer.

Don't say I didn't warn you.