Soap Foam

I love using foaming soap dispensers for kids.  They are so much easier for them to wash off than goopy gel soap.  But I find it very difficult to purchase refills for said foam dispensers.  Then it hit me as I was trying to coax the last of the soap out of one dispenser that I probably could water down the gel stuff and use it which would save me even more on the cost of soap.

So I asked my husband, who invents cleaners for a living, if that would work.  He explained the difference between the soaps to me in terms I barely understood, but the gist of it is, yes, you can water down the thick stuff and it should work just fine in the foam dispensers.

So I tried it using about half soap, half water and it foamed right up.  Fantastic!

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Along those same lines... Did you know you could microwave a bar of soap and watch it grow into a puffy cloud of disinfectant?  It's kind of a fun science experiment for kids to see what happens to the soap when cooked.  And it feels cool after it's been puffed up.

Here are a couple picture of my kids trying it out if you'd like to know how much it grows:

My Family Tree

I fell in love with some family tree murals on Pinterest (such as here and here) and determined I would personalize one for my own home.

I painted the tree on our staircase wall.  If you're not an artist, don't be afraid of tackling this project.  Branches are very forgiving, they don't have to be in any particular place.

Next I borrowed my sister's Cricut machine to design the leaves.  I inserted the names of the kids' Grandparents, cousins and aunts/uncles as well as our own immediate family then just added blank leaves to fill up the rest of the space.  The most time consuming part was by far the placing of the named leaves because you have to be so careful with all the little colored dots for the middle of letters.

I used cheap, simple frames (found at Walmart), because I wanted the pictures to be framed in by the artwork, not covering it up too much.

I found lots of lovely quotes that would have been fitting to add to my mural, but finally decided on this one:

Here is the final product:

I love that my kids know who their great grandparents are, even though they rarely see them, because we have their pictures hanging in our hallway.

And in case anyone is interested in the process of painting the tree:  I used all one color for the base, then added some texture/bark looking wavey lines in a darker brown while the tan color was still wet so that they would blend in well.

Here is the tree minus the leaves and most of the photographs.

I Spy With My Little Eye...

I found these little soda bottles that were the perfect size to fill for little look and find toys for my kids.

I gathered all different kinds of beads, including some in animal shapes and anything else small I could find.  I typed up a list of what was going to be in each one in case the kids wanted to cross things off the list as they found them, then I dumped everything inside and filled it with rice*.  I glued the caps on with a hot glue gun so I wouldn't find a rice disaster all over my house later.

In case anyone is interested in what types of things I collected for these I Spy bottles, here's a sample of my list:

green star

small, med. & large leaves

green button

6 different colored turtle beads

ABC

XYZ

Numbers 1-9

penny, nickel, dime

green teddy bear bead

purple lion bead

small green doughnut

florescent yellow flower, k, y

pink heart, crescent, star, triangle

green diamond

“fun”

orange fuzzy

orange, purple beads

small, green ribbon

white flower

straw

lady bug

2 small screws (gold, red)

safety pin

butterfly and fish stickers

pink, purple balloons

*Hint: I knew that rice absorbs water and I wondered if that would cause any problems after the bottle was sealed.  It has created kind of a vacuum, indenting the sides in places, so I would use something different if I were to do this craft over again.  

Keeping Kids Quiet

There are all kinds of quiet book tutorials out there, but I think the key is to make it personal and economical by using what you have on hand and what your unique children are interested in.

My favorite page in our quiet book is the family tree page.  It's important to me that my kids have lots of pictures of their grandparents since we do not live close to them.  So I cut a tree out of felt, sewed some sparkly leaves onto it and then sewed on some sticky velcro dots where I wanted my pictures to go.

Next I cut out the faces of my kids, my husband and me as well as the grandparents in the shape of apples and laminated them in sets.

We have been using this quiet book for about 3 years, and I just now thought to share this, so it's well used (read: bent up and beat up), but you get the idea.

My quiet book has fabric pages with an activity on each side and a ribbon tab on each page for turning pages and for babies to play with.  Maybe not as practical as the removable pages idea on 3 rings, but softer.

Here are some other pages:

Telling time and Noah's ark.  Tucked inside the boat are animal beads on a string (in pairs of course).  The fish also slide back and forth in the water on the ribbons.

This one is missing the crocheted flower petals (similar to this link) that go over the buttons.  It was a fun idea, but they eventually got lost.  The treasure box on the right can hide snacks or anything you want.  The kids love unlocking the lock, which is just an old luggage lock with the key sewn onto a string so we won't lose it.

I love the weaving idea, but I wanted mine to look like a cherry pie.  It's maybe a little too complex for toddlers.  I'd do fewer strips if I were to redo this page.  The left page I was just using left-over alphabet charms that I had an abundance of to help them learn their letters and how to spell their names.

Another idea for Quiet books is to put a small photo album in your diaper bag with pictures of family and friends.  Kids love looking at pictures of themselves and people they know, so it's an easy thing to carry around without having to relinquish your phone for kids to look at pictures with when you need them to sit still.

I have also taken advantage of free photo book offers from various websites and uploaded pictures I thought my kids would enjoy to use as a quiet book.  You still have to pay shipping on the free books, but for a while there were some really cheap options for paperback 20 page books.  Inexpensive to ship and not heavy to weigh down a diaper bag.  They're also not very durable, but they definitely serve their purpose well.

Another great solution for church is to laminate pictures of Jesus and put them together on a ring so they don't get lost.

Personally, I feel that it is important for kids to learn how to sit still without an electronic device to entertain them.  While there is definitely a time and a purpose for apps and computer games, I feel like some important things, like patience and imagination for example, are learned when such toys are not constantly available to children.

The One Thing Not Found On The Internet

A thought has been nagging at me for a couple of months.  I searched the internet to find a tutorial or some kind of tips on how to make dolls for my girls using my own hair.  There was nothing to be found.  After a comment from my brother-in-law saying, "You may have just found the one thing that is not on the internet!" I thought, well someone needs to put it on the internet.

Most of my crafts have been done elsewhere.  I get a lot of my ideas from Pinterest, but I usually put my own twist to them.  So I thought I'd create a place where I could share my successes and failures for others who are searching for tips on their own creative projects without having to make my private journal entries on my family blog public to the world.

So without further ado, here is a tutorial on how I ended up making real hair dolls for my girls for Christmas.

I started out with about 11 inches of hair braided in two sections, then cut.  For those of you who might think this is a waste not to donate it to Locks of Love, which I might add, is a wonderful cause to support:  I couldn't donate it there because I had highlighted it, which is too damaging to the hair to make a wig.  So the next best thing was to reuse it in my own family.

One of my 3 year olds begs me every night to lay down by her until she falls asleep so that she can play with my hair.  It's been her comforter her whole life, which makes for some nice cuddle time, but also ties me up many evenings when I have other things to do.

My solution was to sew the hair onto a doll's head so she could snuggle with the doll every night and have the same comfort of my real hair.

As I mentioned, I couldn't find any examples to go off of, except the description of a friend whose daughter had a similar doll.

So I created my own doll pattern, tracing a round head, then folding the paper in half to make sure the arms and legs would be symmetrical.

I wanted a fabric that was easy to clean so that the dolls wouldn't look dingy.  However my first attempts using a smooth polyester fabric ended with me melting the fabric trying to attach some interfacing behind the face.

I lack the equipment to do an embroidered face, as I was envisioning, so I bagged that idea and bought some fabric markers to draw the face on.  I tried the markers out on a corner of two different types of fabric before I pre-washed them to see if they really would be color-fast.  The markers faded and blurred on the flannel I tried, so I went ahead with a thicker polyester because the marker was so vivid after the washing.

I also debated long and hard about what glue to buy for the hair.  I finally decided on a fabric glue that was both washable and flexible.  I had no idea there were so many options when I checked out my local fabric store.

I cut a long strip of fabric for each doll and glued the hair onto it, folding the fabric over it so it was holding it in place like a barrette.  I let it dry overnight then sewed overtop of the hair back and forth several times with a small zigzag stitch.

Next I carefully pinned the fabric strip to the face side of the doll fabric so that the hair was hanging down towards the feet.  I sewed close to the edge of the fabric, then a second row along the hair so that the stiff fabric didn't poke out along the top of the head.  And finally I just sewed up along the arms and legs of the doll, leaving a hole along the side of the stomach for stuffing it.

I used some shredded memory foam that I had on hand for the stuffing, so they are nice and soft.

My fabric strips were a little too long for the size of head that I chose.  I should have made the dolls a little bigger so that the hair fit nicer along the top, but overall they were a big hit.

For the clothes I just grabbed some scraps and cut them out at a half inch larger than my original pattern and sewed them up.  I stitched the shoulders together first, then hemmed the neckline and sleeves before stitching the two sides together and finally finishing the bottom hemline.

They were a huge hit Christmas morning and have been much loved ever since.

An alternative look to the gingerbread man pattern would be to sew arms and legs individually and then sew them onto the body in more of a Lalaloopsy doll look.