Dinosaur Week

During Dinosaur Week, we went to my son's favorite park, the Dinosaur Park that is near our home. We have a local membership to a few parks and it includes the Dino Park and we go there at least every other month. It has a museum and an actual playground. On top of that it has many model/replicas of dinosaurs placed throughout walking paths. Some of them even roar. It's pretty awesome. For our picnic lunch, we took dinosaur pb&js.

We also went to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. We loooove that place and if we lived closer we'd definately have a membership there. They even do sleepovers!

We watched a few of the dinosaur "documentaries" on Netflix. My son could watch those over and over and over again. Fun week!!

Animal Week Recap

Last week we had Animal Week from our Summer Fun Weeks plan.

We got lots of animal books from the library and we also got a dvd of Little Peep, which my son thinks is hilarious. I love to hear him giggle. We got some tiny 3D animals to put together (btw-they don't stay together very well but he didn't care). I also saved one of his favorite shirts from going into the garbage. Every year I buy him some white t shirts for the Summer but he almost always stains them within the first few times of wearing them and then they become sleeping shirts for him. This crocodile shirt had a few chocolate milk stains on it and he was sad that he wasn't allowed to wear it out anymore. So I bought a navy blue t shirt from the dollar store, I ironed double sided fusible web onto the back of the crocodile, and then I cut it out. Then I ironed the croc onto the front of the blue shirt and sewed around it. Jacob loved it so much that he put it on immediately. I might add words to it later but for now he's just happy to have his croc shirt back. I think this would be a good option for shirts that kids outgrow too-just cut out the part that they love and sew it onto a bigger shirt.

The thing that we did that was the most fun was that we went to a baby animal petting farm with some friends of ours. This farm was the real deal. The family that runs it raises all of the animals and then they sell the babies to other farmers/ranchers. This cute little goat was only a week old, she lost her momma and sister during her birth so she was babied by the family and she ran around our feet like a little puppy. She was so cute!!! My daughter was terrified by her but my son loved her. They had all sorts of babies there; llama, sheep, horses, hogs, potbellied pigs, goats, and ducks. One of the baby goats had been born just an hour before we got there. They were all so cute! My son said that he loved the cats the most (they were not babies), that cracked me up. I think the week-old baby goat was my favorite. My daughter got brave and fed the goats! She is afraid of everything so that shocked me.

It was a fun week! This week we are having Dinosaur Week...should be lots of fun!!

Cousin's Week Recap

Last week was cousin's week. (See our Summer Fun schedule for more info.)
I have a sister and brother that live in the same state as me, about an hour away (the rest of my siblings live in Texas), so we only see them about once a month, if that. I thought it'd be fun for us to get together with them more often so I decided that one of our weeks should be cousin's week. These are the things we did for cousin fun;

We had one of the cousins over to spend the weekend with us. So fun!
Sunday; we went to a birthday party for one of our cousins.
Monday; we looked through our photo album of family members and talked about each of the cousins and aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpas
Tuesday; we went to spend the day one of the families.
Wednesday; we went shopping for our surprise package things
Thursday, Friday, & Saturday; we stuffed our surprise packages and went to the post office to mail them

This week was pretty low-key as far as activities go but it was fun and Jacob is excited to start Animal Week this week.

Here is the link to the directions for the fun packages that we sent. We ended up sending 5 of them. There is still one family that we didn't send them to but we will send it soon. We had a lot of fun shopping for the things to put in the bottles. Here are the pics of some of the things that we put into some of the bottles.

Dino-mite Tie T-Shirt

I made this fun tie t-shirt for my nephew. He is three and he's crazy about dinosaurs. His dad has to wear business attire for work so I thought it'd be fun for him to have his own pretend dressy shirt. I found the plain black t-shirt at Dollar Tree and I already had the fabric.

I ironed double-sided fusible web onto the back of the fabric scrap and traced around my son's clip-on tie. Then I cut that out and removed the paper backing. I centered the new tie on the black t-shirt and ironed it on. Then I cut a strip of fabric stabilizer and ironed that onto the inside of the shirt, directly behind the tie cut-out.

I used a straight stitch and sewed all the way around the tie and across the bottom of the triangle top of the tie. Then I tore off the paper fabric stabilizer from the inside of the shirt. So simple and so fun! I think I'll go whip out a bunch more of these cute t-shirts for my son's dino-loving buddies.

Playful Summer Dress

It has been really cold here for quite a while this Spring and we haven't been able to get out in the sunshine (because there hasn't been any - it rained for a couple of months straight), but now that the sunshine is here to stay I decided that my daughter needed a new fun dress. I think dresses are so much more comfortable to wear on hot sunshiney days.

I used this pattern from New Look. I really love their little girls patterns. They are pretty basic so they're easy to change up for different looks and embelishments. I found the fabric at Jo-Ann's last year and I didn't have any project in mind when I bought it, I just loved it so I bought a yard of it which turned out to be just enough fabric for this dress.

Summer Fun Banner

I made a banner for our living room wall to represent our Summer Fun Weeks. I used my awesome Slice Elite {which I LOVE because it cuts both fabric and paper} to cut out most of the shapes from scrapbooking paper and I sewed each of the banner pennants onto ric rack, using a contrasting thread. I used mounting putty to adhere the banner onto the wall so it will be removable at the end of the Summer. My son is very visual so I think this will help him to get the whole idea of our Summer Fun themes. For a detailed list of what we'll be doing each week, click here.

If you would like to know which Slice memory card I used for each shape, leave your email address in the comments and I'll reply with my list.

Themed Weeks for Summer Fun

I thought it would be fun to do themed weeks for each week this Summer. Each day of the week we will do something that has to do with the theme; a craft, visit some place, color something, or bake something. I figured out that we will have 13 weeks until school starts so these are the themes that I came up with and the ideas that I have so far to go with the themes.

Cousins Week; We will visit our cousins (the ones who live an hour away), learn about cousins that live in other states, collect things that they love and send mail to them.

Dinosaur Week; Go to the dinosaur park, go to a dinosaur museum, make dinosaur cakes, color in dinosaur coloring books, read dinosaur books from the library.

Vehicles Week; Go see giant trucks at a mine, ride on a train, go to a train museum, color a vehicles coloring book, read vehicle books from the library, drive mini race cars at the sports complex, watch Cars.

Fish Week; Go to the aquarium, go fishing, visit a store that sells fish, sew a fish craft, read books about fish from the library.

Animal Week; Visit friend's baby animals, go to a baby animal farm, go to the zoo, read animal books, watch animal movies on Netflix (National Geographic documentaries), ride a horse at a friend's house.

Park & Picnic Week; Play at a new park each day and take a picnic lunch or dinner.

Rock Week; Collect rocks from around our neighborhood, visit a museum that has special rocks, go hiking, learn about what the different rocks are made of, go to an indoor rock-climbing gym, paint rocks "pets".

Water Week; Visit different swimming pools or splash pads, go to a lake, learn about water conservation and water safety, freeze plastic animals in water and chip away at the ice (learn about ice).

Garden & Nature Week; Visit the local botanical garden, visit a children's garden, learn about the plants we have in our yard, go on an "I Spy" walk and take pictures.

Ball Week; Go bowling, play basketball at a park, play baseball, learn about different balls and how they are used, play foosball, play ping pong, sew our own stuffed balls out of fabric scraps.

Food Week; Go on factory tours (we have several free tours in our area), have the kids help prepare meals that they choose, tour a dairy, play with plastic food, learn about healthy foods.

Service Week; make and deliver a plate of cookies/treats to someone who needs a smile, walk around the neighborhood and pick up garbage we find, surprise a neighbor by weeding their flower bed, clean out our closets and toys and donate the things we don't need/use, design and sew a blanket for humanitarian aid.

Friend Week; Schedule to play with a different friend each day of the week, make friendship crafts for/with friends, send mail to friends who live far away.

What are your ideas for these themes?
Linking to Craft-O-Maniac

Embellished Toddler Tee & Capris

My niece is turning one today! In honor of her birthday, I embellished a ruffled tee shirt and capris that I purchased at Kohls. I like their Jumping Beans line of infant and toddler clothing because so far they have run true-to-size and they don't shrink after the initial wash. I started with some fabric scraps that my sister and I both love. I cut a 1 1/2 inch strip of fabric that was about 12 inches long. I folded over the edges and ironed it to form an enclosed strip for a ruffle. Then I sewed a straight stitch down the middle of it to keep the fabric together. Next I sewed down the middle of it again, on the thinnest part of the fabric, using the longest straight stitch. Then I gathered the fabric and, folding the ends under, sewed the new ruffle in the middle of original white ruffles.

Next I cut a heart shape out of scrap paper and used that as a pattern to cut the fabric and fusible webbing. After peeling the paper backing off of the heart, I ironed it onto the front of the tee shirt after first making sure that it was in the middle of the front of the shirt. Because the shirt is knit, I ironed a square of fabric stabilizer onto the inside of the front of the shirt. Then I used a decorative stitch to sew the heart onto the shirt.

I had some heart buttons so I sewed them onto each end of the new ruffle and I replaced the original non-functioning button on the front of the pants. I also sewed the hearts onto the front pockets and the outside of the legs of the capris.  I like how it turned out ~ a sweet heart outfit for a loved little girl.