Shadowed Cat

I was super impressed with how this picture turned out. I cut out all the pieces of for Big N to put on the orange piece of paper, and she did all the gluing. I *might* have moved a few things while the glue was still wet (if you look carefully you can see the white globs of glue), but I think we did a pretty good job for an accountant and a two year old.

Halloween Crafts

We've been doing a lot of Halloween crafts for the past few weeks.

Here we did hand print spiders for Big N while Little N made footprint ghosts (which we mailed to a family member before we remembered to take a picture).

We made construction paper candy corn that Big N added a little more fun to since she wasn't a big fan of how our craft looked. Although thinking about it now, it's probably because she has absolutely no clue what candy corn is, oh well, no need to introduce more candy now.

Crinkle Cat

Using Martha Stewart for inspiration Big N and I made this crinkly cat one day during craft hour while Little N was sleeping. Big N is getting so independent in her art. She can now fold the paper herself and do ALL the gluing, she tries really hard to use the scissors herself and can so far cut a triangle. What a huge change from a year ago when it was really just me doing things and her watching. Anyways, we're going to hang this from the ceiling for Halloween but, it was just much to wet with glue at this point to take it anywhere.

World Word Art

If you remember back in March when two of my niece's and one nephew were celebrating their birthdays we made them a zebra, an elephant, and a monkey to hang in their respective rooms. So of course, now that we are celebrating the first birthday of my other niece she needed something to put in her room too. When I asked her parents they said she was really into word world these days, or at least smiles when it's on. So, we went with a word world theme and made the duck for her to put up.

At first I attempted to just use white glue to outline the duck and then had planned to paint everything on colour so it was just a subtle picture, but that didn't turn out well at all, so I ended up painting the whole thing.


Now, we just need all the kids to get healthy so we can actually deliver our present to little B.

The Princess and the Dragon

Big N has recently decided that she doesn't like dragons, so R had the idea that the two N's should play the princess and the dragon. Of course with Little N being the dragon, I'm not sure if the thought was to get Big N to like dragons because her little brother was one, or that she should just beat up dragons, but either way, the kids had fun putting together their princess and dragon hats. As you can see Big N did all the gluing on her hat all by herself, which meant it took an extra couple hours for the hat to actually be dry. Big N was definitely more interested in wearing her hat than Little N, but he did enjoy playing with the fire mouth on his dragon.
Big N is just starting to get into the make believe stage, so I think in the coming year we'll have a lot of fun pretending.

Haunted House

I came across a really cool blog post about how to paint a haunted house that looked super simple. However, the day we decided to make haunted houses I didn't have the patience to get out the paint. So, we did a similar house with construction paper. Big N picked where all the windows should go. Then we glued a yellow piece of paper behind our black house. It was super simple and Big N thought it was great.

Wall of Fame - September

I'm behind again, but here's how the September wall turned out, not great, but a heck of a lot better than August.

Apple Art

I needed an activity to keep the kids entertained for a few more minutes one evening while we were waiting for R to get home from work since he was stuck in traffic. So, we cut out apples from construction paper and glued them in our construction paper baskets. We pretended they were falling from our tree.

It was a quick activity, but at least something to get the kids from loosing their schmidt before dinner.

Painted Paper Bag Pumpkins

We did it! We officially started decorating for Halloween. Up to now I've never really been a big Halloween fan, but having two little kids, one of whom was born three days prior to the big day, it gets me a little more excited for the event.

We filled paper bags with crumbled paper, got out the orange paint and went to town. If I were doing this craft without a toddler, I probably wouldn't have stuffed prior to painting, but I needed Big N to be interested, so the stuffing part got her away from the computer (side note, my 2.5 year old knows how to run Netflix on the iPhone, the PS3, and the computer now, all in all we're doomed for getting her to stay away from the television). After the paint was dry, we cut out faces with construction paper and glued them on. Big N was super excited to see her pumpkin all finished, I don't think she quite understood what we were doing until the face went on. Little N thought they were pretty cute too, and was very excited to get his hands in the paint (I'm not sure the carpet appreciated our adventure, but oh well).

Rolled Paper Frame

One day while aimlessly searching blogland, I came across this post for a rolled paper frame art. We had both paper and cardboard handy, so off we went to roll some paper. We followed the directions pretty closely, so go on over to check them out.

We spray painted the entire frame and background black, and then added a little metallic silver paint to the rolled paper.
But now we had this pretty frame with absolutely nothing to put in it. We started looking around the playroom for something we could put in it, and came across a pretty picture of a frog R had coloured with Big N one day after work. We Mod Podged the crap out of it, and came up with this stunning array.
Mod Podge and I aren't the best of friend, so I ended up using some white glue on the back to make sure the little froggie stayed put. Now we just have to find a place to put this little man. He's pretty cute. I think he might get to stay.

The $4.50 headboard

Whether this is considered a headboard or wall art, I'll never know. But, are you ready for the reveal of what this beautiful piece is made from?
It's $1.25 piece of poster board, covered in a $1 pillow case all from Dollarama. The centre is an 8x10 canvas art piece that Big N painted for me, there's actually a lot of dimension in the piece, but it doesn't really photograph very well. There you have it ladies and gentlemen, a budget basic redo.

Pasta Jewelry

The day I asked for suggestions on what to do another friend had said that just the other day her daughters had painted pasta and made little gardens out of the shapes. That sounded cute, until I looked in the cupboard and found out we only had penne and spaghetti. Now, spaghetti doesn't lead itself to too many crafts that I'm aware of, but maybe I should google it before I say that. But, I thought the penne could make could necklaces. So, Big N and I set off to paint some pasta. After the paint had thoroughly dried, we thread ribbon threw it and made some beautiful necklaces and bracelets. Since Big N is on a princess kick right now, she thought her jewelry was fantastic.

Toilet Paper Roll Art

After spending WAY too much time trolling blog land recently, I've come across some VERY artistic people that create awesome things without spending a cent. Now, that is my kind of art. I've decided to finally finish the decorating of the master bedroom and have been looking for some nice pieces of art to work with. The only problem with finding great art, is that it usually comes with a price tag, and mat leave doesn't pay a whole heck of a lot, so art on the cheap is definitely a plus.

Big N and I rounded up the cardboard rolls lying around the house (paper towel, toilet paper, wrapping paper, etc.) and cut them into small pieces. Then we spent a good amount of time laying out a design. We plugged in the glue gun to realize that it couldn't reach where we had laid out our design, and with Little N crawling around in our midst, we couldn't have the floor space taken up much longer, so we just started throwing pieces together and gluing fast before we lost any more pieces to Little N's little mouth.

After we had everything glued together, Little N and I took the piece outside to add some spray paint, Big N had lost interest by this point and was busy talking her dad's ear off. So. we added some black spray paint that we had randomly found in the garage, left by the previous owners no doubt. So our "iron" work has some nice Tremclad covering it, I was quite worried that it would get rusty.

Here is our final product:
I think it looks super cute, and definitely adds something to the bedroom. You can hardly tell it's toilet paper rolls in person.

I'll reveal the entire master bedroom update once I finish a couple more projects, which hopefully happens in the next few days as opposed to months, like the kitchen project that I still haven't finished.

Less than three more months of mat leave, time to speed up the projects so I feel like I did everything I could during my time at home.

Sand Art

After our fun with glitter, we decided to do more art pieces, but using sand as our glitter. Big N had a ball with it. We started working on cardboard, but the dummy inside of me forgot to think about how brown on brown wouldn't really show up. So, we got out the construction paper.

We made some birthday cards for some very important people who are celebrating big birthday's this week.

We were done with the glue before Little N was done his morning nap, so we brought out the paints and made our pictures even prettier.

July Wall of Fame

Here's how the month of July turned out.

The Newest Addition to the Playroom

Our playroom has never quite been complete but I wasn't sure what it was missing, until I stumbled upon a sale at Kitchen Stuff Plus. They had a removable vinyl chalkboard on sale for 25% off, so I picked it up and thought it could be a great addition to the playroom. They also had picture frames on sale, so I picked a few up thinking we needed to hang a little more artwork in the room too. Little N did his very first painting and made the bottom piece at 8.5 months of age. It's awesome!
Big N loved the new addition.
The only trouble now is convincing a two year old that you can colour on the wall, but only this part over here. Oh well, that's what being a kid is all about.

A House in Progress

Little N got a new car seat, which means we got a giant box. And since it's a million and one degrees outside what better way to make use of our air conditioned house than by making a play house.

It started with some simple cutting and taping.

And of course we had to test it out at every stage.
On to the painting.
R was super jealous that I could fit in the box the same time that Big N was in it.


Now, our house is no where near complete, but we can't do everything in one day in case it stays this hot and we have to stay indoors for a few more days. I'll post more pictures when we finish our awesome project.

Glitter is fun AND MESSY!

Big N found a tube of glitter somewhere in our house, which I have NEVER purchased, so I have absolutely no clue where it came from. But, after two days of her begging to use it, I got out the courage to attempt a glitter project with a two year old. She was amazed at how it stuck to the glue, especially the gluing parts she did. All in all, it wasn't near as messy as I anticipated, and perhaps wasn't even worth the two days of distracting her from using it. Maybe I'll buy more glitter??? Hmm...maybe not.

A Proud Mom

I had to show pictures of this beautiful art project completed 100% by Big N.
I have absolutely no clue what it is, but I was amazed to watch her do all the cutting all by herself. She's pretty good at wielding those scissors, which I know for a fact because later in the day she decided to cut some of my hair when I was busy playing with Little N. Thanks for that Big N.

My little baby is growing up.

Happy Belated Canada Day!!

We wound up having a very impromptu BBQ for Canada Day. It was a good thing the kids and I had already prepared decorations for our camping trip. Now, if only I had taken pictures before it had rained all over our decorations, but they were cute nonetheless.


We made an O'Canada sign out of card stock and string. I had Big N paint some white paper with red paint. Then we found a maple leaf and traced them on the page. We cut out a few maple leaves and then tied them on our picnic shelter.

All in all, we had a great day. Big and Little N were both super tired from all the excitement and went to sleep easily (for once).