Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Making Monsters…

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They’re googly-eyed, wiggly-armed and just about the cutest monsters I’ve ever seen! After seeing these Purple People Eaters on Toddler Approved, I knew Lizzie and AJ would have fun making their own monsters.

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Materials Needed:

Empty cardboard rolls
Craft paint
Google eyes
Pipe Cleaners
Your imagination!

First we painted.I had set out two colors of paint, so they could use both on their monsters, but both girls decided to go with just one color.

After painting came the tough step of letting them dry. We decided it was the perfect time for a bath.

Next, I took a sharp pair of scissors and poked two holes in each side of the tube.The girls laced pipe cleaners through the holes so their monsters looked like they had two long, wiggly arms on both sides.

The last step was gluing on the googly eyes. The more googly eyes, the better!At this point, Lizzie decided her monster needed a little something extra, so she got out the markers.

So there you have it, a couple of googly-eyed, wiggly-armed monsters! Don’t they make you smile?

Leaf Garland…

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Remember the leaves we gathered on our leaf collecting trip? After being pressed under heavy books for a few days, we got them out to do rubbings and turn them into a pretty fall garland.

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I gathered the leaves, several sheets of our drawing paper, yarn and our recycled muffin tin crayons. (Crayons turned on their side with the wrappings off will also work well.)We laid out the leaves, put the paper on top and started rubbing.

There’s something so magical about seeing the shape and texture of the leaf appear, that I had to join in myself! Once we used up all our paper, it was time to cut out all the leaf shapes.

Once they were cut, we made the garland.It was a simple process. We just taped each leaf to the yarn. We turned the leaf to the backside, laid the yarn across the middle and applied a couple of pieces of tape. We left a spacing of a couple of inches between each leaf.

In the end we had a beautiful fall garland to display with all of our Halloween decorations. It was simple and Lizzie enjoyed making something that turned out so beautiful.

Fall Bucket List – Revisited…

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We’ve been working hard on our fall bucket list the last couple of weeks. Work is not quite the right word for what we’ve been doing, maybe I should say play hard instead!

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We made pumpkin bread using this recipe from Everyday Food. Yum!

We went leaf collecting and did some apple stamping.

We made apple pie play dough using this recipe from Mom To 2 Posh Lil Divas and we played with it for days. It smelled heavenly!

And last, but not least, we made our spooky spider masks!

What’s next?

We’re going to do our leaf rubbings and turn them into our fall garland. We’ll feed the birds this week and make our crock pot apple sauce. And of course, anything else that suits our fancy!

Leaf Collecting…

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We’ve been working on our fall bucket list a lot this week and decided yesterday was the perfect day for leaf collecting. But first, we needed something to put those leaves in.

I took brown paper lunch bags and cut them in half. We were only going to use the bottom half.

I used a pair of my craft scissors to get the zig-zag pattern on the top. Then, we got out the markers and the girls started decorating.

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When they were finished, I opened up the bags, punched a hole in each side and added a long length of yarn. It was a windy day, so I wanted the girls to be able to wear them messenger-bag style.

And then, we were off!

We went to one of our local parks. It is full of trees and has several walking paths. I knew it would be perfect for leaf collecting.

We walked and picked up leaves, then walked and picked up leaves some more. Most were already brown and on the ground, but we found a few treasured yellow and red leaves while we were out.

We also stopped and examined the mossy wall. AJ loved touching it!

After a lengthy playground stop, we brought our treasures home. They’re now being pressed under heavy books, just waiting for us to have more fun with them!

Have you been doing any fall activities? What sort of fall fun have you been having?

Apple Stamping…

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We did another item from our Fall Bucket List recently – apple stamping.I set up the project by cutting a couple of apples in half. I cut one lengthwise, so we could get the apple shape. The other I cut crosswise, so we could have circles with the pretty star shape in the middle.

I grabbed a few of our craft sticks and stuck them in the apples to make the stamps easier to handle. After pouring out a couple of colors of paint, we were ready to go.

The girls were quite excited to see this; their patience barely held on to let me take a few seconds to snap this photo. (Can you see the little finger peeking off to the side?)

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And, they were off! If you’ve never tried this project before, I’d greatly encourage it. All it takes is a couple of apples and some paint.The girls loved the novelty of using food to stamp and had a lot of fun making the different shapes and even mixing the colors.

Both were able to work on this project without any help from me.

In the end, we had a lot of fun and some great prints.I’m planning on getting out my clear contact paper and turning these into autumn placemats. We’ll have enough for everyone in the family!

Have you tried apple stamping before?