This Little Project

Father's Day Handmade Gift Round-up

Father's Day is coming up quick! Here are some fun ideas to show Dad and Grandpa how much you care. I'll be back tomorrow with some of the handmade gifts we made for our Daddy (so come back tomorrow and let's hope he doesn't peek!)

Let's be honest here: Guys are harder to shop for than Gals. The coupon idea really gets used a lot on Father's Day.

If the man in your life is handy, this little coupon idea mixed with a tool kit idea is perfect for your kids to make and really easy to personalize!

Here are a few more free printable coupons (note there are a couple that aren't G rated)

These shirts would make a cute gift, or may be easy to make too...I'm thinking really cute on a onesie :)

We made some fun cards. This shirt card is an easy folding one.

Here is another version of the shirt card. And this one is an easy printable shirt card that is great for the kids to color for Dad or Grandpa.

There is a sweet "I love you Daddy" poem at Kaboose. It would be sweet accompanied by a cute photo.

Here is a pattern to make your own homemade box to hold a little treat.

This box pattern is an easy printable to hold your gift for Dad.

For more ideas, check out these Little Projects from the archives as well:
Yarn Cards are great for the kids to make.

These Personalized Photo Frames are SO easy and inexpensive to make.

You can also make a fun wordle (see link on right sidebar) with names of family members or things that he loves (sports, fishing, etc.) The more times you type a word in the wordle, the bigger the text gets for that word. You can adjust the colors too. Print, add to a card or frame it and you're done!

See ya tomorrow with new Little Projects to make for Father's Day!

Teddy Bear Picnic and more edible finger puppets

We had an impromptu teddy bear picnic yesterday complete with edible finger puppets, bear claws, and a teddy bear sandwich. Follow along below to make your own teddy bear treats. We used the finger puppets to tell the story of Goldilocks and the 3 bears and then watched "The Teddy Bear Picnic" song on youtube.

To make your edible teddy finger puppets you need: peanut butter (or frosting) for "glue", Mini chocolate chips, brown "toasted coconut" marshmallows, mini white marshmallows, pull-n-peel for mouth, and pretzels for the finger puppet part. We were out of the regular stick kind of pretzels and had to improvise. Those actually work the best though

Each bear uses 1.5 of the brown marshmallows: one for the head, then cut one in half. Turn it so the sticky side is down and cut it in half again for the ears. The nose is a mini marshmallow cut in half. Use the peanut butter like "glue" to hold them in place. The eyes and nose are mini chocolate chips "glued" on too. The mouth is a small piece of pull-n-peel. If you have a peanut allergy to work around, try frosting instead.

One of our people from the village helped out as Goldilocks.

We've had a lot of fun with our other edible finger puppets here and here too.

Our bear claws are made from pretzels with chocolate chips melted to the ends for little claws.

This little bear was very tasty!

I used the lid from our Jiffy jar to cut the head from the bread. Then the ears were from the top edges of the bread. Use the peanut butter to "glue" it all together. The nose is a banana slice with raisins for eyes.

Mmmm!

This Little Project was Yum! For more Fun with Food look to the left side bar title "Fun with Food."

Stop and Go in the Village

This week Jay became a stop-light backseat driver. I think he finally is tall enough that he can see around me a little when we drive. He is thrilled to call out what color the light is and what it means we should do now that he can see them. So today our village got some roads and stoplights, as well as some cars.

This is what the roads looked like before they became roads. In an effort to stick to my original goals (imagination stimulating, use what we already have/inexpensive, create a new toy to play with while we are away for the summer) our roads are made of scraps of fleece from some PJ's I made for my hubby for Christmas. I ironed them onto some thick one-side-fusible Pellon from Joann fabrics to turn them from flexible fleece into sturdy roads.

The cars were about as wide as my ruler so I just doubled that size and drew lines on the back of the fused on Pellon to make straight roads. This sounds so simple, but it took me a while to figure it out...I kept wondering how I was going to see anything I drew on the black side!

It looked like this:

This is what the roads look like cut out.

See how the Pellon is nice and thick to make them sturdy:

The stoplights are made from these pieces of wood I picked up at the Salvation Army store. It looks like an old game similar to Jenga...I just used the tip of my finger and these stamp pads to make the circles on the stop lights.

Here is the Stop and Go. Jay has never been into cars all that much before. He always liked things that flew better. I picked up some great little cars for a quarter each this past weekend at a garage sale-perfect timing! I used yellow embroidery floss (just 3 of the 6 strands) to sew the lines in the road. It was the finishing touch that just proved that I really cannot sew a straight line very well!

I just took the written driving test a week ago to register my car in a new state. Somehow, This Little Project makes me feel like I am 16 again...

p.s. here are the links to the other places in our Village so far... swimming pool, park, and library.

The Village Post Office

If you've been following along, you've already seen the Village swimming pool, park, and library. This Little Project has been fun because it is an "open-ended" toy, meaning that it is interactive enough for their imaginations to go wild making a new little village each day. We recently read the book, Bunny Mail by Rosemary Wells. It is the book that sparked our ideas for this part of our village.

The book is about the letters that Max writes and it has little flaps to lift and "open" the letter. Jay and Kay both loved it. We spent the whole afternoon writing letters after that. We also got to make a trip to the Post Office to mail some Father's Day packages. All of this led to a Post Office being added to the Village.

Each part of the village that is constructed with felt is 2 LAYERS thick so that it isn't destroyed by the end of the day. So the little MAIL letters are a folded piece of white felt stitched with red embroidery floss. There is a little button hole under each letter...see below.

The back of each letter looks like a little envelope. Get it, "letter" (double meaning :)

The letters can be stuffed into the mailbox

The mailbox is only sewn down in the back so mail can be pulled out of the bottom of it.

The letters can be buttoned to the Post Office to spell "MAIL" (great little hand coordination practice).

or they can be or driven around the village in our little mail truck (not everything in the village is perfectly to scale, as you can see :)

The blocks are glued together with Elmer's glue to make the P.O. and the flag pole. I used a flag cutout from a magazine but will replace it with a fabric one sometime. The paper is not going to be durable enough :)

Does all of that make you want to write a letter...or maybe build a village :)

Watch for more village to come...

Improve your Memory for FREE!

I am so excited to share something that I have been using for just a short time and am already LOVING!!! It is called Evernote.

While we are away for the summer I am using my husband's laptop, not my regular desktop. I had all kinds of things saved on my other computer that I have no access to right now. It's kind of frustrating.

If there is one thing I love doing, it is collecting ideas. I love to see what other people are doing and then put something new together for our family based on a synthesis of lots of other ideas. The beautiful thing about the internet is that so many ideas are available at your fingertips. The question is, how do you keep track of the ideas you love so that you can find them when you need them again?

My new answer is Evernote. It's even free. It is an entirely web-based system that stores all of your ideas for you. You can access it from any computer.

All I do is:

1) Select a photo or text of an idea I like and push the "clip to Evernote" button that I dragged into my tool bar. This "captures" what I just selected and also the website address.

2) Label it: A little screen pops up asking what you would like to label it. You can put it into as many categories as you want to type in. Then you can even write more notes below-like why you like it. Later when you need to access the info, you can search for it inside Evernote to find what you are looking for.

3) Save button. It goes into your account for you to access from any computer. You can email yourself notes, track your appointments, etc. It is an awesome way to improve your memory-seriously-I'm feeling smarter already!

Proof in 2 examples:

1) Right now I don't have a printer to use. (I'm trying not to let that drive me crazy.) There are a few projects that I am working ahead on for my kids and Father's Day that I need to print. So I am just capturing pages of ideas and saving them into Evernote so that I can access them in a few days when I will (hopefully) have a printer to use. Easy. Efficient. Neat!

2) I'm flying out for my sister's wedding reception in a couple of weeks. She is the kind of person that loves unique-handmade so I've been trying to come up with the perfect gift for her. I've been scouring the web looking for the perfect idea. Something that fits her style and I can get done in time. I'm saving my favorite ideas and then will pick one to make, but I still have the others there just incase I need them for another friend or even for her birthday.
I found some cute address labels, a fun card to make, and a unique fabric bowl to try out, among other fun things and all I did was "clip" them into my Evernote account.

Still not convinced, read this about the more detailed uses of Evernote.

I've not been using it for that long, so my amazement is still shining...The thing I like most about it?

It is so easy and I feel so smart because I can find and remember things so much BETTER!

If you haven't already, go try it out. I think you are going to like This Little Project!

The Village Library

A great library is a top priority when we choose a place to live. We are big fans around here :) We recently got a library card for our new city that we are visiting for the summer. Naturally it was the next piece of our village.

I was lucky enough to find a bag of blocks at a garage sale this weekend for a quarter. We just glued some little blocks together to make a building with a message encrypted:

{Little Project Tip:} If you make This Little Project, be sure to glue them this way first. We just used Elmer's glue.

Jay had fun painting the roof.