A couple of weeks ago, Ava all of a sudden decided that she absolutely had to build a birdhouse. I have no idea where that idea came from, but she went on and on about it for days, telling us that she needed wood and glue and paint.

I looked for a birdhouse-making kit at Walmart but didn’t have any luck. I looked at a couple other stores (talk about a natural fat burner! Shopping burns lots of calories! LOL) and was planning on going to Michael’s to see if I could find anything when my mom emailed me, telling me to watch the mail for a package for Ava.

When the package arrived, we opened it and it was a Melissa & Doug Build-Your-Own Wooden Birdhouse! Ava was beside herself with excitement and couldn’t wait for Daddy to come home and help her build it. She got out her little toolbox and set it and the birdhouse up on the dining room table.

They spent about an hour building it and then came the fun part…painting!! That took another hour, but it turned out really nice and I’ll take a picture of it once they get it hung up outside

Big thanks to “Mema” for finding this and making Ava’s day (actually more like week, or even month!).

Disclaimer: The link to the birdhouse is an affiliate link and I will get a small percentage back, should you decide to buy it through that link. However, I was not paid anything to put that link in this post.

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This week, one of our MOMS Club events was a craft day.  We made snow globes and the kids had such a blast that I thought I’d share it with you, too.  It’s so easy and cheap (you won’t have to dip into your health savings account for this one!).  Sorry I don’t have any pictures.  It’s been a bad day and I’m feeling super-lazy and it’s my blog so I don’t have to if I don’t want to!  LOL

What you’ll need:

1. Clean, empty baby food jars (with the labels peeled off)
2. Waterproof super glue
3. Distilled water
4. Fun items to put in the snow globe (we used foam shapes, buttons, and glitter)

First, we had the kids fill the jars about half-full with whichever items they wanted.

Then we poured enough water in to fill the jar.

Finally, we glued the lid to the jar.

Voila….a snow globe!  We also let the kids paint the lids, put foam stickers on them and tie ribbons around it if they wanted to.

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Chad’s birthday was Saturday and now that Ava is old enough to understand the concept of birthdays, I wanted to help her make a gift for him.  I wanted it to be something that would be meaningful to him, that could capture this moment in the kids’ lives, in a way.

My first thought was that I wanted to do something with the kids’ handprints.  I considered putting their handprints in stepping stones, but that’s a little more than I could handle by myself.  My next thought was to put their handprints on paper and frame it.

With that general idea, we headed to Walmart to look for a frame.  I ended up finding a frame with four sections that each would hold a 4×6 picture.  I decided that would be perfect, because I could put each of their handprints in a slot, and then put their picture in another slot and a cute quote about Daddies in the final slot.

When it came down to making it, I decided to use Crayola Color Wonder fingerpaint on Color Wonder paper.  That cut down on the mess immensely!!  In fact, there really wasn’t any mess.  And you would be able to see that with your own eyes if my camera didn’t hate me.  I took pictures and videos throughout the whole process so I could share them with you and it turned out I didn’t have the memory card in the camera.  And I have no way to get the pictures off of the camera’s “internal memory”.  It’s all the camera’s fault.

So I only have pictures of the final product.

And this.  I have no idea how Kelvin’s first attempt at a handprint ended up with 5 fingers and a thumb.

And here are the kids with Daddy after they gave him their gift.  He said he really liked it and he’d been wanting something with their handprints on it.

This makes a great gift, not only for Daddies, but for grandparents or anyone else who is close to your children (you would want to pick a different quote though, obviously).

Do you have an idea for a gift for children to make and give?  Please leave it in a comment!

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