Homemade Christmas Dishes

Each year I use my two boys' handprints or footprints to make myself Christmas dishes. I opted to do this once I had kids as a cute keepsake. Plus the penny pincher I am, never jumped in and bought a set of the cute pricey dishes.

This year I decided I had enough plates from previous years, a platter from last year, so this year I began bowls. Here is the finished product:

To see my previous post and pictures of my previous dishes click here.

Tip: I've seen all the pins on pinterest about using a regular sharpie and baking it on your dishes. DON'T!!! I did that last year with red for a red scallop on the edge of my plate. When I pulled it out and rinsed it off to dust it off, the red all ran off. Yes, I had baked it like the pins said. 
So instead, I found in the Walmart craft section, that Sharpie actually now makes pens for dishes. I don't remember the cost, but I think it was about $8 for a 4 pack. So far so good with those, and the ink is holding tight.

For the bowl, I painted the green with my new sharpie paint pens, and used the red paint on their fingertips and they dotted the red berries.

Now, my next trouble is figuring out what to do next year on the bowl. I need more bowls and I'm short on ideas. Also, at this point my kids' hands and feet are getting too big to make more plates. :)

December Funnies

I had to share these two goodies I saw on Facebook.

Merry Christmas and hang in there teachers!! We can do it!!

Elf on the Shelf - Minecraft Style

I'm pretty proud of this one. Not just the typical move him to another location. :)

For more ideas, check out my Elf on the Shelf December calendar. Or find me on Facebook.

Elf on the Shelf 2014

My boys begged me to put up the Christmas tree yesterday. Once that was finally done (4 hours later...stupid pre-lit trees that are no longer pre-lit!! UGH!!) I realized, that in our house, once the tree goes up, Max our Elf on the Shelf returns. Panic set it.

Last year I made a nifty little calendar to help me keep track and not worry about ideas as my head hit the pillow. It worked out great, minus the days we were snowed in at my in-laws an hour away.

So, I have made my 2014 Elf calendar to share with you at dropbox.  You can click on this link and it will take you to dropbox where you can download the calendar for free. You can also see last year's calendar here for more ideas.

With the calendar, I have extra pictures and websites that I used to compile this year's list/calendar. Almost everything I pulled from my personal pinterest board, so I don't take any credit for the ideas.

The above picture is a little hard to see, but tomorrow my boys will find "Max" helping out the Paw Patrol pups. Max is inside their lighthouse, if you can't tell. This was one of my own personal ideas. I had to come up with a few because my calendar begins on Dec 1st and today is Nov 29th.

I hope you can get a few useful ideas from my calendar. Merry Christmas!!

Homemade Halloween Costumes

My 4 yr old LOVES Paw Patrol!!! So it was only fitting that was what he wanted to be for Halloween. Since there was nothing pre-made for Paw Patrol (and I almost NEVER buy costumes) I set to work.

Marshall from Paw Patrol:

Supplies:
*Fireman's hat (already on hand)
*2 black felt squares (23¢ each at Walmart)
*1 white felt square (23¢)
*White t-shirt ($3.88 Walmart)
*Fun foam (I had it on hand, but at craft stores for less than $1)
*Yellow ribbon and flashlight (extra embellishments that I had on hand)
*Glue gun and 1 glue stick 
*Fat marks-a-lot black permanent marker
*Plastic badge from his Paw Patrol toy

Total Out of Pocket Cost: $8.71 plus tax

Shirt: White shirt drawn with black permanent marker. I suggest putting some old cardboard (or in my case a cut up trash bag box) inside it as you color so it won't bleed through.

Collar: Yellow ribbon and a plastic Marshall badge that came with one of his Paw Patrol toys.

For the hat.
Felt ears glue inside. Yellow ribbon around the outside. Small flashlight glued to ribbon. Fun foam badge on the front.

Sight Words

I've been working more fervently with my older preschooler on sight words now that "mommy school" has started again.

Here are a few of the things I have done to help him learn his sight words:

 Dotting each sight word with a different color.

 Playing tic-tac-toe with the sight words.

 Parking lot - cars cover the sight word.

 

Coloring - I found a black and white clip art from My Cute Graphics (it's free) and printed it off. Then I wrote his sight words in the spaces to color.

National Geographic FREEBIE

When I taught I used to use Scholastic News in the classroom. The kids and I both loved it, but it was a little pricey. So I was thrilled when I ran across this website. National Geographic has their past issues online that you can read online. This would make a great listening center/computer center with a science theme - I'm just sayin'!  :)  Besides having the issue online, there is a link to it for teachers to have a study guide and print off worksheets and such...for FREE!! 

I ran across this while studying Insects with my preschooler. He loved listening to the insect stories that were in a few of the issues.

Be sure to check out this great resource! Below is a screen shot of the website. Enjoy!!

On a side note, I do have a Facebook page now, so "like" that for more updates and freebies of what is going on in my "country world".