Halloween Princess Costume: DIY Light Up Cinderella Carriage from a Wagon

With Halloween fast approaching I've got a great DIY to share today that's perfect for a little princess! Most little girls love dressing up as a princess and what princess doesn't need a carriage to make her outfit complete? This easy DIY turns an ordinary wagon into a beautiful carriage that you can use for years with any princess costume!

Take Out the Trash: DIY Toddler Sized Wheeled Trash Can and Garbage Man Costume

This post contains affiliate links please see my disclosure policy for more info

I'm continuing with the short break from the owl bathroom renovation to bring you guys a cute DIY Halloween post. It's a little outside of my realm of decorating and renovating but it's a tutorial I felt I needed to do for all those parents and grandparents of toddlers who love garbage trucks.

Easy and Fun Easter Eggs for Little Ones: Toddler Friendly Egg Dying with PAAS Color Snaps

Easter is coming up so fast this year I feel like I don't have enough time to fit in all the fun Easter activities with our busy lifestyle! But that's not going to stop me from trying so my little one can have a fun-filled holiday.

My mom came up unexpectedly from Arizona on a sad visit to go to her Aunt's funeral. Of course it snowed several inches while she was here when a week before we were pushing 70 degrees and everyone was so giddy from spring fever that they put their shovels in storage (gotta love spring in Illinois). She was able to visit with Jackson and I on her last day for a few hours when I got off work so I decided it was the perfect opportunity to do something fun with Grandma!

Enter PAAS color snaps. A woman at work raved to me about color snaps with her two toddlers in tow. She went on and on about how great they were. Since I had been wondering if Jackson would sit through dying eggs because he has typical toddler ADD and dying eggs is not the most exciting fast paced activity that he craves, I decided to try out these so-called color snaps.

While the snow was coming down outside like it was Christmas Eve, I boiled some eggs, let them cool and we got started.

The color snaps come in five colors: pink, yellow, green, blue and purple. To use these q-tip color filled contraptions you just snap the top area where the line is. Then all the color flows down to one end of the q-tip that you use to "color" your eggs. I'll admit I snapped the purple one and got sprayed in the face a little bit (luckily it washed right off). This is not the cleanest activity but neither is dying eggs the traditional way.

My co-worker, Cindy, came up with a brilliant idea to use trays that liquid water enhancers are displayed in to hold dyed eggs until they've dried. She gathered up a bunch for me and they really worked great!! I'm going to use them every year now!

Jackson immediately loved using the color snaps. He held onto the egg and colored all around his hand.

We Skyped with Jackson's cousin Jade in Arizona the whole time he colored eggs. He had to show her each egg when he was finished coloring it.

Jackson was really focused on coloring his eggs.

Jackson thoroughly enjoyed coloring the eggs with the color snaps. He never got bored and he colored all one dozen eggs.  I even managed to get Jackson to smile in one of the pictures, which he does maybe once in a hundred pictures even though I beg and plead and ask him to say money til I'm blue in the face (maybe I should take a leaf out of one of those photographer's books who fake sneeze and talk in baby voices)!

Here's all 12 colored eggs. My mom and I  had to try the color snaps out for ourselves so we put a few personal touches of our own on a couple eggs (they're not Van Gogh-esque by any means, well maybe Jackson's are) The color snaps had plenty of "color" in them for all 12 eggs but they did start to dry up after 15 minutes or so of non-use.

Overall I really liked PAAS color snaps. Jackson seemed to have a lot of fun and so did my mom and I. However it was a little messy. Especially when I peeled the eggs for Jackson to eat (he loooves hard boiled eggs). All the color came off on my hands and it took some scrubbing to come off.

We will definitely use them again (probably as soon as this weekend when we dye eggs with Cory's family). I wish I would have known about them last year since Jackson had absolutely no interest whatsoever in what everyone was doing at the table. I'm so glad I found out about them in time for dying eggs this year though!

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with PAAS. All opinions, experiences and dyed eggs are my own (and Jackson's).

-Sherri

Green Pepper Clover Stamp Fun For Your Wee Bitty One

I figured my wee bitty one, Jackson, would love to do another painting project, (since he's always up for anything artsy) for St Patrick's Day. I found the perfect fun and easy craft on (you guessed it!) Pinterest.

When I first saw a picture of green peppers used as clover stamps I thought, how crafty and cute! I knew it would be the perfect art project for Jackson! One of my favorite examples out of several that I saw was on i heart naptime.

The process is pretty self explanatory but for the wanna be elementary school art teacher in me (high on the list of my dream jobs!) I'll explain for you all how we did it. Here's the supplies we used:

-Green Paint
-Thick paper
-Several green peppers
-Scissors
-Markers

First we made our favorite super duper easy paint recipe found at one of the best kids artsy sites, Tinkerlab. Here's Jackson helping make the paint. Yes, it's so easy to make a two year old can do it (with a wee bit of help of course).

After we made the paint, I split it up into three shallow bowls wide enough for a green pepper to easily fit in, and used food coloring to make three different color greens.

I then cut three green peppers in half to use as stamps. I had picked out peppers that had the lucky four leaf clover look. You could easily find three leaf clover peppers if you'd prefer that instead.

After preparing the peppers and paint it was up to Jackson to stamp clovers all over the paper. I had to help him a wee bit as the peppers were a bit cumbersome for his tiny two year old hands. He had such a blast and loved stamping and pushing the peppers down on the paper!

The shamrock art looked great all by itself, and for a two year olds artistic ability, totally worthy of front and center fridge, but we decided to spread some luck o' the Irish and give a four leaf clover or two to Jackson's family and friends. We ended up having to do the whole painting project twice, not only because it was loads of fun but because of Jackson's usual terrible two shenanigans he ended up crushing and destroying a few clovers so we didn't have enough to give out to everyone.

So I just pulled the paint out of the fridge and added a splash of water and it worked just as good as the day before. I had also saved the tops of the peppers so he was able to use those the next day. This was such a cheap fun craft, we'll probably try out other fruits and vegetables to use as stamps!

Jackson added all the colors of the rainbow with markers onto the clovers after they were dry and I wrote out how lucky he is to have each person in his life. Hopefully they all receive a wee bit of luck (or at least the little clovers will put a smile on their faces) on St Patty's Day.

When Jackson goes to pass them out he might just give them all a pinch....or a kiss if they're lucky.

Toddler friendly Valentine's that were heart-ly any work, and a whole lot of fun

Every year since my son Jackson was born he has sent out Valentine's to family and friends. This year he is 2 1/2 around V day so he is old enough to do something more hands on. I came across this brilliant idea that I knew would be perfect for Valentines, from Elizabeth Joan Designs. She made a heart stamp out of an empty toilet paper tube! So simple, so cheap (free!) and so genius! Her kids looked like they had an absolute blast!

It took all of 30 seconds to make these easy (but genius) stamps. I then gathered some white card stock, markers and envelopes from my craft stash. I wanted to make heart shaped Valentines so I reused my idea from last year, tracing a wood heart decoration from my Valentine mantle.

It worked perfectly to fit in a 5x7 envelope. Thanks again wood hearts!

I then wrote out a Valentine message from Jackson and let him create a masterpiece.

After he was done drawing we moved onto making paint. I really wanted to make non toxic, toddler friendly paint and I found the perfect recipe on Tinkerlab. Not only did this site have an easy paint recipe but it has tons of ideas for toddler art projects, science projects and more! This paint was so easy to make Jackson did most of the work! 

I measured the ingredients: flour, salt and water, and he dumped them in the bowl. He even stirred the paint mixture. I split the paint between two bowls and added food coloring and we were good to go.

The paint worked out perfectly. It was thick enough to not make a mess. I was so prepared for a mess, see the bib. The bib was the ONLY thing that got messy because it flipped onto the paper and smeared a heart. I even pushed Jackson's sleeves up several times because he wouldn't keep them down and still NO paint on his clothes!

The paint was also thick enough so that I really didn't have to help at all with the stamping. Jackson pretty much did all the work and we both had a great time!

I swear he would have done 5 more pages if I let him.

He enjoyed himself so much that he kept asking to "paint" again, so the next day he painted with Daddy. I had put the paint in the refrigerator and it still worked just as good the next day with a little stir. This time he put hearts on his Valentine's envelopes.

Not too shabby for using products I had laying around the house.

The paint dried in less than 24 hours and it was rock hard and "puffy". I will definitely be using this paint recipe again!

Here is my favorite one that now sits on our Valentine mantle.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

XOXO-

Sherri