Learning To Be a Mom: Fall

Showing posts with label Fall. Show all posts

Okay, I'll admit these aren't real turkey feathers, but since Thanksgiving is right around the corner it seemed like the perfect opportunity to pull out the feathers. I've had these feathers forever. They get pulled out for random projects here and there. When I taught school, I had the kids write Thanksgiving words with the tips. For Little Brother I thought it would be fun to put them into a sensory bin.

We had so much fun playing together. We talked about colors and texture. He loved it when I tickled his face with them. My favorite was when we dropped them from up high and watched them float down. Sometimes it's those really simple activities that are the most fun.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I may be a little late getting this posted, but better late than never. I love Thanksgiving! The food, the family, the colors. I hope you enjoy these simple preschool pages. Just click on the picture to download and print.

Sweet Girl and I love to walk through the seasonal aisles at the stores. I love to see all the decorations. Last Christmas we visited every single store with a Christmas section and just admired their displays and decorations. Well, Halloween isn't quite as good as Christmas, but there are still some really fun things to see. One day we found these cute gel pumpkin window clings at Walmart. I just couldn't help myself. We had to get them, and I'm so glad we did, because Sweet Girl had so much fun.

We started by just exploring their texture. I'll admit I loved squishing them as much as Sweet Girl did. We talked about their colors, and then got down to the real business of sticking them up on the door. As soon as they were all up, Sweet Girl started taking them down. As soon as they were all down, she started putting them back up. This kept her going for a solid half hour plus other bits of time over the next few days. For $2, we had a lot of fun.

Have you ever felt a complete lack of inspiration and ambition? That's how I have been feeling this week. I just have the hardest time motivating myself to get up and do everything that needs doing. So, all week I have been slowly working on this 2x4 wooden pumpkin. I got the idea for this pumpkin on Pinterest last fall, and finally got around to making it when I had a bunch of wood leftover from my two sided fall sign.

Here's What You Need:
4 2x4 Wooden Blocks- Mine are 7 inches long
Orange Paint
Black Stamp Pad
Green Ribbon

1. Sand, sand, sand! These blocks took a lot of sanding.

2. Paint the blocks orange. I wish my paint had been a redder orange, but this worked too.

3. I sanded the edges to make it look distressed. Then I patted my black stamp pad across the wood to help darken and age the bright orange.

4. Finally I stacked my blocks and tied the ribbon around them. This really was an easy project, and now my house looks a little more like fall.

I recently pulled out all of my fall decorations, and as I started to put them up I realized I really don't have many fall decorations. How did this happen? So it was time to get to work and start making some new fall crafts. I found some great inspiration from the cute fall sign over at The Happy Scraps. I liked the idea of just a simple sign. As I got started I decided to turn this into a two in one sign for fall and Christmas. Now once Thanksgiving dinner is over I can come home, turn my sign around and the Christmas season can begin!

This project was incredibly easy and inexpensive. Here is what you need:

1 block of wood- I used a 2x4 cut into a 7 inch piece. I paid $2.50 for the entire board and got 13 pieces out of it. Looks like more signs are in my future.
Scrapbook Paper- Just what I had on hand.
Paint- Less than $1
Vinyl- Leftover from other projects
Mod Podge
Sandpaper

1. I started of by sanding my block down. I had to really work hard to get the ends sanded down. It was a good arm workout. Two birds with one stone!

2. Next came the paint. Originally I painted it a cream color, but it just looked so bland, so I painted over it with this nice deep brown. With the cream underneath it almost has a stained look that I really liked.

3. I cut the paper just a little smaller than the block, and antiqued the edges with my stamp pad. Next I spread some Mod Podge onto the block and smoothed the paper out over top of it, and then spread more on top of the paper. It is important to keep the paper as smooth as possible. Take your time and try to get rid of those bubbles and wrinkles. You can see some wrinkles on my fall paper. I smoothed as much as I could, and when it dried you could barely even see them.

4. Finally I added the words in vinyl. I chose the phrase "merry and bright" from one of my favorite Christmas songs, "White Christmas." I have never had a white Christmas. When I was little I used to pray that it would snow for Christmas, but I'm still waiting on it.

I love the way this turned out, and now I have one more fall decoration. Husband thinks that is sufficient, but I think we need a few more!

Linking Up At:
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In the spirit of Halloween, and trying desperately to believe that it's fall despite the 90 degree temperatures, I made Sweet Girl a felt jack-o-lantern to play with on our flannel board. I wish I were good enough to free hand it, but I am a terrible freehander. I have ruined enough projects to know that by now. Instead I used patterns that I found online. I just cut them out and pinned them to my felt and cut them out again.

I made three sets of faces for Sweet Girl to play with. I was worried she wouldn't recognize what they were since they are funny shapes, but she actually picked it up without me having to really explain it to her. For the most part the faces she made didn't exactly resemble faces, but the most important thing was that she had fun.

With the start of preschool and Husband back to work (He works in education so he has the summers off. It's so nice!) I have been having a hard time fitting in Mommy and Me School. We still do activities and we play and go on outings, but it's hard to plan a specific activity and do all the things to make it blog worthy. I don't know how you working moms do it. I'm having to learn to let some things go and just do what I can do. With that said, here is our Mommy and Me School activity from yesterday.

Sweet Girl and I loved playing with the contact paper for our contact paper fall collage on Monday. I started thinking it would be fun if we could somehow make it into an apple tree. I have been wanting to start doing some apple activities to celebrate fall. I just wasn't sure how to make it work until I saw this cute pumpkin window cling from Kids Activity Blog.

To make my tree I cut out a treetop from green construction paper and then just cut out the center and replaced it with contact paper with the sticky side facing out. Then I taped on the trunk and stuck it on our back door. I cut apples out of green foam, I would have preferred red, but I had green on hand.

Sweet Girl loves apples. We talked about apples and pretended to eat them. We talked about green. I swear someday she will know her colors! We also counted them. When Sweet Girl counts she says "1,2,3,5,6." I don't know what happened to four, but we are working on it.

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This week I decided to bring back one of our favorite Mommy and Me School activities, the contact paper collage. We had so much fun with this activity last time that we just had to play again. This time I used fall colored foam leaves I found at the dollar store.

I taped the contact paper to our back door again and gave Sweet Girl the foam leaves. As she added them to our collage we talked about the different colors and about fall.

She loves to stick her entire hand onto the contact paper and then peel it off.

Lately Sweet Girl has been really into putting things down her shirt. I'm not really sure why. Here she is putting a whole bunch of leaves down her shirt. She is so funny!

Linking up At:

Even though the weather is still very summer like, I have been dying to put up my fall decorations. I love seeing all the fall crafts and activities on other blogs and Pinterest. So I decided it was time to make my fall wreath. I have been looking for inspiration for several weeks, and it finally struck when I saw this simple burlap wreath at Create Craft Love.

Here is what you need:
A wreath- I got this straw wreath at Walmart for $2.50.
Burlap cut into strips
Fall Leaves and Flowers
Twine
Paint
Ribbon
Hot Glue

1. I started with this straw wreath. It was very messy once I took the plastic off, so be prepared for that. I wrapped it in the burlap and hot glued the ends down.

2. I arranged and glued on the fall leaves and fall colored flowers.

3. Next came the bunting. I cut out the triangles and the letters on my cricut. I cut out burlap triangles and then used the letters as stencils.

4. I was planning on stopping here, but as Husband and I looked at it we agreed that it just felt like it was missing something. So I added this ribbon around it, and glued it under the leaves.

I love the way it turned out! I love how the burlap makes it feel very rustic, and I love the fall colors. The only problem is that it is too fat to fit in my wreath holder.

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