Faith, Generosity, and a Cardboard Pumpkin Face

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You're probably confused by the title... and I apologize.  Today's post is quite special to me and I just wanted to make sure everything important was included.

Now if you've peeked over at my About Me page, you'll see that my Christian faith means quite a bit to me.  It shapes how I view the world, pulled me out of a tough spot when I quit my PhD program, and even influences how I view creativity and crafting.


My friend Amy Sullivan (who you might remember was the mastermind behind the #riskrejection challenge that encouraged me to publicly "come out my crafting closet")  recently wrote a book When More is Not Enough - How to Stop Giving Your Kids What They Want and Give Them What They Need.

I received a copy of this book to review... and I was pretty nervous.  A whole book focused on being generous and serving others like Jesus? Ehhh...  I worried that I'd finish the book feeling super guilty because my family and I weren't doing enough.

After reading the very first page, I saw how wrong my fears were.

Amy is honest, funny, and humble.  She shares her own family's struggles with generosity, and how God slowly changed their views of service.  She also offers some really great ways the whole family (including the kids!) can serve and love their communities and the world.


You can check out this video book blurb below for more details:




(Psst- Did you catch how she's donating 100% of the proceeds of the book to Transformation Village ?  Wow.)

After reading her book I felt really encouraged to rethink my views on service and generosity too.  I didn't need to be a missionary or the president of a non-profit to make an impact and help out my community.  I could do small things with love.


And now here's where the pumpkin face comes in.  I initially made Chuck this changeable cardboard pumpkin face (inspired by Halloween and this face from Mr. Printables) as a way to help him learn about his emotions.

See how the facial features change?  As we played with the toy, Chuck began relating to the pumpkin as his friend.  It kind of took on a life of its own.  We talked about how Mr. Pumpkin looked sad, happy, surprised, or scared.  We then also starting having conversations about how we could help friends that might be scared or upset.

And that's when a light bulb went on in my head.  These small, everyday conversations were also equipping Chuck to have compassion for others... and do small things with love.  Chuck's only 3, but he too can have compassion and serve others too.

Whoa.  That was definitely a "wow" moment for me.

So if you have a chance, I definitely recommend you reading Amy's book When More is Not Enough.   You can read her thoughts on writing a book, or find her on her blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest.  

(And in case you want to make your own changeable pumpkin face, simply cut out the facial features and pumpkin from corrugated cardboard.  Then, paint them.  Then, drill holes through the pieces and use fasteners to attach everything together.)

Happy Monday friends!

DIY Piggy Bike Basket

When Chuck turned 3 a couple of weeks ago we got him his first 2 wheeler bike.  I wasn't sure if he would know what to do with it, but he took to it like a fish to water.  He just loves riding it!  However, there was just one problem.  He couldn't figure out a way to ride the bike AND hold his favorite stuffed pig at the same time.  So I told him I would make him a small bike basket.  After showing him a couple of designs, he selected a basket that resembled a pig.  And that's the story behind this DIY piggy bike basket.

DIY Piggy Bike Basket

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Now I know there are tons of really affordable kid bike baskets out there.  But we have a TON of cardboard lying around from our move AND I enjoy making things.  So it was a win-win situation.  Plus, where else could we get a pig basket?

Ok, enough chatting.  Let's get making!

DIY Cardboard Cash Register

Does your child love going to the grocery store? 

 Does his/her face light up at the prospect of pressing buttons?  

Then today's craft is perfect for you!

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Awhile back I was looking around at getting a cash registertoy for Chuck.  He loves watching the cashier scan our groceries, so it was a perfect toy to encourage imaginary play at home.  After looking around online I then got to wondering.  Could I make my own toy?  And that's how this craft was born.

This DIY cardboard cash register has pressable buttons, a sliding money drawer, a faux credit card scanner, and a changeable money display!  Yup.  Cool right?  It's just right for little hands who love to push, press, pick, and pull.  It's also a great way for kids to practice their math skills too!

Interest piqued?  You can see the full tutorial on Handmade Charlotte!

Happy making. :)  

DIY Kids' Cardboard Art Easel

I love making and creating things with Chuck.  But sometimes I'm surprised by how much arts and crafts supplies cost.   Whenever I go to Michaels or Target I always do a double-take when the bill comes up.   What?  How did we spend so much?  Is this glitter made of 14K gold?  To stretch our pennies (and my own creativity) I love making our own art supplies on the cheap.  We've made our own Paint-With-Water Pages,  2 Ingredient Body Paint, sun prints with construction paper, and even used tortillas as canvases for art!  With dozens of cardboard boxes lying around, I thought it would be fun to DIY Chuck an art easel.

DIY Kids' Cardboard Art Easel

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This DIY easel is so neat because it only took a couple of minutes to make (score!), is made entirely out of cardboard (cheap!) , and can accommodate 1, 2, or even 3 children simultaneously painting.  Whoa! Intrigued?  Well let's get crafting!

DIY Climbing Cardboard Circus Men Toys

I love making interactive toys for Chuck. There's something immensely gratifying about creating something that's beautiful, functional, and fun.... out of recyclable items!  Recently I made these two cardboard climbing circus men toys for Chuck.  You pull on the strings and the men race to the top.

Cardboard Climbing Circus Strong Men Toys

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Hee hee.  Do you dig their leotards, chest hair, and handlebar mustache?  Yup.  These manly men exude quite a bit of style, don't you think?

Ok.  Let's get making!

Shape Touch and Find Game

Now that Chuck is almost 3 I'm trying to do more educational activities with him.  Besides learning our numbers, we're also working on identifying different shapes.  Here's a fun shape activity that we've recently been doing together.        

Let's learn about shapes!

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Early childhood mathematics education is something I feel quite strongly about.  Before I was a mommy, I was working on my doctorate degree in education. Although I never finished writing my dissertation (for reasons that you can about here),  I did spend  many years observing and studying how preschool children learn mathematics.  I also had the wonderful opportunity to work on a research-based preschool math curriculum called  Big Math For Little Kids.

This Touch and Find Shape game is one of my favorites from that curriculum.  It's a great activity because it helps young children to learn the number of sides and corners in shapes in a really fun and interactive way. 

Let's play the touch and find shape game!

Homemade Finger painted Starry Night

I love Van Gogh's artwork.  The colors, the movement, the textures... wow, wow, wow.  How does someone even do that?  Yowzers.  Gosh, did he make the world so much more beautiful with his art.  *Happy sigh*  Ok, ok... I'm back.  Let's get to today's post!  Chuck and I have explored great artwork in the past by making collages inspired by Matisse and super easy abstract artwork.  So I thought it was high time we tried our hand at making some artwork inspired by Van Gogh.   Except that instead of using real paints... we used some homemade finger paints!  

Collaborative Art Project:  Finger Painted Starry Night!

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For months now I kept seeing Kidzaw Master Art Kits pop up everywhere.  (Have you heard of them?  They're kits that provide kids with all the materials necessary to make artwork inspired the great artists.)  I saw great results with older children and toyed with the idea of buying one to try out.  But Chuck's only 2 and I'll be honest, his affinity for arts and crafts varies daily.  Yurp.  So I came up with this cheaper alternative.  The finger paint is super easy to make and you could adapt the design to recreate any of Van Gogh's artwork.

So let's begin!

Let's Explore Art Materials like Scientists

Whenever we do art projects, I always hand Chuck certain drawing materials because I know their properties and how they'll look and interact with each other.  In this activity I thought it would be fun to change it up a bit and let Chuck do some exploring.  So we tried our hand at exploring art materials like scientists!    

Scientifically exploring Art Materials with Kids

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DIY Cardboard Rocket Launcher Toy

Apparently we've reached the stage where Chuck likes pretending to shoot things... and people.  (Ack.  Is this common?  I'm assuming so... )  So I thought it would be fun to somehow make a toy that would actually shoot things, like a catapult or a slingshot.  We always seem to have cardboard rolls lying around, so I built this cardboard roll rocket launcher toy.  Then, we had a BLAST playing with it!

Get it?  Rocket launcher?  Blast? Like blast off?   Hee hee hee... wah wah wah.

DIY Cardboard Roll Rocket Launcher Toy

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This rocket launcher toy uses rubber bands and cardboard rolls to shoot aluminum foil balls.  It's so powerful that we can actually shoot a ball across our (small) patio... whoa, right?  Since the balls are made from aluminum foil, they don't hurt. So you could create several launchers, shoot each other, and then not worry about anyone getting hurt.  Excellent, right?

Keep on reading to build your own rocket launcher and see other cool DIY toys that you can make and play with your little one.

Make Egg Carton Bugs

I love a good egg carton craft.  We don't eat eggs too often here, so whenever we finish a carton, I'm always super stoked to make something with it.  Today's Egg Carton Insect Craft came about because ants have been on our minds a lot lately.  For some reason there seem to be ants EVERYWHERE in our new home.  Eeek.  Plus, we recently watched "Honey I shrunk the kids" and Chuck loved Anty the giant ant.   So that's why we had to make ourselves some egg carton bugs!

Let's Make Egg Carton Insects!

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Building Cardboard Bridges (Kid Engineering!)

Ever wonder why corrugated boxes are so strong?  Since we've started unpacking, I'm surprised by how well our boxes held up.  Even after being shipped across the country, our stuff is intact and our boxes still look good.  Wow!  Those folded bits really make corrugated cardboard strong!  This thought inspired me to try building some simple cardboard bridges with Chuck.  This way we could see for ourselves how folds made cardboard stronger.

Easy Kid Engineering:  Let's Cardboard Build bridges!

(Does folding paper make it stronger?)

Make Toilet Roll Glasses!

Toilet roll crafts are some of my favorite ones to make.  (You can check out our extensive toilet roll craft gallery here.)  Right now we're still living out of our suitcases, so good ol' tp rolls are also some of the few craft items that I still have on hand.  Recently I saw Krokotak's toilet roll sunglasses tutorial and I knew that I really wanted to make my own version.  I've had pineapples and rainbows on my mind lately, so naturally they found their way into this adorable craft.

Toilet Roll Glasses

DIY Magnetic Transportation Map Game

Our epic move still looms overhead.  The movers are coming next week and then we fly off to California a week after that.  I keep trying to explain what's happening to Chuck, but I'm not sure he gets it yet.  So I came up with this easy craft and activity to help him out.  It's a DIY Magnetic Transportation Map Activity where you move different types of transportation across county using magnets!

DIY Magnetic Transportation Map Game

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Chuck really enjoyed helping me to color in the map and different types of transportation using watercolors.  He also REALLY enjoyed moving everything around using magnets.  It was a bit of trial and error to put this toy together, but at the end we came up with a craft that's easy to make, fun to use, and *hopefully* helpful for Chuck.

Let's get making!

2 DIY Cardboard Fourth of July Hats!

Fourth of July is in a couple of days.  Now if you're like me, you probably just realized that fact just this week.  (Oh wait... am I the only one is in a perpetual time warp and constantly forgets what day it is?)  This year we plan on seeing fireworks with Chuck and I thought it would be fun to whip up some cute Fourth of July Cardboard Hats for us to wear.  Can you believe that these 2 hats were made from cereal boxes, toilet paper rolls, and corrugated cardboard?

2 Easy DIY Fourth of July Hats!

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Cardboard and Pom Pom Soccer Game

Are you watching the World Cup?  Hubby's been keeping track of the games, but Chuck and I haven't been paying too much attention to the scores.  However, because it's soccer season, I still felt inspired to make something soccer-related.  So that's why I crafted this mini cardboard and pom pom soccer game for us to play.

Cardboard and Pom Pom Soccer Game

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DIY Cardboard Cactus Construction Set

Full crafty admission:  Yesterday I was taking Chuck to the park and saw a lovely clean box in the back of our building.  Not sure how this happened, but suddenly I found myself mumbling, "It's mine, my precious, my own" repeatedly until Chuck reminded me that he wanted to go play.  Then, of course, I snapped out of my gollum state.  But you can bet your sweet Aunt Petunia that when we came back home, I grabbed that box and skedaddled back to our apartment.  Why?  Well, I wanted to make a Cardboard Cactus Construction Set, of course.  Why? (You might ask again.)  Well, because cardboard is cool and cacti are cool... which makes this cardboard construction set cool to the uber cool power.

DIY Cardboard Cactus Construction Set

Create Abstract Art with Kids

Chuck and I enjoy painting... well... just about anything.  Give this kid a brush and paint and he's good to go.  I love making art with the little guy and that's why I'm always on the look out for new ways to paint.  That's why this easy abstract painting tutorial on the awesome blog Create Art with Mel really appealed to me.  You simply use a common household item to create interesting abstract art.  Care to guess what the item is?   

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Toilet Roll Helicopter Craft

Chuck loves his vehicles.  Thus far we've built a toilet roll airplane, a cardboard roll space shuttle,  a shampoo bottle boat, styrofoam gliders, and a tin can car.  (Wow.  That's a lot of transportation crafts!) Since we live near the river, helicopters fly over our building on a daily basis.  So we recently added this toilet roll helicopter to our collection of recycled transportation crafts.   (Can you tell that he's modeled after Harold the Helicopter from Thomas?)

Toilet Roll Helicopter Craft 

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6 Fun Flower Activities for Kids

I've had flowers on my mind lately.  But can you blame me?  Spring is here and the world is bursting with color!  Plus, Mother's day is coming up and I imagine mothers all over receiving flowers as gifts.  So that's why I put together this list of 6 fun flower activities that you can do with your kids.   You can turn flowers into works of art, use them to decorate stationary, or place them in a sensory bin!  Let's get started!

6 Fun Flower Activities 

Build a toy car that moves

I love painting things with Chuck, but sometimes I yearn to make things that actually move or do things.  So when a mommy friend suggested that we build cardboard toy cars that actually move, wowzers, I had to say yes.  She found the directions in an old kids' science book (that I don't remember the name of... sorry).  And that's how we spent an awesome play date with five kids- eating pizza and then building and racing some cardboard racing cars. 

Kid Science: Let's Build a Car that Moves!

Today's craft is awesome for 2 reasons:

1.  The cars really move.  Really.  You just twist the tin can and then let go.  Bam.  The rubber bands store the potential energy and then once released, they turn the can... and your car moves by itself!

2.  You don't need any expensive materials.  In fact, you probably have most of the items already at home.  

Have I whet your appetite enough?  Ok.  Let's build! Vroooom!