Colorful, Rainbow Train Tracks (inspired by Old Tracks, New Tricks)

Today we're sharing another super easy rainbow craft.  Why?  Because I love rainbows.  And, because I love breathing new life into our old toys.

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for the grocery money!  For my full disclosure policy, click here.

Super Easy Train Cupcakes!

Are you a whiz in the kitchen?  A baking maven?  A fondant savant?  If so... this post ain't for you.  This post is for people like me.  People who would rather just buy baked goods then slave away in front of a hot oven.  I stink at baking. But today I'm sharing this super easy food-themed post because I made these super super cute train-themed cupcakes for a friend's party.  (And you'll never guess how I decorated them!)

Easiest Ever Train Cupcakes!

This post contains affiliate links.  Thank you for your support!  For my full disclosure policy, click here.

Build a Funicular Train

Did you know there were such things as funicular trains?  I learned about them from a train book that my son and I read together.  Apparently these trains are used to move people up and down steep cliffs. Two cars are attached via a cable and one car moves up the mountain as another moves down.  Now of course, you know me.... I just had to try making a funicular train for our lego minifigures.... especially after we enjoyed playing with our cardboard conveyor belt so much!

Let's Build a Funicular Train!

Make a Cardboard Bridge for Trains and Cars

We bought an Ikea train set awhile back and Chuck loves it.  The only problem is that our poor Thomas train is too big and doesn't fit under the train set's tunnel.  So I poked through my trusty cardboard stash and made him a cardboard mountain bridge.  

Cardboard Bridge for Trains and Cars

Aha!  Problem solved.

Now all the trains can fit underneath the mountain while his cars drive over the train track.  Yay! 

Wanna make a bridge too?  Well then keep on reading! 

Holiday Train Show at Grand Central Terminal

One of the best things about this Christmas is that Hubby is off the entire week.  Hooray!  With all of his traveling last month, it's really nice having him around.  I also especially love seeing Chuck and Daddy playing like best buddies. 

This past weekend we finally got a chance to visit the Holiday Train Show at Grand Central Terminal.  Even though it was pretty crowded, the display itself was enchanting.  Everything was meticulously crafted and I kept "oohing" and "ahhing" over all the lovely details.

Here are some photos from our trip into the city:

The miniature taxis were too adorable!  Can you spot the tiny Santa?

As you can see, this little guy really wanted to get inside

I loved seeing the sparkly Christmas light-night sky, King-Kong, and tiny, tiny nuns

Ack!  Look at that adorable mini Christmas tree!

We then got some yummy gluten free pizza at Two Boots Pizza.  I love this little guy's sweet kisses

Since it was such a nice day, we walked back to our bus stop.  On our way across town, Daddy and Chuck posed underneath the Bryant Park Christmas tree

It's a family portrait.  Can you find all of us?

An Inwood send-off

Before stepping into 2011, I took a quick look back to Inwood, our previous New York City neighborhood.

(Cue nostalgic music of your choice... mine is the theme song to Forrest Gump.)

Our apartment building ($1,000 for a first floor 1br- what a steal!)

An open hydrant one summer's day  (which Charlie and I also enjoyed a bit later)

The awesome A train:  Like LOTR, its entrance is carved into a mountain

The church we attended:  I met such wonderful ladies here when I helped out at their thrift store

To honor our favorite Inwood restaurant, Alberto's Mofongo House, hubby made this Dominican inspired supper.

Que delicioso!  I do love me some beans, pork, and rice.

Adios New York!  Holland, we're here to stay and ready to make some new happy memories.

10 Ocean Crafts and Activities

This week's Creative Preschool Collaborator's theme is Oceans and Fish!  I was excited to tackle the theme because Chuck LOVES going to the beach and playing in the ocean.   So keep reading for some ocean themed storybook ideas, 10 preschool ocean crafts/activities, AND 4 other kid blogger's creative Ocean themed activities!

10 Ocean Crafts and Activties

This post contains affiliate links.  Thank you for your support!

How to Make Colorful and fun paper plate dragons! (And our 10+ Favorite Dragon Books)

Have you seen our paper plate dragons?    My preschooler is currently on a dragon kick and we've been reading dragon books, watching dragon movies, and making dragon crafts... of course!

If you have a dragon lover at home, then you'll love this craft too.  I've even included a template so that you can easily make these paper plate dragons with your little ones too!  

Let's get making!

Make these Colorful and fun paper plate dragons!

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support!

Reasoning about Elvis and Cheese

I was hungry and decided to make my lunch using these four ingredients.   

Curious?  Well, let me shed some light on my train of thought

• I was hungry.
• My friend Mary made a waffle sandwich with two waffles, peanut butter, and bananas.
• I love bananas.  
• I really love peanut butter.
• Elvis ate grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
• I love grilled cheese sandwiches.
• Perhaps I would love a grilled cheese, peanut butter, and banana sandwich?

And that's when I found myself doing this

to make this.

It actually wasn't half bad. Very creamy, slightly salty, slightly spicy (due to the pepper jack cheese), and just a tad sweet.

Cardboard Space Shuttle Craft (template included)

A couple of weeks ago we visited our nearby Science Center and Chuck fell in love with a small space shuttle toy.  Of course, the wheels in my head began whirring and I knew that we could easily transform a  paper towel roll into our very own rocket ship.  So after a couple days of planning, cutting, and painting, we are now the proud owners of two cardboard roll space shuttles:

Cardboard Space Shuttle Craft

Want a ride to the moon on your very own cardboard roll space shuttle?  Then keep reading to see how we made them (template included)!

18 Transportation Crafts that "Go!"

Do you have a plane, train, helicopter, truck, boat, car, or spaceship loving kid?  While looking through the archives, I realized that we've done quite a few transportation-related crafts here.  18 to be specific!  (Whoa.  Kinda cray-cray and kinda cool...)  So I thought it would be fun to take a walk down memory lane and share this compilation of all 18 crafts that "go" here!

18 Awesome Transportation Related Crafts!

Ok.  I gotta admit something to you.  I was originally going to call this post, "Crafts for Boys" (that's why it's in the permalink) but then totally decided against that name.  Girls can like cars, trains, planes, boats, trucks, and bikes too! Right?  Right.  Ack!  Sometimes it's so easy to fall into gender stereotyping.  (Do you ever feel the same way?)   So anyway, that's why I changed the name to Transportation crafts.

Lego Snow Jars for Kids (and 6 more Lego inspired projects!)

I'm all about cheap and cheerful crafts... and my son is all about Lego.  (I realized we were officially a Lego household when I woke up with a minifigure in my bed the other day.  Oy vey!) Inspired by the adorable miniature holiday displays and snowglobes in the stores, my son and I tried crafting our very own.  But instead of using animals or cute townspeople, we put a Lego twist on these winter snowglobes.  Tada! Here's a SUPER EASY winter snow scene craft.
 

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for the Christmas gift money!  For my full disclosure policy, click here.

St. Patrick's Day Rainbow Paper Pull Craft (Free Printable included)

If you like St. Patrick's Day crafts or rainbow crafts, then today's post is for you! We're making these adorable Rainbow and leprechaun paper pull crafts. Kids can color the images, cut them out, and then make these fun moving crafts just in time for St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick's Day Rainbow and Leprechaun Paper Pull Craft

(Free printable included!)

This post contains affiliate links. This means I make a tiny bit of grocery money from each purchase made. Thank you for your support! For my full disclosure policy, click here.

Lego Snowflakes

Do you enjoy cutting snowflakes from paper?  Do you like Lego?   Then I've got a treat for you! Combining both, I recently figured out how to cut out Lego snowflakes!

DIY Lego Snowflakes!

This post contains affiliate links.  Thank you for your support!

Hubby and I both grew up loving Lego toys. Chuck loves his cars and train Duplo sets.  And every year I find myself cutting all sorts of paper snowflakes to decorate our windows.  So this year, I was inspired by this neat Batman snowflake design to create two cute and easy-to- cut Lego Snowflakes.  

How to do a Blind Contour Drawing

Have you ever tried doing a blind contour drawing before?  I'm halfway through auditing an art class at a local university and thought it would be fun to share some of the art activities that we're doing in class with you!

How to Do a Blind Contour Drawing

Homemade DIY laundry detergent

Guess what I did with that microwaved ivory soap powder?  

Whoa. Whoa.  Back up the train.  Did I jump off the deep end?  What am I doing?  Homemade laundry detergent? What's next?  Refusing to shave my legs or pluck my eyebrows? (FYI- Hubby's eyes practically bugged out when I told him what I was planning on doing.)

Yes.  I made it. It's true.  Have you ever tried making your own laundry detergent?  I'd seen a whole bunch of recipes online calling for the same few ingredients.  Whenever I'd consider trying it out, images of my failed cloth diapering attempts would come to mind.... and then I'd decide against it.  (Psst- Wanna know what happened to my lovely cloth diapers?  It's a sad tale of stinky woe... read the * below.)

Ever since we found such a nice way to create soap powder, I thought, what the heck, let's try the recipe out. Couldn't hurt, right?

Ingredients:
- 1 C Borax
- 1 C Super washing soda
- 1 bar Ivory soap (microwaved into a fine powder)
- 1/2 C Oxi Clean

I simply mixed the ingredients together and stored them in an airtight container.

Now it's just a matter of waiting and seeing.  I'll try the homemade detergent out a couple of times and let you know the results.  Lots of other bloggers have given similar recipes rave reviews.  They claim that it makes your clothes super soft, works well with hard water, and saves you loads of money (you only use 1 Tablespoon for HE machines... which means that I can do quite a few loads with this batch.)

With Chuck's fairly sensitive skin, I'm hoping that it does all that... and works well with his skin too.  Cross your fingers!


UPDATE:  8/26- I just finished using the first batch of laundry detergent.  Let me just say that it works.  It didn't hurt the machine or our clothes.  For the most part, our clothes come out clean.  However, I definitely had problems getting rid of tougher stains.  (Think messy toddler eating spaghetti kind of stains...).   I used stain remover to help with the tougher stuff.  So, this can't be the only thing you use when you wash your clothes.  Since I have an old bottle of regular detergent in our closet, I'm going to go back to using that stuff until the bottle is done.  I'll see if I notice any difference, but if not, I'm just going to stick with the homemade stuff.





*Ahh, curious to hear my sad cloth diapering tale?  Well... let's just say that the diapers worked great when Chuck was young and we lived in Michigan.  But after moving to New Jersey, we ran into a couple of pretty big problems.

1. Chuck started really eating solid food and his waste started to really smell bad.  I had to do laundry more frequently... which wouldn't have been a problem if we had our own washing machine.  Unfortunately, cloth diapers weren't so economical for us because we pay per load.

2.  Our building's laundry machines are located in the basement.  I had to take my "goodies" down with me in the elevator.  Stinky diapers aren't a great way to make nice with neighbors.

3.  I had some buildup on the diapers, so they became doubly stinky when soiled.  (Think highly concentrated vinegar mixed with rotting eggs.)  I could have just fixed the problem by washing the diapers many many times and then hanging them to dry in the sun.  But, I didn't like that option because I'm a cheapo and there really wasn't a nice way that I could line dry them in the city.  (Resting them on city benches?  Hmmm... maybe not...)

So alas, my lovely cloth diapers are now neatly folded and hiding away in Chuck's closet, awaiting to be used again....

20+ Cutest and Super Fun Popsicle Stick Crafts

We love popsicle stick crafts! (Or do you call them craft stick crafts?)  Whatever you call these wooden sticks, I think we can all agree that they offer endless opportunities to create.  Stuck in a rut about what to do with them?  Well, here is a list of over 20 easy, cute, and fun popsicle crafts!

40+ Projects that combine STEM with Art!

Seems like everyone's talking about the importance of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics) these days. And hey, I get it.  We live in a highly technological world that's rapidly advancing in all sorts of new ways.   We want our kids to be be creative and adaptive problem solvers.

But maybe you're like me and you deeply love arts and crafts.  They're your jam.  And maybe you're unsure how to dive into all this STEAM goodness.  Hey, I get that too.  Hopefully today's post will help.  In this post I sharing over 40 ideas for arts and craft projects that also happen to incorporate STEM ideas.  Yup.  Here are some of my favorite artsy crafty posts...which also happen to have a little STEAM-y oomph to them!

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for the support! For my full disclosure policy, click here.

What's up Chuck? Weekend Recap

This weekend we had plans to go into the city to see the train show at Grand Central Terminal. Unfortunately, it snowed all day Saturday (eep!) and I was battling a cold, so we ended up hanging out at home.  At first I was pretty bummed out, but thankfully everything turned out alright in the end.

Chuck and I played with his cars.... a lot....

We re-enacted scenes from the movie "Mater's Tall Tales..."

Keep on reading below!

The usual suspects

Last month marked our one year anniversary living in our new town.  Hubby and I really like living here, but sometimes we wonder whether we'll ever find our niche and develop deep roots.  Whenever I find myself on this train of thought, I try to remind myself that relationships take time and effort to build.

Fortunately, I was reminded during a recent visit to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant that we are making some connections.  Here's what transpired:

((Hubby and I walk in the restaurant.  Waitresses 1 and 2 look up.))

Waitress 1

Do you need to see a menu or do you know what you want?

Hubby

((Surprised)) We'd like to see a menu, please.

Waitress 1

((Hands us menus, walks away, and then returns))

What do you want to drink?

Me

Water

Hubby

I'll have a water too.  I think we also know what we want to get.  I'll have VR1 (porkchop with broken rice).

Me

I'd like VPH1 (pho noodle soup).

Waitress 2  

((Walks by with a smile on her face))

You always get the same thing.  The baby must like soup, huh?

I loved that they recognized us and baby.  It just made my day.