Butterfly Week, Day 1

Summer vacation has begun!! I decided to schedule out a combination of crafts and learning to keep these crazy K girls busy (and hopefully learning too). The first week I decided we'd just be doing crafts, as an easy transition. They love craft time so I knew that would be easy enough to get them to do. I also chose a theme for each week, the first week is butterflies.

Here's today's craft:

It was pretty simple. We started with a cardboard circle (the original idea was a paper plate- copying an idea I saw just a picture of, but I had cardboard and thought it would work just fine).
I drew black lines to divide it into the four sections.

Then I gave the K girls a piece of green scrap paper to draw and cut out their leaf.

Then they glued it on to their circle.

Then I used a hole punch to make eggs out of plain white paper. They glued them on and then labeled that section of their life cycle.

Next is the caterpillar- we took a green pipe cleaner and twirled it around our finger.

(This is actually KK helping KL get hers twirled- it's so sweet when they help each other.)

And KK had the great idea to just push the pipe cleaner through the cardboard instead of trying to glue it (which isn't always easy). 

Next we move to the chrysalis (of which I apparently forgot the "h" after the "c" in spelling it- oops!) 

We took a yellow piece of tissue paper and just crumbled it into a ball. 

Then we glued is hanging off a stick that we drew on. (I originally planned to find a small, thin twig, but I forgot and KK was still in her PJs anyway, so I wouldn't let her outside.) 

For the butterfly we grabbed a small square of tissue paper, squeezed it in the middle and used half of a black pipe cleaner and folded it in half. Tucked the tissue paper in and twisted it closed, leaving antennae open at the top.

(KL thought the antennae were too long so she cut hers shorter.)

Then we glued them on, KL was smart enough to put the glue on the wings instead of the pipe cleaner. Which made it easier to apply. Make sure you have all your labels, here's a cute picture of KL (my just out of Kindergarten-er concentrating super hard on her writing- I gave her a spelling cheat sheet): 

Then it's all done. :) 

That's all for now,
Jo!

Capes

Yesterday was Super Hero Day at the girls' school.
KK wanted to be Bat Girl and KL wanted to be Super Girl.
We already had the Batman symbol from the Spring Fling. So I went ahead and used some left over black satin for a cape. Then I made a red cape for KL along with a felt Super Man symbol the same way I made the Batman before. I have no tutorial because it was super easy (and I didn't take pictures).

But here they are:

That's all for now,
Jo!

Polka Dot Layered Skirt

I know most of the crafts have been mine recently but come summer there will be more kid involvement I promise. For now I have a cute skirt for you.

There's an even cuter girl there too, but you'll see her later.

I bought the gray and white polka dot fabric (and the pink too) on sale at Hobby Lobby as a remnant fabric. I used them together for one of the teacher's gifts and liked the combination. As I was working on the teacher's gift KL told me she wanted a skirt made with the polka dots.

(A month later) I measured her waist and down to her knee (even though she wanted it longer but I knew the layered plan she didn't). She's a tiny thing!! Seriously! Her waist is just 21" (she just turned 6 - 21" is usually a toddler's measurement not a kindergartner's).

Anyway, I looked for an online tutorial but didn't really find what I was looking for so I picked what I wanted from a few different and here's how it turned out.

I took my fabric (which was just shy of double her waist so 40" was my width measurement). I started with the 11" (from waist to knee) and added 1" for bottom hem and 1/2" for top hem. Then, since she wanted it long went ahead and rounded up to 14" (so the first layer is 14"x40"). The in-between layer is a netting with a striped ribbon hem, since I didn't have to fold up I took away the extra inch to hem but made it 2" longer, so it was 15" long (15"x40"). The third layer, the pink, was another 2 inches longer with the added hem so it was 18" wide (18"x40").

After making the pattern I cut the pieces.

I measured the ribbon to 40" but forgot that there's a little stretch in the netting so it  was easier just to leave it on the roll as I pinned it on.

I then attached it by sewing a double layer hem (sewn individually, I tried using my double needle but because of the stretch it just caused a mess), with a short stitch length, I used a 2 on my machine. (I apparently don't have a picture of just this but you will see it later in the layers.
Next I needed to stitch up the sides. Since I have never worked with a netting before I looked for tips online, and didn't find much, but I saw a tip for working with tulle to tape the edges together. Since I had painters tape (low tacky) nearby I thought I'd go for that.

All it did was gunk up my needle, so I wouldn't recommend this :( I tried pinning the edge together but the pins were more in the way than anything else. I decided it would probably be easiest to just take it slow and zigzag stitch up the side- that did work!! :) Yay!

Next I pinned the sides and of the other fabrics.

Then I stitched them up and ironed the seams. I used a pretty thin edge knowing KL would want as much fullness as possible. 

Next I layered them to attach at the top. (In case you're curious I didn't do the bottom hems until the end so I could make sure the layers laid how I wanted the to.) 

Here's how to layer them. Start with the bottom and put it inside the middle layer, facing the correct way (so right sides up, also if adding more layers just keep the in the right order). The top layer, however, goes on the inside, still right side up (so it will fold over the other layers, tucking the hem underneath. 

Here it is in a picture: 

Then I went ahead and lined them up and pinned them together and stitched them together. 

Next I ironed the hem, in several different directions until I was happy with the way the skirt folded over. 

I threw some pins in to makes sure the layers didn't shift and then top stitched as close to the top as possible. (At this point you should be working with the skirt with all layers in proper places. After sewing it, all you had to do was flip the top layer from the inside to the outside.) 

(I use tape, I've seen others use rubber bands, to lengthen the guidelines.) Like I said, as tight as possible, just to keep the layers from slipping. 

Next I went to working on the bottom hems. I started by measuring from the top of the skirt so my length would be pretty even. My net layer turned out to be 14.5" (right where I wanted it to be- score!!) so I decided on 12.5" for my top and 15.5 for the bottom, I know this was a change in plan but it just looked like too much at 16.5". 

Anyway, like I said, I measured 12.5" down from the top of the skirt and put pins in the skirt in about 8-10 places, and then folded at those marks and pinned (I wish I took a picture of this, I didn't, I'm sorry!! But here's a photo of how I measured). 

I ironed my first fold ( you can see it at the 12.5" mark above). Then I pinned the second fold by folding the the first section in half and ironing that edge down. 

Then I folded up the ironed lines and ran them through the sewing machine to complete the hems. (I made the pink a little higher since I had the extra fabric to play with). 

Next I made a casing and ran the elastic under the top hem. 

Finally to finish it off, I ran a zigzag stitch across the very top hem to help hold the elastic in place and keep it from rolling. (It could probably be a little wider but I still caught the elastic so it's good.) 

Here's the picture of KL wearing it. 

She seems to like it pretty well, and I think it turned out pretty cute too, 

That's all for now,
Jo! 

Yogurt Pops

KL had a birthday last week and her chosen snack for school was fruit and yogurt parfaits. (I must say all the teachers love when the snacks aren't packed with sugar!!)
However, her class of 22 has had a bit of a virus lately and there were only 14 kids! So that meant plenty of leftovers. Fruit usually goes pretty fast at our house (as a matter of fact, the blueberries never made it out of the school because the twins were snacking on them while waiting) but I'd cut the strawberries into slices so they started to go bad quickly so here was my idea to prevent them from being wasted:

Looks yummy right!! And it was super simple! I took my Popsicle mold and started with a spoonful of granola. Then I added 2 Tablespoons of vanilla yogurt and shook/knocked it down to make sure the granola froze into it. Then I threw in a few strawberry slices and covered with more yogurt until the mold was just about full, packed it down a little and then added another spoonful of granola until completely full. Then all that's left is to freeze it!

Healthy and yummy, and especially great for quick after school snacks on warm days (or even breakfast on warm mornings!).

That's all for now,
Jo!