Peanut Butter Treats

These candies are a family favorite, and the gween mermaid helped me make them. They are easy and quick and have lots of protein, carbohydrates and calcium.

Instructions: Mix equal portions of peanut butter, powdered milk, and honey (this is a great way to make good use of your food storage, as well.) Spoon the mixture out onto wax paper, cut the paper into individual candy wraps. Then put the finshed candies in the fridge or the freezer. (They are too sticky to eat at room temperature.)

This time I used two cups of each ingredient and it made about 50-60 candies.

Butterfly Thank-you Cards

For this craft I bought a butterfly punch from the craft store ($9.00) and used some old blank stationery that we had in a drawer. You can get blank stationery from paperpeople.us or at xpedx paper supply. I'm pretty sure Office Max carries them, too. This was a great activity for the girls, and the cards will be perfect "thank you's" for after the party.

Message in a Bottle

Here are our invitations to the mermaids' birthday party. They are turning six, so they are allowed to invite six friends. They had a great time making these and an even better time delivering them!

Cost: The bottles were about a dollar each, and the shells cost three dollars. So the invitations were under $10.00.

Pinata Fish Part 2

The fish is dry and packed full of treats. Now it is time to paint!

The girls wanted to make a mermaid pinata at first. Unfortunately Mermaid Pinatas do not fall under the catagory of "simple crafts." Besides that, who would want to swing a bat at a mermaid? It didn't take me long to talk them out of that.

The fish will do.

Cost: I'm not sure how to figure in the three to four cups of flour, but the water was free, the newspaper was free, I used craft paints I already had, so the pinata was FREE. The pinatas at the store cost $15.00-$20.00.

Pinata Fish Part 1

For the mermaids' birthday party we decided to have a pinata. We looked at the pinatas at the store, but we decided to try to make one ourselves. If it doesn't work out we'll go back to the store.

First the girls tore up strips of newspaper.

Then we made a mixture of flour and water.

Then the girls layed the gooey paper across a balloon.

The red mermaid was pretty grossed out by the whole process, but she was a good sport.
Tune in next time to see the exciting conclusion to our pinata fish.

Mexican Paper Flowers

This was our best craft yet!

First cut tissue paper into 10 x 10 squares and make a stack (about four squares in each stack)

Then fold it into a fan.

Pinch the fan in the middle and twist the end of a pipe cleaner around it to hold it in place and to make the stem.

Gently pull apart the petals to reveal...a butterfly!

Just kidding. This blue one needs a little more fluffing.


The fruits of our labors:

The mermaids are going to use these flowers to decorate the treehouse for their birthday party.

So why was this our best craft yet? One reason might be because my five-year-olds could do this without a lot of help from me, another reason could be that the finished product is so big and beautiful, and another reason could be because it didn't take very long so they were engaged the entire time (it took us about 30 minutes). But I think the real reason why this craft was so fun and successful was because the gween mermaid was taking her nap. :)

Materials: tissue paper ($2.79) pipe cleaners ($3.00) Total: under $6.00

Homemade Blocks

Ingredients for homemade blocks:

Blocks cut from untreated wood scraps (these are left over from the tree house)

Paint, mod podge, all sorts of brushes, stencils, etc.

One or more excited children

And here is the result:
That looks pretty easy, eh? Well, here is what happened behind the scenes: This project was very fun for about 45 minutes. After that the mermaids got tired of it and wanted to do something else and so I finished the rest. While I was absorbed in finishing the rest of the blocks, a gallon of orange juice was brought up the stairs, red crayon was drawn all over my kitchen cabinets and all of my jewlery was pulled out and strung around my bedroom. Then my children really got bored and started giving me "wet wilies" in my ear. So my advice to you is to let the children do three or four each and then do the rest yourself when they are sleeping.

Cost: wood-free, craft paints-about .75 cents each (but I already had a bunch), package of paintbrushes $4.00, stencils $4.00 Total: under $15.00

By the way, my children are for sale.

Lady Fingers

A Scrap Craft. Yesterday we needed a quick craft and so I went through my craft drawer to see what I could come up with.

Incredible, aren't they?

The older mermaids like to sew, so they sewed the flannel all by themselves.

I turned it inside out and they hot glued the eyes.

I helped with the hair.

In the end everyone was very pleased with their little lady. For your enjoyment we

included a couple of very short and silly videos. The second one was taken by Sophie.

Cost of this craft: Free