The Rockets Red Glare.

Today Brennan and I had fun putting together a fun project for our Summer decor.

Paper Rockets!


First we started with some empty paper rolls.


And some patriotic colored paper and card stock. See it there behind the photobombing 5-year-old?


Then I just cut the paper to fit the rolls and let Brennan have at it with some modge podge.


Ta Da!


To make the caps for the rockets, I cut circles out of the paper. I just traced a cup to get the shape.


Cut a slit halfway through the circle and shape and glue like so.


Crafting is always better with some good music.


Brennan testing out the zoomability of our rockets. As you can see, after the modge podge-ing I lost him to the water sprinklers. He was on a cookie break.


Hot glue on some sticks. I just used some skewers. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I glued on some ribbon for the sparks.


"3-2-1 Blast off! Wow, Mom, they zoom even better with the sticks!"


And there you have it, our fun Fourth of July centerpiece! Does anybody else get the feeling that these rockets will spend more time out of the pitcher than in it? :)

Here is the link to this picture on pinterest that was the inspiration for our rockets.

He's Wishin' For a Pencil Thin Moustache

Or at least he's having fun pretending with a clay one.  We finally opened up the box of clay that was in the goody bag Brennan got for winning the Christmas coloring contest.













I love when he cracks himself up. : )
Obviously moustaches were the big hit of the evening, but we also made some trees.



And some owls.



Fun.

A Last Minute Christmas Project

So all over the internet this month, (well, the parts of the internet I frequent anyway) I have been seeing (and loving) these waterless snowglobes that people have been making inspired by some at Anthropologie.


{image source: anthopologie}

How cute and easy!  All along I had planned on waiting and recreating these next year...

...but then as I was switching over laundry this morning, Brennan being his normal curious self decided to open up a box that was stashed in the corner.

And lo and behold, a bunch of these were in there. (Obviously, long forgotten about by me.  I once upon a time had intentions to actually can something with them. Ahem.)



I took that as a sign. : )  Let's make some snowglobes!

Time to gather some supplies.  We didn't put up our Christmas village this year, so I dug out the box of village trees and the fake snow.  Brennan wasted no time in doing some forest management.



I also raided Brennan's stash of plastic animals to see if any of them could become part of our display, but none of the ones I found seemed appropriate to be joyously frolicking in the wintery forest.



It actually kind of looked like Lassie and John Boy had rounded up some Christmas dinner candidates. ha.  I'll stick with the trees.

After I had all my goods in line, I selected a variety of trees and hot glued them inside the lids.



Next I enlisted my little helper to funnel some snow into the jars.



We had to use a bamboo skewer to make the snow go down.



Kudos to me for realizing how much of a mess this would be and using a tray to catch the extra. : )



Our jars had a little too much snow.  The little trees look like they were buried in a blizzard.  Of course I kept them that way. :)  But if you do this, just use a little, especially if your jars are small like ours.

Time for a test shake.



Add the rest of the forest.



And the fences Brennan insisted on. (Because they're friends.)



Ta-da!  You have a magical and  wintery centerpiece in less that 20 minutes.

Our Gingerbread House

First of all, how about a whoo-hoo!  Our final inspection on our old house was this morning and everything went perfectly.  We are now officially done with the old house, our change of address is in effect, and besides not being able to fit the jeep in the garage, we are pretty much settled in over here.  Yay!  Now that that's all done, it's time to get in the swing of things with Christmas!

Brennan and I worked on a fun Christmas craft yesterday.

We build a gingerbread house!



Actually, I built the house while he was at school, and then we decorated it together after he got home.  By the way, hot glue works wonderfully on graham crackers.



Brennan was most excited that he got to eat candy!



Not that he hasn't been getting plenty of goodies out of our advent tree.



He had fun helping me decorate.  We used about 4 times as much powdered sugar icing than I first anticipated.  He thought that stuff was pretty tasty. : )



Taking a break to play with his games and puzzles.



I think his favorite part of the decorating (besides eating candy!) was making it snow.











He was done after that.  Time for some Kerplunk.



I tried to stick as much candy to the house as possible, (to keep the sugar-high limited to one day) but we still ended up with leftovers.



I'm glad I don't have to shovel the snow in front of that door!



Notice the yellow doorbell?  That was a priority to Brennan.  You can't have a house without a doorbell!



All done and tucked in with some other Christmas decorations.



Fun. : )