Dino Garden

A great project for spring break. It took us a couple hours gather and make this, with a lot of interesting conversation along the way.

My son and I took a shallow pan out to the back yard and gathered items for this garden. We mostly picked things up off the ground and didn't kill anything. Then we selected a planter bottom to use. we lined it with dirt, then arranged the stones and sticks, then the moss and plants. Then he ran and got his dinosaurs and made a big set up with tar pit and ocean. He named the dinos as he placed them and had the herbosaurs eating plants and the others hunting.
We then placed it in his bedroom. We will mist in once in a while to try to keep the moss alive.

Strawberry Tower

My husband has been talking about a strawberry tower that he saw in a catalogue. He didn't save the catalogue to show me the tower, but he has been talking about making one himself. Today the sun was out, our daughter was napping and I decided to have a go at it. I used a rusty old tomato cage, a planter from my college days (aka really old) some landscape fabric, ten strawberry plants and a lot of dirt.
I curled the pointy ends of the cage under, rolled the fabric and placed it in the cage. Then my son and I started filling, and filling, and filling it with dirt. Then I punctured the fabric and fed the plants through. Next time I will secure the fabric to the cage (maybe use black fabric - this was the fabric we had in the garage) and thread the plants through before I fill with dirt. Was really messy this way.
It is a lot fugly now, but I think it will be luscious when it grows in.

spring planting

Well, winter is over in the Pacific Northwest. This weekend we planted the peas and neatened the garden. Inside we planted starts.
My local farmer's market berry vendors take back and reuse the outer cardboard used for berry "flats", but they don't take back the inner berry containers. I can't bear to throw them out. So I end up with boxes of them in the basement. I am trying them out as containers for my starts. They should hold together long enough for the plants to grow and then I can gently break them apart and plant them outside. I reused garden trays and the berry cardboard for these starts. I am crossing my fingers for a good long growing season.

glass magnets

A fun activity for the dreary winter days. We made these over the holiday break to give to the relatives. You can use decorative paper or my son and his friend really liked cutting out pictures of themselves. For a whole week my son proudly pointed to his face amid the other stuff on our metal front door.

Materials
-flat glass marbles - jumbo sized, clear. I had to order these online, but I once saw them at the dollar store, so if you have time check around. They are usually used in glass vases with flowers.
-decorative paper or photos. old wrapping paper works great. For the photos I printed a bunch on the proof sheet setting of my printer, I think it was 36 photos to a page. that got the faces to be a good size to fit in the marble.
-decoupage medium
-flat craft/paint brush
-hot glue gun and glue
-round magnets
-pencil
-scissors

Directions
Place marble flat side down on paper or photo and move around until desired view.
Trace the marble.

cut out inside pencil mark.

spread decoupage medium liberally on cut out paper/photo.
press paper/photo on flat side of marble.

move until fit nicely, smoothing edges up and around edges of marble.
let dry
apply decoupage medium to back side of paper/photo

let dry

apply a liberal dollop of hot glue in middle of flat side of marble
press round magnet in hot glue
let cool

We set up a sort of assembly line to make multiple magnets. We cut out multiple paper/photos, decoupaged them all at once. Then I handled the glue gun while my son planted the magnets. One hint is to be sure to put enough glue to come around the sides of the magnet, otherwise the magnet eventually falls off.

Recycled castle gift or goodie bag

Here is a fun little gift bag I created. My son loves it so much that he took it off my craft table and ran off with it. He occasionally reappears swinging it by the top string. I think it is perfect for a small gift or make multiple for a goodie bag.

Materials:

4 empty toilet paper tubes

1 paper lunch sack

pen

scissors

hole punch

about 2 ft of ribbon

Directions:

cut top notches of paper tubes, be sure to have an even number of cuts
fold down every other tab

cut a vertical line 3/4 way up each tube
turn 1/4 turn and make parallel cut
draw castle walls, windows and drawbridge on bag

keep in mind about an inch out from the corner will be covered with the

cut 1 inch in from each corner where there is a natural horizontal fold in the bag

thread the paper tubes through the holes

fill bag

fold upper corners of bag down so the overlap

fold top corner down

punch 1 or 2 holes through overlap

1 hole - feed the middle of the ribbon through the hole then bring the ends through that loop creating a closure for the bag

2 holes - string each end of the ribbon through a hole and tie closed

paper beads

My son wanted to make a necklace for his stuffed animal. He wanted to use my glass beads. I compromised and we made these lovely paper beads and strung them together for his stuffie.

Materials:
paper - magazines or newspaper ads work well
round chopstick
glue stick or white glue
paintbrush is using white glue
wax paper
scissors

Directions:
cut paper width way in about 3" lengths
use a length of wax paper as a place mat to keep from gluing paper to table
start rolling 1 corner or edge onto chopstick
spread glue on rest of paper. I used watered down white glue. that was too hard for my son so he used a glue stick.
continue rolling, be sure edges are well glued
slide paper tube off chopstick
repeat
let dry
when all tubes are dry, cut in 1/2" - 1" lengths
string together for necklace or garland

This would be a fun activity to do during winter break. Also could string together a garland to decorate the tree.

organic u-cut tree

Braved the freezing cold to cut our tree this year. I was grateful that the ground was frozen instead of ankle deep mud. But my new daughter was confused and grumpy. I think this is her first experience with freezing weather. She would hold out her hands or a foot scream like she was being stung. So we picked the 3rd tree cut it down, strapped it to the top of the car and were on our way. Oh yeah we paid for it too. Last year we got a funky tree for a very good price. This year we got a normal noble.

We went back to the organic u-cut tree place we got our tree from last year