diy - sock puppet

who doesn't love sock puppets?! this cute little project takes less then a half hour and it uses items you may already have in your home. below is the step by step "how to"... have fun :D

1. what you will need is a few old, but in-shape and not smelly socks that are calf to knee length high,  scissors, card board , pen and glue gun 

2. felt - this will be used for inside your puppets mouth. black, red and pink are the ideal colors, but there are no rules on what your puppet should look like.

3. on the cardboard trace your hand, leaving out the thumb.

4. take a sock and cut across a "mouth" at the toe end.

5. take your cardboard and cut out the same shape on your felt.

6. using the hot glue gun (kids of proper age or adults only) glue the top part of the mouth onto the card board and continue around the edges.

7. glue the felt over the cardboard covering the edges of the sock

8. now to allow your puppet to see. glue the eyes onto pom poms and then onto the puppet.

9. after the eyes are in place, decorate your puppet any way you like. we had a bunch of left over craft items that we gathered up. i asked dylan what he wanted to use for his puppet and i glued it on for him. 

10. and there you have it. your very own sock puppet. enjoy :) they are a lot of fun... even for the adults ;)

we are going to use new friends for our book before bed time. night all.

check out dylan enjoying his sock puppet. 

supplies you will need for  paper tube owl:

- paper tube ~ either toilet paper roll or paper towel roll (cut in 1/2)

- yarn or twine ~ any color

- tape or glue dots ~ if you use a hot glue gun, make sure mom or dad handles that ;)

- scissors

- construction paper or brown paper bag

- crayons

how to make the ears:

- fold down one top edge of the paper tube and then add tape/glue dot to the fold to hold in place.

to make rest of the owls body:

- we add a spot of glue to the body and start wrapping the yard around the tube. you will want to leave room for the owl's head.

- when you wrap the yarn around enough times, covering any tube that may be showing, tie a small knot and tuck it under the string... or what we like to do is add a dot of hot glue where the "wing" will be going and then secure the end of the yarn. 

- on your construction paper or brown paper bag, cut out the owl's feet, wings, eyes and beak. color them how ever you like and glue or tape them to your owl. 

Angry Birds - The Live Version

Our son's 4th birthday was not too long ago, July 18th to be exact. My husband and I decided to have a small gathering at our place. As we looked at the back yard we said, "How are we going to keep the kids busy for a few hours?". The big pool had a rip in the liner, so that was not going to be ready for the gathering. Not to mention, this year we were a bit strapped for cash and a bounce house was a bit far from our grasps. What we did was - "keep it simple".

Our neighbor lent us his vertical golf game and bean bag toss, we had ring toss, horse shoe and derek picked up an inflatable pool that was on sale. Now you would think, that is enough entertainment for one day...

Not with our little kiddo! Dylan would of gotten bored with those games within an hour.
(which he did) ha ha.

One of his favorite games to play on dads ipad is, "angry bird". So we figured we'd make the game come to life. What we did was, ask a few of our friends to donate some empty box's laying around, picked up a few bouncy balls from the dollar store and a water balloon sling shot from the 5 below store. Derek already had paint for the birds, but grabbed some extra spray paint for the boxes. All together we spent under $40 to create what you will see below.

Take note, If you are planning on doing this for your kids.. or yourself ... you want to make sure you give yourself about two days in advance, just to make sure all the paint is dry.

The boxes we only painted one side so we could stretch the spray paint . We painted a few that resembled wood, stone and ice.

For the the balls, we pulled up Angry Birds on-line, painted them with acrylic paint and outlined, to define, with black marker.

Check it out - and then try it yourself.

Everyone had a blast 

and it's a lot harder than it looks. ;)