Pottery Pick-up

Our ceramic pieces were finally ready for pick up yesterday! I could not get there fast enough. Technically, they weren't ready until 2pm, but Alexa and I arrived just after they opened at noon, along with my friend from Novel Style. We were a little too excited! (We even picked new pieces to work on, but that's another blog entry.)

After scoping the scene and finding all of our gorgeous pieces, I stopped to take a breath and a few pictures.

This is my mug. I love how it turned out. I'm not very fancy when it comes to painting or art. I love being creative and doing all kinds of creative, artsy projects, but my skills are lacking. I do however, love the look of this mug. It's a great representation of me...simple, fun and beautiful.

This gorgeous cake plate was made by my friend over at The Charmed Cupcake. I can't wait to see what scrumptious treats she serves on it!

This is one of my absolute favorite pieces. This bowl was created by my friend Rachel. It was her first time painting pottery. I've offered to take it off her hands if she doesn't like how it turned out. I really hope she hates it so that I can buy it off of her!!!

 My friend Christine hand drew and then free hand painted this AMAZING outer space plate for her three year old son. I think that he is just going to LOVE it!

Unfortunately this picture came out blurry, but I couldn't resist posting it because I just love this piece. My friend over at Novel Style created this awesome ring holder using a type of confetti technique. The confetti technique gives the piece a textured feel. I need to make something using this technique, it just looks so cool! So many ideas, so little time!

Novel Style also created this masterpiece. A water color dessert plate and flower tea cup. How cute is the little worm!

Finally, the big shebang! Here is our entire group's finished products. Every single piece is unique, hand painted and designed and absolutely gorgeous.

Rocks, Stones and Pebbles

Alexa is very into collecting rocks, stones and pebbles every time we go outside. She can become completely and totally immersed in a playground with stones, not realizing that she sitting under the swing set playing with her stones while other kids swing above her, narrowly missing her head at every pass. It's amazing. It is one of the only activities where she can and will sit and totally concentrate for more than 30 seconds.

A few days ago, we took a walk outside when the rain had let up a little. We both needed some fresh air. Being cooped up in the apartment for more than a day will make anyone crazy. I didn't bring a stroller, or her bike. It was just the two of us strolling around the park in our neighborhood. We had time and nowhere to be, so I just let Alexa take the lead.

She strolled around the path for a few minutes, but then something caught her attention. It was a small pile of large rocks that someone had arranged on the grass. She immediately started collecting them. She would bring them to me one by one and then run back for the next rock. I kept strolling around, watching her and waiting to see what her next move would be. After a while, and two handfuls of rocks, I tried to wrangle her toward the playground. I thought this was a smart move, however, I forgot the playground base was all little pebbles.

By the end of our walk we had amassed a great collection of stones. I let her pick five out and we brought them home. When she woke up from her afternoon nap we had a great time painting the rocks. Maybe we'll start a rock garden, it'll certainly be easier to take care of than the herb garden.

Getting Artsy

The day before my mom left, we went to a ceramic studio in Linz and painted our own ceramics. I chose a flowered dessert plate and my mom made a door sign.

We spent three hours hanging out together, talking and creating some pretty cool pieces of art. Unfortunately, we discovered the ceramic studio a little late and our projects weren't ready before she went home.

We had such a great time picking out our pieces and then deciding on how to decorate them. My mom is very creative and very artsy. She made my project look like it was done by a toddler compared to her crazy free-handed painting skills. 

I know that paint and sip classes have become very popular in the  U.S. lately. I've decided to try and host something similar at the ceramic shop with some of the other English speaking Expats in the area. I think it'll be a great way to bring people together. I'm not very good at painting at all, but I had so much fun doing this with my mom.

They have two teachers to help with any questions you may have. You can walk in any time during their opening hours and start on a project. The staff is really friendly and helpful. It was a really great experience and I can't wait to go again.

Glitterific!

I was a brave and daring mama this week. I let Alexa color with markers AND I let her play with glitter and glue. I know, what the heck was I thinking?!?! There was glitter everywhere for days. I'm still finding it in random places (Michael's face). Alexa was amazed at the sparkly and shiny glitter.

She was even more excited when I let her pour it out all by herself. After she ended up with about a half a cup of glitter all over herself and the high chair my anxiety started rising, so we switched to markers. Right...markers...because that is less messy??

Since she was already covered in glitter and glue, I guess I figured what the heck?! She loved putting the caps back on the markers the most.

 
She liked coloring on her arms second best. She thought markers on the paper was okay. Figures.

 The rest of this week I think we'll stick to crayons and a coloring book. Maybe next week we'll break out the messy stuff again!

A Little Love

We have been doing lots of arts and crafts projects lately. Something we did this morning, inspired by...you guessed it, Pinterest, was a LOVE painting. The original tutorial uses finger paints, but I used acrylic paints. I bought a large rectangle painting canvas for this project. Depending on how large you want your LOVE painting, is how large of a canvas you should purchase. I also bought a small set of acrylic paints and painters tape. Normally, I do not use acrylic paints with Alexa, but for this project I wanted the paint to stay on the canvas and not dry up and peel off after a few weeks (or days!). We also used our foam paintbrushes from our art kit.

I stripped Alexa down to just a onesie. In hindsight, she should have been in just a diaper. Oh well, now we have an art onesie. Using the painters tape, I wrote the word LOVE on the canvas.

Then, I opened four different blue and green colored acrylic paints and spread them across the canvas in no particular pattern. I gave Alexa a foam brush and let her get to it.

She had more fun using her fingers on the canvas, which was fine, and then painting her leg and the kitchen floor. I helped her out with the foam brush and we covered the entire canvas in paint.

After letting it dry for a little while, I pulled the painters tape off.

TADA!

I can't wait to find the perfect spot to hang it in the apartment.

Painting with Cotton balls

Alexa and I had such a great time painting with cotton balls on egg drawings for some Easter decorations last week. I used the homemade finger paints we made last week for this activity. The paints were a little thicker than I would prefer and I think next time we might use some other washable paints that are a bit runnier. 

All you need for this activity is a paper plate to put the paints on, a few clothespins (one for each color of paint you want), washable paint, a smock (optional) and paper to paint on. We used paper that I drew eggs onto.

Alexa was very curious about the cotton ball on the clothespin, but once I showed her how to dab it on the paper or use it like a crayon, she got right down to it! She liked dabbing it, but the paint needed to be replenished rather quickly. We still came out with some pretty great egg decorations.

This was a quick activity and didn't leave much in the form of clean up. I just unclipped the clothespins from the cotton balls and then tossed the paint plate along with the cotton balls right into the trash. Since we used a smock, Alexa was pretty clean. After washing hands, we were all cleaned up!

We will definitely do this again in the future. Another variation that I'd like to try sometime soon is painting with pompons. I bet it would make some pretty cool looking paint splotches on the paper.

Homemade Finger Paints

I've had these homemade finger paints in my "Need to Try" box for quite a while now. I originally found the recipe on Pinterest. Here is the original recipe, like always, I added a little something to make it my own!

The original recipe wasn't very clear about how long to cook the mixture for, or about how long it would take to thicken, so I doubled the recipe to ensure that I would have enough goo to make six colors of paint. **The original instructions did not work for me, but I have them listed below. I also have listed the final instructions that I used to successfully create the paints.**

I started by gathering the supplies:

Supplies:
6 small glass jars with lids (glass baby food jars work great)
Small Saucepan
Spoon
Large Measuring cup
Powdered Food coloring in a variety of colors
Baby Wash

Ingredients:
3 Tablespoons Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 cup Cornstarch
2 cups Water

<Original instructions> Combine ingredients in a small saucepan and warm until mixture thickens. Cool and pour into containers. Add coloring to create desired colors.

 Sugar, Cornstarch and Salt Mixture 

Powdered Food Coloring (Lebensmittel Farbe)

While my ingredients were "warming", I took the lids off of the jars and added 1/4 teaspoon of powdered food coloring (Lebensmittel Farbe) to each jar. I used red, orange, yellow, blue, green and purple.

After allowing the mixture (which still was not thick after cooking for 40 minutes) to cool, i added about 150ml of the mixture to each glass jar. It immediately mixed with the powdered food coloring and became a very vibrant, still liquid, mixture. I added 1-2 drops of liquid baby wash to each jar and then left it to sit, cool and congeal. An hour later, it was still completely liquid, so I sat the jars in a glass dish and added boiling water to the bottom. Let's see what happens next!

After 15 minutes sitting in the boiling water, the finger paints were still completely liquid. I thought I'd try the oven next! Haha at this point I was just too stubborn to give up. I used all of my cornstarch by making it a double batch and I was determined to have some finger paints for Alexa to paint with. The oven didn't work either (Shocker!).

I finally came up with a Hail Mary pass and it worked!

<My Instructions: that work!> Combine ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil on medium-high heat. Once the mixture is bubbling for 10 seconds, remove from heat and stir rapidly while the mixture thickens. The mixture will be a little thicker than store bought finger paint. Pour into jars with food coloring and allow to cool. Final paint mixture, when cooled, will be a little chunkier than store bought finger paints, but the additional sensory stimulation while painting is really fun for the kids!

Easter is Just a Hop Away

With Easter just around the corner, I've been seeing all of these really fun looking Pinterest craft ideas that I would love to do with Alexa. I might try and get one of two of them done before Sunday, but I think I might have missed the boat on all the Easter crafts. Maybe next year we will be a little more together.

Instead of painting and crafting, we have been practicing for Saturday's Easter Egg Hunt! I've been hiding a plastic egg around the apartment and Alexa loves running around trying to find it. Granted, it has to be hidden in plain view otherwise she just goes and finds a different toy to play with, but I think she's starting to get the idea. We are going to rock this egg hunt Saturday morning!

Another thing on my list of things to do this week is to do an Easter photo shoot with Alexa.  We did a mini session Sunday morning and I am hoping that I got a few cute shots. I'll post them later this week once I have time to upload them onto the computer. I'm really looking forward to taking pictures of her in her Easter dress. She's going to look so cute!!


Here are a few of my favorite Pinterest Easter arts and crafts ideas:

Playdough Carrots

Pom Pon Easter Egg Painting

Fingerprint Carrot Craft

Yarn Easter Eggs - this is a decoration

Marble Easter Eggs - made with foam shaving cream, food coloring and hard boiled eggs



Have you done anything fun with the kids to prep for Easter?

Qtip Watercolor Painting

We found another crafty activity to add to our repertoire! Watercolor painting using qtips as a paint brush. Alexa is super into anything crafty. So far, we have painted with watercolors twice and she enjoyed it both times. She likes being able to dip the qtip into the water and then pick her color. It is hard work trying to mix the water into the color, but she did a really great job the second time we did this activity. 

All you need is some qtips, water color paints, an old yogurt container, water, some paper towels and a lot of patience. This is a great activity for developing and fine tuning those fine motor skills and it also makes a very pretty piece of art when finished.

For this activity, I have been setting up the art station on the living room coffee table. I use clear tape to tape down two sides of a piece of white paper. Then I use an old yogurt cup as a water cup and place that on a paper towel to absorb any spills. I grab 3-4 qtips and the watercolor paints. Alexa fits perfectly on the couch with the table pulled all the way up to her. I hold the water cup so she can dunk the qtip in. She practices dunking the qtip in the water and then has to concentrate to get paint onto the qtip.

She's getting very good at holding the qtip between her thumb and pointer finger like you would hold a pencil. Her control is also getting better. Her favorite part is mixing the water with the paint. After she stirs it for quite a while, I try and convince her to actually paint on the paper!

The Coloring Wall

For Alexa's first birthday party with her friends, I put up a coloring wall in our hallway. I had purchased an activity tablecloth in the party section of a store in the US, but didn't end up having a table to cover it with. It was such a quick and easy thing to do so that the kids could have a little bit of freedom and fun at the same time.

We used tape to attach the top and bottom sections of the tablecloth to an empty wall in the hallway. I used a plastic container to hold about 10 crayons and left them there for the kids to play with. It was a hit! Even the older kids had fun doing the mazes and tracing the dot-to-dot pictures on the tablecloth. I think this will be a must have at parties in the future. 

I left it up for a few days after the party and Alexa did well grabbing some crayons from the container and coloring on the coloring wall. Once she started taking crayons into other rooms and coloring on my oven and balcony door I took the coloring wall down.

Beach Sand Play Dough

I love trolling the internet for cool activities and projects to do with Alexa. I think these moms and teachers and caregivers who come up with these ideas are amazing. I also like experimenting with my own stuff. After finding a cool recipe for chocolate clay from Growing a Jeweled Rose, I decided to try and come up with my own recipe for some kind of play dough using stuff we had around the house.

We've been having some really beautiful weather in Linz and so I decided to try and make my own version of Cloud Dough. I grabbed some flour and baby oil because I thought that would make a great soft, fluffy textured play dough. What I ended up with was an amazing play dough that felt just like a nice sandy beach. It wasn't exactly what I had set out to make, but it ended up being a lot of fun anyway.

Alexa and I had a great time squishing and pressing the sand dough into different molds. She crushed the sand dough in her hands and into the bucket. I think this would be a very interesting addition to a sand/water table in the summer.

Beach Sand Play Dough

1 cup flour
3/8 cup baby oil

Mix well with your hands and then have fun building a sand castle with your new sand dough!

I left our sand dough out for several days. It held up perfectly, so today I put it into a clean and dry baby food jar and labeled it for storage. I'm not sure how long it will hold for, but I like being able to keep it for more than one play day.

Apple Stamping

Alexa got a small little stamper as a treat from someone recently, a toy that is much much too small for her to be playing with right now. The stamper did get me thinking that stamping would be fun for her. She loves doing dots with her crayons and stamping requires that same movement. I decided to make her some infant safe stamps using apples.

Supplies:
2 apples
2-4 cookie cutters
a knife

I started off by cutting the apples in half. I then stuck a cookie cutter into the middle of one of the apple halves.

Then using the knife, I cut about 1/4-1/2 inch around the cookie cutter.  Once you remove the cookie cutter you have an apple stamp!

I made star, flower and moon stampers.

Using finger paints, I dipped the stampers in the paint and then helped Alexa stamp them on her paper. After a few practice stamps, she got the hang of it and was stamping on her own.

She was initially shocked at the shapes and I let her investigate the paint covered apple stamps. She had a lot of fun stamping. The green star stamper ended up being her favorite!

Happy Stamping!

Sunday Funday: Cardboard Box Coloring & Building a Box House

Sunday Funday is back. Here's another great family activity that your little ones will love!

Get Imaginative.  We decided to build a cardboard box house. All you need is a large box (that you don't plan on using again), some crayons or markers and a pair of scissors. (*Cutting a cardboard box can be difficult, this should be done by an adult.)

This activity ended up developing along the way. We started off sticking Alexa in a large empty box with some crayons. That was a little too much for her, however, she did enjoy dropping and picking up all of her crayons repeatedly in the box. She also enjoyed handing me crayons to draw with. After a few minutes she was over my baby in a box idea and was ready for something else. I can absolutely see this being a great idea for an older toddler. It lets them get creative and crazy in a contained environment. If you have a wall scribbler, cardboard box coloring is definitely for your little one!

I decided to make her a little house out of the box. She loves her play tent and really enjoys when I build her forts to play in, so I thought a cardboard house might be fun. We flipped the box upside down. I drew a door on one side and two windows, one on each side. I then used scissors to cut the doors and windows open.

Alexa had fun helping to decorate and color the outside of her house.

Then we played! She loved playing peekaboo through the windows and door. She liked when I would knock on the door and she would push it open from inside. It was a great way to role play a few daily greetings..."Hello, how are you?" - open the door, "Bye-bye" - shut the door. I also told her some opposites: open/close, in/out.

One day she flipped the box onto it's side and played inside for quite a while. I guess some houses have their door on top!

She has really been enjoying her house. She plays with it, in it, or on it nearly every day. It was definitely a great Sunday activity.

Chocolate Clay: Edible, No Cook Play Clay

I found this really easy and very inexpensive recipe for edible, no cook chocolate clay at Growing A Jeweled Rose. As soon as I read the blog post, I knew Alexa and I would be trying it out. Shockingly, I did not have cornstarch or nutella at home, so this morning we ran to the store and picked up our supplies. I bought the store brand of nutella because let's be honest...it's the same exact thing and I'm using and to make play dough. The nutella knockoff and the cornstarch cost 2,68€.

The recipe from Growing A Jeweled Rose says you can use as much nutella as you want. I wasn't sure how the recipe would turn out so I erred on the side of caution. I used one super heaping tablespoon of hazelnut cream.

Then I added two heaping tablespoons of cornstarch to the mix. The spoons were pretty useless in mixing the ingredients, so we dug in with our hands. It was messy, but felt so cool!

I let Alexa explore a little with mixture. She didn't really like how sticky it was, but yet she couldn't resist touching it repeatedly. Once it was mixed well and wasn't sticky anymore, I set Alexa up in her high chair with some cookie cutters.

She wasn't quite sure what to do at first, so I took the clay out of the bowl and showed her how to roll it in her hands. She mimicked what I was doing. Then we flattened the clay out and explored it's texture.

I'm not going to lie, she totally ate some. I'm pretty sure she would have eaten all of it if I hadn't stopped her. I can't blame her though, hazelnut cream smells great and tastes even better!

We used cookie cutters to cut out star, flower and heart shapes...all of which she promptly put in her mouth! Then we rolled balls of chocolate clay into a caterpillar shape and squished it flat to poke holes into.

Alexa enjoyed playing with the chocolate clay. I think her favorite parts were mixing it together and then tasting it! I might hold off a little longer before introducing other types of play dough because she still puts everything in her mouth, but I was glad to know that this was safe to eat.

What else would you make with chocolate clay?