Just Add Stickers

  Over the years we have spent many weekend mornings crafting. It has been one of my favorite times to spend crafting with the kids. Last Saturday morning Little Miss asked Little Man if he would help her build a castle for her dolls. The two of them went out on the back deck in their pj's. They dug through the recycling and brought out lots of crafting supplies. It was such a heartwarming, moment.  Little Man doesn't like to craft as much as when he was little, understandably but when his sister asked for help with her castle he said, "yeah, I know how to make a castle, how many turrets do you want?"  This is their finished product, complete with a  drawbridge and kleenex box beds for the doll princesses. 

When I was little my aunt would cook a big turkey dinner in the middle of summer when she got tired of eating salads and barbecue.  Similarly, I like to decorate for Halloween when the heat gets too much for me. Celebrating Halloween in summer aka: summerween is a thing in stores this year! I'm so very excited to see spooky ghosties camping and sun bathing this summer, it made me so happy!  One of the themes in stores this year was summer fruit as jack-o-lanterns. One year Little Miss and I carved a watermelon, as they did in the Gravity Falls Episode 'Summerween' and that was a lot of fun. I found this fake succulent in a watermelon slice in Michael's, I gave him a jack-o-lantern face and voila a spooky slice of watermelon (although, he looks a little sad because his seeds look like tears, poor guy.) Similarly, I created this jack-o-lantern pineapple by giving him a face (the mustache is explained below.) Hubby gifted me this ghostie nightlight from Amazon and it fit r...

This last June we hosted my sister's forest themed baby shower. I attempted to make the babyshower a surprise, she surprised me twice with my baby showers so I really wanted it to be an epic surprise. In the end I had to tell her to make sure she was there but I was able to keep the theme and the guest list a surprise. That was all worth it when she walked in to see the decorations, her reaction was priceless.  One of the ways that I was hoping to bring forward the theme was with the food. I wanted the table to look like it could be in a forest with natural accents.  Little Man was keen to help prepare the baby shower, my sister is his godmother and he wanted to help. He made this flowery foccaccia with vegetables and herbs from our garden. It turned out great and was delicious. For the party favors we gave out baby plants that our guests can take home and watch grow! I also know that there are some of our guests who are not plant people at all so I picked up some fake plants ...

This year we had two parties within two weeks of each other. One was Little Miss' 8th birthday party and the other was my sister's baby shower (which I will share soon)! Little Miss chose Stitch for her theme, no surprise there! With the new movie coming out there was no shortage of Stitch decorations and party ideas.  At first Little Miss asked for a cake in the shape of Stitch's face but I don't think that I have the skill for that. Instead, I found the idea for this beach cake on Pintrest. It was pretty easy to make and I used an idea that I have seen many times, I bought a cake from the grocery store and scraped off the icing and decorations. I used blue icing to make the water and Graham cracker crumbs to make the sand. I used Graham cracker teddy bears and fruit roll ups as decorations as well as little paper umbrellas and flamingo toothpicks. I was very happy with the end results, it was very summery. For our craft we decorated pencil cases and notebooks. I bough...

This is the last week if school so I am in summer prep mode. I love preparing for the summer, coming up with fun activities or a bucket list.  One year I planned to go to all the free activities in our town. A few years in a row we documented all our summer activities and made a Summer Scrapbook . This year is a little different, I am working full time and the kids are getting older and don't need the summer planned out as much as they used to. I still wanted to do something special for the summer, for them and for me. One rainy weekend this Spring we went to a book store that we all like. I told the kids to pick out a book for a summer project.  Little Miss chose an activity book for kids going into grade 3. She saw this page and she was sold. She loves math, mental calculations are something she is working on right now (it is so wonderful but she doesn't get that from me!)  Little Man's summer project is to write a graphic novel. He found a graphic novel of how to writ...

This past January I decided to change up my Just Add Stickers logo and background. Over the past 12 years of this blog I have changed the look of my homepage twice. When I look back on the old designs I feel nostalgic, I remember all the times that I worked on my little blog over the years, the projects that I worked on with my kids, for them and for myself.    When I started my blog in 2013, I was figuring things out as I went along. I didn't have a smart phone at that point, I finally got a tablet soon after I started but my first blog posts were made from my laptop, uploading pictures from my digital camera. I chose a playful option from the background themes. It fit well with the crafts that I was posting, very playful.  Then I discovered Canva! That was a game changer! I changed to this background on New Year's Day 2017. I was crafting more for myself at this point, Little Man was at school and I was working on my Etsy shop. I was looking at making my blog look a lit...

Happy Spring everyone! The weather was cold at the beginning of the month but we've had two weeks of warmer weather and lots of rain, perfect gardening weather! When we moved to our new home last summer the garden box was overgrown and we started using it to put our hedge trimmings in. We finally cleaned it out and added new soil  We were excited to try our hand at gardening again. Over the yeats we have had little  herb gardens  and of course our  Fairy Gardens , which are more decorative than actual gardening.  Little Miss was very excited to start our very own vegetable garden. She helped me create our garden plan and we shopped for the plants, seeds and garden decor together.  We had to make a few adjustments to the garden box. We realized that it was too deep to be able to reach the plants in the back, especially for Little Miss. We searched through the shed, which has a lot of  ceramic tiles and garden stones leftover from the previous owners. We...

  Little Miss was reading her Chirp magazine recently and we found out that it is 'make your own book day' on May 8th. That sounded right up our alley, so we tried out the make your own book tutorial in the magazine.  Little Miss is very interested in fuzy animal notebooks these days, so we made our own version of a fuzzy book. We used felt to cover the books. Little Miss chose to make Stitch and Angel books. We used felt to make the eyes and ears and used a black market for the details.  I chose to make a ghost notebook, I think it turned out pretty cute. You could cover the little books with nice paper or stickers. These little books could be used for daily notes or lists. They would also make a thoughtful Mother's Day gift.  Happy make your own book day and happy crafting!

Little Miss is in her slime phase right now. She wants to make it and play with it and she saw on YouTube that you can even make edible slime. So, of course I looked up recipes and I chose the one with the ingredients that I had on hand. I have to say that it was easy to make and Little Miss says that it tastes good too!  There are two main kinds of edible slime that I found, one that uses gummy bears and one that uses marshmallows. We used marshmallows because it was what we had in the house but I think that the gummy bear recipe would be more colorful and you might  not need food coloring.  The recipe that I used contained marshmallows, corn starch, oil and food coloring. The other variation on the recipe that I saw was to use powdered sugar instead of corn starch. I tried using the powdered sugar but the mixture was always sticky, the corn starch gave the mixture a coating that made it more maliable, it didn't stick to our hands. At first I opted for the powdered sugar...

  Putting together a fast board of snacks is one of my favorite ways to incorporate holidays into our everyday. It doesn't take much more time but it looks great. This brunch board is a great idea for Easter brunch (lots of fruit to counter act the chocolate) or for Mother's day.  Small egg bites are a good way to add some protein to the snack board. My simple recipe is: Ingredients: • 4 eggs • 1/3 cup grated cheddar cheese • 3 slices of ham chopped Instructions: 1. Preheat oven to 350° 2. Grease muffin tins or silicone muffin molds (I used heart and flower shaped molds) 3. In a small mixing bowl, beat eggs with a fork  4. Mix in the rest of the ingredients 5. Spoon the mixture into the muffin molds 6. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the egg bites are firm I start by lining my board with parchment paper. Them add the veggies and fruit. For this brunch board I used blueberries, apples and carrots. I also made tomato and mozzarella skewers. I had some mini muffins but buttered...

Last week my whole family was sick for the entire week. We all had fevers and chills for days and days. One night when I was starting to feel a bit better I decided that we needed a little pick me up and change of scenery. I decided to take out our S-Patick's Day decorations out and make some rainbow hearts to decorate with.  This was just as much of a craft as I could manage at that time. I took out a stack of felt, scissors and my glue gun. I cut hearts out starting in rainbow colors starting with red and getting smaller with each heart. I used the 1st set of hearts as a template for the others. Once they were all cut out I glued them together.  I used these rainbow hearts to decorate the hutch in my kitchen, a space I love to decorate because we can all see it from the table and it is nice to change things up without changing too much.  Along with the rainbow hearts I made a 'pot-o-gold' using some decorative coins and yellow tissue paper. I am happy with how this turn...

Have you ever ordered something and received the miniature version of it? I have, and I know that I am not the only one. This happened to me two Christmases ago. In all fainess it was probably clearly marked, I just thought that it was a cooking kit for kids but it was actually a mini baking set,  to make not just small treats but mini treats.  Instead of returning the mini baking set I decided to keep it for a rainy day and we finally had a chance to use it this weekend. Little Miss is very interested with mini versions of things these days, especially the mini brands surprise packs. I brought the baking kit when went to Grandma's for the weekend and it was a big hit with everyone.  The overall consensus is that the recipes are actually tasty but it is also messy, since we have to take out all the ingredients anyways we should have made big versions as well. There are lots of websites and YouTube channels for tiny cooking. Overall it was very cute and a lot of fun! ...

There is something very relaxing about a Sensory activity. I made this Valentine's Day activity for Little Miss, we both like kinetic sand, it's fun to play with and isn't as messy as some other sesory bin materials. I also don't think there is an age limit on sensory activities.  I found all the material I used at the Dollar Store. This would be very easy to make using any materials you have on hand.  The supplies I used are: • Container (I used a heart shaped chip and dip bowl) • Kinetic sand • Heart jewels (or any Valentine's craft supply works) • 'Shovels' (I used wooden spoons because it's not beach season so I couldn't find any little sand shovels.) • 'I dig you' sign Activity:  Open and dump. It's as simple as that, start with the jewels or craft supplies. Place enough sand to cover the jewels. I topped it all of with a 'Happy  Valentine's Day' sign that I had left over from a cake a few years ago. I placed the 'sho...