bits of flaggy goodness…

July 3, 2010 at 8:22 pm (craftiness n' colors, holiday, independence day, nummies for th' tummies, picture post, sensational summertime)

“You’re a grand old flag,
You’re a high flying flag
and forever in peace may you wave.”

~George M. Cohan

Three cheers for the fourth of July! For cookouts and fireworks and red, white, and blue! This year has found me with very little time to spend on arts n’ craft time with the Puffy Wonder, so we had to do our projects on the fly – meaning super simple and FAST! I’ve been on the lookout for crafts that can be done from start to finish in 30ish minutes (or at the very least get to a pausing point within that time) and require not so much supervision. Daybaby A (the 20 month old I watch during the week), has been joining in on our fun more often recently, and I’ve included a couple of pictures of her cute self, too.

First up, obviously, is the good ol’ red, white, and blue juice pop!

T loves helping out in the kitchen, and projects that she can do all by herself (or mostly, anyway) are hands-down winners in her world. She’s been practicing with pouring liquids somewhat evenly and without spilling, and is getting better. For this we used the current favorite juice flavor ever Kiwi Strawberry, by Juicy-Juice, and added just a smidge of red food coloring. For the blue, we a drop of blue coloring to the juice and watered it down a bit (so it wouldn’t be purple). Vanilla yogurt made up the layer in between. This was a great activity – not only to practice pouring, but also to really show how liquids freeze into ice. It didn’t take very long between layers to freeze, and edible art is always the greatest. . .

If there is one thing that kids love above all else, it’s getting messy, which is why they both had such a fantastic time making these little hand-print flags.

What could be easier? Get paint on yer’ paws and stamp. . .

Add star stickers and a popsicle stick and you’ve just made yourself a fun toy to whip around like a maniac for the rest of the afternoon!

Between the two girls, we made about 15 flags, most of which were destroyed by the end of the day.

Baby A needed a little bit of help making her hand-prints clearly, but did wonderfully with keeping the stars on the blue bits (more or less), and of course this project ended several pages of smeary purple finger paint later. Quick and dirty – a perfect kiddy craft!

This one is fairly obvious – three cheers for pom-poms! I actually had these guys (and the ribbon) lying around in the pom bin since last July (we used some of the red and silver ones for our little Valentine’s critters). We didn’t have quite enough to do the proper number of stripes, but T had fun with this simple flag craft all the same!

Next up on the lineup of insanely easy Independence day kiddy art was this fun star stamping project.

We haven’t done cookie-cutter stamping since Halloween, but it was a huge hit then, so I was sure it’d be just as much fun this time.

Both girls had a great time , and the steady thump thump thumping of their cookie cutters hitting home filled my house for a good 45 minutes.

It was a bit questionable if Baby A was actually making stars, but whatever they were she sure had a wonderful time stamping with her cookie cutter!

The images shown here all belong to T, since she demanded a fresh sheet of paper several times before both girls gave up on stamping – inevitably choosing fingers and hands over brushes and cookie cutters. This time the smooshy fingerpainty mess was pink!

Last and tastiest is T’s flag cake! She did so well with this one, I’m proud of my munchkin! She baked the cake (from a mix, of course) pretty damn near all by herself. She poured the powder, filled the measuring cup with water and then with oil (I showed her how high to fill it, of course), ‘read’ the pictures on the box to figure out how many eggs she needed, and after I showed her how to crack one, she cracked the other two *mostly* by herself. She even ran to get me when she heard the alarm buzz to make sure I knew that it was done! My little lady is getting so grown up!

Baby A helped T a tiny bit with the smearing on of whipped cream and managed to put on about 3 blueberries before giving up to gobble as many as she could munch. T gobbled her fair share of berries, but did a great job of getting some onto her cake, too. I ‘drew’ the lines on with a spoon for T to follow, and she rocked it. . .  Yum! I love food crafts best!

Did you see the adorable little patriotic bows that T and Baby A had on in some of the pictures above?

Yeah, that one!

Many thanks to Kendall, from Tutu Perfect Creations for making us all of our pretty new baby bows and bands! She sells all kinds of adorable girly bits – from bows and headbands to wands, onesies, and hats – and tutus, of course! Everything she sells is fully customizable, she’ll work with you to make sure you get exactly what you’re looking for. Go check her out – and keep your eyes open for more tutu cute hair bows on my little ladies in the pics coming up on future posts!