Mother's Day Project

Spoiler alert...if you are a mother, grandmother, great grandmother, or Godmother to me or my kids please don't read this post until after Mother's day.  I wouldn't want to ruin your surprises! :-)


Since Jim and I got married we decided as a family that we didn't want to purchase cards for any occasion.  We roughly calculated the $3-$4 that people had spent on engagement, bridal shower, and wedding cards could have added up to feed us for probably the first year of our marriage!  That was significant enough for us to choose to not spend that money.  However, we do love to acknowledge various occasions that would typically warrant the buying and giving of a card.  I also love to be creative and crafty, but mostly when it has a purpose and function (not just for something to do).  So, I make cards.  I enjoy personalizing the cards and using items that I have around the house (old magazines, ribbon, colored paper, sharpies, etc.).  Each card may not be Hallmark quality, but it has love and thought poured into it.  An added perk is that I take the opportunity to pray for the person I'm making the card for while creating it.

Now for the Mother's day cards.  This is one time of the year that I prioritize including the kids in the creating process as much as possible.  We talk about the special people that will receive the cards as gifts.  We often choose special features for the individual.  Joel knows most of their favorite colors so will try to pick their color for them. :-)

This year I wanted to include both Kirstin (10 months) and Joel (3.5 years) in making a card for each of the 7 matriarchs in their lives (other than their Momma!). So, I decided we would do butterflies.  Joel and I have been reading books about spring, which include lots of butterflies.  So this just made sense.

Now for the crazy part... (HINT: have supplies all ready and within reach before engaging the kiddos in the process!)

I stamped Kirstin's feet.  I chose red ink because that was the only ink pad that I had that was washable ink.

red piggies

Look how sweet her foot print is on all those pink papers!

Then the other foot... I tried my best to get them lined up for a symmetrical butterfly.

Baby wipes are the perfect tool to use to wipe off the cute little toes when they are done being artsy.

After Kirstin's little feet were all stamped, I went back and stamped my finger in the middle for the body of the butterfly.  I also used a sharpie to make eyes and antenna.

Joel's butterflies were different.

We put finger paints in a tray.  Joel put the paints on his hands.  Each time before putting his hands on the paper he pressed his hands together so the butterflies would be symmetrical.

We worked to have Joel's thumbs overlap to be the antenna.  This worked for some of them.  He wanted me to add eyes (and antenna to the ones that the thumbs didn't overlap right).

I love to see my kids' hands and feet printed!

Both butterflies flying together!

Here's one of the finished cards.  I added a message and signed the cards.  I tried to get Joel to sign them himself, but he was done with art and needed to play with trucks after making SEVEN cards!

Another one of the completed cards.

They were all unique and special!  We had so much fun making them.

We even had several outtakes during the process, I'll only share a few (Joel had taken the camera for a bit and took many more.)

Cute girl ready for whatever her Momma is going to do with all those fun looking supplies!

Colorful hands and happy boy!

Kirstin came to check out what her brother was doing.  He looked and sounded like he was having fun.

Yes, he put his paint covered hands on her face!  I cringed at the anticipation of this happening, but they both were laughing so much that I took a picture and wiped her off after.:-)

Happy Mother's Day to all our Moms, Grandmas, and the kids' Godmothers!  We love each of you so much and praise God for the special people that you are to us!

Finger Painting turned Monster Truck Race

Joel has been asking about what happens when two different colors are mixed. For example, "Mommy, what happens when yellow and blue mix?" The answer here is, of course, green.  After talking through this several times and covering all of the possibilities several times, one particular day while Kirstin was napping I thought it would be a good idea to allow him to explore some of this color mixing.  I'm all for making a mess for the sake of learning, but the timing has to be right (which is why it took a couple of days before we did the experiment).

Since I tend to save things that might work well for a project someday (much to the annoyance of my loving husband who would really prefer I throw it all away), I had a giant piece of paper that was packaging for something.  This giant piece of paper happened to have a shiny side, very much like the expensive finger paint paper, but this was free so much better! :-)

So I told Joel to come to the kitchen and roll up his pants legs and take off his shirt, at which point I had his attention because I'm normally telling him to put his shirt on! I laid the giant piece of paper on the floor.  I put squirts of finger paints into an old egg carton (another item of trash potential project material that I saved).  The egg carton worked really well to hold the perfect amount of finger paint and I could throw it away at the end to minimize clean up time (even though finger paints wash really easily!).

So after about 1 minute, Joel's excitement for painting was done.  However, I still had finger paints out that I wasn't going to throw away and this great giant piece of still mostly blank paper.  So, I had an idea....

I got a couple of Joel's hot wheels cars (with various sizes and textures of wheels) and began to drive them through the paint.  This is where Joel became engaged and excited about the painting again! :-)

I would paint sections of the paper and Joel would drive the cars through it.  He was so excited to be doing this.  It made really cool tracks all over the paper.

Joel said that he was having a monster truck race.  He even tore the paper a bit at one point when a car jumped through some paint.

The whole scene

The good news is that a baby wipe cleaned the finger paints that got on the bamboo floors and little boy very easily.  No damage done and we did color mixing via a monster truck race. :-)

Oh and this lovely giant piece of paper is now folded up in Joel's room because he also likes to save things.  However, I will likely be able to talk him into getting rid of it after a few weeks of it not being looked at again.  It's all about the process for me!