July 4th Tin Can Windsock

When I saw these tin can windsocks over at Ucreate I knew they'd be easy to recreate with my kids.
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I used the cans left from a game from my son's superhero party.  They had hot glue still on them but we just painted right over it.

We invited some friends to join us for the project.

The kids painted theirs blue and I painted mine with stripes.

Then we added star stickers.  I just cut some stars out of white contact paper.  I had zero faith these would stay on outside but they did!

I punch two holes in the bottom of the can with a screwdriver.  Then we strung yarn through to hang them.

I hot glued satin ribbons around the inside rim.

 

Our hung outside from July 4th late into August and they survived the weather just fine.  They were a great addition to the flag and made our house look very festive this summer.

 

 

Missionary Packages

I have a nephew who just left on a mission for my church.  He spent July 4th in a missionary training center and they probably didn't really celebrate so I sent him a fun patriotic care package.

After the training he headed to Boise, Idaho where he'll teach people about our church for two years.  When missionaries are new to the mission they call them "Greenies" so I send him a green package when he arrived in Idaho.  I can't just send a plain box to I wrote "greenie" all over the outside of his with different green permanent markers.

If you're looking for other missionary care package ideas check out my Fun Mail & Packages link for past ones.

Rockets

I saw these hanging rockets on Alphamom via Pinterest.  I just copied the picture but read after the fact that they actually filled theirs with confetti and pulled the string to "pop" them open.  We just hung ours up for holiday decor.  We covered toilet paper rolls with cute paper and taped the ribbon on for streamers. 

All of the neighbor kids came over to make their own.

I made a few for table decor one Sunday when we had dinner guests and did fill those for the kids to open.

Kids Crafts

We moved into our new house in May and the only boxes I have yet to unpack are my craft supplies. I lost the closet space I had for them at my last house so I need to get a new cabinet to put them in. Until then we'll keep doing fun kids crafts with what we have out.

My ten year old niece, Madison, came to stay with us for the summer so we did all sorts of fun kids crafts.

We made bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed. We buy the "colorful bird" assortment at Wal-Mart and do get a fun variety of birds showing up in our yard.
We made these "foamerators" I saw last summer in my Family Fun Magazine. They were easy and all the neighbor kids loved them.
We decorated sugar cookies for July 4th.
Then we invited the neighbor girls over to do cute finger and toe nails in red, white and blue.

We watched YouTube videos and learned how to make friendship bracelets.
Then we invited our neighbor over to teach us another version.
We made homemade ice cream with this insulated bag I bought on the Michael's clearance rack for $1.00. I was glad that's all I paid because the seams busted as we were shaking it. We've made it before in just a canvas bag or insulated lunch bag (something to shake it up without having to touch the cold bags inside) and they worked just fine.
We mixed up this cornstarch sidewalk paint I saw over at Pink and Green Mama's site. It worked great on my ugly blacktop driveway.
We made crafts in this craft recycling bus we found at one of the festivals. It was an old school bus full of every recylced piece of plastic, craft materials, glue, scissors, strings, stickers...anything you can think of. You could stay as long as you wanted and make whatever you wanted.

We decorated ocean cakes with graham cracker sand, gummy sharks and fish and candy seaweed after seeing dolphins, seals and stingrays at the zoo.
We celebrated Christmas in July with paper Christmas trees, cutting snowflakes, watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas music and making quick, simple gingerbread houses out of graham crackers.
We also took advantage of stores around here who offer free kids crafts. We hit up Home Depot
Lowes (we got there a couple of hours late but asked if there were extra kits and they gave them to us to do at home)
and Michael's
They made these Home Depot boats at a local festival.
Then we brought them home and painted them.

What fun crafts did you do with your kids this summer?

Snowflakes for All Seasons

I picked up this book a couple of years ago and forgot all about it. It's called Snowflakes for All Seasons by Cindy Higham. I think older kids would really dig this book. The list price on it is just $9.95. It has 72 "easy-to-make" snowflake patterns for all holidays and seasons. The "easy-to-make" part is debatable. Some of them are pretty intricate that they're hard to cut just right. But, they are pretty cool designs. I pulled out the book today and cut out the 4th of July snowflakes they had patterns for. My son is really into cutting these days so I gave him the junk mail to cut up while I cut these out. While we are sometimes creative, we are also sometimes messy. Here's our mess:
Here's a red star snowflake.
Here's a blue Statue of Liberty snowflake.
Here's a white Liberty Bell & Firecracker snowflake.
Here they are hung in our window. I only cut out four snowflakes today. If I were having a party or actually being social this weekend I may have cut more but these four work for us.

Stay tuned for more snowflakes as the seasons and holidays change.

Yankee Doodle Birthday Package

My brother-in-law that recently left on a mission for our church celebrates his birthday on July 4th. He'll be celebrating this year in the church mission training center in Utah so I mailed him a red, white and blue birthday package. Anything out of the color scheme I wrapped up in red and blue wrapping paper. I included plenty of snacks, an Old Navy flag t-shirt, a flag, a few light up bouncy balls, a lint roller, some post it notes and I found some great salt water taffy at Wal-Mart with red and blue star wrappers to throw in as well.

Then our family decorated firecracker cards and wrote birthday messages on the back. My husband did the stripes, I did the stars and my two year old did the scribbled one.

Firecrackers

I made these wooden firecrackers a few years ago. I needed a craft project that I could make up kits for a group of people at church to do. So I bought several wooden dowels, cut them into different lengths, drilled a hole in the top of each and included some twine to use as the wick of the firerackers. I brought paints for everyone to use and it was fun to see how different people painted theirs. I stayed traditional with red, white, blue, stars and stripes. They're super easy to make and are an easy craft for groups to do.