Our turkey day craft

Maybe we should alternately title this, "Jamie's attempt at being a crafty mom!" 

Here's what happened:  We got about seven inches of snow on Friday afternoon/overnight into Saturday morning.  Jenna and Brody's basketball games got cancelled and Jenna  begged me to do a "project."  I thought we could make something for the Thanksgiving table at Grandpa and Grandma Burdorfs.  I quickly consulted pinterest trying to come up with an idea (what did we do before pinterest?!).

I liked these cute little turkey name place cards.  We improvised a bit on how to do them and what supplies we used, but I think they turned out pretty well.

First off, Jenna painted some wine corks brown.  "Conveniently" I had a bunch stashed in a drawer. ;)   

 

 Then,  Brody and I shaped the pipe cleaners, while Jenna cut out the beaks and whatever that red thing on a turkey is called.  I did the hot-gluing of the eyes, beak and feathers. 

Next, I found some wooden grilling skewers stashed away in my pantry, so I cut those in half and stuck it into the top and then just hot-glued the construction paper onto the top of the skewer.  Wa-la!

 It was a little time-consuming, but we think the finished product is pretty cute and will look great on the Thanksgiving table!

 

Here's what you need:

1. Wine Corks

2. Brown Paint

3. Googly eyes

4. Pipe Cleaners

5. Foam sheets (for beak)

6. Wooden Skewers

7. Construction paper

 

On a side note, I have to ask for some prayers and happy thoughts for Blake.  His tacro and creatinine were just slightly higher than normal, so we have to redo labs Monday morning.  Please pray for a smooth draw since last Wednesday was a nightmare and pray for those numbers to where they have been.  Thanks friends!

Concert Weekend

We had a sort of laid back, sort of busy weekend. Saturday was kind of a lazy day, but Sunday was pretty busy.

Aaron, who has been reffing a lot of basketball, reffed Friday night and Saturday afternoon. The kids and I had movie night on Friday night. Our movie of choice was, "Santa Claus." That was the first time the kids had seen it and they loved it!

Saturday, I decided it was time for a craft. I found cottonballs and so I thought they would enjoy making a Santa. This is what happened when we started...

...the kids thought it would be fun to have a "snowball fight" with them. The finished products:

For some reason lately, it seems we are eating a "breakfast for supper" meal about once a week. I was not in the mood to cook Saturday night, so we had pancakes and bacon. I saw this idea on pinterest, to make rainbow pancakes. I made the batter and let Jenna and Brody each pick a color. Brody chose blue; Jenna "violet" (those are her words, not mine!).

I swear, if you want your kids to think you are the best ever, just add food coloring. The kids LOVED this. Oh yeah... Jenna won't eat pancakes without chocolate chips these days and Brody just follows suit.

What happens when you leave Brody alone with food color for five seconds... :)

Because it is going to be so cold this week, we decided to break down and try the winter coats on the boys that we bought LAST season when they were on sale. They are just a bit too big. LOL

Saturday we got rain. Lots of it! Unfortunately for us snow lovers. The kids seemed to think we got about six inches. Notice the grass...

They thought there was just enough in our neighbor's driveway.

Sunday was Jenna's first concert at school! She was a nervous wreck all day. Jenna is so her mother's daughter. :) Here she is lining up:

...and singing. It was so cute and fun to watch. And would you believe it?! Jenna survived!! :)

Grandpa Larry and Linda surprised Jenna by coming to her concert and then were nice enough to watch the kids so Aaron and I could get some Christmas shopping done. We got all four kids done! Woo-Hoo! And it's not even December 23rd.

Turkeys

At our house we are thankful for crafts! And creativity! The kids really enjoy craft time, so I told them I'm going to try REALLY hard to be organized and plan something for one day a week after school.

Since it is Thanksgiving, I figured the obvious thing to make would be a turkey. After picking up Jenna from her early out, we went home and got started. The feathers for the turkey:

Brody starts putting his feathers on. He is getting so much better at sitting and doing things like that. I think it must be preschool that is helping.

There was a lot of discussion about how to arrange the feathers on their turkeys. So funny to listen to both of them.

Brody took this picture of my turkey and insisted it be put on the blog. :)

The finished products! I think they turned out really good and we hung them up in the kitchen. Jenna's already asking me what we're doing next week for craft time. Hmmmm....

Sponge Balls

I got this idea from a friend (thanks Chris!) to make these sponge balls for the kids to play with. With as hot as it's been, I decided it would be a perfect time to make these with the kids. You need three sponges for each sponge ball. The kids liked to mix and match the colors.

Start by cutting a sponge in half and then in half again.

Line up the sponges in any pattern you want.

Gather them together like this and then use a rubber band to secure them in the middle. The result looks like this:

Cute, huh?!

The kids and I had a lot of fun playing in the backyard with them. I even got in a pretty good dual with Jenna. Brody was my little helper and stole all the sponge balls from Jenna. :)

This picture of Brody freaks me out. I have a vision of him at about 17 pitching for his high school team. Daddy was pretty proud of his form.

Jenna had pretty good aim. She even nailed Brody in the forehead, which she found hilarious and Brody...not so much!