Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Great Dinner Recipe #1- Noodles and Hotdogs

So I was looking through a few recipes I tagged to try with Gavin. Hes a very picky eater and doesnt like much more than his formula. Even at almost 10 months! I was making spaghetti for my fiance and I, when I saw a recipe that included spaghetti noodles and hot dogs on pinterest. What kid doesnt like hotdogs?! So I got everything together and got to work.
Pretty simple idea right?! So I just took the noodles and broke them in half. I stuck 3 pieces through 2 cut up hot dogs. They'll look like this when you're done.
Of course you can always add more noodles or more hot dog pieces, but since G is so small still I knew this would be enough. Once you get to this point, just put them in some boiling water and cook until the noodles are soft!
Then TA-DA!
I realized as I got them out, how easy and fun this would be for children of any age. I cut them into pieces of course so G wouldnt choke and let him go to town! I have to say it was a huge hit that I'll repeat in the future! Even the dogs and fiance ate some! 




Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Yarn Letters for G!

So after a long hiatus from a sick child, sick animal, crazy work and weekend activities, I have finally found the time to sit down and post another craft I had fun doing! I'm hoping from now on, I can stay on top of this and get it going a lot faster. Thanks for hanging in there. So as my last craft, I got the inspiration from Pinterest. I had wanted to do these for awhile, but wanted to wait for the next color change in G's room. We recently updated his room from "the nursery" to a "big boy sports room". LOL It was a hard change for me but also exciting. To get started with this craft, I had to get this list of stuff together.

-Cardboard: just enough to make however many letters is in the name or word you are doing
- Yarn- one roll of yarn should be plenty, but it depends on the size of the letters and again how many letters you're doing
-Scissors
-Letter stencils of your choice
-Scotch tape

So the first thing I did was make a trip to my nearest craft store. I needed to find some stencils in the size and font I liked most. I then made my way over to the yarn section and tried to match the color to his room. Once I got home I cut up a cardboard box to look like this:


Once the cardboard was ready, I opened my stencils and punched out the letter I'd need for Gavin's name. Then I laid them out to fit the cardboard and simply traced them. 



I played around with the lettering on the cardboard a little bit to get it to look just as I wanted. Once they were all traced out, I cut them out. This can be a little challenging depending on the thickness of the cardboard and the shape of your letters.

Now comes the harder part. Take a long piece of your yarn and fold it in half tying the two ends together. I found this made the process of wrapping the letters a little easier and it made the yarn thicker. The hard part is getting it started. I took a small piece of scotch tape to secure the beginning of the yarn to the back of the cardboard. At that point you just begin to wrap around the letters. It also makes it a little easier if you wrap the letter in sections. At the end of your piece of yarn, again use a piece of scotch tape to secure and start again with another piece. Your letter will look kind of like this.

You'll notice in this letter you can see through the cardboard underneath. I simply just moved and straightened the yarn out so it was completely covered. Again depending on the size of the letter and the shape of them, depends on how hard the yarn wrapping will be. At this point, you've completed your first letter so the next ones should be a little easier. Once you get all of your letters done, youll have the joy of being able to hang them anywhere you want! You can hang your letters one of two ways, simply take a nail and hammer them against the wall (as I did) or you can put the nail in the wall and hang the letters by the yarn on the back. If you really want to get creative you can tack some ribbon into the back of the letters and hang them by the ribbon. Thats what so great about this craft. There are a million different ways to make it your own!



** One thing I will say is doing bigger letters with thicker cardboard is easier. I did small 5" letters with the thin cardboard and it did provide more of a challenge. It all depends on you and what type of space you are working with. **