Unicorn Birthday Party!

Honeypie turned 6 this month!  I know... time flies.

So what better way to celebrate this year than with a magical unicorn party for my huge unicorn lover!  I made unicorn headbands for the kids to decorate during the party.  Here is how I made them... I used poster board paper.

I taped the horn closed and notched the bottom to be able to glue it to the white brow band.  Kids used glue and gold glitter to decorate the horn so it did not matter if you could see overlapping on the paper.  It got covered with the glitter.

I hot glued the horn to the brow band.

During the party everyone decorated their unicorn headpiece with glitter and markers.

We played pin the "horn" on the unicorn.  

Honeypie helped make horns for all the children.

She drew a giant Unicorn on craft paper.

Even daddy played! It was a hit.

We read "the little lost unicorn" and "unicorn wings".

Had plenty of unicorn balloons...

And unicorn goodies for goodie bags.

We painted unicorn houses to go with our little unicorns 

(found these at Michaels!)

We had a visit from a chocolate colored unicorn too!! 

 Everyone got to ride him!  He was very friendly and was named popcorn.

I made the cake of course!  

and I made vegan cupcakes with unicorn cookies on top as well.

YUM!!

"Six" comes only once and this one was another birthday to remember.

Magic and friends and sweetness!!

Happy birthday little one.

~ ^_^

Snow happy!

The robins are pecking at the ground in our garden, as the weather seems to be bringing some warmer days.  As the last of our snow melted away, we soaked up all we could before this loooooong cold end of winter.

We read these 2 very cute books we thought we'd share, "snow happy" by Patricia Hubbell and "Snow" by Cynthis Rylant and both inspired snow happy fun.  

We even went a bit "Jackson Pollock"  on that perfect infinite white snowy canvas with some snow painting fun!

(By the way... for those of you who do not know Cynthia Rylant... please fo to the library and check out some of her books!!! They are beautiful!  Most are very poetic like the one we read  here but some like the "Henry and Mudge" series, are just plain cute and funny.  Very adored here.)

So true no?

(We painted on the snow with watered down tempera paints on a squeeze bottle)

snow happy!

Art day

When honeypie found in the closet old watercolor sets that belonged to mama long ago, she adopted those as her own, just like a perfect art lover would, gathering and collecting tools and inspiration for creating. (She had plans!)
I totally understand. I,myself, am an art supply hoarder.... there, I've said it. I don't think I am ashamed. There isn't an olive or jam jar I don't collect for future use. Egg cartons and toilet paper rolls will not be spared from my collection.
(So if you need some... You know where to go.)
Paper is my lover. Rice or origami, textured or colored, those seductions beckon my hands and I can't even begin to talk about brand new colored pencil sets or the smell of inks without sighing... Mmmmmm.
Today she found Daddy's pastel set and mine from when we were in art school together and added that to her collection. She then asked me to show her how to use the pastel chalks.
So that's what we did today .
Who to better introduce pastels than the master himself... Degas.
I love this series of children's art books by Laurence Anholt.
The one we read today is called "Degas and the little dancer".
It tells the story of how Degas came to meet "Marie", the little ballerina who posed for him as he created his "little dancer" sculpture.
It also tells the reason why Degas began to sculpt and to use pastels as his art medium. (He began to loose his eyesight.)














Today we just worked on a still life using apples. With the pastels, honeypie tried to capture the lights and darks she saw while working on dimension.
We used textured colored paper which works best with pastels, (better than white paper) brings their colors out. Chalk pastels are easy to use and great to blend with your fingers!
Chalk pastels are different than cray-pas... which are oil based pastels. Those are a whole other medium all together and I'll talk about them another day.



















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Sea shell memory game

"MOD PODGE STINKS!!!" says honeypie

We participated in this weeks theme at unplug your kids which was "OCEAN". It has been a while since we visited... seems we have been cooking together alot instead of crafting and we had fun!

We got the idea for this project from last months "Family Fun Magazine". It was to create a memory game using sea shells and stickers. So perfect for this weeks theme and the idea of saying goodbye to summer.

Well, this summer has been quite a wet one and the times we were at the beach, the waves were so rough, I am sure that is why we could only find shell bits on our sea shell hunt.

So, we visited our local craft store and purchased some.

All you need for this project is some sea shells, some cute ocean stickers, doubles of each picture since it is a matching game, and mod podge (though honeypie HATED the smell of it). I suggest using this only is you want to seal the stickers. It adds a glossy affect to the shells. Though i wonder what acrylic medium or regular elmers glue would do. Mod podge does stink!!

You can store your game in a cute box and pop it out on a rainy or snowy day, to be reminded of summer days.

This was a fast project and not complicated at all, great for little hands.

^_^ ~ birdycake