Easy City Scape Mural

During taping for a segment on today’s 10! Show, I had the pleasure of meeting Eren Cannata, a very talented singer/songwriter who was today’s musical guest. Eren performed his title track from his latest CD “Blame it on the City” — a fantastic song, and it was the inspiration for our lovely city scape mural! […]

Quick Craft — Piñata Suncatchers

It’s almost time for Cinco de Mayo — one of my favorite holidays! I love the food, the music, and all the bright beautiful colors! We made fun pinata suncatchers today to make our kitchen look a little more festive. I drew an outline of a donkey onto some construction paper, and Emily cut out […]

LIVE and in HD… It’s FFFB!

I was interviewed for two segments LIVE this morning on 69 News at Sunrise to share some of my ideas for family fun on rainy days! In case you missed today’s show, here are the clips: Next, Eve Tannery and I had LOTS of fun gettin’ crafty! Special thanks to Eve and the crew over […]

Easy Spring Mural

A few days ago, I bought a package of flower-shaped Post-Its. We couldn’t resist making an inexpensive no-mess Spring mural with them! While Clara was napping this afternoon, Emily helped me take down the four leaf clovers in the sewing room and replace them with colorful flowers! One pack of Post-Its comes with three different […]

Crazy Weather Pictures

We’ve had a lot of crazy weather here lately. One day it’s warm and sunny, and the next (like today) is cold and rainy. So we made some crazy weather pictures! To make your own, you will need a clear sheet protector (very inexpensive), some wipe off markers, two binder clips, and some markers or […]

Birds on a Wire

These colorful birds are so happy and cheerful! The best part — they were made using leftover color coding labels from the dollar store. Very inexpensive, since we had an entire pack of 225 of them for $1! First, we cut a piece of blue construction paper in half to form two long rectangles. Then, […]

Flower Arranging 101 — Dollar Store Style

With more snow forecasted for today, this sweet flower arrangement was a nice reminder that Spring will be coming soon! Isn’t it so bright and cheerful? Emily put it together all by herself, and the best part is that all of the materials for this craft either came from the thrift store or the dollar […]

Crafting with Recyclables – Giant Sunflower

It was the sheer size of this giant sunflower that made us smile, and what a fun way to reuse those empty oatmeal canisters! We used a technique similar to the one here, but on a grand scale. We love crafting with recyclables because they are FREE art materials! To make your own giant flower, […]

$5 Friday — Dollar Store Smiles Edition

When will the snow ever end??? I don’t know about you guys, but all this whiteness and being cooped up in the house for far too long was enough to drive us all a little coo-coo. So this afternoon I took Emily with me to the dollar store for another $5 Friday adventure! This time […]

Psychedelic Snowman Sculpture

Who says you can only build a snowman outdoors? And while we’re at it… why can’t he be a bit more colorful? After gathering some snow from outside, we made our sculptures with it…. …and we brightened up our designs using some sheets of bleeding art tissue paper! [Note: This is different from regular tissue […]

Sunny Day

We made our own sunshine today! There was lots of sunbathing…. …jumping around in our bathing suits, dancing to music by The Beach Boys… …reading trashy novels (or library books)…. …and what beach day would be complete without ice pops? Now, if you’ll excuse me…. I think I hear my piña colada calling.

Weekend Rewind — Indoor Sandbox

Hope everyone is enjoying the weekend! Here’s a fun post from our archives, and one that I talked about on our debut for The 10! Show. The girls had so much fun with this indoor sandbox, and it’s a great activity even the littlest ones can enjoy! One of the things Emily misses the most […]

Happy Birthday, Bubble Wrap!

Bubble Wrap is turning 50 years old this Monday! We’ll use any excuse to celebrate!! We save and reuse this stuff all the time. It was the perfect excuse to bring it out for the girls to enjoy! Bubble wrap was originally intended as a new kind of wallpaper, but soon after became used as […]

Low-Mess Mittens Painting

Clara and Emily loved painting these mitten pictures, and there was very little mess involved! The secret is to use bleeding art tissue, which is available at any art supply store and is very inexpensive. I cut out some mitten shapes from the bleeding art tissue paper and arranged them on top of some very […]

Indoor Snow Picnic

The girls wanted to have a picnic snack this afternoon, so we made an indoor snow picnic — it was so much fun! Clara, still in her pajamas, was delighted to see this set up in our living room. Emily helped me hang some leftover wrapping paper up on the wall, and we used white […]

Peace Dove Handprints

In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we made peace doves using hand prints! This was a quick and fun craft, and it introduced the dove as a symbol of peace. To make your own peace dove handprint, you will need: white paint, orange and blue construction paper, glue, and a paint brush. Oh […]

Snowflakes at Night

I cut out some paper snowflakes this afternoon, and Emily thought it would be fun to make snowflake rubbings with them! We used black construction paper, and put the paper snowflakes underneath. Then, she used the side of a white crayon to make the rubbing. She thought they looked like snowflakes at night! Clara gave […]

Cheap Thrills — Indoor Hopscotch

It was far too cold outside to run around and play. Instead, we made a hopscotch grid in our foyer using masking tape on the floor! The girls got lots of exercise! (I did too.) We have slate flooring in our foyer, so Emily practiced writing her numbers with chalk. You could also add the […]