Happy Halloween!!

Costume Fun 2011

Emily the Peacock

Since last Halloween, Emily decided that she was going to be a Peacock.  We had a lot of fun making her costume.  She wore a pair of brown leggings and brown boots.  Then she wore a hooded sweatshirt (it actually has Ariel on the front of it) and a long sleeved teal shirt (to hide Ariel).  I made her feather fan from a piece of foam core board, which I covered in felt half circles in different shades of yellow and bright green.  Then I glued the peacock feathers to stick over the top.  The feather fan stayed on with elastic that I sewed into a circle and threaded through 2 holes in the middle of the foam core board so she could wear it like a backpack.  Finally I made an alligator clip for the head feathers.  I covered it in teal ribbon then hot glued 3 pipe cleaners to the middle and then hot glued pieces of black and blue feathers.

We were stopped throughout the night by other trick-or-treaters of all ages to comment on how cute her costume was!

Juliette the Ladybug

I am not sure how we decided that Juliette was going to be a ladybug, however the whole month of October if you asked her what she was going to be she knew and answered “a ladybug!”

My mom and I sewed the wings for her costume out of felt and used elastic to attach them over her arms like a back pack too.  She wore a black long-sleeved onesie and black leggings with black socks and shoes.  I knew she would never wear a headband for the antenna so I lined 2 alligator clips with black ribbon and hot glued a pipe cleaner to each one.  Then I rolled the top of the pipe cleaner into a ball.  She loves clips so they stayed on the whole day without any problem.

She loved wearing her costume.  I love that we can now add it to our dress up collection.

  Trick or Treating 

The girls loved being able to pick their own candy at the different houses!

Waiting to yell “Trick-or-Treat”

Cousin Brianna the Cat walking with Juliette…they had so much fun together!

Off to the next house for more treats!!

Once we got home Emily couldn’t wait for Daddy to dump all of her candy on top of her, I think this will be a yearly picture!!

      Then Emily sorted all of her candy!

(I used to love doing the same thing with my candy when I was little too)

Happy Halloween!!!

A Very Merry Shutterfly Christmas Card Giveaway!!!

I have used Shutterfly for both Emily and Juliette’s  Birth Announcements and was so pleased with how easy they were to create and personalize.  Last year we began the tradition of creating a Summer Fun Photo Book and I loved how easy Shutterfly made it to record all the special memories we shared together.  Every year we send a Christmas Photo Card to our friends and family because I think it is great to be able to send smiles along with our Christmas Greetings!  For Christmas last year we created our cards on Shutterfly and I was impressed with all the different styles available.  It was a lot of fun to try them out with the pictures that we took.  I was thrilled with the cards that we finally decided on and ordered from Shutterfly.

This year there are so many new styles to choose from and after checking out all of the new Christmas Card designs I can’t wait to create our family Christmas Card. 

So far my favorite designs are:

All The Happiness

  Bold Bright Joy

 Snowflake Borders

Once the great Christmas card photo shoot of 2011 is over and I upload my pictures I will be able to make the final decision.  Until then I definitely recommend checking out all that Shutterfly has to offer!

**Update**
Here it is!!  Our photo shoot was a little less than fun, however the card still came out amazing.  Can't wait to recieve them and then send them to all of our family and friends.  Click below to check out all the other amazing designs. 

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

The Giveaway!

Shutterfly has generously offered 2 of my readers a chance to win 25 free 5x7 flat or folded cards.

( Winner will be responsible for all applicable taxes, shipping and handling).

Mandatory Entry

Visit Shutterfly and tell me which is your favorite Holiday Card Design or Shutterfly Photo Gift Idea????

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This giveaway ends on November 5, 2011 at 11:59pm.

The winner will be drawn by random.org and announced on this blog as well as emailed. Winner will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn. Email address must be in at least one comment or visible on your profile to win.

Disclosure: I will receive free cards for writing this post to participate in Shutterfly’s holiday card promotion however these are my own unbiased experiences and opinions.

stART ~ Stellaluna

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART.  **This is a work in progress so if you have participated and would like to be added to the list, leave me a comment and let me know :0)

Emily and Juliette enjoyed listening to Stellaluna, by Janell Cannon.  This is a wonderful story about a bat that is separated from its mother after they are attacked by an owl.  Stellaluna lands in a bird’s nest and is then raised with the family of birds.  She begins to act like the birds, eating bugs, sleeping at night and sleeping upright in their nest.  One day when she learns to fly she finds her mother and learns that she can see in the dark and that she is supposed to sleep upside down.  Stellaluna is excited to tell the birds what she has learned, but they soon find out that although they are very similar to each other, they are also very different.  Emily was happy that they were still friends at the end of the story.  I thought this was a great story, and liked the facts that are included throughout the story and on the last to pages as well.

To go along with this book we made toilet paper tube bats.  I folded the tops of the tubes down in opposite directions to make the two points for the ears and point at the bottom for the body.   Emily and Juliette painted their bats and once they were dry glued on there wings and used small red dot stickers for the eyes.

The girls finished bats.

Now it is your turn!! Click below to link up a book you read and the project or activity that you did to go with it.

Having Fun Learning

Having Fun Learning Together This Week!!!

Emily is 4.5 years old and Juliette is 27months old

Emily and Juliette are really enjoying helping me watch their cousin who is 12 weeks old.  He fits right in with them and both Emily and Juliette look forward to having him come over.  The girls have been keeping busy with lots of different activities while I am with the baby.  They play nicely together and so far it has been working out really well.

The girls liked coloring in a different spot.  I let them bring their papers and markers onto the floor in the living room, the change of location made this activity a little different and they thought it was fun.

Juliette has enjoyed having some quiet time in her room, when I went to check on her she was quietly “reading” her books.  I often find this bookcase completely empty after she has “read” through all of them and left them in a huge pile on the floor!  She is such little bookworm, just like Emily :)

  Juliette loves helping feed her baby cousin.

Emily enjoyed dressing up her Snap 'N Style Doll and making up stories to go with them.  This doll is getting ready to be in a wedding! The highlight of  Emily’s week would have to be getting to use the peeler to help me peel carrots for dinner.

The girls with Grandpa playing Sequence for Kids .  This game is a fun strategy game.  Emily loves playing to block other people, she will block them before putting down her own winning piece.

  Emily relaxing on the couch working on her Lauri Toys Dot-2-Dot Lacing Enchanted Kingdom cards.  These are lacing cards that have numbers on them like a connect the dots puzzle.  She has to begin at #1 and lace through to the last number in order.

Emily found and cut out pictures in a magazine that began with the letter A

Juliette has really enjoyed building with Duplos she has been creating some really great structures.  Usually she just fills the whole board with one layer, now she is building up to make some tall towers.

After making our Water Color Leaves for our stART project the girls had fun exploring with the liquid watercolors and diffuser paper a little more.

Great fine motor practice with theseMelissa & Doug DeluxeLacing Beads   

Juliette played Perfection .  She requests this game a couple of times a week.  She does it without the timer and then when she is finished we push the board down set the timer and wait for it to pop up.

Juliette is amazing at Zingo , she has been playing this bingo game almost a year now and every time we play I am amazed at how she seems to barely look at her card yet know exactly what she needs and what I need when we play.  Her favorite part is moving the tile dispenser to show the new tiles.

 

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking these buttons!!

stART ~ Corduroy’s Halloween

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART.  **This is a work in progress so if you have participated and would like to be added to the list, leave me a comment and let me know :0)

This week we read Corduroy's Halloween, by B. G. Hennessy.  This is a cute lift the flap book that tells the story of how a little bear named Corduroy prepares to celebrate Halloween.  Emily and Juliette love looking under the flaps to see the fun surprises underneath while we are reading the story.

Both Emily and Juliette liked the Jack-o-Lanterns that are in the story so we made our own out of paper.  To make them a little more special we made them sun-catcher Jack-o-lanterns.

I cut a pumpkin shape out of card stock paper and the girls picked which way they wanted to hold it so they could have a tall skinny pumpkin or a short squatty one.  Next,  Emily had fun drawing a face on hers.  Then I cut it out with an Exacto knife type of a cutter.   For Juliette I drew the face and cut it out.

Then they painted their pumpkins.

After they dried they glued yellow tissue paper to the back of the pumpkin over the holes for the eyes, mouth and nose.  Emily was determined to cover her entire back with tissue paper.

Finally they glued on the stem, leaf that was cut out of construction paper  and the vine which is a piece of pipe cleaner.

Emily’s Jack-o-Lantern

 

Juliette’s Jack-o-Lantern

 

I love how when the sun is shining it really lights up the Jack-o-Lanterns face!!

Now it is your turn!! Click below to link up a book you read and the project or activity that you did to go with it.