Hooked By Hanna

I'm so excited to kick off our Work at Home Mother's month with Hooked by Hanna. Hanna is a local WAHM that I met when I was looking for a custom made Halloween outfit for my daughter. I had a wacky idea in my head and had seen Hanna's creative work on her Facebook page so I asked her for a Lobster hat and she nailed it! We loved her outfit and the quality of the hat was so stellar that we've been wearing it still on these blustery days.

Hanna started crocheting as a mother of two boys a few years ago. She received a crochet hook and some simple patterns as a gift. Now she is a mother of three and going strong! Hanna had this to say when asked what made her business come out of that one gift:

"As the busy mom of a six-month-old and a three-year-old and as a somewhat uncrafty woman, I didn't pick up that hook until nearly a year later. Once I did, I couldn't put it down! Crochet became a creative outlet, a form of meditation, and a stress reliever. Over the next year my house was overrun with crocheted toys and hats for my boys. My Pinterest boards were overrun by patterns I wanted to try. I began giving crocheted gifts and started getting some special requests. In August of 2012, I decided to officially launch my business "Hooked by Hanna" and have enjoyed the challenge of keeping up with special orders."

Hooked by Hanna's Facebook page has an album of items already created and are for sale, as well as pictures of special orders from the past. Pinterest has been a helpful tool for Hanna and her customers in that it provides inspiration. Here's a good board to look at for exaples of what can be ordered: http://pinterest.com/hannadm/crochet-for-baby/

Hooked by Hanna was generous enough to offer a giveaway this week of one of her baby hats. Below are pictures of the two that the winner will be able to choose from.

This is a childs size tiara as one option.

This is a childs size Fireman hat as another option for our winner.

Giveaway ends on the 8th!





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Stuck inside?

As much as I would LOVE to say that we are SNOWED IN I sadly can not. We are more or less basically rained in. I am so tired of the rain and ready for the snow...hopefully soon? Anyways to get us ready for the snow I decided to search Pinterest to find some fun winter craft ideas to do with my boys. Here are two easy and fun ones that we did.

The first one we did was a name snowman. It really helps to have everything cut out ahead of time, especially if you have little ones who are going to be doing the crafts. If you have older kids who you trust with scissors then you can let them cut out their own shapes. What you need is circles. One for each letter of their name as well as one more for the head of the snowman. Then you will need the basics...eyes, nose, mouth, arms, hat etc... and last a piece of long skinny paper to be used as the back ground.
I put glue on the paper where the pieces were supposed to go and let my boys put the pieces on. They are similar yet have their own angles. Once they get older and understand what they are doing a little better then they can do their own gluing.
Here are our finished snowmen. I think they are adorable and its a great thing to use for letter and name recognition. My 3 year old will say something like "Hey Zekey has my 'E' in his name" which is pretty cute!

The next craft is really easy to do as well. All it takes are a couple of empty jars. We used plastic peanut butter jars...I have boys...these get thrown around A LOT! But they love playing with them. Then you will need a lot of cotton balls and some pieces of snowman body parts cut out (eyes, nose, arms and mouth).After they are finished stuffing their jars you can give them the body parts. This was hard for my boys to do and I ended up doing most of this part but they still had fun with them. You slid the arms in on the sides between the jar and the cotton balls then you do the rest of the items. We had the jars pretty full so it was hard to get them in there.
but they turned out pretty cute! You can use a bow or an old sock as a hat. We didn't bother with that because I knew it would have just gotten ripped off but my boys still love to play with these jarred snowmen!

Thanksgiving Turkeys

Need a last minute idea for Thanksgiving favors? I found this adorable idea online and enlisted my kiddos! Here's what you need:

Toliet paper rolls

Brown paint and/or brown markers

Googly eyes

Red/orange construction paper

Scissors

Feathers (any fall colors will work)

Craft glue

Happy participants! =)

First I had the kiddos color and paint the toliet paper rolls. We have 10 Thanksgiving guests to prepare for so they were able to color some and paint some.

While that kept them busy, I got to work cutting out the beaks, the "gobblers", and the feet for the turkeys.

Does anyone do Muffin Tin Mondays (or Tuesdays, or Wednesdays, or...)? We do! I thought it would be fun to put those tins to use and help the kiddos know what each turkey needed. They helped me count the eyes and make sure that each tin had all of the turkey parts needed.

Then it was time to assemble! One really handy tip I've learned along the way includes a paper muffin cup and Q-tips. I put a small amount of glue in each paper muffin cup and gave them a couple of Q-tips. This helps keep the mess a little more contained and allows them to do the gluing by themselves. They were VERY excited to get going!

We allowed our projects to completely dry before I added the finishing touch: names to make them into place cards. I added a little slit to each side of the turkey and wiggled the paper down in.

And because no party favor is complete without an edible treat - I plan to hide homemade peanut butter cups under each turkey. =) Enjoy!

May each of you have a happy Thanksgiving this year!

Fun Craft Idea

So today while looking through one of my magazines I found a really fun idea for a craft. It seemed pretty easy to do so I decided to do it with my 2 year old. Here is the simple instructions with pictures showing each step. This is a great activity to do. I would recommend if you have younger children to prepare the paper ahead of time so they don't have to wait. Also, if they don't like the sound of a blender do that part ahead of time.

Step 1: Tear colored construction paper into about 1 inch square pieces. (They recommended using 3 sheets of 8x11. ) Then soak in hot water for 5 minutes.
Step 2: Pour water and paper into a blender. Blend until its just little chunks of paper. (sorry I almost for got to take a picture so this is after I had removed most of the paper.)
Step 3: Pour the paper into a sieve and squeeze as much of the water out as you can. If you don't have a sieve you could probably just use your hands to do this or if you have a strainer with extremely tiny holes or a cheese cloth. Those would all work good.
Step 4: Place the paper into a bowl. I used 5 different colors and it was nice having them all ready to goat the same time.
Step 5: Take a plate or cookie sheet and cover it with a couple of old towels or rages. Then put a paper towel on top of that. Fill cookie cutters with the mush up to the top. Then smash it down, squeezing out the rest of the water and flattening the mush as flat as you can. For the smaller cookie cutter like the light bulb one I used int he picture below a spoon was needed to flatten in the small spots. I would recommend using larger cutters for little kids so its easier for them to fill and flatten. Do not remove the flattened mush from the cutters just yet! Feel free to get creative and mix colors together. We did two Christmas trees and put garland on one and ornaments on the other using other colors of paper. Add the additional colors after you flattened the main backing down. Make sure you push them into the main back well enough that they connect together.
Step 6: Move the cutters over to a new cookie sheet. (I lined mine with parchment paper). After the cookie cutter is placed down slowly push around the edges to pop the mush out. If you have a smaller cutter like the light bulb one I used be careful that you don't push just one side out first. kind of slowly work your way around the cutter. I did have to re attach some of the green part to the bulb because they came apart. To help keep this from happening make sure you has squeezed as much water out at possible and make the paper as flat as you could.
Step 7: Place the shapes into the oven for 2 hours at 200 degrees. This will dry out the paper and form the hard ornaments. I flipped mine over about 1 1/2 into the time. This helped the other side to dry up a little faster. If they still seem a little damp keep them in for a bit longer and check again. You can then glue ribbon onto the back of them for hanging.
Here are some of the light bulbs I made. My husband said they looked like carrots and beets. lol
After my 2 year old and I were finished we have some left over paper. My husband couldn't resist this fun craft and made a layered star.

I hope you enjoy this idea! This is a great way to use up those scraps of paper left over from other projects!