Valentines Day 2015

So for now it is a tradition that I help with valentines for my nieces.  If you remember, last year we made crayon lips for all their little friends.  This year, we made Olaf!

Only one of my nieces was able to do it this year.  Well, mostly because we waited till the last minute to do them!  I really missed Mackenzie :(

So back to Olaf.  I had seen on Pinterest really cute Olaf's in a bag so we went for it.  We had to piece together a snowman in a bag and attach a label to the top!   For the label I used pages (on a Mac).  I downloaded some Olaf clip art and used a fun font that I found from dafont.com a few months ago.  I have a secret obsession with font, by the way. I left a blank so that Ashley wrote her name one each one.  That is a total of 30.   I didn't know how well this was going to go because of flashbacks of last year and how painful it was watching a 3 year old write 6 letters. This year, much better.  Holy cow the difference three and four!

 Now time for the snowman.  I purchased everything at the local grocery store.  I used giant, regular and mini marshmallows for the body.   For the arms, of course, pretzel sticks.  For the nose and buttons, Mike and Ike's and mini M&M's respectively.

It was time to let the girl do her thing.  She put a big, medium and 4 small marshmallows in each bag.   She then continued to put in 2 pretzel sticks, 6 mini M&M's and 1 nose.   She counted each mini marshmallow and M&M's out everything.  I will come clean.... Ashley was still napping when I got to my dad's house so we started to make some in advance and left 5 for Ashley to do.  Thank goodness because it was painful watching her count out the M&M's!  While she was finishing making the snowmen, I stapled the label on.  I stapled 25 of them of before Ashley had finished 1 bag, just to give reference. They turned out totally cute!

So we were done and waiting for dinner to finish in the oven so we played!  We had left over marshmallows which we were never going to eat and pretzel sticks that our hands had been all over so we improvised.  I love her spirit and creativity.   We started building a house, then worked out with our dumbbells and then Ashley pulled out the Q-tip!  I was dying laughing!

Hope you enjoyed!  Happy Valentines Day from my family to yours!

Being a fantastic Auntie!

So although I do not have children, my sisters (in-law) DO have children so I get to do so many fun things with them!  This past weekend I got to make Valentine's with them for their schools.  I have been seeing the melted crayon hearts all over Pinterest and I have been dying to make them.  I committed to making them this year and then got my nieces on board!

So I started the night before by putting hot tap water in a bowl with the crayons to take the wrappers off.  Good thing I did because it would have been a real bore with three year olds!

Now came to the breaking part.  The girls were really good at this!  They had a blast doing it also.  I was worried there might have been tears for broken crayons but luckily they have grown out of that stage!

So after all crayons were broken, they took quick work to filling up the silicone lip molds I found at Michael's where I live.  My brother tried to teach his daughter how to put the crayons in correctly but she seemed to ignore his instructions and do how she felt was right.  In all truth, there was no wrong way!  I did let them fill them by themselves and before I put them in the oven, I evened them out a little bit.

After baking them at 230 degrees for about 15 minutes, I took them out, stuck them outside for 5 minutes (due to the 'Polar Vortex' we have been experiencing, cooling time was extra short!) and they were done!  I wish I snapped a picture of their faces when they saw them for the first time.  They could not believe that THEY made those!

The girls finished them off by putting in a clear little bag, a note and signing their names (which ended up being first initials only) and I tied them up with a ribbon.  Great time had by all participants!  I can't wait till they are in elementary school to do it all over again with them.