Perfect Gift Wrapping Ideas -- a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Have you entered my current giveaway for a custom canvas print? There are only one more day to enter!!

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

How do you wrap gifts? Do you just throw them in a gift bag? I'll admit I often do at least for gifts for kids. However I always love playing with gift wrapping. At work we charge at least $6 plus the supplies for gift wrapping. I'm always amazed when people pay it. I will admit the gifts always look beautiful when they are done. They are usually done in a seam line wrapping style. And today's book that I am sharing gives a tutorial in this kind of wrapping!

Virtual Book Club for Kids-- The Berry Book by Gail Gibbons

With summer just around the corner, this book seemed to be the best for our pick this month. Gail Gibbons has so many amazing books. It was hard to choose one, but between summer coming, berry season starting and the fact that Hazel and I both love most berries, it seemed like a perfect fit!

For those of you who may not know about the Virtual Book Club for Kids, it is hosted by a group of amazing bloggers. Each month an author is chosen and each blogger chooses a book (or books) by that author and do an activity or craft to go with the book. Then we host a blog hop for you to share any crafts or activities to go with any books by this month's author. This month the author is Gail Gibbons.Here are the wonderful bloggers who host this great club!

Toddler Approved - Rainy Day Mum - Adventures in Reading with Kids - 3 Dinosaurs - Royal Baloo - The Educators' Spin On It - Inspiration Laboratories - Pleasantest Thing - Edventures with Kids - Two Big Two Little - Playing With Words 365 - Kitchen Counter Chronicles - Outlaw Mom - Mommy and Me Book Club - Crafty Moms Share - No Twiddle Twaddle - The Good Long Road - Ready. Set. Read 2 Me - Reading Confetti - Mama Smiles - Juggling with Kids- Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas - Creekside Learning - Creative Family Fun - The Usual Mayhem - Teach Preschool - PlayDrMom - CraftoArt - Here Come the Girls - Being a Conscious Parent - Smiling like Sunshine - Crayon Freckles - Train Up a Child - Smile Play Learn - Enchanted Homeschooling Mom - Coffee Cups and Crayons - Having Fun at Chelle's House- Love, Play, Learn - Juggling With Kids - Motherhood on a Dime - Growing Book By Book

- This Reading Mama - Fantastic Fun and Learning

  This month we picked The Berry Book. This book goes through various kinds of berries. It also tells us which ones are edible and which ones are not. At the end of the book there are recipes for blueberry pie, strawberry jam, and raspberry ice cream. 

The book also mentions strawberry festivals and the blueberry festival held in Maine. Our town happened to have its Annual Strawberry Festival on Saturday. It is held by the town's historical society. The only strawberry related thing at it is the strawberry shortcake. We however had never gone, so we did. They had a few crafters as well as some yard sale type tables and then the historical society building was open with a 1920 Ford on display as well as a lantern collection. Hazel enjoyed the strawberry shortcake.

We also decided to try the blueberry pie recipe. Since Sunday was Father's Day we thought it would be a nice treat for Daddy and Pop. We used a frozen pie crust and stuck to the recipe. Everyone enjoyed it.

We are planning on making some raspberry jam as well, but did not get to it. I promised Hazel we would make some this year. She really enjoyed making strawberry jam with my mother last year and blueberry jam with me. Since raspberries are so expensive, I decided to try a recipe that uses frozen ones. I'll let you know how it comes out. I am also hoping to make some strawberry soup. When we were in Florida, we had some delicious strawberry soup at the 1900 Park Fare in Disney's Grand Floridian. Hazel and I both loved it!

My parents also brought us a lovely surprise when they came to visit for Father's Day--some of the strawberries from their garden! They are so much better than the store bought ones!!

Now it is your turn. Have you explored any of Gail Gibbons' books? Please join us in this blog hop if you have!!

Holy Hot Mess -- Book Review & Mommy Life Update

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Life has been tough. The past 18 months have been tough on everyone with Covid. However the last month especially has had its own toughness for me. About nine years ago my parents sat Steve and I down at Christmas to let us know my father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. It was caught pretty early. He asked us not to tell Hazel. Fast forward to about six summers ago when my father was discussing his Alzheimer's Disease openly at the dinner table with Hazel there. It was the first time she was hearing he had it. He had forgotten we hadn't told her. He was still doing all right. Then about four years ago he started a slow decline. My parents moved from the house my grandparents (my dad's parents) built on Cape Cod to a 62 and over condo building. The house was becoming too much for them to handle. My sisters and I took over the care of the house and rent it out for much of the summer. We use it for holidays and off-season vacations mostly. We

Mother's Day Crafts & Activities -- a Crafty Weekends Link Party

Today is Mother's Day here in the United States. We have had a bit crazy of a week, but it did involve some fun crafts that are great crafts for Mother's Day and can be adapted for other gifts like teacher gifts, Father's Day and birthday gifts! 

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Cinderlad

With it being St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to share another Irish Cinderella. If you missed my post last week sharing Fair, Brown and Trembling, you can check it out and on it I shared some information about Ireland. Since I already shared the information there, I'm going to skip that part of this post. So this week's story is a bit different. It is called Cinderlad. The book we read is by Shirley Climo. The first major difference is the Cinderella character is male. And he saves a princess from death, but that is getting ahead of ourselves.

This book begins with the birth of a baby boy. His mother names him Becan, which means "little one" in Irish. Becan's feet grew unusually large, but he remained relatively short. His mother died while he was young. His father who was a peddler was away often and would bring back what was needed. One day he came back with a new wife and her three almost grown daughters. Then he went off to work again. The stepmother and her daughters watched Becan and always blamed everything on him. The daughters called him Little Big Foot. Eventually the stepmother got sick of having him around and sent him off to be a herdboy for the cows. Becan was fine with this however he was afraid of the tales he heard about the large speckled bull who could kill a man by kicking him. 

One day the bull arrived at the field where Becan took his father's cows. Becan scratched him in the same place the cows liked to be scratched and they became friends. Becan would tell the bull about his problems and one day the bull talked back. He told Becan he would not starve while he was around and told him to pull out what was in his ear. This was an amazing meal wrapped in a table cloth. After that every day the bull would come at lunch time to feed Becan. He stopped accepting the scraps his stepmother offered for dinner and she became suspicious. She sent her eldest daughter to spy on him to see who was feeding him. The daughter came home and reported to the mother. The mother told her they would kill the bull and have a nice stew. Becan heard everything although they thought he was asleep. 

At day break Becan ran off to warn his friend. The bull told him to jump on his back and they would escape. The traveled a long way until the bull stopped and told Becan that this is where they would say goodbye. He told him a grey bull would come to fight him and the grey bull would kill him. When he died he told Becan to twist off his extra long tail and wear it as a belt. Becan should use it whenever he needed the bull the most. Becan was horrified at this thought, but the bull insisted. All happened as the speckled bull said. The grey bull arrived and they fought all day. At days end the speckled bull was dead and the grey bull had disappeared. Becan cried all night by his friend then remembering what he said he easily twisted off his tail and wrapped it around his body twice as a belt. Then he reached in his ear one more time and pulled out the white table cloth and covered the bull with it. Then he wandered off on his own. 

While walking on his own, his feet hurt (he was barefoot) and eventually a gentleman offered him a ride on his horse. When Becan told him he was going anywhere he offered Becan a job as a herdboy. The gentleman warned him that his next door neighbor was an arhach (a giant) and told him to stay on his side of the fence. Becan always wanted to see a giant, so he did not listen. When the horse, cows, sheep and donkey had eaten all the grass on the gentleman's side of the fence, Becan climbed up and saw that the giant had lots of grass and apple trees. He knocked down some of the stones of the fence so the animals could pass over it and then they all went to where there was food. The giant arrived and almost killed Becan until he remembered his bull tail belt.

The bull tail wrapped itself around the giant's neck. The giant begged for him to remove it and Becan said he only would if the giant gave him his boots and disappeared forever. The giant gave Becan his boots which fit him perfectly and also dropped his sword which Becan picked up and wore in his belt.

One day the gentleman warned Becan to stay close to home because it was Dragon Day in Kinsale. He explained that every year the dragon came out of the ocean and ate the most fair maiden. If the fairest maiden was not tied to the post to be eaten the dragon would make the water swell over the entire town. This year the fairest maiden was the king's own daughter, Princess Finola. Well of course, Becan went off to see what was going to happen. He rode the man's donkey to town and saw the princess tied to a post. Everyone around her ignored her cries for help and would not look at her. Then he said he would fight for her. And the dragon appeared.

He and the dragon fought for a long time. His arm got tired of swinging the giant's sword. When he pricked the dragon with it, the dragon acted like it was a minor pinprick. Then Becan remembered the bull's tail and pulled it off. It magically wrapped itself around the dragon's jaws and the dragon returned to the sea with the tail.

Princess Finola wanted to thank him, but at the same time he heard his three stepsisters call out "Little Big Foot" and he wanted to escape. Princess Finola reached out for him and grabbed his boot. He rode the donkey away having lost one boot. Princess Finola announced she would only marry the man who fit the boot since he was the only one who had helped her. The king sent a messenger out looking for the man who fit the boot. It was a year before the messenger arrived at the gentleman's house. The gentleman tried it on and it slid right off. Then he told the messenger to let the boy try it on. The messenger didn't think a herdboy would be the one, but let him do it anyway. Of course it fit and Becan told them he had its mate in the cowshed. Becan rode the gentleman's horse to the castle where Princess Finola waited for him. She commented on how they were the same height so they would see eye-to-eye on things and told him he would now be Prince Becan. They got married and lived happily ever after.

Our crafts for this book were of course our peg dolls and then we used DLTK toilet paper roll crafts for the bull and the dragon. We used a paper towel roll for the giant and just made it ourselves. 

Later this week we will be sharing more Irish cooking and hope you will join us. Tomorrow we will feature the first of this month's Virtual Book Club for Kids posts and it will include a giveaway. Please come see and enter!!

Source

Paper Cutting for Celebrations -- a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of this book free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation. 

This Thursday is the Multicultural Kid Blogs' Chinese New Year Blog Hop. In preparation I have been gathering some great resources and I thought I would share the craft one with you tonight. It is Paper Cutting for Celebrations: 100+ Chinese Designs for Festive Holidays and Special Occasions by Zhao Ziping. 

Diversity Calendar

Disclosure: I was sent a free digital copy of this product for this review. All opinions are my own and I received no other compensation. I am providing links for your ease.

Do you try to teach your child(ren) about different cultures? I find it so hard to keep up with all the various holidays and celebrations that there are around the world, but also find it important to teach Hazel about it all. I like to supplement what she learns at school and add more about other cultures and religions so that she will have a better understanding of the world. After all if we all had a better understanding of each other perhaps we could live in peace. Well Becky Morales of Kid World Citizen has made it easy for everyone with her new Diversity Calendar of Multicultural Holidays for Academic School Year 2016-2017. It is available at Teachers Pay Teachers for $3.50 for a digital download.

Nature Art and Activities

Hazel's Pine Cone Fairy

Today was a fun packed day at our house. Hazel did not take a nap, so it was also a long day. We started our morning with an early play date, though both kids slept in so it was later than usual. During which we played inside and outside. Hazel wanted to take a walk with her little wagon so she could collect nature treasures. Of course to her all the leaves are treasures so we didn't get very far.

After our playdate Hazel and I headed over to the Farmer's Market. I promised to buy her some apple cider doughnuts and some apple cider. It was the last week of the Farmer's Market in our town, so it was our last chance. Then we came home and had lunch and tried to nap. I almost fell asleep, but apparently Hazel didn't want to and decided she wanted quiet time today instead. Quiet time is at least half an hour of alone time in her room. She can play with her dollhouse or read her books in there, but shouldn't call me unless it is an emergency. She is getting much better at this. I feel it is important for each of us to have a little down time in our day and a change of pace as well as time to be alone.

Acorn and Pinecone Paintings

Then we started to do some crafts. (Well actually I guess we continued to do crafts since we had done some before our playdate this morning.) These crafts however were done in the garage. I would have done them outside, but after our Father's Day experience outside crafts do not work for us. We started with the acorn painting similar to what I saw on Tippytoe Crafts. However I didn't look to see what they did in awhile, so I went with my own intuition. We also did not have many complete acorns so we threw in some pinecones. We put a piece of white paper in a shirt box and then dipped acorns, acorn caps, and pinecones into fall colored paints. The result was interesting.

Hazel's Fall Treasure Wreath

My First Nature Person

Next we took some of those leaves, pinecones, flowers, acorns (well mostly caps) and glued them onto paper and a cut paper plate wreath.

My Maple Leaf Fairy

Our Oak Leaf Fairy

Then we decided to make leaf people which we then made into leaf fairies. Oh, and Hazel decided to use a pinecone instead of a leaf for one of them.

Then Hazel really wanted to go dig in the garden, so I let her. Yesterday she got to dig to help plant fall bulbs. And I was very glad she wasn't worried about getting dirty like she use to be.

Hazel's Digging Adventure

After digging, we decided to try some more painting. This time we used flowers, leaves and anything we could find as our brushes. We had a great time. Hazel got sick of the flowers, etc. and decided to use her fingers and hands.

Choosing a flower

Dipping it

The Result of Flower Painting

Painting with her hands

Her hands and painting

While she had her hands in the paint I pulled out more fall colored paper and got her to do her handprints for handprint turkey cards for Thanksgiving. I will stash them away for a bit. Then I hosed her off. She somehow ended up with orange paint in her hair. It was definitely a bath night tonight. We did some more painting and crafts, but we will safe those for another post. I figured while she was already dirty to do footprint paintings too. They are our Halloween cards. I'll share our Halloween crafts tomorrow.

Enjoy!

Sharing Saturday #24

Wow, what amazing ideas were shared last week!! I loved them all. If you have not had a chance to check them out, please do so and share some comment love.

This week we had about a 20-way tie for the most clicked, so I'm just going to share a few of my favorites!!
In honor of Father's Day, one had to be a gift for Dad:
From East Coast Mommy: DIY Father's Day Gift

From Fit Kids Clubhouse: Preschool Science Matters

From Healthy Mama: Ice Sculpture

From Making Memories....One Fun Thing After Another: Bubble Art

From Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational: Hide & Seek Camouflage Game

If you were featured here please stop by here and grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog!

From Your Host:

From Crafty Moms Share: Stenciled and Stamped T-Shirts

 Now for This Week's Party

A Few Simple Guidelines:
1)  Please follow both hosts via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

Hosts are Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart. 

2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post.

3) Post the button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

Button Code:

<a href="http://craftymomsshare.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"><img alt="Photobucket" border="0" src="http://i1101.photobucket.com/albums/g424/cpericola/SharingSaturdayoption2-001.jpg" /></a>

4. Optional: Like us on Facebook and Google+
Disclaimer: By sharing here, you are giving Crafty Moms Share and Mama Mia's Heart2Heart permission to use your photos for features and to pin your craft at Pinterest. 

All right everyone...This is a PARTY!! Have Fun!!

Journal Sparks -- a Crafty Weekends Review & Link Party

Disclosure: I was sent this book to review free of charge from Storey Publishing. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Do you need a spark for your creativity? I think every crafter goes through a dry spell. Life gets busy or you just don't feel like creating anything right then. Today's book helps everyone find a little creativity spark. The book is Journal Sparks: Fire Up Your Creativity with Spontaneous Art, Wild Writings and Inventive Thinking  by Emily K. Neuburger.  You may remember Emily K. Neuburger from Show Me a Story. 

Crafty Weekends -- a craft link party

I had big plans to review a fun craft book with you tonight, but life got in my way. Since I want to provide the best review I can (and as honest as I can) it will wait a week. Sorry!! However, it is time to see what you have been creating! Thank you to everyone who shared with us last party. Below are a few of the features from our party. I am sharing some party features, some various craft features and bag features. Please remember for your child-oriented crafts, activities, lessons, etc. Sharing Saturday is going on!!  I can't wait to see what your latest creations!!