Free Downloads that I LOVE

Wanted to let everyone know about an amazing free download going on right now over at q.a.design.

Jenna is sharing her state/country prints which she normally sells on etsy.

Kentucky

Michigan

 Illinois

I have actually not so secretly coveted these prints for a long time.

I made some copy cat ones (since she didn’t have Ontario) using canvas and paints for our office/playroom over a year ago and still love them.

From left to right the pictures are 1) of Ontario, CAN where my husband was born 2) where we live now and (3) the state I was born in.

Click here to go to the free downloadable prints from q.a. designs

 Do you see any prints for your house or to give as gifts?

Art Project with Andrew

My six year old has been asking for months to create a piece of wall art similar to this one.

source

I have stalled and stalled on it because 1) it would take a good amount of time to complete and 2) I couldn’t quite decide what the best way to make a frame for it would be.

But the since this project was on the list I was forced to make a decision and begin.

We looked around the garage and found this old Halloween decoration which was broken.

My husband add the ears which were previously the mummy arms while old metal coat hangers became the base for the antlers and the nose.

Using a mix of half Elmer’s glue and half water, Andrew and I paper mached strips of newspaper onto the structure.

Over the course of a week we put on four separate layers.

After a trip to the craft store to choose his colors, Andrew painted his gazelle with a combination of orange, coral, black, white, and blue colors.

There was a minor debate about where this piece of art should hang. Andrew suggested my bedroom which I quickly thanked him for but declined. My thought was for it to go in his bedroom room. He quickly declined that offer. We finally settled on an area in our playroom above a doorway.

Andrew’s already talking about making a water buffalo for the living room and an elephant for his sisters’ room.

I’m thinking I’m going to have to introduce him to the idea of small sculptures.

Tuesday To Do Party

Storybook Valentines

While the Angry Bird Valentines I made for my boys are great, they weren’t really appropriate for my 2 year old.

So…I made Storybook Valentines.

All of her favorites characters are here.

We taped a silly band bracelet to the back of the card and called it DONE!

If you’d like a copy of these valentines,click here.

If you decide to download, please consider becoming a follower of Big D & Me.

Angry Birds Valentines

My six year old requested Angry Birds valentines this year.

I just made them and he is “super” excited to give them to his friends.

If you’d like a copy of the valentines, click here.

Please consider becoming a follower of Big D & Me if you decide to download.

I found the Angry Bird art work on this blog. He has t-shirts and bumper stickers to buy of these super hero birds. I’m thinking those might make a great birthday gift for someone.

 If you’d like something for the younger crowd, I have some Storybook Character Printable Valentines.

michellepaige Tuesday To Do FEatured Todays Creative Blog Making

Jedi Art

My boys have a bedroom which is dominated by Star Wars.

When we moved into our new house, my mom bought the boys Star Wars comforters for their bed, so in their eyes, the rest of the room had to follow suit.

I told them I would try.

They turned to me and said, “Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.”

“I’m just worried you won’t like it.”

To which they said, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

OK, so maybe they didn’t say it in so many words.

They didn’t have to. They’re Jedis and I read their mind 🙂

For the art work above their bed, I used 6 IKEA frames, a printer, and some material.

Four of the frames are simply Lego Star Wars minifigures printed out.

We goggled their favorite characters and found pictures which would enlarge clearly. Each minifigure had their own space thanks to the picture divider included with the frame.

The other two frames have, “Jedi Alex,” and “Jedi Andrew,” made out of left over material from their window covering.

First, I wrapped the frame in burlap. Next I used the Star Wars font to print out their names on card stock. Next, I cut out the cardstock letters and placed them over some thin denim. I held each letter in place while I cut the denim around the letter. For the space inside the letters I glued different material on top of the denim.

Across from the beds are the chicken wire frames I shared last year.

The Lego minifigure containers sit next to the frames.

Here’s one more look at the art.

May the crafting force be with you!

Disguise

Andrew, who’s six,  came home with some additional homework this week.

His assignment was to provide Tom the Turkey with a disguise so that he wouldn’t be cooked on Thanksgiving Day.

Andrew turned his turkey into an elf complete with a toy train in his left wing.

Turkey In Disguise

The next day I was eager to hear all about the other students’ turkeys.

Andrew explained, “There was a Yoda, a Harry Potter, and a cow.

Jane made a cow. She took a paper bag and covered her turkey with it and pasted a cow head on it.

It looks like a kid made it.”

Apparently, art at five and half is just childish while art at six qualifies you to work at the Guggenheim.

Care Bear Bingo

I don’t know about you but last night I ate about twenty mini candy bars.

If anything, I am underestimating.

I spent the rest of the night complaining about my aching stomach while my husband looked on with a, “Why are you surprised by this…. this happens every year,” look.

Later in the week I’ll post some of our Halloween pictures but for now I have this for you.

Care Bear Bingo!

I am going to a birthday party for a little girl turning four with my two youngest this weekend. The birthday girl is very into Care Bears so I decided I would make her a Care Bear bingo game.

The set consists of 5 cards and 25 calling cards.

The game is a preschool version of bingo with only sixteen spaces instead of the usual twenty-five. Fewer spaces for the younger kids tends to work better.

I also printed off two copies of the calling cards, cut them apart, and placed them in a small box for a memory game.


In order to download the bingo game, please click on the bingo board above. The PDF document should come up. From there, print.

If you decide to print, please consider becoming a follower of Big D & Me.

If you are interested in other printable bingo games please look in my “Printables” section at the top. I am also selling a Thanksgiving bingo game in my etsy shop.

Hopefully this is the first of many girly bingo sets!

Todays Creative Blog Tuesday To Do Party Weekend Bloggy Reading

Thankful Turkey

This was originally posted last November when only 3 people read my blog – I will have our turkey ready for this Nov 1st as the kids have come to expect it now that this will be our third year sharing our thanks this way.

With the upcoming holidays I find my kids increasingly thinking about what they can get – i.e. video games or enormous toys. Therefore they have not set foot in a toy store since August and I hoard all toy catalogs that come to the house. I’ve been trying to really make it a point in the last year or two to help them think of others and be thankful for what they have.

Last year I made “Tom the Turkey” to help remind us that we are indeed lucky in many ways. I made Tom out of brown bags from the grocery store (yes I know cloth bags are important but sometimes you just need to have the brown bags for projects). Then I cut out feathers from construction paper that we had.

After dinner, everyone gets a feather and writes down what they are thankful for that day. Then we use a glue stick to put the feathers up. The boys seem to really enjoy this activity and won’t let us leave the table without filling out our feathers.

I included a picture of Tom from last year since this year’s turkey has tons of feathers covering his face.

thanksgiving turkey

A sampling of feathers from this year:

From the 8 year old:

I am thankful for….our car…having enough food on the table…going to Gramma & Grampa’s house for Thanksgiving….the Saints winning the Super Bowl.

From the 5 year old:

I am thankful for….Jesus & God…..the shepherd watching over me….going to Gramma & Grampa’s…..eating turkey (in reality he won’t touch the turkey or mashed potatoes with a 10 foot pole….Wyoming and Montana.

What can I say… the boy loves geography.

What are some of the ways your family shares what they are thankful for?

Todays Creative Blog Tuesday To Do Party

Spooky Tree…A New Tradition

Last year as I was toodling around Goodwill I came upon this crazy looking metal tree. I had seen this piece in a magazine at some point and remembered it was an Easter decoration with decorated eggs hanging from it.

While I didn’t want an egg holder, I did want a spooky tree for Halloween. I bought the tree for $2.99 and brought it home. To say my husband was skeptical is an understatement. But as usual he gave me an unsure nod and said nothing. Thanks Derek!

I sprayed the piece black and let the kids decorate it. They spent a fair amount of time one Saturday morning working on it.

The main decorations were foam Halloween stickers – pumpkins, bats, and ghosts. They also included a mummy they printed out along with some homemade tombstones. The tombstones are made of a foam board covered with felt with letter stickers to create the R.I.P. messages.

I cut out a witch silhouette from foam board to add to the very top.

This year we were able to take out our spooky tree and redecorate it – a fun new tradition. It now sits on its new home, our dining room table…at least until Nov 1.

How’s your Halloween decorating going?

I Heart Craft Things – Guest Post

Today I have a blogger here who you must meet if you have kids. Rachel, the mom behind I Heart Crafty Things, does activities with her kids which truly inspire me to do more with my children. Most of Rachel’s activities revolve around children’s literature and corresponding learning projects. (I decided to say learning projects instead of art projects since following directions, cutting, and tracing are all such important skills for little ones to learn.) Some of my favorite I Heart Crafty Things posts are Paper Plate Pirates, Red Light, Green Light Activities (wonderful beginning math concepts in this post), and the Piggy Snacks . So without furth ado…here’s Rachel.


Hi, I’m Rachel from I Heart Crafty Things. I discovered Big D & Me about a month ago and after reading about her recent Boot Camp experience, I knew she was my kind of gal. Her sense of humor is just what a stay at home Mom of 3 needs to help keep me sane on those unbearable days! That is why I was sooooo excited when Jennifer asked me to guest post.

After having my first child, I found myself in this “Oh my gosh, I have no talents or interests in my life” kind of slump, and quickly discovered an unfounded passion within myself for children’s literature and crafting. I can honestly say that over the years it is what has kept me sane and happy as a Mother. I was not a creative or imaginative child at all, and being able to instill some of that into my children has made me a really proud Mommy. Over at I Heart Crafty Things you will read about fun children’s crafts coupled with children’s books. Like when we created these Band-Aid Fireflies to go along with “The Very Lonely Firefly” by Eric Carle.

or our Eric Carle inspired Very Hungry Caterpillar’s

I also try to keep things fun for my First Grader too with projects like this “Out of this World” Craft.

This past week I’ve been reviewing shapes with my Preschooler. We read the fun book “My Heart is like a Zoo” by Michael Hall.

It is a fabulous children’s story where the author creates animals out of heart shapes. Each page displays a different animal with descriptions that include feelings like “snappy as a crab” and “angry as a bear”. Reading this story was a great opportunity to talk about feelings, but also to review one of our shapes, the heart.

Going through every page in the story we tried to count how many hearts were used to create each animal and then we picked which one was our very favorite animal at the end of the story. The back of the story the author shows how to create the lion animal and I thought, “Hey, we can totally do that!” So using my book as a guide, I printed off several different sized hearts to create some of the animals we found in the book.

After printing off the hearts, we colored and cut them all out. I was in charge of cutting out all the tiny hearts. I knew the little hands would have a hard time with those. Then we took a brief recess as I attended to my cute baby girl (who has morning hair haha) who secretly got a hold of an orange marker and pretty much had the time of her life…

Then we picked out some colorful construction paper to glue our hearts on (I cut sheets of construction paper in half because we didn’t need the whole sheet).

I did a little bit of cutting on some of the hearts, using the book as my guide.

The kids got busy putting glue on all the hearts.

And we placed them on our paper to create some super fun animals all out of hearts. We used black circles made from a hole punch for our eyes.

Meet our silly seal (my personal favorite)…
Our Snappy Crab…
Mr. Angry Bear…
And our very Brave and totally disproportionate Lion (hahaha, hey, the kids didn’t notice!)…
So what are you waiting for?? Go get crafting with your kids! But wait, first come over to I Heart Crafty Things to say hello!  🙂