Homemade Bathtub Paints

There were so many different things I could have used for a title of this post. "The Worst Idea I've Ever Had," "My Budding Artist," "A Bottle of Mustard Explodes," "Evan is Looking a Little Jaundiced." But, I opted for the straightforward approach.

A few weeks ago I decided to whip up some homemade bathtub paints for Evan's amusement. It was really easy--just use some baby wash, stir in cornstarch until it is your desired consistency and then add some food coloring.

Evan enjoyed every minute of it and painted almost every square inch of the tub. Bryan got home from work right at the peak of the painting and looked in at the yellow mess and proclaimed it may have been the worst idea I'd ever had. At that point, I was beginning to think he was right. Then Evan smiled and all was forgiven.


The tub wiped up easily and Evan was only yellow for a day or two. Kidding. It washed right off. I would do it again, although, I haven't, so I'm not quite sure what that means. Give it a try! Let me know if you do and how it worked for you. I want to let someone else experiment with some reds and blues before I try it out!

Toddler Craft: More Gift Tags

Evan and I had another fun day of crafting and made more gift tags (see the last gift tags we made here). This time we used brown and red pom poms and sticks we picked up outside. Evan liked using the glue, but it got a little messy. I didn't dare get out the camera with his sticky fingers within reach, so the picture is just of some of the tags.

In hindsight I wish I would have used wiggly eyes instead of paint for the eyes--but they turned out okay.

I'm pretty sure we're going to have more gift tags than gifts this year...we may even end up making gifts out of our tags! Anyone want some??? I'll add you to my Christmas list!

Felt Food: Ravioli

I am hoping to make Evan a whole grocery bag full of felt food for Christmas. He has started doing a lot of pretending lately, and I think he'll have fun cooking for us. I decided to start easy with a plate of ravioli. Since he doesn't read my blog, I can go ahead and post about it.

Toddler Craft: Gift Tags

The first Toddler Craft Day I did with Evan was such a hit that we decided we couldn't wait until next week to craft again. Yesterday's project? Gift tags!

We made a few different versions of tags and some clothespin reindeer that will be adorning our Christmas gifts. Here Evan, dressed in one of my old t-shirts, is creating his abstract reindeer tags.

Then we moved on to the thumbprint reindeer tags.

And finally we made some clothespin reindeer, which were actually a little advanced for Evan. It was more like Advanced Placement Toddler Crafting (or remedial mommy crafting, which is about my level!).

I hope we can find some cute reindeer wrapping paper to match all of our reindeer tags!

Toddler Crafts

I have declared Mondays Toddler Craft Day at our house, and I hope to do a new craft with Evan each week. I called today's craft, "Where is Evan?" We made mom, dad and Evan using straws, construction paper, plastic cups and cardboard coasters, which I had taken from our table at Outback a while ago with another craft project in mind.

We cut circles out of the coasters and construction paper, decorated them each with a face and put them on the straws. Then, we cut holes in the bottom of each cup, put construction paper on the outside (we could have skipped this step, but my cups were clear), and then dropped the straw person in.

You pull down on the straw to hide the "person" inside the cup. Evan and I sang, "Where is Evan..." to the tune of "Where is Thumbkin," and, of course, repeated the song for mom and dad.


He got a kick out of it. But, he got a little frustrated at one point when he couldn't get the straw person out of the cup; however, he was holding the straw at the bottom of the cup with one hand and pulling up on the head with the other hand. I kept trying to show him to hold the cup instead, but he eventually just took each of the straw people out of the cups completely and packed them around for a little while.

It was a pretty basic project, but Evan seemed to like it. I hope I can think of something fun to do next week!

Oh--and--Bryan, Evan tattled on you for eating M&Ms. As we were putting our scraps in the garbage, Evan pulled out a Peanut Butter M&Ms wrapper. This is the video and conversation that went on for about 30 minutes. Of course, as soon as Evan sees the camera he wants to watch what I just filmed, so he is usually walking towards me...



And take two...