MARSHMALLOW PRINTS

Dave made a fire in the backyard the other night and Kinley was thrilled. She came screaming in the house hollering about marshmallows and going through every single cabinet that she could reach trying to wish some of those fluffy treats into existence. But, alas, no marshmallows appeared and she had to go to without her "smows".

When I was tucking her into bed that night she asked if we could buy some marshmallows at the store for eating and for painting with. I never, ever say no to a craft request (unless it involves glitter. I reserve the right to veto glitter crafts at my discretion 😉) but I wasn't quite sure what kind of painting she meant. I had just seen a really cool marshmallow painting idea from Bar Rucci on Instagram and thought maybe she had seen it over my shoulder, but no, she didn't want to paint on marshmallows, she said she wanted to paint with marshmallows. Genius, right?

I should mention that Kinley is a complete and total polka dot addict, so the fact that her sweet little dot-loving mind came up with a dot-making process all on her own is extra cool. I love that she is getting old enough to come up with her own ideas for getting creative.

We headed to the grocery store the very next afternoon and as soon as we got back home and walked through the door with our fresh bag of jumbo fluffy white sugary stampers, we squirted Kinley's choice of paint colors on a plate and got down to it.

BUBBLE WRAP FISHIES IN A PROCESS ART SEA

We are a family of unabashed fish lovers. They have literally had to kick us out of the zoo aquarium twice because they were closing and we had lost track of time watching those sharks and gorgeous finned-friends swim back and forth over and over again. This fishy fascination has led to many a sea creature craft over the past three years, but this new one was different and extra cool so I popped on over here to share it with you. Even if you aren't a serious fish lover, you can probably get down with bubble-wrap stamp fish, right?!

CRUSHED CEREAL ART

The instructions for this super fun one have moved over to our brand-new and extra rainbowy website. Here's the link:

https://www.hellomoonpie.com/blog/crushed-cereal-art

Happy making!

xo Cara

RECYCLED BOTTLE BRACELETS

Break out the crimper and pop a back-when-she-was-fun Madonna tape in your Walkman, baby, cause bright and crazy bangles are BACK!

Kinley and I have been on a recycled craft craze lately. It started with Earth Day and it's only gotten better (or worse?) since we've been participating in @get.creative.with's recycled container Insta-challenge this week. We recycled some of our own art into other kinds of art, turned a garbage box into a little tiny buddy sight-seeing cable car, and made a family of bees out of an old egg carton, but I think these bracelets are our best trash art yet!

A BOOK & A CRAFT: ESCARGOT

Disclaimer: This post was written by a person who unabashedly loves both snails and all things French-y, so she may be a tad bit biased towards books with adorable French snails for main characters. Continue reading the following gushfest at your own risk. You have been warned.

Escargot: the tale of a little French beret-rocking snail in search of the perfect salad.

I mean, you guys, I just can't. This book was made for us.

Sweet little manipulative Escargot is on a mission to both make you love him and to get to the other side of the table where the salad of his dreams is waiting. He tries every method imaginable from showing off to telling sob stories to convince you that he is indeed the best kind of creature on the planet. Let me tell you, his tactics worked on me.

TOP SECRET SNOW CONE SYRUP

Hey there! How are you livin'? Does it feel like summer in your neck of the woods already, too? Here in good old OH-IO we get a full two weeks of spring if we are lucky before the tornadoes and summer heat start rolling in. I've been trying to suppress my urge to whine and beg Dave to turn on the air already man, for the love of sweaty leg pits and in order to do that, I've had to get creative with my stay cool methods. I mean, twelve fans on high can only help so much, you know? ;)

My mom works in the office of a factory and in the summer, the factory part of the building is not air conditioned. In an effort to keep all those hardworking factory men happy, she goes in one night a month and churns out snow cones for those guys at top speed to help them cool down. But, obviously, snow cones require syrup and she was flying through the store-bought kind, so she came up with this recipe and, take it from me, it's a thousand times better than any of the kinds they carry at Wally World, plus the flavor options are pretty vast.

Now here's where I need you to swear on your favorite pair of flip-flops that you won't tell anyone the top secret recipe I'm about to fork over.

Just kidding,

Tell anybody you want, friend! And you're welcome in advance for your extra month of lower energy costs ;)

GORGEOUS (& CRAZY EASY) COFFEE FILTER FLOWERS

Get a load of those gorgeous flowers, would ya?! It's spring y'all, and more importantly, it finally feels like spring. When I was brushing Kinley's hair this morning she hollered LOOK MOMMA!! There are little tiny baby leaves on our big tree!! and what do you know, she was right! I have been missing those little tiny baby leaves and their fresh tiny baby leaf green -- my favorite shade.

Don't you just love spring colors? Bright and happy and perfect for getting creative with.

MARSHMALLOW PAINT PEEPS & A WHOLE LOT MORE

Have you been as naughty as we have with the Easter candy this year? Kinley and I have polished off a giant bag of Starburst jellybeans, two bags of those crunchy shell Cadbury eggs and wayyyy too many purple bunny Peeps already this year, and we are still a week away from the actual ginormous candy-explosion of a holiday.

Our never-ending supply of yummy purple bunnies totally inspired this project.  I know lots of people don't love the taste of them as much as we do, but I think we can all agree they are pretty much the cutest candy ever created! Kinley always apologizes before biting their cute little ears off :)

SPLISHY-SPLASHY PUDDLE PAINTING

Are you here for puddle printing instructions? No worries, they've just moved on over to our brand-new website -- you can find them right here.

See you over there, friend!
xo Cara

SUPER AWESOME HOMEMADE BUBBLE SOLUTION

Did you come here looking for the perfect bubble solution recipe? Well, you are in luck because it just moved to our new and improved website!

Just click here to head straight over to it!

Have fun!!

xo Cara

PLASTIC EGG PROCESS ART PAINTING

You guys, I'm SO excited!! I've got my very first guest blogging gig. Yes, for real!

My new blogging bestie, Denise, invited me over to her blog for some Easter fun. She's the friendly, creative supermom behind buckandchuck.com. If you aren't already familiar with her awesome blog, you should totally check it out. It's jam-packed with fun ideas, mommy humor and pictures of her beyond adorable kiddos. She's got an egg-cellent new post with about a gazillion brilliant ideas for stuffing those Easter baskets that's definitely worth checking out!

Kinley and I have been trying out all kinds of different Easter activities looking for the best ones to share on our special post, but this one that we tried today? I just couldn't wait to share it with you! You might remember my old post from when K was a teeny little ladybug about marble painting with bouncy balls? Well, this is kind of like that, but with an Easter twist!

WAX PAPER MONOPRINTS

Have you ever heard of monoprints? They are basically the easiest, most fun art ever,

Monoprints are made by painting on a surface (so many options) and then pressing a piece of paper or cardstock onto the painting to make a print.

WATERCOLOR EGG CARTON FLOWER LIGHTS

Easter is coming! The season of chocolate bunnies and chicks, baby lambs, jellybeans, marshmallow Peeps and EGGS.

So. Many. Eggs.

And you can't have a million gorgeous dyed eggs, without having at least a couple of egg cartons, can ya?

A-ha. THAT'S where I was going with all of this ;)

Kinley and I are participating in an egg carton craft-off this week on Instagram, and until I started seeing all of the amazing ideas pop up in my feed, I had NO idea how much awesomeness is possible with such a humble recycled material. (If you wanna check out our competition, just search #getcreativewith--seriously, the possibilities are endless and crazy, crazy awesome!)

We had to step up our game, man! But, what to make?

INVITATION TO CREATE: PAPER BAG BIRD PUPPETS

Are you ready for hours of squawking and bird drama? Are you sure?

Okay, ask and ye shall receive! I should warn you that I, too, thought I was ready and 2 hours later, I need some Tylenol and a nap, but it was actually totally worth it because bird drama is the most hilarious kind. Some of our bird drama even trumped The Bachelor!

This project was kind of an accident. We were supposed to make the paper plate birds I have had pinned for a year, but when I went to go grab the paper plates, there were none. Oops.

But, it totally worked out, didn't it? Puppets, as it turns out, are WAY more fun that lame old paper plate birds ;)

SPLATTER PAINT STARRY SKY

K and I have been participating in some Instagram art challenges lately and we have been having a creative blast. It's so fun to be given a theme or material to work with and brainstorm together until we have the ultimate idea.

This week's challenge on one of our favorite accounts (@kidartlit) is Night. That's pretty broad, right? I was having such a hard time narrowing all of the fun night things (night sky, skylines at night, nocturnal animals, glow in the dark, all of the nighttime books, etc) down to one to plan an art project around, so I went to Kinley for some help.

I asked her to tell me some things about nighttime that make it different than daytime, and she actually thought up a lot more than I thought she would, and even a lot more than I had thought of.

She said that we wear jammies at nighttime, eat dinner and watch shows at nighttime. It's dark outside at nighttime, and Daddy comes home from work. But, she said her favorite night things were the moon and the stars.

BIRD WEEK SENSORY BIN

We did lots of fun stuff around here for Bird Week and I can't wait to share all of it with you, but I have to start with our nest-building sensory bin because it was the biggest hit of the whole week for sure.

I bought a few things at Dollar Tree and had a few things here, but all in all it cost about $6 for the whole thing, and $6 for hours and hours of fun pretend play is money well-spent, if you ask me!

BEST PANINIS EVER.

I know, paninis are a pretty random topic and I am no food blogger, but I made these the other night and they were too dang delicious to keep to myself. Dave was shocked that they didn't have any special aioli or sauce or anything because they were just so yummy and it seems too simple a recipe for that much tastebud OOMPH. :)

We've tried lots of panini ideas over the years. Pinterest is swimming with ideas for different kinds, but we've had so many mediocre ones that one this good had to be passed along.

First of all, if you don't have a special panini pan or press, don't worry! Alton Brown from the Food Network said on one of his episodes of Good Eats that if you wrap a brick in aluminum foil and put that on top of your sandwich in a regular frying pan, it will work just as well. Or you can do what I used to do before we got a panini pan, and just smush your sandwich with your spatula really hard :)

20 MINUTE DIY LIGHT TABLE

If you follow me on Pinterest, you know I have an obsession with light tables. I want to buy one, but a sensory item that costs more than $10 is definitely not going to be cleared by the accounting department (aka Mr. Raising Kinley) so I have been collecting do-it-yourself ideas for literally two years.

They all do it differently--IKEA supplies, fairy lights, lanterns, light strips, actual tables that you cut holes out of with power tools, teeny tiny, ginormous. You name it. Someone has used it to make a light table. And I have pinned their idea.

It was all just so overwhelming to me, I guess. I need someone's idea to be THE idea. The best of all of the methods squeezed into one.

I finally read a blog post the other night about another mom's homemade light table and I thought to myself, "Dude. Just do it. Just gather up the stuff and DO IT ALREADY."

EASY DIY RAINBOW RICE OR PASTA

Scoop it.
Measure it.
Throw it with glee from corner to corner.

RICE, baby! The ultimate sensory bin filler!

Plain rice is fun, but dyed rice is even better. And you aren't gonna believe how incredibly easy it is to step your rice up to the next level.

DIY LIQUID WATERCOLORS

Did you wander over here looking for our fabulous liquid watercolor recipe? Don't worry -- it's not gone forever, Kinley and I just took it over to our new website, hellomoonpie.com :)

Just click right here to head straight over to it!

OUR NEW (AND IMPROVED) PRESCHOOL PLAN

When I started planning our preschool year, I read a million blog posts and ideas from other preschool at home moms and I thought I had come up with the world's most perfect plan.

I wrote a detailed plan for every subject, every week from the end of August until the beginning of June. I printed out cute little schedule cards for each moment of our preschool day, laminated them and hung them up in a neat row and imagined exactly how each perfect day was gonna go. I had a big long chat with Kinley about exactly how school would be, beginning with when we would wake up all the way through to "afternoon recess."

And, then we actually started.