Lil' Chef Hat & Simple Sugar Cookies

When I was a kid, I loved playing with my mom's aluminum cookie cutters that she had inherited from her mother.  Mom gave them to me some years back, and I still love playing with them!  Usually they sit in a bowl in my kitchen on display.  At Christmas time, I use them to decorate a silver tree.  There is just something so appealing about the simplicity of them. 

Cannon, my little chef, and I decided to get them out the other day and make some sugar cookies.  I used the Martha Stewart recipe which is so yummy!  Before we got started, I had to make Cannon another chef hat...he wore the other one out. 

Here are some simple steps to make your little chef their own hat.  First gather these supplies:  glue gun, piece of posterboard or cardstock, & tissue paper. 

Measure around your little one's head and cut out a piece of posterboard/cardstock that is an inch longer.  I used a piece of old cardstock I had, it was the perfect width.  Next, hot glue the tissue paper around the band of the posterboard/cardstock. 

Then, overlap the ends of the posterboard/cardstock about one inch and hot glue them together.   

Once you have the edges glued, take the parts of the tissue paper not glued down and mushroom it up to make the hat poof.  Then take the ends and glue them to the inside of the hat. 

Finally, write the name of your little chef on the hat and let the cooking begin!

Cannon had a great time cutting the cookies out of the chilled dough. 

Here are a few of the cookies he cut out baked perfectly on a pizza stone.  Isn't the Scottie dog the cutest!

This has always been my favorite of all my cookie cutters.

Cookie time!

The batch before the boys got their hands on them...they didn't last long. 

Cannon was proud of his creations. 

Cannon even let his big brother have some cookies!

What simple things bring your family joy? 

Lego Land

Our back room has been named Lego Land.  There are Legos EVERYWHERE.  About once a week we have to threaten to get the vaccum cleaner out so Ryan and Cannon (mostly Ryan b/c Cannon hates picking up...he seems to mysteriously have an injury around pickup time) will pick up.  As much as the Legos drive me crazy, I do think they are good toys because they really allow the boys to use their imagination and creativity.   

Ryan loves Legos.  I mean really loves them!  He wakes up sometimes before 6 a.m. to go to the back room to start creating w/his Legos.  He makes some pretty amazing things.  He has such a good imagination.  He is super excited that he made the Lego Robotics team at his school and will start competing in the spring.  I think that is pretty cool too, Ryan! 

It is funny with your kids how you see little pieces of you in them.  Ryan loves creating and I love creating.  His medium is mostly Legos, while I like making all sorts of crafts, cakes, etc.  My husband is always amazed by what Ryan and I see in our heads when it comes to a project.  He says he is just not wired that way. 

Ryan gets really excited about contests.  He always thinks he is going to win.  He was most excited to see that Lego was having a contest online to submit projects.  He worked for hours trying to come up with an idea.  He decided on using Lego Agents pieces to make the "Gold Getaway".   Apparently, aliens robbed a bank and got away with all the town's gold!  Never fear, the Lego agents are fast on their trail to nab those pesky bank robbers.  Here are a couple of pictures of his hard work.  Way to go, Ryan!  Keep on using that great imagination!

Orange Ya Glad He's Our Dad, Follow-up

I said I would post the pictures of the "Orange Ya Glad He's Our Dad" Father's Day present the boys and I made for Jaron, but...well I never got around to it.  It was a fun project that they boys and I had a blast doing together.  Here's what we came up with...

Ryan & Cannon love making cards for people.  They drew dad pictures and wrote sweet notes.

Since the theme for the present was "orange ya glad", we put in fun orangey items including:  orange slices, orange soda, oranges, orange polo, and a photo shopped orange ya glad card (directions are here:   http://thesometimessupermom.blogspot.com/2010/06/orange-ya-glad-for-great-dads.html). 

How awesome is this soda?  I found this a couple of months before Father's Day & hid it for the present.  :)  Funny note, it tasted terrible!  It was orange cream & none of us like cream soda.  Yuck!  It was sure cute, though!

I used orange gingham for the lining of the basket and ripped a piece for the bow.  I really like gingham. I buy it every time I see it on sale. 

Pitiful oranges.  I couldn't believe these were the best three I found at the grocery store! 

We found a basket at Goodwill that was .50.  It had a wooden heart on it.  We sprayed the basket and heart white.  We took some orange paint and painted the word "Dad" on it and used a permanent marker to jazz it up a bit. 

The boys added their names on the back of the heart.  Parker has really good penmanship for a 7 month old! 

Orange ya glad here is the final product?  It turned out nice (and it was a very inexpensive gift...my favorite kind.) 

The boys were so excited to give their dad his gift!  They were proud of their work.  Every picture I took of them there was always somebody moving, so unfortunately this is the best one.  Happy Father's Day, Jaron!

4th of July?

Yes, I know it is well after the 4th of July, however I am finally getting around to posting some of our 4th pictures.  We didn't do anything too exciting, we stayed close to home and watched a local fireworks show.  It was a great show and the boys really enjoyed it.  It was of course very hot!  This summer has been terribly hot w/about two and a half months worth of over 100 degree temperatures.  You know it is bad when the car temp gauge is saying 112 degrees outside or 98 degrees at 9 p.m.!  I hate the heat!  Every year I threaten to move somewhere where the temperature is milder.  It is now September 12 and it is still reaching close to 100.  It looks like maybe another week or so of these crazy hot days. 

Parker's first fireworks show!  He did fine.  I was afraid it would scare him because we were really close to the action, but he wasn't afraid at all.  Ryan's first fireworks show was in Pittsburgh, Texas and he was about the same age as Parker and it did scare him!  I can still remember Jaron, baby Ryan and me sitting in the back of Jaron's blue pickup in lawn chairs watching the fireworks until Ryan started SCREAMING!  For the life of me, I can't remember Cannon's first firework show right now.  His first year is really a blur for me since I was dealing with the death of my mom.  :( 

Look at Ryan and Cannon's long hair!  It had gotten so long.  It was sooo cute, too.  We cute both their hair a little shorter before school started.  Not too short, though! 

Parker's face was still really broken out w/his eczema.  Nothing would clear it up.  Thankfully, it finally went away after our beach trip...I think the sun and salt water cleared it up. 

Cannon says, "Great Fireworks, dude!"

A Burlap Wrap

Hobby Lobby has great sales! I found this picture on their 90% off aisle for $4.49! Yea. I wasn't sure at the time what I would do with the picture, because it doesn't at all go with my taste, but I liked the bones of it. So, finally I came up with the idea to dismantle the picture, by removing the four tiny canvases on the top and wrapping all in burlap. Because we are going with a beach theme in our master bedroom, I hot glued sea shells on the burlap. I think the pictures would have looked really nice with some design stenciled on them. I've got another canvas type picture in our house that I'm going to wrap in burlap next and stencil our last name on it. Now that I have done this craft, I'm seeing all kinds of canvas type pictures at Goodwill and such for like $1 that could easily be wrapped and turned into something cool.   A cheap, easy, and good looking craft!

You can see from the back the smaller canvases were screwed on.  So, I broke out a couple of tools and took them off, easy!

Next, I just took the burlap and wrapped the five pieces like presents and hot glued the corners together.

This post wouldn't be complete w/o me showing you how I work...MESSY!  I'm so bad.  I make a mess whenever I go, especially if I'm being creative.  I was working on about five projects at once.  This got bad enough for me that I moved my work into the kitchen (instead of just picking up).  :)  One of these days I'm gonna be a neat freak...hahaha!

Time to clutter another spot.  :)

Next, I just picked some shells and hot glued them on.

The finished smaller canvases.  I think they will look good hanging in the bedroom next to the larger canvas.  One of these days I'll get around to actually hanging them. 

The finished larger canvas.  I love the simplicity of the shell on the large canvas. 

As always, I had some little hands helping me with this project!  Parker so wants to peel the shells off and eat them I'm sure since he wants to put everything in his mouth these days. 

Parker says he thinks you should wrap something in burlap, but not a baby!  :)

Check out two of my favorite weekly blog parties!