A SPECIAL TOUCH AT THANKSGIVING.

This year my kids and I added a special touch to our Thanksgiving table.

When I was setting up the table I realized I still had the cloth napkins in the laundry basket (we did a rehearsal Thanksgiving Dinner last week) so the napkins were all wrinkled.

I had to use paper napkins. I hated it because they look so cheap and cheesy especially when you are using expensive china from Europe. I needed to do something to

make those paper napkins look a little more exciting.

That’s when I came up with the idea of making a turkey napkin holder. I grabbed the construction paper and scissors and started cutting. I needed seven so I started making an assembly line.

It was really easy and it probably took me a total of 15 minutes to make all seven.

Here’s what you need:

Construction paper (orange, pink, brown, red, yellow)

Staples and a stapler

Black marker (to draw the eyes)

Check out the picture that I posted along with this blog so you can see what I cut out. It’s really easy and they’re a hit.

My son wrote the name of each person on the turkey. It ended up being a place card as well and then at the end of the party grandma and grandpa took them home as a souvenir. They loved it too.

MONEY! MONEY! HELPS WITH MATH SKILLS.

I have bought my kids “play money” several times but as you know toys now a days don’t last very long in a home. It has nothing to do with the way they are made… it has to do with the way kids play with them, they’ll either break them or get bored because there’s another toy that can replace that toy, and another toy, and another toy. Basically, there are too many!

Anyway, my kids love to play “store”, the other day they were playing store and they were pretending to have invisible money. I saw that and decided to surprise them.

I went and got some construction paper and made some play money for them. It was nothing fancy. (I knew it would end up in the garbage after they were done playing “store”. The point was for them to have fun.) I cut out some rectangles and wrote the numbers on the bills. I used different colors too.

They loved it!

Again it wasn’t fancy but it’s ok, it served its purpose and it didn’t cost me any money! Plus the kids had a blast playing with it.

Playing with play money will help kids master basic math skills. It helps kids learn how to count, add and subtract. They learn about the different denominations of paper bills, as well as how to use these to make purchases.

I didn't make coins... but you can also use the construction paper to make them.

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE COSTUME

Nicole wanted to be strawberry shortcake. The costumes I saw on the magazines were very cute but Nicole would freeze. That’s the problem with the majority of the costumes; they are cute but not really made for October weather. And if you are wearing a coat then what’s the purpose of having a costume on if no one can see it?!

I decided to make Nicole’s costume just like we did Jerry’s. I printed a picture of Strawberry shortcake and took it with me to the store to buy the materials.

And, let me point out… I am not a seamstress!!!

Figure out how much fabric to buy. I didn’t measure… I just guessed! Went to Joanne Fabrics and looked through the entire store for any fabric that had strawberries on it. I also bought a package of ½” wide elastic.

I had never made a skirt before!

Here’s what I did:

1- Fold the fabric short end to short end (unfinished end to unfinished end) with right sides together. I sewed them together. This seam goes down the back of the skirt.

2- Make the elastic waistband casing. Turn down the top edge of your skirt 1” and sew. (Do the same thing to the bottom edge of the skirt and sew.) Don’t forget to leave a 1” opening at the back seam to insert the elastic through.

3- Stretch the elastic and measure the waist. Cut it, and then attach a safety pin to the end of it. Thread the elastic through the waistband casing. Overlap the ends and then sew them together. Sew the opening in the casing shut.

The skirt was done… now I needed to do the shirt. Again I had never made a shirt before. Nicole is always cold when we go trick-or-treating so I decided to use both the polyester fleece for the main part of the shirt and for the arms I used the same material as the skirt.

So here’s what I did:

1- I went in Nicole’s closet and picked a shirt that fit her to use as my cutout pattern.

2- I folded the fabric in two pieces. Then I traced the shirt and then cut out the pattern piece. (I traced the sleeves separate then the chest and back because I used two different types of fabric)

3- Sew the chest and the back parts together. I used my sewing machine. When you sew make sure you do it inside out so you don’t see the sewing lines after.

4- Sew the arms to the shirt (I can’t really explain to you how I did it because I had to keep trying until I got it right. I got it wrong a couple of times.) (Next time I’ll do a video clip so you can see me doing it.)

5- Hem the bottom of the shirt.

6- I used elastic to make cuffs on her sleeves.

Once I finished the skirt and shirt I decided to add a strawberry to the shirt so it wouldn't look so plain.

I made the hat the same way that I made Jerry's Mario hat.

HOW TO MAKE A MARIO HAT

Daddy and I decided we were going to make the kids costumes this year. Lil’ Jerry wanted to be Mario from Super Mario Brothers.

Daddy had the brilliant idea to go to the Salvation Army to look for the pants and shirt. There we found blue jean overalls and a red turtleneck. It all cost about 5 bucks.

Then we went to Joanne Fabrics and bought red polyester fleece. Daddy also got a white wood circle and traced an “M” on it, which he glued to the hat.

Daddy cut out the hat and I sewed it with my sewing machine. Here’s how we made the hat:

Fold the fleece in half so that you are cutting out two pieces at a time. My husband used the lid from a 5-gallon pail to trace a circle on the fabric.

Cut out the two circles and keep the corner that is left over - this is going to be the bill of the cap.

Round off the corner and cut off the thin ends.

On one of the rounds, trace a smaller circle. It should have about a 4.5″ diameter. This is going to be the head hole. It seems small, but fleece is stretchy.

These are all the parts cut out.

Sew the two rounds together about 1/2″ from the outer edge. Sew along the outer edge of the bill.

Turn both pieces inside out.

Place the open edges of the bill along the edge of the small circle and stitch all 3 layers together. 


ONLY MY NICOLE!

Do you remember your parents telling you stories about the old days when teeth were extracted by pliers… well my Nicole must have thought that was a good idea because today she ended up with pliers in her mouth...not for her teeth though!

Before I explain what happened let me ask you this: “Did your kid ever get his/her lip stuck in a marker?” Yup, “their lip stuck in a marker? Probably not right?

Well, my Nicole did! She was watching Toy Story with her brother and sister. Somehow she ended up with her lip stuck in a ZhuZhu Pets marker.

Her dad and I were going through the black Friday fliers looking for deals when Nicole all of a sudden comes crying holding a marker in her mouth… we were looking at her with a big question mark and wondering why she was crying. That’s when I noticed that her lip was stuck in the marker.

“ARE YOU FOR REAL?” I said. REALLY???

“How did you do that Nicole?” we asked.

My husband had to get a needle nose pliers and another set of pliers to get the lip out of the marker.

Once we took out her lip from the marker I just couldn’t stop laughing because - how do you get a lip stuck in a marker?! ONLY MY NICOLE!

Has your kid ever done anything like this?

USE THEM TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

When the silly bandz craze started the first thing I thought was: “Why didn’t I come up with this... it’s just an elastic band.” Kids were going nuts over them, you couldn’t find them anywhere because stores couldn’t keep up with the demand.

My kids thought they were cool and because their friends had silly bandz they wanted to have silly bandz too. I checked them out and found them at the dollar store.

I decided to use the silly bandz to my advantage… as a reward system. I told my kids that they would earn a silly band for good behavior and that they would lose one every time they did something bad.

It worked! My kids were too funny. Nicole and Jerry were competing with each other to see who would end up with more silly bandz. They even started asking us to give them chores, like washing dishes and cleaning so they could win a silly band. My daughter Nicole has almost 200 silly bandz.

The silly band reward system lasted about 3 months.

(Now… apparently grown ups are using them to flirt in bars (as a pick up line.) The NY Daily News has an interesting article on that.)

Do you use a reward system? What is it?