The Crafty Work At Home Momma

We recently went to a friends school gathering where they had all of us decorate ornaments using sequin pins, sequins, ribbons, pipe cleaners and pom poms. We arrived a bit late and the only supplies left on my table were the sequins and push pins. So I got to work and came up with the following. Fairly simple to make. I imagine hot gluing the sequins on would be quicker. You can come up with different layouts and color combinations. I wanted to create a blue and silver combination, but there weren't enough colors, so I decided to just do a multi color one. We only had an hour to make the ornaments and the school was going to use our ornaments to decorate a tree at our local zoo. So I was short on time and took some photos of a few different combos I came up with. I will definitely be buying some styrofoam balls today! The rougher textured styrofoam balls almost have a blingy look to them which work well if you want to create a design on the ball and have some negati

(This post contains affiliate links) As you may already know, Scholastic Teacher Express Dollar Deals is one of my favorite homeschooling tools! Scholastic Teacher Express is having their Dollar Deals again! In the past I have purchased and downloaded several educational ebooks on Scholastic Teacher Express . I'm able to view these ebooks on my iPad or even print out the worksheets I need at a moments notice. There are ebooks on every subject imagineable for each grade level. This Dollar Deals event ends soon and it's the LAST CHANCE this school year! Join their mailing list to receive notification of their sales. USE COUPON CODE TEAPOL5 for an additional $5 off your purchase of $10 or more. I just purchased 10 ebooks for $5!!! I'm going to look through and get some more for some summer learning. UPDATE: DOLLAR DEALS EXTENDED UNTIL MAY 31st! Remember to use Notability has to save on ink and paper.

There are currently two Reading Eggs sales going on and one of them ends today! Save a MASSIVE 50% when you purchase a 12 month subscription of Reading Eggs and Reading Eggspress! Normally $69, you pay only $34.50! This sale ends today! 1. Click on ‘Redeem Promo Code’ on the right hand side and enter APR465 in the box that appears, press ‘Apply’ - then follow the prompts. Bonus 50% Family Discount – Save 50% off the full price, paying only $34.50, when you purchase any extra 12 month Reading Eggs subscriptions for each additional child in one transaction. If you absolutely can't purchase today , they're having an Easter Special where you receive a free Mathseeds subscription when you purchase a Reading Eggs 12 month subscription! 1.Log in to Reading Eggs 2.Select a Reading Eggs 12 month subscription. 3.Click on ‘Redeem Promo Code’ on the right hand side and enter EST345 in the box that appears, press ‘Apply’ - then follow the prompts. PS – if you have more tha

Scholastic Teacher Express Dollar Deals is one of my favorite homeschooling tools! Scholastic Teacher Express is having their Dollar Deals  again! In the past I have purchased and downloaded several educational ebooks on Scholastic Teacher Express . I'm able to view these ebooks on my iPad or even print out the worksheets I need at a moments notice. There are ebooks on every subject imagineable for each grade level. To save on printing, there are those worksheets that are multiple choice and I can't see printing out and wasting the ink. So I found the solution in the App store! Notability has been a life saver. I purchased some inexpensive pack of 6 stylus pens from Amazon and downloaded the Dollar Deals  ebooks onto my ipad. Then I open them using Notability .  With the stylus pens, my kids are able to write in their answers and draw right on top of the ebook page. I save on paper and ink!   The Dollar Deals Sale ends on April 30th, 2014. But no worries

  My 4 year old has been all about felt food since this past Christmas. I made her tons of felt food for her Christmas gift, but where was she going to bake her felt food? So she saw a cute mini kitchen from Plan Toys, and begged me to buy it for her. Although it was cute and we'll made, I decided to make one myself.  I started out with a plain cardboard box. The size all depends on how big you want the kitchen. I started out with one the size of a large square box of diapers. It's best to look for one with all four flaps so that you can reinforce certain areas with the extra cardboard pieces. Then I used modge lodge matte finish to glue on a layer of small pieces of tissue paper in different shades of blue and green. I applied several layers, making sure to let the layers dry in between applications.   Once dry, I traced a small shallow bowl on the right side of the top surface of my kitchen and used a box cutter to cut about an 1/8 of an inch inside of the tra

The kids and I try to include at least one art lesson a week. Some of our lessons require more than one day to complete. We plan on going to the Art Institute soon and my husband and I want the kids to be familiar with some of the paintings we might see. So we've been using the book Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters . So far we love it, and it has so many hands-on activities to explore the styles and techniques of the world's greatest artists. They also break up the sections by style/date. This week, we learned about Early Renaissance painters, The Limbourg Brothers. If you're not familiar with the Limbourg Brothers, they are three artist brothers who painted very detailed paintings using thin paintbrushes and magnifying glasses. They created a book with a calendar and pictures of the seasons. The art activity we followed asked to create our own Book of Days. I created a template and had the kids pick a favo

I absolutely want to make this for my daughters. I have daughters who are 8, 4 and 9 months old, and I believe they can all wear one. I wish there was some way to make the hats smell like cabbage patch dolls. :) This pattern sells for $5.50 on Craftsy . Sizing is from infant to 12 years of age!

I thought this was the coolest! Ever since I started shopping for my own jeans, I could never find a good pair of jeans. My little chicken legs were abnormally skinny near the knee and I had wide hips and a small butt. LOL. Thankfully I've rounded out a bit in some areas, but I still have skinny legs near my knees which  makes it nearly impossible to find a good pair of nice fitting jeans.   I've always been skinny and was always made fun of growing up, so looking fuller was always important when I shopped for clothes. So when I FINALLY found some jeans that fit me perfectly, I was beyond ecstatic. I do still have the jeans, but I was never able to find similar fitting jeans after that.   I recently came across this tutorial  on sale for half off a few weeks ago. Every now and then they do have a 50% off sale, but for their regular price, which is also the price of jeans, you can learn how to properly duplicate or custom make a new pair of jeans to fit your body.  

This last Christmas, my 7 year old daughter received an American Girl doll. She is obsessed with her and carries her EVERYWHERE! I admit, a little of the AG Doll Craze has rubbed off on me... I've made her doll some cute crochet booties, crochet hat, and now some play food. Here's my first attempt in making Spaghetti for an AG Doll.  I started off by evenly rolling out some polymer clay for the bottom of a plate. I used Sculpey III Polymer Clay . If you're lucky enough to buy some clay cutting tools, I highly recommend them. I don't have any, so I used the rim of a small plastic cup to cut out a perfect circle. Then I rolled about a 1/4" circumference coil long enough to place on top of the outer edge of the circle. To adhere the coil to the circle shape, I used the end of a small brush to push some of the clay together. Then I smoothed it out and flattened the edge of the plate. I also flared the edge of the plate out to make it look a little