Hello! I'm Joanna, author of this photo journal. My husband, Mark, and I are professional photographers in Asheville, North Carolina. The name of our company, Tuesday's Frog, is based on an almost-wordless children's book about mischievous frogs that go flying on lily pads one night. We love this book because the illustrations are truly the heart of the story. Speaking of mischievous, Cole & Harper are our children, and frequent, though not always willing, photography subjects. Here you'll find not only the stories of our everyday lives, but of those we've photographed in our capacity as professional photographers as well. Please feel free to browse the links above, check out the archives at the bottom of the journal for more photo stories, or subscribe and receive email updates of all our antics. Enjoy!
February 5, 2009
Valentine's Day projects
So, it's day 2 of snow-days-without-snow. There is snow in the Asheville area, just not at our house, which means that the kids have been home from school for 2 days without the benefit of being able to go sledding outside. Yesterday we baked chocolate chip cookies, and today I decided we should work on some Valentine's Day projects.
First up was a crayon project that I found in Wondertime, called Melt My Heart. (Alas, this magazine will no longer be published, right after I subscribed to it, of course!) Let me tell you, the quiet concentration of two children peeling papers off of crayons for 10 minutes straight made this project well worth it. Besides the fun of recycling broken crayons instead of throwing them away!
Instead of foil liners in a muffin tin we used these handy silicon heart-shaped cupcake forms on a baking sheet, and instead of skewers we used chopsticks.
If I'd been thinking a little more I would have put 2 holes in each of the hearts we want to string with ribbon so that they'd lay flat when hanging around your neck. For the others I'm not sure yet how to use them....I wonder if they would work as magnets?
The best part of this project was that it was easy to fix any hearts that broke while being pried out of the forms - we simply stuck the broken pieces back in the form, and put the forms back in the oven for an additional minute or two at 300 degrees to melt the wax again.
Project 2, which was a little more labor intensive, but still pretty cheap & easy, is featured on The Purl Bee blog: Valentine Heart Pins. (I don't knit but I love to look at pretty pictures of knitted things!)
The tools required for this one: felt (29 cents a sheet at Michaels), embroidery floss (99 cents), needles, safety pins, stuffing (used some left over from a pin cushion I never completed) and pinking shears.
I'll have you know Cole sewed 2 of these hearts all by himself! I was so proud of him! Both he and Harper stuffed the middles and picked out all the color combinations. (I had the hearts cut out before we started.)
So here are our finished hearts, with a few modifications. I used a scalloped scissors on some of them (my favorite scissors from Fiskars ever!) and we also attached a few little buttons here and there.
She brought this home from preschool yesterday and I thought the craft was too cute not to share: 1 toilet paper roll, smooshed on the back end to make a seat, and painted green 2 pompoms and 2 googly eyes 4 foam star stickers for feet 1 crinkly pink tongue cut out of construction paper and folded accordian-style
...remedy bags (which Cole helped decorate) for his teachers, stuffed with things to keep the sniffles, sneezes, and sickness at bay (kleenex, chapstick, cough drops, hand sanitizer, etc.) I can't remember if I got this idea from Melissa Deakin or not...but as she's the queen of gifts I thought I'd link her site so you can get some sewing/crafts/card ideas for yourself.
...and finally, Miss Harper's accessory of the season -- knee socks.
Cole's last day of preschool is on Friday, so we prepped these gifts for his teachers today. They were super easy to make and Cole was proud that he helped with the projects - we simply adhered vinyl lettering from Once Upon a Design to stackable glass jars from Target. The vinyl is easy to adhere and sticks well (but is removeable if you need it to be.)
A fun idea I thought I'd share with you. I can't claim it as my own, as one of the Garden Girls shared the idea with me originally. What I have done for our cards is modified the design so that Santa's hat is actually hanging off of the card itself. The cards we made are 6x6, which worked well for a Harper-size handprint but was a little small for Cole's handprints (hence the reason Santa's hat is off the card.) We used green, pink, white, red & black cardstock, white paint, a regular hole punch, a slightly-smaller sized hole punch and an oval punch (but you could hand cut the circles/ovals as desired.) The plastic noses came from some game Cole has lost most of the pieces to, so we decided to put the leftovers to use. (You could also use googly eyes instead of white & black punches.) We wrote on the inside of each thank you note with white pen.
Cole & I made these super easy and cute reindeer cookies on Friday in preparation for our Christmas party yesterday (more on the party in a later post.) They're basically peanut butter cookies with a red m&m for the nose, mini semi-sweet chocolate chips for eyes, and broken pretzels for antlers. Cole especially enjoyed rolling the dough into balls and plopping it on the cookie sheets.
We found the recipe in a recent issue of Woman's Day.
Here's an easy kid/mom craft for you. I spent a weekend working on these suckers for a project that never came to fruition. But I still like the idea, so I was glad to see that Making Memories used it for their blog. ; )
PS. For the puppy frame, I used a rectangle "frame" stamp from MM and then adhered the puppy photo after the shrinky dink was baked. You could also laminate the photo (or even just cover it with a small piece of clear tape) before attaching the photo to the frame to make it a little less susceptible to wear and tear.
Just thought I'd share these thank you cards I made after Harper's birthday. Mix some white paint with the Die Cuts w/ a View card kit and you're set! Easy peasy.
