DIY Candy Burgers

This has been a very fast-moving and exciting summer with the kids.  This explains why my posts are few and far between lately.  We've had trips to visit family, excursions to the beach and afternoons making crafts.  Recently, the kids and I embarked on making 'burgers.'  It was a fun and easy project that rendered tasty little treats. 

 

All we needed were a few 'Nilla wafers, thin mints, food-colored icing and fruit roll ups. 

We slathered a bit of icing on the bottom of a wafer.  Added the thin mint on top.  We cut green colored fruit roll ups to simulate "lettuce" and then added some more "mustard" and "ketchup" to the top of the thin mint.  Next, top it off with the final wafer...and voila!

 

 

The kids had a blast making these miniature burgers (and even more fun eating them).  Other versions of this project used coconut flakes (dyed green) for the lettuce.  And a few sesame seeds on top of the wafer for 'bun seeds.'

 

Have you done any kids' projects this year to share?  Please send them my way!

 

 

 

Valentine's Day DIY Favors

 It was about 9am...a mere hour into the snow day.  My precious little kids had still managed to wake up at 6am.  By this time, they'd eaten breakfast, watched four episodes of 'Dog With a Blog', sneaked in forty minutes of game time on the kindle, gotten into three knock down drag out fights and played out in the snow. 

And here we sat.  With  h-o-u-r-s  of endless *quality* time in front of us. 

So I did what any insane mama would do.  I bundled those lil kiddos up to their ears in snow gear and loaded them into the car.  We trekked through six inches of snow and headed to the DOLLAR STORE!

Crafts galore!  We loaded up on a ton of supplies with Valentine's Day themes.  Over the next several days, I will share our DIY activities. 

To start, we made these candy-filled Valentine's "thank you's" for all of the teachers and professionals in the kid's lives.  Twelve of these suckers (yes, my kids are needy and require a ton of support). 

We filled pickling mason jars with tissue paper just to pad the bottoms a bit.  With twelve of these babies, I didn't want to buy stock in M&M's and Hershey kisses. 

Filled each jar with goodies galore and topped with polka dotted tissue. 

Then used a bit of baker's twine I had left over from Ikea.  We used gift cards from Target and cut them to pint size. 

Wrote a little personal message of "thanks" onto each card.

And loaded them all back into the card board box so we can tote these off to school. 
This kept the kiddos busy for about 30 minutes (all the way up to the point of filling the jars with candy...and of course testing a few handfuls to ensure the product wasn't rotten). 

Check back soon to see how we filled the other 7 hours of the day! 

Do you make crafts for your school teachers?  Share any good ideas!  Check out more ideas on my pinterest page.