As everyone knows Zach and I are trying to stick to a rather tight budget for our family. We are so blessed to have so many wonderful “fathers” in our lives and I wanted to make sure we did something special for each one. Thanks to Pinterest I had TONS of cute, fun, age appropriate ideas 🙂 The first weekday of Britt dropping her morning nap we went to Target and the Dollar Store and stocked up on supplies I didn’t already have around the house and that Thursday I decided to give it a go with everything. With both kids. All at once. Yes, I’m nuts.
The first thing I wanted to do was send a hug to my dad! He lives about 6 hours away and we rarely get to see him so I thought it’d be a cute gift 🙂 I already had a big roll of paper so I had Kye lay down with his arms spread out and traced him with a sharpie. I just traced Britt’s hand as there was no way a squirmy toddler would be able to lay still that long haha. I then wrote “Sending a Hug from Kye…and a high five from Britt!” on the paper and let the kids color on it while I got the other Father’s Day stuff set up!
Next is where I made a crucial mistake. I decided to have the kids decorate plates for Zach, my Dad, Zach’s dad, and Zach’s grandfather. I also decided to call them “cookie plates” and to bake two batches of homemade cookies and put them into a container for each man to give along with the plate. Cute? Yes. Too much work especially with two kids? Double yes. Up until this point I was used to Britt napping in the mornings so it normally would have been just Kye and I baking. Having her there to “help” proved to make everything much more difficult!
Britt’s first time helping bake!
The fatal error came in when I decided to make the cookies before doing the other crafts. I figured they could bake while the kids decorated everything…but instead it ended up making Britt very upset because she wanted to keep eating the dough haha! Oops! She sure did LOVE licking the beater though! One for each kid 🙂
The next craft was for the kids to make a tie for Daddy. Zach wears ties pretty often and I found a free printable on Pinterest and thought it would be cute to let the kids decorate a tie from each of them for him to “wear!” Britt wanted nothing to do with it b/c she had cookies on the brain. But Kye REALLY loved it! He was super excited and took it very seriously!
I let Britt get down to have a break and she was obsessed with climbing up and down the stool…
Attempt #2 with her tie!
I attached a string to each of them so they can be “worn”
I love how Kye’s turned out!
To end all the Father’s Day goodies it was time to make our plates! I’ve seen this idea floating around Pinterest and have been curious to try it! Every other mama must have done it too as when we went to the Dollar Store they were completely sold out of the plain white plates! The yellow was fun though!
I had leftover black paint from Kye’s birthday party and did his hand prints on each plate first since his hand is bigger. He loved it and thought it was super cool to get to “paint” his hand!
Britt…didn’t go so well. I mean I see TONS of these ADORABLE hand print projects. Um. They must not be very realistic b/c the child got paint EVERYWHERE and made it practically impossible to get the paint on her hand then get the plate lined up then get her handprint on the plate then move the plate before she smeared it. Whew. It was a JOB. My mistake in it was doing FOUR plates. That was too much. I should have just made one for Zach or spread out making them for each person at different times! It probably would have gone smoother. Check out the end result:
Priceless!
So…we took a bath break…
(thank the LORD for washable paint!)
Mommy even had a mess!
Thankfully we survived it and we each ate a cookie as a reward for all our hard work! (and then we escaped to CFA to play and eat lunch…Mommy had to get OUT of the house!)
I wrote the kids names, the year, and “so and so’s cookie plate” on each plate with Sharpie then baked them at 350 degrees for 30 min to allow it to set. They turned out SUPER CUTE! Everyone really liked them and the cookies were super yummy (it’s like one of my favorite cookie recipes…it’s on the package of Reese’s peanut butter chips that you can find in the chocolate chip section).
Lessons learned from this adventure:
- Don’t let kids lick the beater until AFTER finished with all projects
- Spread out the amount of projects to tackle instead of trying to do them all at once
- Do the prep work on baking cookies while kids sleep so there isn’t as much for them to “help with”
- Find more simple crafts for the toddler stage that they will enjoy
- Avoid hand print crafts until the toddler age ends 🙂
