Craft night fun

Tuesday is craft night in our house.  Yesterday was such a beautiful day that I thought we should start a fire in the fire pit and roast marshmallows instead but Julia had her heart set on painting her jewelry box that came in a kit she received for her birthday.  

I've been trying to convince her to make a quick and easy Valentine's banner for our fireplace the last few craft nights but she has not been interested.  So, I took out her jewelry box kit and she painted it and made a bracelet for it in about 10 minutes flat.  She likes long craft nights and the 10 minutes it took her to paint the jewelry box didn't cut it for her so she was willing to participate in my Valentine's craft.  

While she was painting her jewelry box, I collected about 6 sheets of pinkish colored scrapbook paper from my seldom-used stash, drew a heart onto some cardboard we had in the recycling pile and cut it out to use as a template.  I turned the scrapbook paper to the blank side, traced 3-4 hearts/sheet and once Julia was done her jewelry box she was interested in the hearts.  She helped me cut out the hearts and then laid them out on the floor so she could see the designs.

I took a pretty pink ribbon and used a thumbtack to attach it to the mantle.  We took out our package of white clothespins and then Julia set about attaching hearts to the ribbon with the clothespin.  By this time Emma was very interested in the project (she sat out a lot of craft night because she was so tired and quite cranky from missing her nap and having extra fun outside in the great weather).  But, once the flurry of activity around the fireplace started Emma joined in by picking out the hearts she wanted to hang and then joined us to hang them on the ribbon.  

This was a super easy project because it only required cutting hearts out of pretty paper and using a clothespin to attach to some ribbon I had in the house.  We had leftover hearts and strung a line in each of the girl's bedrooms once we were done on the mantle.  The house really looks festive and Julia and Emma were really into this craft.  I think we might have to do a similar project with shamrocks, eggs, maybe even flags.