Jungle Monkey Diaper Gift

Howdy! So this weekend is a ladies retreat at my church - the first one I have ever been to - and among the fun things we have planned is a silent auction. The silent auction proceeds go to benefit the Rachel Gage and Michael Ramette Memorial at Lake Texohma which I hear is going to be a nice covered area for people to gather around created by our teens at church. The items for the auction are donated items from church and communtiy members and I definetly wanted to contribute something. Since I have been dabbling in making creative diaper gifts (Find me on etsy.com and Facebook as 'CraftsandCause') I thought I would make something for the auction. At first I was going to donate a pink giraffe cake but after bouncing the idea off a few people I came up with a few guidelines: (1) The diaper gift should be something that was not definititvely girl or boy oriented, and (2) was something that was medium sized as if it was too big it might be too expensive or too large for one to give to someone, other than family, as a gift.

I have been on the lookout lately for cute containers and Target has some that I love right now - they have cute colored metal buckets. Also while I was looking around the floral department of Tom Thumb I found some 'Love Monkey' dolls that were really cute and super afforable. So the items that I used for this craft are ribbon, tissue paper, felt, 35 size 1 diapers, shredded paper, yarn, cardboard, cellophane, the 'Love Monkey' doll, and the metal buckets.

I started thinking - how could I arrange the diapers to make a unique theme with the monkey doll - and then it hit me; my theme would be 'Jungle Monkey'. So I arranged the diapers in the shape of a tree and oriented the monkey around them. For those of you attending the retreat as well, above is a sneak preview and for everyone else above is the web debut.

Intro Blog

Howdy! In my first official blog I thought I would share the latest crafts my daughter and I have made - handprint/footprint paintings! I bought some canvases from a craft store on sale a while back and have been waiting for a good opportunity to use them. Well the time finally came - my in-laws came into town for a visit and enjoyed some grandaughter time (so my husband and I could have a couple of date nights) and my sisters' birthday came around!

Our first project was for my in-laws. I gave my daughter a 5x5 canvases, let her pick her washable paint colors, and let her paint to her hearts content! After her canvas dried we painted her feet with white paint and stamped them onto the canvas in a turnout. My goal was to make a definitive heart shape so after we stamped her feet we got out some thin red ribbon and glued it around her feet in a heart shape using Modpodge. For a 2 year old being patient while we slowly put on the red ribbon was hard but she was so excited about the project she did a good job. Once the feet paint and glue dried Kate picked some ribbon and we hot glued a "hanger" onto the back of the painting. My daughter is pretty good at writing her name once you dot it out so we wrote a note and put it in the mail.

Exited about our new canvas paintings we decided to make a painting for my sisters' birthday. Again I gave my daughetr a canvas (a different shaped one), let her pick her paint colors and go! After she declared her painting "done!" we let it dry and talked about what we would do to it next. We were going to paint her hands and place them onto the painting to shape in a flower shape. I painted a circle, painted Kate's hands with a color she picked and then started stamping her hands around the circle. Then we chose a different color and stamped some outer "petals" of her flower. Same as before, once everything dried we added a ribbon hanger and a note on the back. I thought this turned out so cute I wanted ot make one to keep at our house so we started again and my daughter chose different paint colors.

Overall this was fun to do with my daughter - I enjoyed watching her get crazy with the paints, watching her giggle as I painted her feet, and teaching her good ways to show our love for others.