New England Mamas

Winter Crafts that are for the birds

Winter can be a great time for bird watching. One way to entice them into your yard it to provide food. There is something beautiful about seeing a bright red cardinal against the snowy white ground.

The easiest way to draw birds into your yard is to provide plants that they can eat and hide in as well as fresh water to drink. Last year, I posted this craft I did with the kids.

Here are a few more that you can do.

Thanking Shrinky Dinks for our snow-day sanity

I'm from the Windy City.  Contrary to what many people believe, though it is called the Windy  City because of politics not because of the weather.  (In other words, the residents are known for generating a lot of moving air.)  That being said, it is very cold.  Despite the weather, I only remember having a snow day one time growing up.  Even if I forgot a couple, it is clearly rare for a snow day to be declared.

That doesn't seem to be the case in Massachusetts.  Whether they're warranted or not, there has been at least one snow day every year that my son has been in school.  Sometimes I have agreed with them.  Other times I have been surprised, particularly when the snow day follows a day with open schools but far less pleasant weather.

This year though I finally decided to embrace the snow days.  

Crafting with your kids - DIY Christmas wrapping paper

I know you don't need anything else to do two days before Christmas, but if you're like me and you've been driving back and forth to stores for weeks now, you really don't want to make another trip if you don't need to.  So what do you do if you've found out half way through wrapping all your holiday gifts that you've run out of wrapping paper?

Improvise.

My daughter and I made wrapping paper this year.  We were going the DIY/green route; I just couldn't bring myself to go and buy wrapping paper, especially when it's going to be half off in just a couple of days, but mostly because all the dyes they use in most wrapping paper kind of squicks me out.  This was a super easy afternoon craft idea and I had pretty much everything on hand.  You probably do too.