All posts tagged gifts

Dissolving Dinosaur Skin

by Vanessa Brady on 20 September 2012 in Kids with 3 Comments

About a month ago, my husband started reminiscing about a toy he loved from the 80′s (Mad Scientist Monster Lab). The basic premise was that you attach “skin” to a monster and then watch it disintegrate in a acid. Fun, right?! Well, since we couldn’t just run down to our local toy store to pick up a kit (although there was one selling on Ebay for 50 bucks!), we decided to try and make our own. How hard could it be, right?

Famous last words, lemme tell you.

First, it was impossible to find monster skeletons. (Ended up getting these dinosaur ones) Then, finding the perfect container that would fit the dinos but not be so big that you couldn’t see all the fizzing and foam. We looked at practically every plastic container we could find in town. We even tried the local restaurant supply store (which worked out anyway since I found our Easy Interchangable Art Hangers there!) We ended up finding a perfectly sized container in a water beads kit at Toys R Us but thought a Sea Monkey cup would have worked well too. Let me know if you find anything better!

Now, we just had to figure out how to actually make the dissolving dinosaur skin. Luckily, David A. Katz came to the rescue! He’s a science demonstrator out of Tucson that posted a recipe for Monster Flesh. Awesome, right?

Well, as you may have guessed, having the “flesh” work the first time would have been too easy so we had to recreate the project 4 or 5 times before we came up with ratios that perfectly matched my husband’s memory of the Monster Lab. I hate to say it but this project was slowly wearing on my last crafty nerve. Jack, of course, loved every single minute of it!

So, after many tries and few curse words…I present Dissolving Dinosaur Skin! (adapted from David A. Katz’ Monster Flesh)

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Closet Gift Wrap Organizer

by Vanessa Brady on 10 January 2012 in Home, Tutorial with 4 Comments

I knew, three years ago on the day we moved, that storing all our gift wrapping supplies in the separate garage was going to come back to bite me. I know that the garage is only a few seconds away from the house but who seriously wants to go outside in triple digit heat or the cold? I’ve seen a good amount of gift wrap stations online but they weren’t a good fit  because 1) not enough free wall space  and 2) not enough free funds. So, like anyone who knows me probably figured, time for a trip to our local thrift store!

Closet Gift Wrap Organizer

Materials:
- thrifted wire baskets
- spray paint (optional)
- nails/hammer
- various sticky hooks

Instructions:

1. I stood in the aisle for 30 minutes just looking at all the wire organizers before I picked out what I thought would work for a gift wrap station. You obviously won’t have the exact same wire baskets at your thrift store but that’s the fun, you get to improvise! Depending on your needs, you’re going to want a basket to store random things like tape, organizer for scissors and pens, a card holder, a ribbon dispenser, gift bag holder and someplace to hang tissue. We use gift bags maybe 80% of the time so I only needed two curtain rods for brown and white wrapping paper. You could always add more if you need to.

2. Spray paint everything. Of course, this step is optional. The baskets will work with our without a fresh coat of paint but they sure do look prettier!

3. Find a door that will work for your organizer. I used my ridiculously tidy linen closet (insert sarcasm) which was perfect since it’s in our hallway and is all but wasted space. Not so perfect to take good pictures though. No windows=no natural light=crappy pics. Guess I know where we’ll go if a tornado ever strikes!

4. Use nails to attach the two curtain rods on either side of the door. Be cautious about your door’s thickness. The center panel of our old door is really thin so I couldn’t just nail all the baskets. The four baskets on the center panel are hung with those sticky removable hooks. Not too worried about them falling since they’re not going to hold anything too heavy. The gift bags’ weight did add up so I hung that organizer on the thicker part of the door with nails.

5. Once everything is in place and you’ve waited about an hour for the sticky hooks to cure (Is that the right word? I guess they just need to do what ever they need to do.), you can start organizing all your supplies! I was giddy with excitement. Seriously. No more burning the bottoms of my feet off as I run from the house to the garage for gift wrap!!

6. For the ribbon organizer, I just stuck a dowel rod through one end of the basket, the ribbon spools and out the other end. You could always just throw them in a basket if you can’t find an organizer similar to this.

7. Keep in mind that you can always add a cardboard bottom if you need one of your baskets to hold loose items like pens.

8. Don’t forget a basket for gift cards!

Fort Making Kit

by Vanessa Brady on 31 January 2011 in Kids with 2 Comments

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(Shhh, Josh! No peeking!)

Here’s my version of a Fort Making Kit I found on Saltwater Kids. I made a few of them as end-of-the-year gifts and they seemed to be enjoyed. A wonderfully easy gift that I hope will bring hours of entertainment!  No need for any tutorial over here since the Saltwater Kids tutorial is so well done. Yay for great tutorials!

 
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