I love this time of year and the reminders to express more gratitude than usual. It’s truly a message I need year round! This holiday season, I wanted to do an activity with my children to work on our daily gratitude. As I’ve mentioned before, when something needs to get done in our family … we tie it to something that absolutely has to be done every day! Thus we have a lot of seasonal traditions tied to meal time.

After making this darling and easy Give Thanks Mason Jar (instructions below) for Super Saturday (a neighborhood crafting event), I decided to put it to use as our daily gratitude jar. At every meal, we each take a few dried beans and put one in the jar to represent something we are grateful for. My kids are loving it and I love hearing what they have to say. Our thankfuls range from “I am thankful it might snow soon,” to “I am thankful for beef stroganoff,” to “I am thankful for Super Mario brothers.” Too much fun!

The Give Thanks Mason Jar was super easy to make. Here’s what you need:

Mason Jar

Beans,

Thank you Vinyl Stickers or you can make your own vinyl saying with a Cricut.

Frosted Glass Spray Paint

1. Start with a clean Mason Jar. The oils from your hands can make the spray paint not stick correctly. I put mine on the ground on top of cardboard to spray.

2. Apply vinyl sticker.

3.  Follow the directions on the spray paint bottle to frost your Mason Jar.  I did three coats on mine. Using a blow dryer helped to speed up the drying process!

4. Start giving thanks at meal times!

What are your favorite Thanksgiving traditions?

The post Simple Thanksgiving Craft and Daily Gratitude Activity for Children appeared first on KeepMovingForwardWithMe.

Time to get creative! Today we are looking behind the scenes at a day in the life of a craft/DIY blogger. Three craft bloggers and three totally different days.

1. Let’s start with Rachel from the Crafted Life. Her movie-inspired crafts are darling, be sure to pin this one with the sweetest Elf projects for Christmas! The Crafted Life’s tutorials (with beautiful pictures bytheway) make DIY fun and approachable. Forget the fancy tools and years of experience, head to this gal’s site and get started on something beautiful! Find out what time of day she gets the best pictures and what social media site drives her the most traffic to her blog in this post or by clicking the picture above.

2. Our next blogger is Busy Being Jennifer. Her Craft Crazy Friday link-up is bursting with 100s of crafts and recipes that I’ve been scanning through for St. Patrick’s Day ideas. If you are a craft blogger, make sure the link up is on your radar. One thing I love about Jennifer’s day is that she makes a plan and she sticks to it – from going to the gym to sewing up her makeup bags for the next market. Be sure to read her nugget of wisdom at the end of the post – I happen to agree completely!

3. This blogger is passionate about preserving memories and family history – something I love having just attended Roots Tech. Meet Dawn from Dawn’s Delights Art. Dawn is a genealogist and digital scrapbooker with a lot on her plate as she homeschools her children. Her shop full of digital scrapbooking clip art will help you preserve your memories, too. Take a look behind the scenes of a homeschooling, work at home, craft blogger and see how she gets it all done! 

And when you are done checking out our craft bloggers, be sure to take a look at our other bloggers as well!

A Day in the Life of a Travel Blogger

A Day in the Life of a Food Blogger

A Day in the Life of a Family Blogger

Who is your favorite craft blogger?

Who would you like to see a behind the scenes snap shot of?

What gets you through your day?

The post A Day in the Life of a Craft/DIY Blogger appeared first on KeepMovingForwardWithMe.

Hosted by:

Silhouette America & The Pinning Mama

Whether you craft morning, noon, and night, or have just been browsing Pinterest and seen some of the super cool things the Silhouette CAMEO can do, this giveaway is going to knock your socks off! I have partnered with over 30 awesome blogs to bring you everything you need to do almost any Silhouette project you can imagine, from glass etching, to custom shirts, and vintage signs with this prize package you will be more than set! Are you as excited for all the possibilities as I am?!?!?

The Prize:

1 Silhouette CAMEO

1 Glass Etching Starter Kit

1 Stamping Starter Kit

1 Heat Transfer Starter Kit

1 Vinyl Starter Kit

1 Fabric Ink Starter Kit

1 Rhinestone Starter Kit

1 Sketch Pen Starter Kit

1 Double Sided Adhesive Starter Kit

That is right! We are giving away a Silhouette CAMEO electronic cutting machine and one of EVERY starter kit that Silhouette makes! That is a value of over $550, not to mention the ability to craft your heart out for a very long time! Enter the giveaway by using the Rafflecopter below. And remember if you don’t win, you can see the current Silhouette Sale & Promo Code here. Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Have you used the Silhouette CAMEO before?

What prize are you most excited to win?

What is your favorite form of crafting?

The post The Ultimate Silhouette CAMEO Giveaway! appeared first on KeepMovingForwardWithMe.

Once upon a time I received a dreamy box full of glitter in the mail. My daughter and I knew our weekend of Christmas crafts was about to become much sparklier! Our biggest project – giving Santa’s cookie plate an upgrade.

Our first step was to gather the supplies and select which glitter to use for the border.

Lily choose Gold, Snow, and Citron from Michaels Recollections Glitter Collection. The extra fine glitter was perfect for our project! You can buy the glitter individually or you can also get them in pretty sets. The prices start at $3.99 and, let me tell you, the glitter lasts forever! My six year old applied the glitter liberally several times and it barely put a dent in the containers.

Other supplies you will need include:

Paint Brushes – a wide one and a smaller one for touch ups

Crayola Chalk

Painter’s Tape

Chalkboard Paint or Spray Paint

Modge Podge

Plate

Once we had all of our supplies together, Lily helped me tape off where the chalk board paint was going to go.

Because we were taping a rounded edge, I tore the tape off in several-inch long pieces and then laid them down overlapping until we surrounded the entire edge of the plate. I then used my little sharp tool to make an even cut around the entire edge. I did this step myself, but Lily helped with the rest of the process.

Next came the fun!

Lily started by painting the outside of the circle and then finished with the middle. This helped her to not getting any of the paint outside the circle. We let the chalkboard paint dry over night and it was ready for a second coat in the morning.

It was time to move on to the SPARKLE! We poured the modge podge into our glass cup and then used both the smaller and bigger brushes to spread it on the plate. The smaller brush was for the inner ring. We did it in sections so the modge podge did not dry too fast.

Lily knew the best way to apply the glitter. Pour, pour, and pour some more! I started applying it much too thinly. The sections where she literally dumped the glitter looked much better. For the first coat of glitter, we sprinkled all three colors from the Michaels Recollections Collection. The glitter we used was very fine, but Michaels also has chunky and tinsel glitter available which may be fun to use as well!

We let the glitter dry and then we went over any sparse patches with another layer of modge podge and more glitter. Putting a poster board underneath the plate allowed us to catch any glitter that fell off. We funneled the glitter into a plastic bag and then poured it on for the second coat. You will want to spray a sealant on keep the glitter in place as well.

Lily was THRILLED with our final project.

She quickly wrote her thank you note to Santa and now she can’t wait to make cookies Christmas Eve. This was the perfect craft for Lily and I to work on together! We are already thinking of ways to use our glitter from Michaels next!

My boys also got in a little glitter fun when Lily was at school. I made them snow bins and sprinkled in the Peacock extra fine glitter. They loved making mini snow men inside!

Thank you to Michaels for making this post possible!

The post Chalk Board Santa Cookie Plate appeared first on KeepMovingForwardWithMe.