Confessions of a Not So Crafty Momma.

Thanksgiving is less than a month away and today, we did our first turkey themed craft of the year! This paper turkey is perfect for little ones under five!

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Materials Needed

• Construction Paper (We used brown for the turkey’s body and feet, orange for the beak, and red for the wattle. I let my toddler pick out the colors she wanted for the feathers. We glued everything on a piece of white paper).
• Markers or Crayons
• Glue
• Scissors

I started by cutting out a beak, the wattle, and two feet like shapes. Next, I traced my toddler’s foot on the brown paper and her hands on several colors of construction paper. After I was done tracing, I cut it all out. If your child is an older preschooler, you can let them do the cutting!

Next, I helped my toddler glue the cut out hand prints onto the white paper. If your child is under a year old, you can do the gluing for them. They won’t have as much fun as a toddler or preschooler would have with this, but it will be a great keepsake for you to look back on!

After the handprints were glued on, I gave my toddler the footprint to glue on. Once that was on, I gave her the wattle, beak, and feet.

Lastly, I gave her a marker to draw eyes on her turkey. You could also use googly eyes, but for this turkey, we decided to keep it simple!

Book Suggestions

If you’d like to pair this art project with a book, we have a few suggestions!

If you like this art project, please share it with a friend!

I know Halloween was only a few days ago, but I feel like October flew by and I know that November will go fast as well. This holiday season, we hope to make a few new traditions. One new tradition that we’d like to start is building a gingerbread house together. Today, I want to share a few gingerbread house ideas.

**This post may contain affiliate links. We may get a small commission, at no additional cost to you, for purchases made from our links. Any price mentioned is the price on the date that this post was originally published.**

Gluten Free Gingerbread House

Cardamom Cookie Gingerbread House

“Hot Glue” & Gingerbread

Gingerbread House from Scratch

No Bake Gingerbread House

Book Suggestions

If you want to end your day of holiday fun with a children’s book, here are some suggestions! We know that the holidays are already expensive, so all the books on this list are under $7.

I hope these ideas can inspire you to add gingerbread house building into your holiday traditions this year! If you’ve built one in the past, please leave us a few tips in the comments below!

Halloween is almost here! We have been busy with Halloween and fall festivities, but we did take a little bit of time today to paint a paper plate jack o’lantern. This art project is perfect for kids from two to four and even though it is a bit messy, can be done in a classroom or home environment.

**This post contains affiliate links. We may get a small commission, at no additional cost to you, for all purchases made from our links. All opinions expressed are our own**

Materials Needed

• Paper Plate
• Orange Paint
• Scissors
• Black Construction Paper
• Brown Construction Paper
• Paint Brush (Optional. We did not use one)
• Glue

I started by giving my daughter orange paint to paint the paper plate. She used her hands, but a paint brush or even a sponge would also work.

While the painting dried, we talked about parts of a jack o’lantern. I asked my toddler to pick what shapes she wanted for the eyes and nose. Then I asked her to decide if she wanted a scary face, a happy face, or a silly face. After she made her choices, I cut out the parts from the black construction paper. I also cut out a small rectangle from the brown construction paper. If you are working with a group of children, it may be easier to pre-cut the shapes and then let each child just grab when they’d like.

Once the painted plate was completely dry, I helped my toddler glue on the jack o’lantern parts.

Next, we flipped it over and glued on the brown rectangle.

The end result is a unique little jack o’lantern that is perfect for little hands to make!

Book Suggestions

Little learners often enjoy having a book and a craft paired together! Here are some book suggestions.

If you like this craft, please share it with a friend!

While I love to share amazing recipes from other bloggers, I have never before shared a recipe that I have created myself. Today, I’m going to invite you on a dysfunctional journey as I adventure into my first food related blog post. We did not grill any over the summer, but when we got the SUMPRI Barbecue Grill Basket, I decided to try it out and share what I made!

**I was given a significant discount on the grill basket in order to share it with all of you. All options expressed are my own**

The SUMPRI Grill Basket is a portable stainless steel basket that features a removable handle. It can be used for meat or veggies, but I decided to use it to make grilled sweet potatoes.

For this recipe, I used two medium sized sweet potatoes, some olive oil, and brown sugar.

I started by cutting up the sweet potato into thin slices.

Next, I headed out to my grill with all of the ingredients and my new grill basket. I was impressed with how sturdy, but still super light, the basket was. It was super easy to carry and if we were traveling with it, it wouldn’t take up much room.

Next, I put the sweet potatoes into the grill basket, drizzled olive oil over both sides and cooked them about five minutes on each side.

This SUMPRI grill basket set also includes heat resistant grilling gloves and a brush to apply sauce or oil. The wooden handle of the grill basket doesn’t get hot, but the gloves will still come in handy while you are grilling! After the potatoes cooked for about 5 minutes on each side, I sprinkled some brown sugar over them and cooked them for an additional two to three minutes on each side.

Once they were finished, the grill basket made it easy to just dump them onto a plate. The last thing I did was sprinkle a bit of extra brown sugar over them. This is optional, but we really love brown sugar in our house!

The SUMPRI grilling basket made making this recipe so easy! It was easy to clean afterwards and the quality was great! If you want to try it for yourself, you can get it here.

We would love to hear from you! Do enjoy grilling in the fall? What is your favorite thing to grill?

Halloween is less than two weeks away and we have been slacking big time on the Halloween crafts! Today, we want to share a simple and mess free black cat!

**This post contains affiliate links. We may get a small commission, at no additional cost to you, for purchase made through our links. All opinions expressed are our own. Any prices given are current as of the time this post was originally written. Prices are subject to change.**

Materials Needed

• Construction Paper (We used two pieces of white, black, and pink)
• Glue
• Scissors
• Black Paint
• Plastic Sandwich Bag
• Googly Eyes

I started by slightly folding one piece of white paper so it would fit into the sandwich bag. Next, I put paint on the paper and slid it into the bag. After that, I gave it to my toddler so she could spread around the paint. We use this method of painting often because there is no mess to clean up!

This painting took awhile to dry. While it dried, I cut out two triangles and several long rectangles from the black construction paper. I also cut out two pink triangles slightly smaller than the black triangles and one more small pink triangle. Once the painting was completely dry, I cut out around the outline of the painted area.

Next, I helped my toddler glue the cat’s head onto the other piece of white paper. After that, she glued on the eyes, ears, nose, and whiskers. When we do art projects, I always try to offer as little guidance as possible.

The end result is an adorable black cat that won’t leave you cleaning up paint!

Book Suggestions

Little learners often learn the best when you pair up a book and a craft or activity! All of these books are under $10.

If you like this craft, please take a moment to share it!

Even though our family won’t be heading to Disney until next October, we are in full Disney planning mode. Over the years, the amount of planning required for a Disney trip has increased. Today, we want to share some tips for planning a trip to Walt Disney World.

If you are staying on property, you can make your FastPass selections 60 days before your arrival. If you are staying off property, it is 30 days. Make sure you log on as soon as you can to pick your FastPasses! The FastPasses for newer and popular attractions go very fast, so if you wait too long, you may miss out!

If you are staying on property, you can also take advantage of Extra Magic Hours. These give you the ability to be able to enter parks early or to stay late. Make sure to look at the Extra Magic Hours schedule before planning which park to visit each day. This may give you the chance to ride some of the more popular rides with shorter wait times!

There is so much to do in the Parks, but Disney magic can also be found outside of the parks as well. Plan some time to visit Disney Springs as well as some of the Disney resorts. You will find some amazing resturants and shopping by taking even four hours away from the parks to explore. It is also a way to take a bit of a break from all of the overstimulation of the parks.

Don’t forget to plan out your dining. We always take time to figure out which quick service restaurants we want to eat at and where they are, so that we do not waste park time figuring it out. You can make advanced dining reservations for table service restaurants up to 180 days in advance. By making reservations as far out as possible, you have the best chance of getting the reservations you want. There are often day of reservations available, but if you have your heart set on a certain resturant, then you may not want to take that chance.

If parades and shows are important to you, make sure you look at the entertainment schedule for each day while you are planning FastPasses and dining reservations. You can find this information on the My Disney Experience app. If these things are not important to you, consider looking up the times anyway because wait times are often less when everyone else is waiting to see a parade or castle show!

Several stores sell Disney gift cards at a discount. We buy ours at Sam’s Club, but if you have a Target Card, you can also use that to purchase them at a discount. We buy a gift card when we have extra money in our weekly budget and that is how we pay for our trip. Disney gift cards can be used to pay for your resort stay, meals, souvenirs, and park tickets, so they will not go to waste!

We find planning each day at Disney to be super helpful, but don’t forget to leave some wiggle room in each day. You don’t want to over plan yourself and miss out on the spontaneous magic Disney World has to offer.

We hope that these tips will help you feel like an expert Disney trip planner! We would love to hear from you! How many Disney World vacations have you planned? What is your favorite part of the planning process?