Ball – stay at home drama

Here, we added a cute little owl WHOOOOOOse eyes are glowing and ready for Halloween. Yup–you guessed it, $1.00–at Dollar Tree!

YES–Ball® makes limited edition purple mason jars and YES you can make adorablely cheap crafts with them!! Toddler friendly Halloween decorations that will keep you and the Kidd-o busy for an hour or two–coming your way! I made this one up, while I was unpacking my Halloween decor last week…annnnd I wanted to share it!! These are “ghostly trees”.

Ball® exclusive purple mason jars, floral wire, wire cutters (or strong kitchen scissors) bag of decorative rocks. (We had the black, but the clear stones would be best to show off the purple!) string or fishing line, twigs, lace tulle or cream gauzy/tulle fabric

If you haven’t noticed, I like Dollar Tree… So that’s where I grabbed the styrofoam, floral wire, wire cutters, rocks, and string. I bought the tulle rolls at Walmart for 2.97, and the Ball® mason jars can be purchased at http://www.freshpreservingstore.com! We mixed our trees up by using the Ball® Heritage Collection Pint and Quart sized jars.

arrange your twigs and branches to look “tree-ish” and then you are ready to wrap the wire around their trunks. To make this craft adult friendly–you could spray paint the sticks silver for a more fancy look!

First off, head outside, let the kids play! While you’re out there, they will LOVE searching the yard for the perfect “creepy” sticks to create their ghost trees with…(and if they’re like my toddler–they’ll enjoy poking you with the sticks too!) Gather a good handful of sticks and branches that will make up the “tree” part of the craft! You’ll want them 12-18 inches long or so… and obviously you can cut them/snap them to be shorter.

take a kitchen knife or scissors and just chop away at it until you can push it through the top of the mason jar.

Cut and shape a chunk of the green styrofoam to insert into the top of the mason jar and shove that sucker way down to the bottom. You could add a drop of hot glue to the inside base of the jar to stick it to, but you don’t have to!

once you’ve positioned the branches to look like a tree, wrap the floral wire tightly around the base! (about 3-4 inches up from bottom)

Put the silver ring of the mason jar cover back on, leaving the disc off, so you can easily stick the tree into the styrofoam at the bottom of the jar. Again, you could add a blob of hot glue to the styrofoam so it sticks to the “tree” when you push it down–but you don’t have to!

Add some tulle to the bottom of the jar surrounding the styrofoam so it doesn’t show through jar. If you gather the tulle and bunch it up around the styrofoam it’ll work best.
Add a few of the black rocks on top of the styrofoam around the “trunk” of your tree and it’ll add a little weight to your jar and keep the tree in place as well.

NOW. Make your ghosts! As silly as it sounds, grab a few paper towels and cut them into small squares about 4×4 and crumple it up to be the ‘head’ of the ghost. Have cottonballs? Use one per head if you’d rather! Cut your roll of cream lace or tulle in about 8 inch long pieces (leaving the width as is), and place the crumbled paper towel in the center of the fabric. Fold the fabric over and gather it under the ghosts head. Tie in a simple bow with the string. Make the bow loops big enough so you can hang the ghosts on the tree once you’e made them all.

Make anywhere between 5-8 depending on size of trees and preference. You can trim your ghosts to whatever size and shape you want! Hang those little cuties on the trees and there ya have it! a $4-$8 halloween craft! (depending on what you already have at home for supplies!)

Want to make your jars glow? Add battery operated string lights to put inside the jars or LED tea lights to make your jars glow purple!

*These Heritage Collection Ball® Mason Jars were sent to me for free by Ball® Canning and all opinions are my own in any and all use of this product.

October 13, 2015October 14, 2015 by StayAtHomeDrama Categories: Cheap Crafts, DIY, Halloween Crafts, Kid FriendlyTags: Ball, DIY, ghosts, Halloween, Halloween Craft, Mason Jar, Stay At Home Drama, tulle 3 Comments

photo 2-44 — American horror story: Toddlers

We are FOURTH OF JULY ready! How about you? We’re making cucumber/vidalia/beet salad and a patriotic sangria to share this year, as we’ll be attending the ANNUAL Bristol 4th of July festivities with our red, white, and BOOZE in tow. Please excuse my two year old daughter, as she does not know flag etiquette. If you count dragging the mini flags across the cement and whacking flowers with them as “what to do”–then we’re golden, otherwise–she’s the least “american girl” that I know. Also, she prefers to sing “happy birthday” while waiving them, instead of “america the beautiful”…ya follow me?–she doesn’t get it!

*Stars n’ Stripes Sangria*
1 jug of Carlo Rossi Rhine (white)
1 bottle of welch’s white grape juice
1/2 (the pint bottle) of peach schnapps
1 bottle of polar strawberry/watermelon seltzer for fizz (use any flavor you like!)
1 cup of lime juice (fresh squeezed or bottle)
Lots of fruit! I picked red apples, blueberries and strawberries because HELLO– they’re red, white and blue! Duh. Throw some limes in too, for color. If you cut the apples laying horizontal, you get a really cool star shape where the seeds were (instead of slicing from stem to end– slice across instead!) Put your sangria in a Ball brand mason jar–filled with ice (and some of that sinfully soaked fruit), and you have adorable arm candy for the holiday!

photo 1-40 — fryin’ up some tasty flowers with my american chopsticks

photo 1-39 — Auntie Addie got her nails did by MOI as payment for watching my kiddies! Am I a cheap-o? Nahhhh…Auntie loves the torture!

Fireworks tonight and the parade tomorrow…how much better can ya get?…well…there’s always that beach chair…alone…on an island somewhere…anywho–we have gone to the Bristol Fourth of July parade every year since I can remember! It is definitely much more fun being a kid at a parade, but if mama can put sangria in her sippy cup–everyone’s happy. Also feed me snacks, I like snacks with my drinks.

photo 3-32 — she sat for 10 minutes straight with this sucker in front of her!

photo 2-45 — special treat at the Bristol 4th of July Concert series!

I’m bustin’ out the radio flyer wagon this year to haul the kiddies around. Well really, Ollie will be in the baby bjorn attached to me like velcro–per usual, and Penel will be strapped into the wagon with all our cooler/diaper bag swag, until some very daring individual decides to unleash her amongst the tens of thousand parade-goers. We should probably avoid the red, white and blue with her–and stick to neon green…you know.. like the asphalt workers wear so they don’t lose each other on the job.

happy baby. gangster baby. happy-gangster baby.

My aunt lives right on the parade route which makes pee/poop runs a breeze–especially when your toddler enjoys pooping in her pull-ups these days. YESSSS, I knowwww…we totally went backwards with the potty skills. DON’T JUDGE ME– I was very pregnant and very lazy. I’ll be nursing in private, too… versus out on the sidewalk with the saxophones of the 78th high school band passing by. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good band–but they don’t need any distractions (my chest) while trying to remember the tune to “your a grand ole flag”. For crying out loud, they’re already trying to walk, play the darn instrument, AND catch water from the squirty bottle being shot into their mouth by the “water person” who’s NOT in head-to-toe polyester. Phew. Poor things… all…that…fabric… thank goodness for them, it looks like we are getting 70-ish weather. I’m sure those outfits smell lovely from sweat by the end of the conga line– so 70-ish sounds hot enough.