I'm back!! With babies and a craft!!

I'm back! So I've been kind of a slacker on the blogging front, but I have an excuse. I had twins! Max and Lily were born on July 3 at 38 weeks! After everything we went through I made it to 38 weeks, I couldn't believe it but I am so thankful they were healthy! Some day I will post an actual birth story but for today I have a craft!

This year I will be hosting Thanksgiving for the first time, I am pretty confident that I won't burn the turkey but my mom will be on stand-by with any questions I'm sure I will have. My biggest worry about hosting thanksgiving is keeping the kids entertained. My nephews are what we will call "energetic" and I have a brand new house, so activities to keep everyone calm and busy are a must.

First, I decided I was going to print out cute placemats for the kids table. Then, I realized they needed crayons to color this placemat with, so the idea of the Crayon Turkey was born. I think it came out really cute.

What you need:

• Crayons
• Styrofoam balls (I think mine were 4 inch balls, they came in packs of 2)
• Egg shaped styrofoam (for the turkey head)
• Foam paper
• Construction Paper
• Foam paint brush
• Brown acrylic paint
• Hot glue gun

First, paint all the styrofoam pieces brown. After I started painting the balls, I realized I needed to cut a slice off of the bottom so they wouldn't roll away. Learn from my mistake and cut the bottoms off first.

While you are waiting for the paint to dry, take the time to make up all the other pieces. On your construction paper draw a feather shape. I gave each turkey 4 feathers, 2 orange and 2 red. So for one turkey with 4 feathers cut out 8 feathers. I don't have pictures of the next step so I will explain it as well as I can. It is easy.

On one of your feathers, draw the veins. Next put some elmer's glue on one of the plain feathers, put a toothpick in the middle and then place the feather with the veins drawn on it on top. I put a staple in the bottom as well to help hold the toothpick in. Make sense?
Using your foam paper cut out the following pieces:

The beak.
The eyes. I used white paper and then put a dot in the center with a sharpy.
The gizard. (My husband said it isn't called a gizard, but that's what I call it)
After the paint is dry glue the head on the body using your hot glue gun. Make sure the head is centered and not too low or the turkey will tip over, trust me. Then, glue the eyes, beak and gizard on.

I glued each turkey onto a piece of foam paper, this helps it stand a little better. I also cut a piece of foam out for each turkey and wrote the kids names on it.

Stick the feathers in the turkey. Next, using the tip of a pen, poke a hole in the styrofoam directly in front of each feather, this will be for your crayon. Stick the sharp tip of the crayon in each hole.

That's all! Then look how adorable they turned out!!
I also made each one of the kids a coloring book. I just googled thanksgiving coloring pages. Printed them, poked holes in the sides and tied them together using grosgrain ribbon that I had lying around. Make sure to heat seal the ends of the ribbon or they will fray.

I'm so excited for Thanksgiving! Anyone else have any craft ideas to keep the kiddos busy over the holidays?