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It’s that time again.  We are winding down from summer camp and vacations and trips to the pool.  We are making endless trips to Target and Kohls stocking up on school supplies and school clothes.  I’ll bet your kids are ready to go back.  I’ll bet you are ready for them to go back.

Well as luck would have it, we discoverd a way for you to kill three birds with one stone (you know we would never actually kill any birds - it’s just an expression.)

1.  Quiet the end of summer chants of “I’m bored Mom, what can I do?”

2.  Assist your back-to-school organizing and cleaning efforts.

3.  Give your kids some really cool and original supplies to go back to school with.

On the Daily Danny website we discovered a great step-by-step guide to making cool crayon creations out of your old, stubby crayons.  You know - the ones we throw away all the time because we don’t know what else to do with them.

We loved the idea of using all of your cookie cutters you have sitting in the back of your kitchen drawer to make some really stylish crayon shapes.  Check out Danny’s blog for all of the instructions.  Emily and I are going to try it and will post our pictures here.  We’d love to see the results of your efforts too!

Here are some pictures from Danny’s website… cool huh?

If it seems funny to you that we are posting about a way to organize the mounds of American Girl Doll stuff your daughters have acquired only one day after we posted about spoiling your children… don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on us.  Here’s the problem. While we, as parents, have the best of intentions, they, as grandparents have the best of intentions too.  What kind of grandmother can resist the pleas of a poor, disadvantaged grandchild (who has horrible parents that don’t buy the child anything).  Truthfully, what kind of grandmother can resist the American Girl Catalog and the abundance of choice (and doll clothes on sale) from Emily Rose.

So - the question is, when your American Girl Doll stuff gets out of hand, what’s a parent to do?  Well, Wilyhacker on the instructables website has come up with a plan to create the fabulous American Girl Doll storage unit that you see above.  Granted - we didn’t actually try making this - so although it looks relatively simple - I can’t vouch for it.  Especially since I’m not handy at these kinds of things.  But we would love to see and hear from anyone who has given it a try.  And hey - if it all goes really badly you could always just give up and buy one of our doll trunks.

Look what we found on the Sewing Chick’s blog!  How to make Fairy Wings for your doll.  I can just imagine all of the possibilities for Sophie and Marisol.  Pink ones, rainbow ones, bejeweled ones, etc… Emily is just starting to get interested in sewing and absolutely loves to use the sewing machine.  Thsi is a great project for us to try together.  Usually she is the one guiding me as, I am ashamed to admit, I am absolutely hopeless at sewing (machine or otherwise).  In fact, don’t tell anyone, but I usually have to wait for my Mother-in-Law to visit to get even a button sewed back on.  Anyway - I do know that there are so many of you out there that are fabulous at sewing so this one is for you.  If you finish the prject we would love to see photos that we can share on the blog.

We do have a very cute doll fairy outfit that you can pair with the wings.  I thought it would be really cute to make matching wings for your daughter and her doll so I went on a hunt and found these fairy wings for your daughter for only $10.99!

I love play dough!  I love to play with play dough.  I just couldn’t wait until Emily was old enough that I could buy tons of different colors and sit at the kitchen table with her for hours.  I have to admit that one of my favorite things about play dough is the smell.  Doesn’t it make you want to eat it?  Can we blame our kids for putting in their mouths?

We found this great article from Family Fun that has 10 different edible play dough recipes!  Jello, Kool Aid, Peanut Butter, Oatmeal - all play dough, all edible.

The article states that this play dough is great for kids who are in pre-school and tempted to eat their art supplies.  But since I am um…. quite a bit older than pre-school and I have been tempted to eat my art supplies I would say these recipes are great for everyone.  Emily and I are certainly going to experiment with these.  She is just getting interested in cooking so these will be so fun to do together when we can both enjoy the results (and I can enjoy my secret desire to eat my play dough.)