This post is sponsored by Cricut and contains affiliate links.

My kids are always asking me to print out coloring pages for them. They love coloring their favorite characters, cute holiday scenes, and even geometric patterns.

So when they asked me to make them their own bags for Christmas, I knew exactly how we could personalize them!

Last year Cricut came out with Infusible Ink, an ink transfer product. You cut designs out using Infusible Ink Transfer Sheets, or draw pictures with Infusible Ink Pens & Markers on laser copy paper, then using high heat, you press your design into the Cricut Blank base material.

Unlike vinyl, which sits on top of your base material, Infusible Ink gets pressed INTO the base material. No flaking, no peeling, and no cracking. It’s an awesome, long-lasting, high-quality way to transfer bright colors and your own designs onto shirts, pillows, coasters, and yes, even tote bags.

Are you intrigued? I was, too. It’s amazing.

I already use my Cricut Explore Air 2 to make all kinds of things around the house. Why not use it to design and create tote bags for my kids!?

All three kid-colored tote bags turned out perfect. Honestly, they turned out even better than I had imagined in my head, and the kids love them, too!

They were so easy to make, and the kids had a blast designing and coloring them. They’d be a great gift to give to kids to make for themselves, or a great gift to make for friends, grandparents, or teachers!

Kid-Colored Tote Bags

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Active Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Kid-colored tote bags are an easy, personal DIY holiday gift! Make custom tote bags for your kids or friends, or gift them to grandparents or teachers!

Print

Materials

• Cricut Explore Air 2
• Cricut Infusible Ink Markers
• Blank laser copy paper
• Cricut Infusible Ink Tote Bag Blank
• Cricut EasyPress
• EasyPress Mat
• Blank butcher paper

Instructions

1. First, you want to open Cricut Design Space. The Infusible Ink Markers I used (and link to) only work with Cricut Explore machines, so next set your machine to Explore.
2. Next add a template of a tote bag onto Design Space. This will help you design something that will fit nicely on the bag. Go to templates on the left-hand side, and then select "totes." This will put the outline of a tote bag on Design Space. Depending on if you have a large or medium-sized tote bag (ours are medium), you need to change the size. At the top of the screen, select "size" and switch it to "custom." The medium bag is 14x14" so I made the tote part of the bag about 14x14" big.
3. Now you're ready to design! This is where you get to be creative. You can do your child's name, a monogrammed letter, a favorite character or animal, inspiring phrase or quote, just a word (toys or books or snacks), or anything else you might think they'd like to color, from simple to complex. For my daughter, I had a picture of a dog and her puppy with the text "P is for Puppy." My oldest son just had a big J to color, and my youngest son colored in the words "BOOKS." Make sure you're using the "draw" linetype and not "cut."
   NOTES: Once you have your design, make sure it's aligned the way you want it. You may need to center your images if you have more than one piece to your design. Do this by going to "align" and then "center horizontally." You also want to weld your design into one piece if you used more than one piece in it.
4. Next, you get to draw the design onto paper so your child can color it! Click "Make," change the layout to 8 1/2 x 11", make sure mirror is ON, and then with a piece of laser copy paper on your mat, draw your design!
5. After your design gets drawn onto the copy paper, it's time to grab your kids! Hand over the Infusible Ink Markers and let them color. They can color as much or as little as they want.
6. When they're all done coloring, plug in your EasyPress and turn it to 385 degrees. Each Infusible Ink Blank has a different temperature and time for pressing, and the tote bags are 385 for 40 seconds. Once it's ready, lay your tote bag onto the mat, then your design onto the tote bag where you want it. Then place a piece of butcher paper in between your design and the EasyPress. Apply gentle pressure to the EasyPress for 40 seconds, and then take it off your tote bag. Once the bag is cool, remove the butcher paper and your laser paper, and you're done!
   NOTES: Make sure you use a new piece of butcher paper for each design, or if your design is too big for your EasyPress and you have to press one half at a time. Otherwise, you'll end up with residue from the ink on the paper that transfers to the bag.

As soon as we finished these kid-colored tote bags, they immediately filled them with a bunch of things and carried them around all day.

I love that each bag is so unique, and shows off each kid’s personality. And making them was so easy, I want to make them as gifts for everyone! Can you imagine how cute these would be for grandparents or teachers!?

Seriously, I would recommend Cricut Infusible Ink markers and totes to anyone looking to make a personalized, meaningful gift. And yes, that does include gifts for yourself, too! I was super impressed with how these turned out, and I know the kids are going to use them for years to come!

The post Kid-Colored Tote Bags with Cricut Explore Air 2 – An Easy DIY Holiday Gift! appeared first on Life With My Littles.

This at-home color hunt printable is a great way to keep kids busy and having fun while you’re stuck inside! Great for younger and older kids, and it comes in color or black and white!

After the initial desire to make this crazy time of our lives special by planning crafts and games and making new recipes each week wore off, I, like many other moms, felt burned out.

And unfortunately, that was weeks ago.

With the thought in mind that we have no idea how long this is going to last, I decided it was time to whip myself back into shape and make life at home a little more exciting.In an attempt to keep my kids away from screens and other media, I thought it’d be fun to do a color hunt at home! My kids are 3, 5, and 7, so I knew they could all do it at different levels. It was the perfect family activity!

I wanted to make our activity extra special, so I hopped onto Target.com and ordered a box of brand new crayons! We’re kind of crayon snobs over here, so Crayola is the only brand we buy. I picked up a 24 count box of Ultra-Clean Crayola Washable Crayons, along with a bottle of Dial® Kids Peachy Clean Body & Hair Wash for after (because when you have a three-year-old, you always have to wash up after any type of coloring activity!). We used Drive-Up so we could stay in our car and the sales associate brought our bag right out to the car!

When we got home I put together a cute little printable at-home color hunt worksheet and printed out three copies. It turned out so cute, and my kids were super excited to get started!

I wanted to make it work when printed in color and black and white, and I also wanted it to be easy to identify what color each box was, so even my three-year-old could understand what he was supposed to do.

I put the basic colors on the front of the worksheet and then added some colors that might be a little bit more challenging on the back. I also added a bonus question for older kids!

We set off on our hunt through the house for things of each color, and after we found them all, we brought them back downstairs to draw them on the worksheets!

I loved seeing how each of my kids drew and colored each item. My oldest son loves to draw, my daughter loves to color, and my younger son has (mostly) stopped scribbling wildly all over his paper, so it was the perfect activity.

And of course, as I expected, my youngest son ended up coloring on himself. Luckily, we used washable crayons, but we also had our bottle of Dial® Kids Peachy Clean Body + Hair Wash to scrub him off after!

We love Dial® Kids Body + Hair Wash because it’s developed with the help of Pediatric Dermatologists, it’s tear-free, hypoallergenic, pH balanced specifically for kids’ skin, and doesn’t have any artificial dyes. It’s gentle enough for my little ones and I love it! And bonus, right now you can get $1 off one Dial® Body Wash or 10-Bar+ (excludes trial/travel sizes) while supplies last!

We did this two days ago, and my kids are already asking me to print out more copies of the color hunt so they can do it again!

I’ve included printable downloads of our at-home color hunt so you can keep your kids busy while you’re stuck inside, too!

Just click below to download and print your own color hunt. Remember, it’s double-sided, so don’t forget to adjust your settings when you print it!

Printable At-Home Color Hunt in Black & White
Printable At-Home Color Hunt in Color

I hope everyone is staying safe and staying busy while we’re all at home! And until we can get out again, I hope this fun at-home color hunt can keep you busy for a while!

The post Printable At-Home Color Hunt appeared first on Life With My Littles.

These DIY labels for school supplies are so simple to make and apply! You can easily personalize them for your child and they only take a few minutes to make. Such a great way to label supplies for school!

A few weeks ago, we made the big decision to homeschool our kids this year.

It was a very difficult, personal decision that we came to after our school district announced they were starting school with a combination of distance and in-person learning and were likely to switch to just distance learning or just in-person learning throughout the year.

There were a lot of factors that went into our decision to homeschool, but now that we’ve officially decided, I’ve started preparing for the school year. And if I’m being honest, I’m really excited for the upcoming year! My daughter is starting kindergarten and my oldest son is starting second grade, so I think it is going to be really fun!

One thing that we always love doing is buying school supplies, and it’s been even more fun buying supplies for homeschooling because I get to decide what to add to our list!

We’ve gotten new crayons, markers, colored pencils, glue sticks, pencils, paper, folders, and binders. But once I bought all of our homeschool goodies, I had to figure out how to organize them.

Thankfully, my Cricut Explore Air 2 was up to the challenge! It’s so easy to use, no matter what you’re making, and these labels were no exception!

I have two beautiful pen sets from Cricut, the Extra Fine Point Pen Set and the Ultimate Fine Point Pen Set. I love the colors in both, and they’re both compatible with my Explore Air 2.

The only issue I had is that the pens won’t write on regular vinyl.

Luckily, Cricut also makes writable vinyl that’s permanent, but unluckily, right now it’s only available for Cricut Joy. Yes, there are a few Cricut Joy pens that will work on the writable vinyl, but I wanted to use my wide array of colors I already had!

With a simple tweak, I was able to use the writable vinyl that’s made for Cricut Joy with my Cricut Explore Air 2. It was simple and even the most beginner Cricut users can easily replicate what I did.

These adorable labels are perfect for any child’s school supplies, whether they’re going to school or homeschooling. You can even customize them so they have your child’s name on them! And today, I’m sharing the whole process, and the Cricut Design Space file, with you!

First, you need to decide which of the DIY labels for school supplies you want to use, and how big you want them. My supply boxes are 8.8″ long, so I made my labels each 5″ long.

The Design Space file include labels for crayons, thin and thick markers, glue sticks, pencils, colored pencils, and dry erase markers. If you want to create or change your own labels, detach the pieces of a label in the file, change the text, and if you want, change or delete the picture. You can also change the pen colors. Easy peasy.

So let’s get started! Cut a piece of your writable vinyl so it’s 8.3″ long (one of the choices for material size is 5.8×8.3″ long, and since the writable vinyl is 5.5″ wide, it works).

Next, put it on your cutting mat. I like to use my scraper from my Cricut Joy tool set to make sure it’s stuck on there good and flat.

Make sure your Cricut Explore is set to “Vinyl” and the right pen is loaded into your machine. Load your mat and press go! The machine does all the work for you. Every time it finishes with a color, it will pause and wait for you to insert a new pen. When it’s done writing, then it uses the blade and cuts out your labels!

I loved watching my designs come to life on my writable vinyl. The machine worked perfectly and the designs came out flawless!

Once my Explore finished its job, I unloaded the vinyl, peeled the stickers off, and placed them onto my supply boxes. I got my supply boxes on Amazon, but you can really get them anywhere as long as they are flat on top.

Make sure you carefully apply the labels so they don’t bubble up or wrinkle. The scraper tool is an easy way to make sure you get the labels on without any bubbles.

Once all your labels are on, fill up your supply boxes with school supplies and you’re done! Yay!

Regardless of if you’re homeschooling, sending your child to school, or distance learning this year, labels for school supplies are a must! You can even go a step further and label your child’s lunch box, notebooks, or backpack. These DIY labels or school supplies are so easy to make, and you can personalize them pretty much however you want.

Now that our school supplies are all ready to go, I can hardly wait to get started with the school year. I hope that wherever you are, whatever your children’s school year looks like, you’re excited, too! Good luck!

The post DIY Labels for School Supplies: Personalize with Cricut for Back-to-School! appeared first on Life With My Littles.

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When I was pregnant with Little J, I decided I wanted to make my own burp rag and bib sets. So I made a bunch of sets with all these cute boy fabrics I found and I LOVED them. The burp rags I made were incredibly easy, I packed them in his hospital bag when he was born, and I used them the entire time I nursed (eight months).

The best part was that they lasted that long, and I’m sure they would last even longer if I wanted to keep using them, but I definitely wanted to make new girl burp rags. Hence, this tutorial!

Note: I used the first set of burp rags I made with my second son four years later, and they still held up great!

Now when I say these are the easiest and best burp rags you will ever sew, I really mean it. Two rectangles of fabric sewn together, flipped right-side out, and then topstitched. I am not kidding, they are that easy.

So now that you’re not scared of this sewing, let’s dive right in!

Yield: 2 burp rags per 1/3 yard

The Best (and Easiest) Burp Rags You Will Ever Sew

Active Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Difficulty: easy

This is the easiest tutorial for a burp rag you could make! Only three steps, and they are the best DIY burp rags!! Great for easy baby gifts, and they last through multiple babies!

Print

Materials

• 1/3 yard minky fabric, prewashed
• 1/3 yard patterned fabric, prewashed
• thread to match

Tools

• Cutting Mat
• Rotary Cutter
• Ruler
• Sewing Machine

Instructions

1. Cut a rectangle 10×18″ out of both the minky fabric and the patterned fabric. I used my cutting mat and rotary cutter and it made it so easy.
2. Sew the two rectangles together, right-sides together, with a 1/2″ seam, leaving a 1″ opening in the middle of one of the edges.
3. Flip the burp rag right-side out, and topstitch all the way around, including on the opening to close it.
4. Just kidding, there isn’t a step four. You are done! I told you that was insanely easy! And they work so well.

Recommended Products

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• 
  Cutting Mat Ruler
• 
  Rotary Cutter
• 
  Cutting Mat

The minky is super soft on baby’s face, and the cotton is breathable and you can pick any cute fabric you want!

I love the set I made for baby girl and I can’t wait to use them!! These also make for great gifts!!

Good luck and happy sewing! And if you want to try out sewing something else for baby, you can use my tutorial for a standard car seat cover or a quilted car seat cover! Or check out my best and easiest bib tutorial!

This post was originally published on September 4th, 2014.

The post The Best (and Easiest) Burp Rags You Will Ever Sew appeared first on Life With My Littles.

Easter is such a special holiday, but I feel like it’s often overlooked.

Yes, we hide Easter eggs and fill Easter baskets, but besides that, how many of us do Easter activities with our toddlers in the weeks leading up to Easter?

My kids always love doing crafts with me, and now that my youngest is two, we’ve been trying to find activities and crafts that he can participate in. I thought it would be fun to roundup a bunch of Easter crafts for toddlers for any other mamas looking for crafts easy enough for their toddlers to make, too!

And as is normal in a roundup, please click through before pinning the picture, because these are not my pictures and the ladies who came up with these ideas worked hard on them!

Paper Plate Easter Bunny via The Best Ideas for Kids

Easter Dot Activity Printables via The Resourceful Mama

Pom Pom Chicks via Crafty Morning

Fork-Painted Chicks via Crafty Morning

Wet Chalk Tape Resist Easter Egg via Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Footprint Carrots via One Krieger Chick

3D Puffy Paint Easter Eggs via A Little Pinch of Perfect

Cotton Ball Bunny Picture via Easy Peasy and Fun

Egg Splatter Painting via Hands on as We Grow

Bubble Wrap Easter Eggs via The Chaos and The Clutter

Loofa Painting Chick via Meaningful Mama

Easter Bunny Ears via All Kids Network

Paper Easter Egg Decorating via Alice and Amelia

Potato-Stamped Easter Eggs via The Best Ideas for Kids

Bunny Handprints via Crafty Morning

Watercolor Dipped Eggs via Hello, Wonderful

Easter Egg Suncatchers via The Artful Parent

I’ve already done one of these with my kids last week when my oldest had spring break, and I’m sure we’ll do several more in the weeks leading up to Easter! I hope this list of amazing ideas helps inspire you to be creative and have fun with your toddler! Happy Easter, mamas!

The post Easter Crafts for Toddlers appeared first on Life With My Littles.

I love doing special things for my babies’ first Christmases. I’ve always been big on Christmas traditions, and it’s so fun to start them when your baby is little!

This year we have another new little guy (okay, nine months isn’t super new) and he gets to celebrate his first Christmas. I’m so excited to do all the things with him. Small things like making gingerbread houses or decorating the Christmas tree can be so special (even if your baby can’t really participate!).

One thing we have done with each of our kids is make special keepsake ornaments to commemorate the occasion! There are lots of cute ornaments that you can buy for your baby, but if you’re extra, that just won’t work.

So today, I want to share eight cute ornaments for baby’s first Christmas that you can make yourself!

Baby’s First Christmas Ornaments You Can Make Yourself

Painted Footprint {via Momista Beginnings}

Baby Stats {via Chicken Scratch NY}
(made with vinyl, but you could also hand-write this)

Hospital Bracelet and Hat {via Thrifty Crafty Girl}

Handprint Mold {via You’re So Martha}

FIrst Christmas Tree Slice {via The Photographer’s Wife}
(perfect if you cut down your own Christmas tree each year)

Baby’s First Christmas {via Sarah’s Vinyl Shop}
(yes, this is one you buy, but you could make this super easy)

Stitched Onesie {via Skip to My Lou}
(I just love the embroidered look on felt!)

Photo Blocks {via Mod Podge Rocks}

Aren’t all of these baby’s first Christmas ornaments fun! I can’t wait to make one for Little R!

The only problem is deciding which one to make! Any suggestions?

The post Baby’s First Christmas Ornaments You Can Make Yourself appeared first on Life With My Littles.

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If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have seen sneak peeks of our family’s Moana Halloween costumes. Little A is Moana (of course), Little J is Maui, and Little R is Pua. I love Halloween, and I frequently spend a lot of time working on Halloween costumes (like this Lightning McQueen costume I made last year). I put a lot of time and effort into these costumes, and I am SO HAPPY with how they turned out. I know Halloween is less than two weeks away, but I couldn’t not share these!

Let’s start with Moana.

Little A’s costume is the only one I didn’t completely make.

She was gifted the Moana costume from one of her grandmas for her birthday, and Little J got her the singing Moana necklace for her birthday.

I decided to make her a little flower crown that she could wear like Moana wears in the movie.

I used flowers from Michael’s and a tutorial I found similar to this one.

It was super easy and while it’s not a total DIY, I still love it!

Now we’ll go to sweet baby Pua.

We call Little R Pua almost more than his actual name, so it was easy to decide what character he would be from the movie! I searched for a baby Pua costume tutorial, and couldn’t find one, so I improvised!

And the best part is that if you don’t want to do any sewing, you don’t have to!

All you need are white baby pajamas (I used this one from Amazon), a white baby hat, gray felt, white felt, pink felt, and hot glue. First cut out some gray spots and hot glue them all over the pajamas.

Then cut out some pink triangles and some slightly bigger white triangles (for the ears) and glue them together, then glue them to the hat.

I recommend putting your hat on your baby to make sure you put them in the right place. Of course take the hat off before gluing them so you don’t burn your baby. Then glue a few more smaller gray spots onto the hat, and voila!

You have a super easy no-sew baby Pua costume! If you’re wondering why I said you don’t have to sew it, I actually made the baby hat because I didn’t want one with a little fold on it. You can find the tutorial I used for that here. I love how Pua’s costume turned out, and it was so easy!

Maui’s costume took me the longest, and it’s definitely the most detailed.

I got the skin-colored shirt and pants from Amazon (shirt here, pants here), and drew the tattoos on (yes, I know) with Tulip black fabric markers.

It took several hours, I only did the front of the shirt and the ankles, and if you decide not to draw them on, your costume will still look awesome.

For Maui’s fishhook, I mostly followed this pin. It’s made from several layers of cardboard, masking tape, white felt, a rope, and hot glue.

I’ve seen a few different tutorials on Pinterest, and you can also just buy a fishhook if making one intimidates you. I used white felt instead of cardboard (because it was what I had and seemed easier) and just stitched it on using embroidery thread.

Then I hot glued some rope around the bottom of it.

For Maui’s necklace, I cut teeth out of a white foam sheet from Michael’s (like this), hot glued some thin hemp rope around the tops, and then hot glued them in between some white and brown beads on a thin hemp rope. It was super easy, and I just tie it on my son using a bow when he wears it.

The skirt was also super easy, even if it took a while. I used different colors of green felt, purple felt, and red felt, and cut leaves out of it.

Some of them were simple leaves, and then some of them I cut into to make them look more like palm leaves. To attach them to the rope, I used thread and sewed them on in a big long line along the rope. I also drilled some holes through some seashells and tied them onto the rope. To put it on, I just use safety pins on each end and pin them so it doesn’t fall off. There’s probably a better way to do it, but that’s how I did it!

So there you have it! DIY Moana Halloween costumes. They are great family Halloween costumes, great sibling Halloween costumes, or they are even great on their own! My kids ask me to wear them every day, and I can hardly wait to show them off and wear my Te Fiti costume with them! Happy Halloween!

The post DIY Moana Family Halloween Costumes appeared first on Life With My Littles.

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In December 2015 my son watched Cars for the first time. He was hooked (and still is). About a week after he watched it, he started telling me he wanted to be Lightning McQueen for Halloween. For the next ten months he was insistent that he be Lightning McQueen. So last year for Halloween, I made him a DIY Lightning McQueen costume. Guys, it was AMAZING. I was super proud of that thing. Even more importantly, he was super proud of that thing. Seeing how excited he was to wear his Lightning costume was my favorite part of Halloween last year. He ran around shouting “Kachow!” and wore the costume all trick-or-treating and the whole time we were at our church Halloween party.

I couldn’t find a good tutorial online for how to make a costume, so I sort of just did it myself looking at my son’s Lightning McQueen diecast car. I made sure to take tons of pictures, and today, I’m going to share how I did it! If there are any mamas out there trying to figure out how the heck they’re going to build their child a Lightning McQueen costume for Halloween this year (especially with the release of the AMAZING Cars 3!), this one’s for you!

First, let’s talk about the body. The first step is to cut out the body of the car from sturdy cardboard. I used the box that my husband’s lawnmower came in. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures of that process, but I looked at pictures of Lightning and used a pencil to draw the sides first, and then once I cut those out, I was able to cut out pieces that fit in between the sides. You’ll need a front (for the mouth), a thin front (for the headlights), a front top (for the circular Rusteze logo), a front windshield, a piece for the very back, a piece for the back hood behind the opening, and then two thin pieces for the spoiler.

Next, I taped them all together using thick masking tape and duct tape. I did a nice job on the outside taping them, being careful to make the joints flat, and then on the inside I reinforced it with lots of smaller pieces.

After the body is all taped up, it’s time for red spray paint!! I had to do a few coats to get the red I wanted, but it turned out great. (Also, this is the only in-process picture I have!)

Now it’s time to add the tires I used styrofoam circles and spray-painted them black. I wish I would have used a little bigger circles because if you look at Lightning, his tires take up a little more of the body, but it was still okay. I used gorilla glue to glue them on because it’s durable!

The next thing I did was to paint on the windows, back windshield, mouth, headlights and taillights, the lines on the back of the spoiler, lightning bolts on the sides (the small silver and large yellow ones), and his eyes. I drew what I wanted in pencil first and then painted. Look at a picture of Lightning when you’re doing it so you can get the right shapes.

Next comes the logos! I found all my logos and stuff online, and I conveniently saved them all so I can share them with you! You can download them all here. Print them out, cut them out, and use mod podge with a matte finish to glue them on. That way you can do a layer under the pictures to adhere them and a layer on top to seal them on. I used my son’s diecast Lightning McQueen to figure out where all the pictures went. There are logos on the sides, the top, the spoiler, the back, and the headlights and taillights.

The last part is to put on straps so your child can wear his costume! I used thick red straps that were in the ribbon section of the fabric store, but they were more like flat, rope (just look at the pictures). To attach them, I first glued them onto the underside of the front opening (using gorilla glue again). Once they were completely dry, I had my son get in the car and then I tried to see how long I wanted them to be. Once I figured that out, I cut them to length and glued them to the underside of the back. And a quick tip, the straps kept falling off my son’s shoulders because I didn’t glue them close enough together in the back. So lesson learned (and passed on to you!).

That’s the last step! Now take a step back and admire your work! If your son is anything like mine, he’ll be thanking you for days. It was seriously the best Halloween costume I’ve ever made, and I’m sure I’ll be proud of it for years to come! Good luck making yours, mamas!

The post DIY Lightning McQueen Costume appeared first on Life With My Littles.

If you follow my blog at all you’ll know that I love the 4th of July! It’s a holiday that gives me all the feelings, and I love celebrating it. And despite my lack of doing fun crafts and activities the last few months since Little R has been here, I am determined to make some fun red, white, and blue recipes and do some fun patriotic activities with the kids. I loved gathering recipe and activity ideas for toddlers for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, so I thought I would do it again for the 4th of July and inspire myself to get creative with my kids! So here are 35 4th of July recipes and activities for toddlers!

First up, 4th of July recipes for toddlers! And please, don’t pin from this page. Click the links and go pin the original pictures because these ladies all worked hard on these ideas!

Patriotic Jello Salad {via Life With My Littles}

Fourth of July Layer Cake {via Life With My Littles}

Patriotic Popsicles {via Life With My Littles}

Homemade Italian Cream Sodas {via Clarks Condensed}

Fourth of July Fireworks Cheese Stick Snacks {via The DIY Lighthouse}

Fourth of July Firecracker Dogs {via Handmade in the Heartland}

Fourth of July Dipped Pretzels {via The 36th Avenue}

Firecracker Popcorn {via Reasons to Skip the Housework}

Chocolate Dipped Banana Splits {via I Heart Naptime}

Red, White, and Blue Cupcake Cones {via Family Fresh Meals}

Red, White, and Blue No-Churn Cake Ice Cream {via It’s Always Autumn}

Red, White, and Blue Fireworks Treats {via Lemon Tree Dwelling}

Fourth of July Breakfast {via Be Different Act Normal}

Fruit Sparklers {via Tastes Better From Scratch}

Patriotic Snack Mix {via That Bald Chick}

Firecracker Rice Krispie Treats {via Two Sisters Crafting}

Firecracker Jello Cups {via Cincy Shopper}

Kid-Friendly Patriotic Punch {via Mom Endeavors}

Easy Flag Fruit Dessert {via Family Fresh Meals}

And now on to the 4th of July activities for toddlers!

DIY American Flag Handprint Tees {via Life With My Littles}

Fireworks Poppers {via Life With My Littles}

Pom Pom Sparklers {via My Very Educated Mother for Sugar Bee Crafts}

Stars and Stripes Sensory Bin {via What Can We Do With Paper and Glue}

Handprint Fireworks {via Ava’s Alphabet}

Fourth of July Sensory Bin {via Stay at Home Educator}

Dish Brush Fireworks {via Crafty Morning}

Flag Craft with Dot Markers {via My Mundane and Miraculous Life}

Star Spangled Slime {via I Can Teach My Child}

Patriotic Suncatcher {via A Little Pinch of Perfect}

Patriotic Fireworks Foam Sensory Activity {via The Jenny Evolution}

Pom Pom American Flag Painting {via Crafty Morning}

Mess Free Star Painting {via Simple Play Ideas}

Painting Fireworks {via Happiness is Homemade}

Cookie Cutter Stamping {via Mama to 6 Blessings}

4th of July Paper Plate Crown {via The Suburban Mom}

Well there you go! 35 fun 4th of July recipes and activities for toddlers that are sure to help you celebrate! USA! USA!

The post 4th of July Recipes and Activities for Toddlers appeared first on Life With My Littles.

Growing up, fireworks were always my favorite part of the Fourth of July. I’ve always loved watching them light up the night sky, especially when paired with inspiring music.

Where we live in Texas, fireworks are legal and sold basically everywhere. I thought I had seen fireworks before, but last year I was completely blown away by the vast number of fireworks going off throughout our city. It was absolutely beautiful and blew my mind!

This year I fully plan on enjoying the fireworks displays again. I also came up with these easy little firework poppers that are the perfect Fourth of July activity for toddlers or preschoolers. I let my kids get involved where they could and then when it was time to pop them, they were thrilled! And the best part is that they are pretty simple to make.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• 4 plastic treat pop containers
• 4 3×6″ pieces of white cardstock
• blue and red crayons and markers
• patriotic confetti
• washi tape
• hot glue
• tissue paper

First, let your kids color and decorate your white cardstock. We originally made these last year, and since my kids were 3 and 1, they mostly just scribbled on the papers (and the table), but if your kids are older I’m sure you’ll get some fancier designs.

Next, glue your papers around the treat pops. I just wrapped them around and did one line of hot glue down the edge and pressed until it dried.

Now fill your treat pops with confetti. I used some red, white, and blue circles I cut with my Cricut (but you could also use your Silhouette or a circular hole punch),

some patriotic star confetti,

and some shiny basket filler. You are welcome to use only one kind of filler, but it was a lot more fun for us to use three kinds.

Now comes the tricky part. We are going to tape a piece of tissue paper over the top of the treat pop so that it holds everything in. First, cut a circle a little bit bigger than the hole. I would recommend maybe like 1/2″ bigger all around.

Take your tissue paper and hold it on top of your treat pop so it keeps all the confetti inside. Now slowly tape down the edges all the way around using your washi tape. I recommend going very slowly and making sure it all lines up. When you finish, put another piece of tape on the bottom of the treat pop so you have two cute little borders.

And hey, you’re all done!

Don’t be too hard on yourself if they aren’t perfect because honestly, your kids are not going to care. They will love pushing the bottoms up and POPping their fireworks that they helped decorate!!

The post Firework Poppers for Kids appeared first on Life With My Littles.