Thursday, November 14, 2024
Welcome back, Friends!
This week is a special one here at Our Grand Lives!
It was two years ago this week that we published our first blog posts!
Look at our sweet Littles in 2022!
(There were only two of them!)
Click on the link above to learn how it all began!
That first post was soon followed by
Check it out if you want to find out more about us,
including our favorite comfort foods and childhood celebrity crushes!
After retiring from our careers as Kindergarten teachers,
OGL has proven to be a welcome outlet
for sharing our love of family and children,
for learning and creating
and for celebrating and making memories!
After all, that’s what we’re all about!
We are grateful to our husbands, our families and our friends
for taking this journey with us
(and for often being our very own guinea pigs)!
We are also ever grateful for our friendship and the adventures
we continue to have together
as we've learned to navigate technology, the blogging world,
photography, graphics and more!
We can’t wait to see what we’ll come up with next!
And, of course, The BIGGEST Thank You goes to All Of You!
THANK YOU for taking the time to stop by and to read our posts here,
for commenting and sharing with us
We appreciate you all!
Now on to today’s post…
We’re off and running with more Thanksgiving fun
to share with the Littles in your life!
If you’ll be spending time with your Littles between now and Thanksgiving Day
- your grandkids (like us), your own children or those you teach/care for -
this project will definitely make you smile!
Who knew that pool noodles were so versatile?
Of course, their primary use is as a floatation device
used for swimming, water play and other activities.
But they can be used in a variety of other ways, too…
(Hmm… that might just be a topic for a future post)!
We typically buy one or two each year at a local dollar store
and then use them for craft projects with our Littles throughout the year!
Perhaps you have an extra one lying around in the garage, right now!
During a recent visit,
Laura and Little L had fun making their own flock of turkeys!
Each Perky Turkey has its own personality!
🧡 ❤️ 💛 ❤️ 🧡
This project would be fun to make ahead of time with your Little
OR
to use as place cards at your Thanksgiving table!
(That’s what we’re planning to do with our own perky turkeys!)
It would also be a great activity to have on hand,
ready for your Littles to make on Thanksgiving Day!
Gather the supplies ahead of time and you’ll be all set
to entertain those young ones while the grown-ups watch football!
MATERIALS NEEDED
• pool noodle (1 pool noodle makes 10 or more turkeys!)
• a serrated knife
• googly eyes (or a black marker)
• 1-2 red pipe cleaners, cut into 1” - 1 ½” pieces
• brown, red & orange construction paper
• craft feathers - we found our package here
• scissors & glue stick
• a glue gun (GROWN UP use, only)
DIRECTIONS
To begin, cut the pool noodle into 4” or 6” sections, depending on the size you want. We plan to put ours on the Thanksgiving table as place cards, so we cut ours into 4” lengths.
NOTE: If you and your Little are making the turkeys to play with or as a craft for your Little Thanksgiving guests, you could cut different sizes for a family of turkeys!
Add the googly eyes. (We used the self adhesive ones but you can glue them on, too.)
To make the waddle, bend one 1” - 1 ½” piece of red pipe cleaner on one end and push it into the pool noodle, under the eyes. Leave some space for the beak. (We used a toothpick to make a small hole, and then added a bit of glue from the glue stick to the end of the pipe cleaner that we pushed into the hole.) Then we bent the pipe cleaner under slightly, as shown.
Cut a triangle beak out of orange paper and glue it to the pool noodle between the eyes and the pipe cleaner waddle. Cut a foot from brown paper - we made one big heart for each “foot” and then cut out triangles from the top of the heart to make the turkey’s “toes”! Glue that to the bottom of the pool noodle!
Learn from Laura...
Time to add the turkey feathers! We added 5-6 colorful feathers to each turkey!
We plan to write names of dinner guests
on our turkey feet when setting our table for the BIG day!
Little L loved her perky turkeys and we think you will, too!
This activity set the stage for laughter and memory making
for both Little L and I!
So, go scrounge around for that pool noodle that might be hiding in the garage
and make your own flock of perky turkeys!
🧡 ❤️ 💛 ❤️ 🧡
If YOU know of or have created any of your own Little friendly Thanksgiving crafts…
please share!
New ideas get us excited... can you tell?
In fact, it's one of our favorite things about our friendship…
We love sharing ideas and learning from each other!
Feel free to comment at the bottom of this post
or email us directly at ourgrandlives@gmail.com
THANK YOU!
We’d love it if you visited our social media sites and/or followed us there!
where we regularly share new and fun content!
Tomorrow is Friday, so we’ll be back with a new Fall Fave!
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We’d love it and that way, you’ll never miss a thing!
Thanks again for spending a few minutes here!
It means the world to us!
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This is such a cute craft! It's adorable, hands-on, and it looks like a lot of fun for everyone involved. Thank you for sharing with us at The Crazy Little Lovebirds link party #64. We appreciate you!
Steph@CrazyLittleLovebirds
What a cute idea. When I saw the photo on SSPS link up party I thought they were made with toilet paper rolls. My grandkids and I make things like this out of toilet paper rolls all the time. I think I will take your idea but use toilet paper rolls. Adorable. Congrats on two years! You're just a baby in blog land! I've been blogging for 16 years!
Congratulations on your 2-year blogiversary! I know I speak for more than myself when I say I'm glad you started blogging. :) I love seeing what you share. And this time is no exception! These perky turkeys are DARLING! What a fun idea. Visiting from The Crazy Little Lovebirds linkup.