Rainy Day Fun: Angry Birds!!!

Are your kids (or your husband) addicted to Angry Birds?  If not they really should be!

Just kidding, of course, but we love Angry Birds in our house and the boys found these great paper crafts this morning.  Perfect, considering it's storming off and on all day today.

Yes, it's noon and we're still in our pajamas.  You wanna make something of it?!?

They print out like this and you cut them out and fold them (in case you're new to paper crafts).  This

Make your own Mancala game board (and learn what mancala is) :-)

What?!?  You've never played mancala?  Where have you been?

Yeah, I had never played either until today.  But I really liked it and it was free!  Plus we learned a little culture from our future child's home country.

Mancala, according to Wikipedia, is actually a family of games that originated in ancient Ethiopia.  The game we learned how to play is one of many variations, and it's a great game to play in areas such as Africa because you don't need any equipment.  Folks can simply dig 12 holes in the dirt, gather a bunch of seeds or small rocks, and the game is on!

In our case, we used an egg carton and some dry beans.

By removing the lid and cutting it in half, we had our game board with the score cups on each side.

Rainy Day Fun: Papertoy Monsters

A while back my youngest boy found this book at the library and brought it home.

It was all sparkly-new, which is why I didn't realize until I got home that you are supposed to punch out the pages and glue the pieces together.  Whoops!  I didn't think the library would appreciate us

Tween Boy's Vintage Video Game Room

Ben's room is finally decorated!!!

When he was younger, I did vintage-inspired sports as a theme.  Now he's outgrown that so his 3-year-old brother inherited it.  We decided on a video game room, but I definitely wanted it to have a vintage feel, so here's the tour:

Mario Art: Painting Tutorial

I'm finally (mostly) finished with my 10-year-old son's vintage video game bedroom!  Woo Hoo!  That poor kid has been waiting quite a while.  I still have a few more small projects I'd like to do for him, but that's for another day.

I'd like to show you how I made these pixel art canvases, because I think many people believe that