How to make a DIY foldout American Girl Doll dollhouse

Hi, guys! Today I am going to share with you a fun project that you can do in about half an hour, to an hour. I will be showing you how to make... A dollhouse that is not really a dollhouse!

Wait... You are probably wondering what that is. A dollhouse-that-is-not-a-Doll-house is a piece of folding cardboard that, once you fold it out, can be accessorized with furniture. The idea is to make a house for your dolls that looks the way YOU want it to be.

We will need: 

• A science fair board (or a large shoe box, or a folded piece of cardboard),
• Paint and paint brush (we used acrylic paint),
• Large piece or pieces of paper (this is optional),
• Glue,
• A pencil,
• Mini Duct tape (for border),
• Plastic (for the windows),
• Paper (for the window border),
• And an adult to cut out the window with an X-Acto knife.

To get started, use scissors to cut your science fair board to the desired height. (You might want to ask a grownup to do this for you.) If you are using a board from a past science presentation, remove every “science stuff” that you had glued on it. Afterwards, draw out your window on the cardboard. (Tip: using a ruler for this part helps getting straight and neat windows.) After you have finished that, ask an adult to cut out the windows with an X-Acto knife. (WARNING, if are a brave soul doing the project yourself, at this point adult supervision is HIGHLY recommended!)

Now, take out your paints and brushes and start painting the walls!

Me and my mom also chose to do an accent wall by gluing a sheet of scrapbook paper onto one of the walls and bordering it with duct tape.

Next, it is time for the windows. Instead of glass, we glued transparent plastic over the rectangular cutouts. You can usually find the plastic around your house. The stuff on packaging works great. To make the windows look neat and realistic, apply strips of plain or color paper over the edges of the plastic to create window frames. 

And… we are done!!! This was our finished product:

We had so much fun making this dollhouse, and I hope you will too!

Here are some pictures we took when we set it up with furniture. We made this dollhouse for my American Girl dolls, but you can use it for any dolls, not just AG.

First we made a living room...

And then...

A kitchen!

In the picture below, Grace is telling Julie that eating ice cream before dinner was not such a good idea )))

I hope you have as much fun with this project as I did!

Hoot-bye for now!

Washer necklaces and Happy New Year!

Hi, guys!

For my first post this year, I will be showing you a craft that my mom and me made. We got the idea for these fabulous washer necklaces on Pinterest. Yep, washers, you know, the little donut shaped things that they sell at your local hardware store.

So anyway, we took the washers and painted them with nail polish. My mom also made two with beads glued on, and one with magazine page with text on it. This is how they turned out:

Everyone should try this, it's so fun and so easy, and it also comes out beautifully.

Have a ho-o-o-oty New Year!

Never trust old ladies in purple dresses

Hello readers! I am here to tell you a true story that happened to me not so long ago.

Ok, here it is: Once upon a time, I was at a nunnery in Myanmar, also known as Burma. That is a place where Buddhist nuns live. Girl Buddhist nuns. The boys living in a monastery are called monks. We were there to watch them eat breakfast (crazy, right?) 

Ok, so, after we watched them sing, we went up some clean tile stairs (you could see that girls lived there) to a couple of temples. Since I am from a different country than most of the people there, I was exotic to them. So, lots of people wanted to take pictures with me. Including the lady at this temple at the nunnery who was wearing a purple dress. Me and my mom said ok to the picture, because, what harm can a couple of pictures do, right? After we took the pictures, the lady came up and hugged me. After the hug... she KISSED me!!! It was on my cheek, and she did it so fast that my mom could not do anything about it. After that incident, my mom sanitized my cheek with a wipe. 

So, fellow kids, if you are ever visiting a place in Myanmar where lots of locals go, do yourself a favor, stay away from ladies in purple dresses, and just in case, bring some wipes with you. 

Hoot hoot, see you next time!

The most important skills in life

So I was thinking the other day, what are the most important skills in life? I’ve decided that they are: squeezing lemons and screaming. Think about it, if you know how to squeeze a lemon, you can have your own lemonade business. Then, when you make money, you can scream MONEY!!!!! Then, if you see a car coming towards a pedestrian, you can scream CAR!!! Then get famous for saving someone's life. So next time someone asks me what the most important skills in life are, I will answer, 

squeezing lemons and screaming!

Peace!

Rope jumping firefly

I recently trained a firefly to jump rope.

(or, I tried to)

I used my sweater as a rope!!!

The firefly was having fun.

(or, I think so because it flew away from me)

Peace out ✌ hootsome out!

CLOUD DOUGH

Hi, everyone! Sorry I have not been blogging in a long time : ) Its hard to think up stuff to write. Well, any way, I wanted to share a cloud dough recipe with you guys.

I first got the idea to make this on an amazing blog called Growing a Jeweled Rose. Very awesome blog - so check out the link a the end of my post. Most of you probably don't know what cloud dough is, so I will explain it. It is moldable dough but is much softer than play dough. Here is the recipe.

You will need:

Seven cups Flour

One cup of oil (vegetable, olive)

(Optional) Scent and food coloring

Get a bin, bowl or any size container you want to use and put in the flour. It's about seven cups to each one-cup of oil. Then put in your scents and/or food coloring. I used cinnamon for hot chocolate cloud dough. No food coloring was needed. Then add oil land mix thoroughly.

With the cinnamon dough make a hot chocolate shop for kids to play with. Put in spoons, cups and glitter. Use cotton balls for marshmallows. Add learning by asking kids to give you a certain number of marshmallows for them to engage counting practice.

Also, for this activity you could substitute scented and colored rice for the cloud dough. I have not tried it yet but will try soon and make a future post about it. Explore with all kinds of scents and colors for more play.

Sorry I did not include pictures in this post, but I did not have my camera on me.

Until next time, hoot-hoot and have a hootsome day!

Link to growing a jeweled rose is here