Milk Carton Animals

Holy goodness, I’ve created little project monsters.

And animals.

(The monsters being my children. And the animals being some milk cartons. For clarification.)

Basically, in a matter of days, we have fully reignited the kiddos’ project LOVE, and they’re now asking to do a project morning, noon, and...afternoon, ha.

And I could not be happier about that.

But after a few months of hunkering down for distance learning, spending our “free” time on doodles and outdoor exercise, and a whole bunch of other quarantine to-dos, we didn’t have many spare chunks of time for much else.

So...I’m absolutely gonna need to stock back up the craft closet if this demand keeps up. ;)

Luckily, I’ve written down at least a handful of things to tackle, using items already in the casa, and we had another two-thumbs up project today, in the form of...milk carton animals!

I’ve been saving our empty cartons for the past couple of weeks, and finally emptied the last one yesterday, so when the cry for a project sounded, I was prepared.

I didn’t have much of a plan—other than visuals I’d seen online. But I just busted out construction paper, scissors and glue, and let them go nuts.

And they totally dug it!





I thought for sure that they’d be little perfectionists and reject my sort of half-planned attempts at wrapping the cartons and adding the frills, but they were all in and so creative with their solutions.



Based on the colors of paper we had available, we ended up with two tigers and a pig. (Baby Scratch, Shaya, and Pinkie, respectively. As no animal of any kind in our house is without a name). And they ended up pretty darn cute.







Just prior to this project, we managed a fantastic morning bike ride, a (distancing) run-in with a neighbor and her dog (much to the kiddos’ delight), and were about to pick up Chick-fil-A and dine outside by the pool for lunch.

All lovely things that made for jovial moods and even two declarations of, “this is the best day, ever.” Ha.

We’ve really been making a concerted effort the past few days to get the crazies to bed on time, as we’d been letting things slip by 20-30 minutes, and I really feel that returning to our pretty strict regimen has already made a positive difference in the household moods.

It’s so hard during the summer when the days are long and so much fun can be had. But if nobody’s rested,  the wheels fly off. It’s no bueno.



So I’ve been grateful for more smiles and less whines this week. :)









So happy tomorrow is already Thursday. Hunkering down with some school work in the morning, but feeling pretty stable this week, thank heavens. And counting every day we can remain that way as a major blessing!

Over and out.