Activity – MinnieVanMom

Potato Stamp Painting

Published on March 30, 2021 by Leslie1 Comment

Potato stamps are something that you can use for so many different activities throughout the year, and they are so easy to make. They are also perfect for little hands! So grab a sack of potatoes and some paint; today, I am sharing a fun craft that kids of any age (including toddlers) will enjoy.

What You’ll Need:

Russet Potatoes

Small Cookie Cutters

Sharp Knife

Paint (I like the Crayola Washable Paint the best)

Small Paintbrush

Canvas

To make your potato stamps, wash your potatoes off and then cut them in half (either long ways or short ways, depends on how big your cookie cutters are). Then pat them dry on the inside.

To make Easter Egg potato stamps, carefully make slices, zig-zags, or poke holes into the potato’s flat side. The potato can be slippery, so be careful.

To make different shaped stamps take a cookie cutter and push it into the flat side of the potato. Once the cookie cutter is wedged inside, take a sharp knife and slice it into the potato until it touches the cookie cutter. Slowly take your knife and cut all the way around the cookie-cutter shape, and remove the excess potato. This should leave you with a little stump that looks like your cookie cutter shape.

Now it’s time to paint! Using a paintbrush, paint colors onto your potato stamps. Carefully stamp the potatoes onto your canvas and press down. Slowly pull your potato stamps off the canvas and check out your design.

To change up the colors of your stamps, just wipe the potato off or rinse it off in between stamping.

Give these potato stamps and try and let me know what you think. We painted outside on our backporch and got a little messy, but we had so much fun!

Sending love and magic.

Plush Mickey Conversation Hearts

Published on February 11, 2021February 11, 2021 by Leslie1 Comment

It’s time to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a cute DIY! I made these plush Mickey “Conversation Hearts” for my daughter to play with, and she is obsessed. I love that you could place them out as decoration or string them together in a garland.

These are similar to the Gingerbread Men I made for Disney Parks Blog and they are so easy to put together. Let’s create!

What You Need:

Felt

Red Yarn

Red Puffy Paint

Polyfil

Mickey Cookie Cutter

Scissors

Marker

Needle

Using your Mickey cookie cutter, marker, and scissors, trace and cut two Mickey shapes from your felt.

With the red puffy paint, write a cute phrase or word on one of your Mickeys.

Once the paint is dry, whip stitch your two Mickeys together.

Before you close up the Mickey, stuff with polyfil.

I hope you enjoy these precious stuffed Conversation Mickeys as much as we do.

Sending love and magic.

Mickey Mouse Gingerbread Ornament

Published on November 22, 2020 by Leslie1 Comment

My dream has always been to work with Disney in some capacity, and my dreams come true because today, I had the honor of being featured on Disney Parks Blog. I wanted to share the craft that I created for Disney Parks Blog, my Mickey Mouse Gingerbread Ornament. This craft is so much fun to make, and it looks super cute hanging on your Christmas Tree.

Mickey Mouse Gingerbread Ornament

Before starting, print out your Gingerbread Mickey Template and carefully cut out the exterior stencil, interior stencil, and face.

Step 1. Using your marker, trace two Gingerbread Mickeys using your exterior stencil on the brown felt. Carefully cut out each Gingerbread Mickey.

Step 2: Place the Gingerbread Mickey interior stencil on one of your Gingerbread men and trace around the outline with white puffy paint. Add paint squiggles on the arms and legs of the Gingerbread Mickey, let dry.

Step 3: Once your Gingerbread Mickey is dry, place it on top of your second Gingerbread Mickey. Using your needle and white yarn, carefully sew your two Gingerbread Mickeys together with a whipstitch. Before completely stitching up the Gingerbread Mickey, stuff with polyfill.

Step 4: Using your Mickey face stencil, carefully trace Mickey’s face onto your black felt and cut the face out. Hot glue the eyes, nose, and mouth onto your Gingerbread Mickey.

Step 5: Now it’s time to decorate! Using your puffy paint and ribbon, add buttons, rosy cheeks, and a bow tie (or a hair bow if you want a Gingerbread Minnie).

Step 6: Hot glue a looped ribbon on the back of your Gingerbread Mickey so that it can hang on your Christmas Tree!

I hope you love this Mickey Mouse Gingerbread Ornament as much as I do. I can’t wait to share even more Disney Christmas Magic this holiday season.

Sending love and magic.

Cinderella Glass Slipper Craft

Published on August 17, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

Today I want to share a fun Cinderella activity that I created for my daughter. I thought that she would enjoy making a sparkly craft, so I decided on a glass slipper! Keep in mind that my daughter is not quite two yet, so this activity is for her skill level. But, you could tweak this to for older (or younger) kids!

I am going to link the supplies that you will need through my Amazon store. Please note that I do get a small commission if you purchase through these links, but you can also find these supplies at any craft store.

Supplies:

Self Adhesive Jewels

Glue

Glitter (full disclosure: I do have glitter all over my house)

Wooden Slipper (I found these on Etsy, and the seller shipped fast!)

I started by peeling the backs off of the adhesive jewels and laid them out for my daughter. I let her place these wherever she wanted all over the shoe.

Once she was done with the jewels, I spread an even layer of glue on the wood. I then gave her the glitter shaker and let her go to town (this was her favorite part). When she felt like she had enough glitter, I shook off the excess glitter and let the shoe dry for a couple hours.

This was such a cute project! You could do this without the wooden slipper, with paper or foam board, for instance. I just liked that the wooden shoe would last a long time. Let me know what you think of this project.

Sending love and magic.

101 Dalmatian Puppy Puppets

Published on August 11, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

Coming as no surprise to anyone, my daughter loved the movie 101 Dalmatians. I decided to continue the puppy fun this week with a fun (and easy) project.

As the mom of an almost-two-year-old, I sometimes find it hard to find projects and activities that she can do. Honestly, I spend a lot of time scouring Pinterest and blogs, trying to spark ideas. Most of the time, I find super cute activities that I love, but a little over her head. I am so excited that she loved making these puppets as much as I did.

I am going to link the supplies that you will need through my Amazon store. Please note that I do get a small commission if you purchase through my links, but you can also find these supplies at any craft store.

You will need:

White Paper Plate

White Paper Bag

Black Dot Stickers

Black Marker

Googly Eyes

Tape

Pink Felt or Construction Paper

Ribbon (optional)

To start, I went ahead and cut two puppy ears from my paper plate, and a pink tongue from the felt and set it aside. Then I started peeling stickers off and handed them to my daughter, one by one, to place on the white paper bag and ears.

Once she had the bag completely decorated with black dots, she added black dots to each of the ears. When we finished with the dots, I taped the ears on the back of the bag and added the googly eyes.

Our final step was to tape the tongue on and add a black nose. On one of our dogs, we also added a red ribbon as a collar.

Making these puppy puppets was such an easy and enjoyable project for me and my daughter. Most of all, I think she enjoyed the independence of putting the stickers wherever she wanted to on her puppy. I have a feeling that we will try this project again in the future and make different animals.

I hope you loved this precious puppy puppet as much as we did! If you do, please leave a comment and let me know.

Sending love and magic.

Cars Car Wash Activity

Published on July 20, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

It has been so hot outside, and I am always looking for fun water activities to keep us cool. Today I threw together a fun “car wash” for my daughter, and it was a hit! She loved it so much that she cried when we had to put it away.

To start, I grabbed two plastic bins. I filled one of the containers with some soil that I had on hand and then added some water. I filled the second bin with water and added some dish soap.

After getting the bins ready, I grabbed some of our friends from the movie Cars to bury in the mud. I also found a little brush for my daughter to clean with, and then I let her have at it.

At first, she was a little skeptical about digging in the mud to get the cars out. But eventually, she realized how fun it was to dig around and then wash the cars off.

If you need an activity that will keep your toddler occupied for awhile, give this easy car wash a try!

Sending love and magic.

Tangled Up Sensory Box

Published on July 7, 2020July 7, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

I try to make a new sensory box for my daughter at least once a week. She loves sitting, exploring and playing quietly (which gives this mama a nice little break). Today I am sharing one of our favorite boxes that is inspired by the Disney movie Tangled.

I will start by saying that originally I planned on using cooked spaghetti for this box. But because we like to keep our boxes for a week, I thought that spaghetti might not be a great idea. I ended up using yellow yarn instead of spaghetti, but I still think cooked spaghetti would be a really fun option too!

I make a small commission if you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, or you can find these products on your own.

To make this box you will need:

Rapunzel Doll (I used this, but you could use any Rapunzel doll)

The first thing I did was cut my yarn into smaller pieces. I sat some of the yard aside and put the rest in the bottom of my tub. Once I finished that, I decided to braid some of the yarn that I sat aside. I made two big braids, but you could make smaller braids if you wanted to.

Now that I had the yarn ready, it was time to assemble the box. I started by putting the braids in the box, it’s fun to wrap them through the other yarn. Next, I added my plastic flowers and fake flowers (be sure to bury some).

Finally, I added the crown and the Rapunzel doll and the box was complete!

I love that this box isn’t messy and is so easy to store for future playing. My daughter loves running her hands through the yarn and digging for all of the flowers. We aren’t planning on “leaving out tower” any time soon, so I feel like we will get a lot of play out of this box.

My favorite thing about making sensory boxes is that there is no “right way” or “wrong way” to do it. Let me know if you recreate this box and what your kids think of it.

Sending love and magic.

Toddler Meals (That Are A Little Magical)

Published on July 1, 2020July 7, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

When my daughter first started eating “real food”, she would devour pretty much anything that I put in front of her. Unfortunately, that is not the case anymore, and our meal times have turned into fights. She has become picky about what she wants to eat and it makes meal times hard on all of us.

Over the past couple months I have found myself brainstorming ways to make her meals a little more fun and I thought that I would share some of those ideas with you! If you are dealing with a picky toddler, or just want to make meal time a little more fun, maybe these ideas can help.

I make a small commission if you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, or you can find these products on your own.

Here are some of my favorite products that help inspire my daughter to eat the food that I put in front of her:

Bumkins Minnie Silicone Grip Dish

This Minnie Mouse plate from Bumkins is our absolute favorite! My daughter loves is because well, it’s Minnie Mouse, and I love it because it’s easy to clean and stays on her high chair tray. Most toddler plates have three areas for food, but this one has five areas which means I can give her more options.

Vegetable Cutters

I honestly use at least one of these vegetable cutters on every single meal that I make for my daughter. I love this set because it comes with a Mickey cutter (I’ve learned it’s much easier to get my daughter to eat “Mickey apples” over “apples”) and it also comes with little animal forks that are fun to eat with. These cutters are very easy to clean and you can use them to cut so many different things.

Mickey Sandwich Cutter

Just like the with the vegetable cutters, I use this sandwich cutter for everything. From PB&J to grilled cheese, we have lots of Mickey sandwiches in our house. I also use this for cookies, Rice Krispies Treats, beignets, and biscuits!

Mickey Mouse Muffin Mold

There is something special about having a Mickey Mouse blueberry muffin on a Saturday morning, but I love this muffin mold because you can use it for so much more than just muffins! I’ve made really cute brownies and cupcakes with it, but it would also be great for baked eggs and rolls.

Here are a few examples of our fun meals that I hope will inspire you! Feeding a toddler or child can be such a task, but this makes it a little more exciting for all of us.

Sending love and magic.

Under The Sea Sensory Box

Published on June 25, 2020July 7, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

My daughter is a big fan of sensory boxes (and I’m a big fan because they seem to keep her occupied for a decent amount of time). I love trying to come up with fun sensory boxes with a Disney twist! This morning I put together a (very easy) Under The Sea Sensory Box and I wanted to share it with you. I feel like there are so many ways that you could change up this box, with sand or plastic fish for example, but I put it together with things I had around the house.

I make a small commission if you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, or you can find these products on your own.

To make this sensory box you will need:

Plastic Tub

Water

Food Coloring (I used a mix of blue and green)

Sea Shells

Plastic Seaweed

Little Mermaid Toy (at one time, we had this whole set, but my daughter has misplaced Sebastian and Flounder)

The first thing I did was trim down my plastic seaweed. It was much taller than I thought it was going to be so I cut it down to about as tall as the tub. Next, I filled my tub about halfway up with water, added a couple drops of food coloring, and gave it a good stir.

Once the water was the blue color that I wanted, I spread seashells across the bottom of the tub. Then, I placed the seaweed in the water. Finally, I tossed in our Little Mermaid figurine and the box was complete!

After putting this box together, I decided my daughter will definitely be playing with it outside. I think that the water could get out of hand in my house, but it’s perfect for a hot summer day. I hope your kids enjoy this sensory box as much as my daughter does. Happy Playing!

Sending love and magic.

The Cleanest Finger Painting Ever

Published on June 23, 2020June 24, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

Before I became a mom I would browse Pinterest and look at all the fun activities that I would one day do with my future child. The one thing that I didn’t realize is that most of these activities also included a big MESS. So, a couple months ago, I set out to find a clean way to finger paint with a toddler. Is that even possible? YES!

To do “plastic bag” finger painting you will need a Ziploc bag, finger paints, and a canvas (I like to use these from Amazon!). You can also add a sticker or vinyl to make a fun design, but this is optional.

If you are going to use vinyl or stickers, place that on your canvas first. Then squirt small dabs of finger paint all over the canvas. Carefully slide your canvas into a plastic bag and make sure the plastic bag is sealed. Finally, give the painting bag to your toddler and let them go to town! They can squish, swirl, and smash the paint, but they won’t get dirty!

When your toddler is done painting, carefully remove the canvas from the bag and set out to dry for c couple hours. If you placed stickers or vinyl on your canvas, carefully peel them off once your painting is dry.

TA-DA! A beautiful, mess free finger painting!

Sending love and magic.