Saint Patrick’s Day is an annual feast day that celebrates Saint Patrick, the most commonly recognized of the patron saints of Ireland.

The day is a national holiday of Ireland. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday.

Green ribbons and shamrocks were traditionally worn in celebration of St Patrick’s Day. He is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish. Today, many people, regardless of ethnic background, wear green-colored clothing on St. Patrick’s Day.

St. Patrick’s Day Crafts

Crafts for this day obviously center around the color green and shamrock leaves. My favorite St. Patrick’s Day crafts, especially for young children (2-4 years), are simple: simply cut large shamrock shapes out of green construction paper (there’s a good template here if you prefer to use one), then use your imagination to decorate.

Kids as young as 2 years old can decorate the shamrock shapes with pieces of colorful paper and foil. Slightly older kids that are OK around small objects can use buttons, beads and glitter. Children can also draw faces on the shamrocks (use plastic craft “eyes” for added fun) and glue bits of yarn as “hair.” It’s also fun to glue the finished shamrock to a popsicle stick and turn it into a puppet. As always, just let the kids use their imagination, and have fun!

Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography

Yes! Baking and decorating cookies with your kids qualifies as a craft. It’s fun, it’s creative – it’s the perfect thing to do with your kids on a long winter afternoon.

Of course, TV commercials, especially around the winter holidays, try to get you to buy pre-made cookie dough and to just bake it. This may be easy, but where’s the fun in that? Making cookies from scratch is actually very easy. Chocolate chip cookies are always a hit, and in a way they are the easiest because you just mix the dough and drop it by the spoonfuls – no need to refrigerate and roll out the dough.

But homemade sugar cookies are exquisite, easy and fun to decorate. Here is the recipe that I like to use:

Sugar Cookies Recipe

Ingredients for 10 large cookies (double the recipe if you want more):

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. In a large bowl sift together the flour, salt and baking powder.
2. Cream butter and sugar, using a whisker or an electric mixer, until fluffy.
3. Beat in the egg.
4. Stir in the vanilla.
5. Mix thoroughly to create dough. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.
6. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
7. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness (we like our cookies thick).
8. Cut out shapes using cookie cutters.
9. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake until edges begin to brown, about 15 minutes.
10. Cool and decorate, if you wish (trust me, your kids will wish).

Icing:

1/3 cup softened butter
1 pound confectioner’s sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix icing ingredients together until smooth. Separate into different bowls and add a drop of food coloring to each bowl. Spread on cookies with a butter knife, and sprinkle with candy sprinkles or with colored sugar.

Photo by omniNate

She was so happy to see me when I returned from the hospital after giving birth to her sister.

As I entered the room, her face lighted up. We hugged, and I kissed her warm little cheeks. She gave me a wet kiss, then looked at her father, who entered the room after me carrying her newborn sister in the car seat.

“What’s that?” She asked, frowning.

The rest is well documented in our family photo albums, which clearly show that for my firstborn daughter, who was only two years old when her sister was born, the first few months after she became a sister were hard. We did our best to ease the transition, but when I look at the pictures now, I can see the stress in her little face, a cloud of sadness in her eyes. At least part of her joie de vivre was gone for a while. The good news: it came back.

My general approach to parenting is that we should do our best, forget about being perfect or avoiding mistakes, and give ourselves a break. Parenting is hard enough without adding to the stress by reaching for impossible goals. We can’t always make it right for our kids. There will be challenges and hardships, and that’s OK – learning to cope is part of life.

However, since most kids get a sibling while they’re still very young, they do need our help and guidance when learning to cope with their new situation. Here are a few ways to ease the transition:

1. Prepare your firstborn in advance. Like many other major life changes, advance preparation can only go so far, but it’s still better than nothing. Read books together, talk about your growing tummy and the growing baby inside it, encourage role playing, and let your firstborn feel the baby move and “talk” with her.

2. After the baby is born, encourage your firstborn to become your little helper. Establishing your firstborn as big and independent, in contrast to the tiny, helpless newborn, may give him a sense of purpose and pride. On the other hand, if your firstborn resists these efforts and only wants to be babied, you should respect that.

3. Be unapologetic. My own mistake as a new mom to two small children was feeling intense guilt towards my firstborn. I shouldn’t have. Having more than one child is your prerogative, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Be as natural and unapologetic about the entire situation as you can.

Whatever you do, there WILL be some stress and resentment when you bring home a second child. The truth is, for many families, the stress and resentment will never completely go away – sibling rivalry is an extremely common phenomenon. So do your best to prepare your child, be understanding and supportive during her struggle to adjust, make it clear that he cannot hurt his sibling and that having a sibling is completely normal, and remember: struggles and challenges are part of life – the trick is to learn how to bounce back and keep going.

Photo by Dianna

I started doing handprint projects with my kids when they were about 9 months old. I now have a collection of hand prints in different sizes – a fun reminder of how they grow up each year.

Needless to say, most kids LOVE doing hand prints – they give them permission to be messy! Although I have to say that over the years I have come across several children who didn’t like to get messy and didn’t like the way the wet paint felt on their skin. Just try and see how your child reacts.

Instructions are hardly necessary for this project… simply paint the kids’ hands with washable paint, using a paintbrush. If they’re old enough they can paint their own hand. Then have them press their palm against white or off-white construction paper to create the print. They can decorate the print while still wet with glitter, or they can wait for it to dry and then decorate it with stickers, or glue beads, buttons and feathers to the print.

With little kids, it’s really fun to create footprints, by the way. Those little feet look just adorable on paper.

The only drawback to this activity: small kids tend to smear paint all over themselves before you have a chance to wipe the paint off their hands. So dress them accordingly (or undress them before doing this project), limit this activity to the kitchen or to the backyard, always use washable paint, and get ready for some messy fun!

Photo by woodleywonderworks

I was shocked at the profound impact that having a child had on my relationship with my husband. I think we all know it in theory – we know that nothing is going to be the same after we have a baby – but you really have to experience it to grasp how major the change really is.

In my experience, the main way having a child affects your relationship with your partner is that it completely refocuses you on the child. The child becomes your number one priority. In addition, you’re tired and overwhelmed with how demanding taking care of a newborn is, and there’s probably some physical healing going on as well and readjusting to a new body image. Kids have a way of enriching your life, but they also drain you – they use up every bit of energy you have, and sometimes it feels as if nothing is left for you, or for your partner.

Having said that, our marriage did survive raising two kids (they are now 8 and 10 so things are easier), and it’s now stronger than ever. How did we do it? After the initial shock, we came back to our senses and insisted on continuing to invest in our relationship despite the added challenges and the lack of energy.

Here are three tips for preserving your relationship after having a baby:

1. Force yourself to pay attention to your partner. This may sound unromantic, but the reality is that most women really are 100% absorbed in their new baby after giving birth. However, to maintain a healthy relationship with your partner, you need to pay attention to him too. Even if you have to force yourself to do that, at least for the first few months, DO IT. As long as you stay in the habit of talking and communicating with each other, even if it’s a little forced during those first few months, it will be much easier for you to bounce back when the baby gets a little older.

2. Take care of yourself. Make it a priority to eat healthfully, get some basic daily exercise (walking while carrying your baby in a baby carrier is wonderful exercise), insist on taking a daily shower (crying for 5 minutes while mom is taking a shower will not scar your baby for life) and in general make an effort to maintain a sense of “me” rather than allowing yourself to become completely lost in your new role as a mom. Taking care of yourself and feeling good about yourself will make you a better mother, and a better partner.

3. Schedule a weekly date night. Regular date nights are amazing. They force you to dress up and go out even if you’re tired and really don’t feel like it. Of course, once you’re out of the house you’ll likely have a great time. You can go to the movies, to a gallery or a museum, to a nice restaurant – it doesn’t really matter what you do as long as you get to spend time together as a couple and away from the baby.

If you ever feel guilty about redirecting some of your energy away from the baby and towards yourself and your partner, remind yourself that you are doing no one any favors by being a martyr. Your child will greatly benefit from having parents who maintain a good relationship and from having a happy, relaxed mom who knows when she needs some pampering.

Photo by Ann Gordon

Kids love making homemade photo frames because, unlike some other crafts, they are practical: you can actually use them, display them, and they make great gifts for the grandparents.

CD Box Picture Frames

The easiest way to make DIY picture frames is to use empty CD boxes. Do you have those lying around the house too? If you don’t, they’re very cheap to buy at computer stores.

Basically, you just need to open the CD box and take out the paper inserts and the molded plastic piece into which the CD fits.

Cut your photo to just a bit smaller than the box. Attach the photo to the clear plastic with sticky tape, facing to the outside, and attach a piece of cardboard behind it as backing to protect the photo.

Decorate the outside of the box with whatever you want to! As always, let your kids decide how they want to go about this project. You can use pieces of ribbon, colorful fabric, seashells, buttons, colorful paper, or a combination. You can even decorate with stickers or with stamps if you want a quick, non-messy project.

When your frame is finished, open the box out to stand it up.

Craft Sticks Picture Frame

Another easy way to create homemade picture frames is to use craft sticks (see photo above). Select a photo or a piece of homemade art, trim it so that it fits into a frame made out of four craft sticks, glue it to a piece of cardboard, then glue the craft sticks together to make the frame, and glue them to the photo. Decorate as you wish.

Photo by naan

We’re doing a blogger outreach right now, reaching out to mom bloggers and asking them to review our medium baby bunches.

The baby bunches are offered in pink, in blue and in a gender-neutral yellow, and since each blogger (and giveaway winner) gets to pick their color, it’s interesting to me to see how they make these color choices. (To receive information about our giveaways, as well as Twitter-only promotion codes, please follow us on Twitter.)

I definitely see a trend there: moms who are expecting girls, or who have friends who are expecting girls, are asking for a pink bunch. Moms to baby boys are requesting blue bunches, and those who are not sure yet about what they will do with the bunches after reviewing them – maybe anticipating a baby shower at some point in the future – are opting for a neutral yellow.

I always assumed that “pink for girls, blue for boys” was something cultural and arbitrary, but when researching for this post, I discovered that there is actually research that says that women across cultures show preference for red-based colors, including pink and lilac and that the reason dates back to women’s ancient roles as gatherers (while men were hunters) – women learned to become attuned to the reds of the ripe berries and other fruits and to prefer these colors.

Like many other human behaviors, “pink for girls, blue for boys” is likely a combination of genetic and cultural influences. Of course, not everyone accepts this norm and some actively rebel against it. When my first daughter was born, I dressed her in many colors, including soft blue, and avoided pink as a matter of principal! Of course, people kept asking me why I was dressing a girl in blue (the horror!) and when she turned three, she insisted, like many other little girls, to ONLY wear pink. I obliged her.

So, when choosing a baby gift, should you follow traditional color norms, should you rebel against them, or should you go with neutral colors? My personal recommendation, when bringing someone a gift, would be to definitely not rebel – that would be a mistake in terms of gifting etiquette. I would say that if you know the person well enough to know their personal preferences, definitely go with that. If you’re not sure, or in the case of, say, a coworker baby gift, neutrals such as yellow or white are probably best.

Having said that, if you know the baby’s gender, and you are in the United States, getting a pink baby gift for a baby girl or a blue baby gift for a baby boy would probably be just fine. The cultural norm is so deeply ingrained here that I can’t imagine anyone would have any problem whatsoever with following the tradition.

As for our baby bunches, we designed the pink baby bunch specifically for baby girls, the blue baby bunch specifically for baby boys, and we also have two gender-neutral baby bunches: the yellow bunch and the white winter bunch.

I was recently browsing through the card aisles at a local drugstore, and I couldn’t help but thinking that as much as store-bought cards can be pretty, they are never quite as thoughtful as homemade cards.

You have to admit that buying a store-bought Valentine’s Day card is the easy way out, especially if you don’t add a hand-written personal message. Sure, writing a personal message can be hard, but it is so much more meaningful!

When it comes to kids, while they often can’t put thoughts to paper as effectively or as eloquently as adults can, making a homemade Valentine’s Day card is a wonderful way for them to express their creativity and their love for the recipient.

A homemade Valentine’s Day card can be elaborate, or it can be quite simple. One of my favorite cards is a three-layer heart-shaped card. Simply cut out three heart shapes in different sizes from three different types of paper (red construction paper, gift-wrap paper and colorful tissue paper in shades of red and pink work well) and glue them to each other, the large heart at the bottom and the smallest on top. Attach a small envelope with your Valentine’s Day message inside using a red ribbon, then fold to create a card.

Your Valentine’s Day card doesn’t have to be heart-shaped though! Little boys will probably enjoy different shapes and colors, such as simple geometric shapes or even simple car shapes glued to each other. Dinosaurs are always a hit with boys – use this simple template to trace and cut a dinosaur shape.

As always when crafting with kids, let them take the lead and try not to insist on some “ideal” result for the project. Focus on the process rather than on the results, and have fun!

Photo by Cláudia Assad

If you’re at the end of your pregnancy, you’re probably looking forward to your maternity leave. Huge, heavy and bloated, squeezing into office-appropriate clothes and shoes is not much fun. Your nesting instincts have likely kicked in by now, so you would like nothing more than to stay home and prepare for the new baby.

Many women who are able to take 12 weeks of paid maternity leave use two of them before the baby is born, while many others work until the very last minute so that they can spend as much time as possible with their newborn.

While a maternity leave is pretty much a necessity – you do need time to recuperate and to adjust after giving birth, and while many moms choose to extend it, others quickly feel trapped and isolated and can’t wait to go back to the stimulating, grownup environment of an office.

Whatever your personal feelings are about being home with your baby for a few months, the following tips should help you make the most of your maternity leave while keeping your sanity!

1. Prior to leaving, make the transition for coworkers as smooth as possible. Many expectant moms create a detailed handbook that details unfinished projects, including contact info. While this is a lot of work, it will help alleviate some of your own worries – and guilt – about taking time off. Remember that your leave can start earlier than your due date even if you had planned on working until the very last day, either because the baby arrives early or because of medical issues.

2. Don’t plan on getting any office work done for the first month after giving birth. Most moms agree that caring for a newborn is the hardest job they have ever had – much harder than any office job. Even if you’re eager to transition back to work as soon as possible, don’t plan on accomplishing anything other than recuperating and taking care of your newborn for at least four weeks.

3. Take care of yourself. Easier said than done, for sure, but this should be a priority. It’s interesting that so many new moms report that they’re just not able to take a daily shower during those first few weeks – the baby is so demanding that they sometimes reach the end of the day still wearing their pajamas. I felt like that with my first baby, but with the second, I knew better than that. Taking a daily shower and taking care of myself were a priority, and I knew that leaving the baby in her crib for a few minutes, where she is safe (albeit unhappy), while I’m taking a shower and getting dressed, is not the end of the world. You ARE entitled to take care of your own needs, and in fact, you will be a better, more patient mom if you do.

4. Stay in touch. While no one at the office should expect you to be constantly available during your maternity leave, it’s a good idea to check your email and voicemail daily just so that you’re in touch with the office and your inbox doesn’t get out of control. Many moms feel that the single hour they take each day for reading work email actually helps them keep their sanity and feel like grownups. It’s a welcome break from the daily chaos of dealing with a newborn.

5. Most importantly: give yourself a break! Don’t be hard on yourself and accept that it is going to take time – usually several months – before you get used to your new life. Feelings of sadness and depression are very normal, so give yourself time to get over them, while being alert to any possibility that you might have postpartum depression – this is very normal too, but needs to be addressed medically.

Phoot by Surlygirl

February 14, 2010 will mark the start of the Year of the Tiger on the Chinese Lunar Calendar.

Chinese New Year is a major Chinese holiday and is typically celebrated with large family gatherings, gift giving, eating of symbolic foods and the display of decorations, all meant to bring good luck for the New Year and to celebrate the arrival of spring.

During Chinese New Year children receive a red envelope containing money as a gift from older family members. Red is considered a lucky color by the Chinese. It is also believed that the red envelope has positive energy that protects people from evil, and that it will bring luck to the giver and to the recipient.

One of my favorite Chinese New Year crafts is making a homemade red envelope and decorating it with Chinese good luck symbols.

Instructions are simple:

Print out this envelope template from Crafty Templates onto red paper. Enlarge the image prior to printing to get a bigger envelope. Alternatively, you can trace and copy this template onto thick red paper such as construction paper. Cut it out.

Fold the left, right and bottom flaps and tape together with a clear tape, or glue together. Leave the upper flap open. Later, you will tuck this flap inside to close the envelope.

Use a thin paintbrush dipped in gold paint, or a gold pen, to draw a good-luck Chinese character on the front of the envelope.

After the paint has dried, place a bill inside the envelope and seal it.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Photo by Silly Jilly