Father's Day Cards

 For Father's Day the girls and I once again opted to go for the homemade route when it came to cards for the dads in our lives.

 The first original card was Melanie's "Tickle Monster" card for my dad.  

I thought it would be cute for Melanie to make the tickle monster (the girls' nickname for my dad) into a real image.  So I had Melanie tell me what shapes/colors she wanted the various parts of the monster to be, I would draw them and she would cut them out and assembled them (aside from the hands, those were a bit too detailed for her scissor skills)

The finished card

 The next cards revolved around the girls' first experience with watercolors.

I knew I wanted to go with a theme revolving around hands like we did for the Mother's Day cards this year.  I tried tracing their hands and telling the girls to paint them lots of colors, but Claire would become so focused on painting the hand that she would paint right through the paper.  So I scratched that approach and just had them paint the paper as they saw fit, and they had a blast!

 Amelia supervising the watercoloring

 

"You missed a spot."

 If it involves getting messy it will most likely make Claire happy!

 *Maybe if I try and look cute mom won't mind that I made a mess*

Thank goodness for washable paint!

 Once everything was dried I traced the girls' hands on their respective paintings several times and cut them out to use on the cards.

I also painted a page myself and had Matt help me trace Amelia's hand so she wouldn't be left out of the cards.

 Here are the cards I came up with

It was fun to hear what the girls came up with for their list of favorite things about their grandpas.  They tended to get repetitive with their lists, playing chase and tickling were big sticking points for the girls, so I had to remind them of things they have done with their grandpas and see what they said about those events.  Against my personal wishes/better judgement I was a good mommy and did write down what the girls said, even if it encourages something I'm not particularly fond of (i.e. my dad sneaking candy to the girls when he helps me load them in the van when we leave their house)

I'm planning to get a simple black frame for Matt's card so we'll have this record of the girls hand prints for years to come.

I still have a painting from each of the big girls and a few of Amelia's hand prints left over.  I think I'll also get frames for the girls paintings to hang in the playroom to add a bit of color (I've been thinking about giving them a wall and a couple frames for each of them to display their most recent masterpieces in to help keep my refrigerator from becoming so overrun with artwork).  I'm also planning on getting some of those laminating sheets to use on Amelia's hand prints and turn them into magnets for the refrigerator.  They're just too cute not to!