parade and a flag craft

I know.  Everyone's been done with July 4th for awhile now.  But summer is hard on blogging, so I'm playing a little catch up.

I found this cute craft the day before Independence Day on pinterest.  So yes, when the kids woke up the next morning, I had it all laid out for them to start and finish an hour before the annual parade.

And I'd just like to add, although I could do crafts all day, the kids are often resistant to them.  They'd rather be bored and say there's nothing to do than actually make something fun.  So my trick is either to not invite them to do the craft, and just start doing it myself (which will often attract three interested onlookers) or to not explain what we're doing ahead of time and have it be somewhat of a mystery.



So I just pulled out some plain white fabric I had stashed away and cut it into rectangles.  We used acrylic paint and no rules...just stick with red, white and blue and paint it how you'd like. (Definitely use newspaper under the material when painting because it will bleed through the fabric.)  To get the flag on the stick, I just folded the fabric around the stick and hot glued it to itself.  I love how different they all came out, but still with the same theme.  I could see making these for any holiday...Christmas, a birthday theme, Thanksgiving..... they're somewhat addictive.





The flag got used at the beginning of the parade, then tossed to the ground and stepped on when the candy started being thrown.  I managed to save them from permanent damage.  I think they'll be fun to pull out next year and 'remember when'.



Diego hyped out on sugar broke into dance when the patriotic band passed.



And, of course, it wouldn't be the fourth of July without the Abraham Lincoln shirt.  Which is now a size too small.  The good thing is this:  not wanting to mess up a good shirt, I practiced fabric painting on a separate red scrap shirt and then cut out the design and stitched it to this white shirt....SO ideally I can just take the red piece off and sew it to a shirt that actually fits!  To make your own Abe Lincoln shirt, follow the link to MADE.



Free soda and hot dogs afterwards.  Too many choices!!



Juan Pablo always works the fourth so it was just us in the hot, hazy sun.  The parade was short.  The candy was intermittent.  But we caught up with good friends which made it all worth it...and so the tradition continues.