Author Archives: Jenn Rian
April Holiday Traditions
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April is almost here and it’s time to start planning your holiday traditions!
Here are some ideas for family traditions for April holidays.
*30+ APRIL FOOLS PRANKS TO PLAY ON YOUR KIDS
If you’re not really digging the idea of pranking your kids maybe you can come together
as a family and create some silly and foolish April Fools Day fun with these…
*APRIL FOOLS DAY FAMILY TRADITIONS!
*FREE APRIL FOOLS PRINTABLES!
Just print and prank! 😉
*EASTER TRADITION: MAGIC JELLYBEAN PRAYER AND LOLLIPOP GARDEN
*FREE PRINTABLE EASTER BUNNY PAW PRINT TEMPLATE
*EASTER TRADITION: EASTER BUNNY TRACKS 2011
*EASTER TRADITION: EASTER BUNNY TRACKS 2012
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*EASTER TRADITION: EASTER BUNNY TRACKS 2013
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*50+ EASTER EGG DECORATING IDEAS
*NATURAL DYES FOR COLORING EASTER EGGS
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How to Make Leprechaun Footprints: Video Tutorial
How to make leprechaun footprints: video tutorial
Here’s a quick video tutorial showing you how to make the leprechaun footprints that you see in these posts:
*Leprechaun trickery is afoot! and
*St. Patrick’s Day Tradition: Leprechaun Footprints.
I also included some footage of Adaline discovering the mess the leprechauns made in 2013.
(Watch video here)
To make leprechaun footprints:
-Put green Crayola washable fingerpaint on a plate, piece of paper, or thick paper towel
-Make a fist and dip your hand into the paint (dab off the excess)
-Press your fist onto your surface of choice
-Use your pinky finger to make toes
-Repeat using other hand
More details:
-It takes me about 45 minutes to make the mess.
-I do ALL of the prints for one foot/fist at the same time so that I don’t have to keep switching hands.
-It takes about 5 minutes to clean up the footprints.
-The footprints wipe off easily with water. You may want to use some soap if the paint was on long enough to dry.
-My daughter enjoyed cleaning up the footprints.
Has a leprechaun ever visited your house? What kind of things have your kids thrown in the toilet? Let me know in the comments!
*March Holiday Traditions
*Leprechaun Visit 2013: Little green footprints!
*Leprechaun Visit 2011: Magic green milk, footprints, and more!
*50+ FREE St. Patrick’s Day Printables (Links)
*The time that Buddy the Elf stole a picture from my blog!
*30+ April Fools Pranks You Can Play on Your Kids!
Great for Leprechaun tricks and Elf mischief as well!
*Easter Bunny Tracks: Paw Print Trail!
*Santa’s Magic Sooty Bootprints!
This post is linked to…
SITS craft link up / SITS Sharefest /Kids Activities Blog: St. Patrick’s Day
That one time that Buddy the Elf stole my blog…
You probably saw the title of this post and thought,
“Oh, that silly Jenn. She’s probably going to tell us a story of some weird crazy dream she had about Elf and her blog!”
But, no. I’m totally serious. Buddy the Elf stole my blog. Sorta. Except not really. But he kinda did.
Yesterday at 2pm my husband sends me a message “Buddy the Elf is posting your St. Patty’s Day post on Facebook.” and I’m like, “I have no idea what that means.” So he tells me that his sister sees this picture of our house in her Facebook feed and she called to tell him, and then he told me.
At first I was excited thinking about how awesome it would be to get a ton of unexpected traffic from a Facebook page with over 11,000,000 followers. And just in case you have trouble following all of those zeros, that’s over 11 million people. Woo to the hoo!
So I go to the Buddy the Elf Facebook Page and I see my photo has been “liked” over 6,000 times and shared on Facebook over 1,000 times. And my heart sinks. Because here is no source link back to me included. In fact, there’s no link at all.
To make things worse it was an older version of the photo from 2011 that wasn’t watermarked. I hadn’t even been blogging an entire year yet when I published that post and it never crossed my mind to watermark my photos.
Then I saw a glimmer of hope. There was a link in the comments to a pin…maybe I was given credit after all! The link goes to a pin on Buddy the Elf’s Pinterest account with the description, “Have you seen these toilets? They’re GINORMOUS!” And when I click on the pin…
It leads nowhere. Well, actually it leads here. The original pinner (Buddy?) had pinned the image url instead of the post url, so when you click on the pin it just brings up the photo instead of leading directly to the post. The good news is that “coolestfamilyontheblock” is included in the image url, but most people aren’t going to take the extra step to search for the blog.
So this is a cautionary tale for you, girls and boys. Always watermark ALL of your photos before putting them on the internet, because you never know if your content will be stolen by a 6 foot tall elf with a following of 11 million people.
Furthermore, never pin or repin a photo without a proper link to the original source! This means that you should be clicking through and checking sources before repinning. I know that Pinterest can be addicting and you can get pin happy and just start pinning all of the things and who has time to click through when I’m so busy planning my dinner/wedding/birthdayparty/dreamhome/workoutplan?!
But you seriously need to slow your roll, pinner, and make sure that you are pinning responsibly! It doesn’t do anyone any good to spread “bad” pins around that lead nowhere or that lead to the wrong place. It’s frustrating for fellow pinners who are seeking the original source for content/information and frustrating for the bloggers (content creators) who are missing out on traffic and potential new followers. Follow the golden rule while pinning, if you wouldn’t like someone else spreading around an unsourced photo of yours then please don’t repin without checking the source first.
I know that you’re busy. So am I. (sorta) If you really like a pin and you really don’t have the time to check the source, please repin to a secret board and then go back and check the source later before pinning publically. (“Woah, Jenn, what a great idea!” You’re welcome, imaginary blog readers.)
As I’m writing this my image has now been shared on Buddy’s Facebook page over 2,000 times and has over 10,600 “likes” and his pin has been repinned 250 times. And mama ain’t seein’ none of that traffic 😦
Woo Boo to the hoo.
I could report the photo on both Facebook and Pinterest and have them removed for not crediting the original source and copyright infringement or other fancy legal sounding what-nots, but I have no interest in this at the moment. I don’t care if they shared my photo…I just want my traffic. In an attempt to remedy the situation, I started dropping my link in the comments on both the Facebook page and on Pinterest. I started “liking” the positive comments and replying to some of them. Did it help? I don’t know. “Buddy” hasn’t responded to me at all.
How can you help?! I’d really appreciate it if you could help me get the watermarked version of this photo along with the source link out into the internet, particularly on Facebook. It would be great if you could share it on Facebook through your personal profile and/or Facebook page.
I’ve included some links below for quick and easy sharing!
*Share/like/comment on Facebook
*Repin
*Share/+1/comment on Google+
*Retweet
It would also be great if you could head over to Buddy’s Facebook page and find my comment where I left my link and “like” it so that it gets bumped higher in the comment thread. Click here
Do you always watermark your photos? Do you check sources before repinning? Has an elf ever stolen your blog content? Let me know in the comments!
March Holiday Traditions
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March is almost here and it’s time to start planning your holiday traditions! Here are some ideas for family traditions for March Holidays.
March 02 is Dr. Seuss’ birthday and Read Across America Day (March 03 for 2014)
*Celebrating Seuss
Celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday with green eggs and ham, create a Foot Book,
and make Thidwick moose antlers from hand tracings!
*A Splendiferous Dr. Seuss Breakfast
Green eggs and ham, bread butterside up, and Moose Juice!
*FREE Dr. Seuss Fonts
These free Dr. Seuss fonts can be used for printables, invitations, birthday parties,
baby showers, school classrooms / preschool, and more!
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*Dr. Seuss Posts
Links to all of my Dr. Seuss posts.
St. Patrick’s Day is March 17!
Leprechauns, shamrocks, clover, green, rainbows, and pots of gold!
*St. Patrick’s Day: Leprechaun Trickery
All of my posts in the “leprechaun” category in one convenient place
*Leprechaun Visit 2011
Leprechaun tricks, pranks, and mischief. He leaves green footprints,
turns the toilet water green, turns the milk green, and makes a huge mess!
*Leprechaun Visit 2013
More leprechaun trickery including green footprints, and toilet papering the house!
*50+ FREE St. Patrick’s Day Printables
*30+ April Fools Pranks to Play on Your Kids!
These April Fools pranks also work great as leprechaun,
Elf on the Shelf, and Thing 1 and Thing 2 mischief!
Easter is usually in April (like this year, 2014) but sometimes it happens in March.
Click the label above to visit the “Easter” category for related posts.
St. Patrick’s Day Traditions: Leprechaun Footprints
In 2011 we had a leprechaun visit our house for the first time. We woke up to find that he had left green leprechaun footprints all over our kitchen and laundry room, he’d turned the toilet water green, and made our milk turn green in the glass! The following year on St. Patrick’s Day I had a one month old baby and I’d ask Santa Claus (head of all legendary figures) to please keep the leprechauns away. Last year the leprechaun was back to his old tricks again!
The leprechaun entered magically through the back door and then made his way into the laundry room where he hopped from the floor, to the washer, to the dryer, to the toilet, to the floor again, to the sink, and back out into the kitchen. Did you know that leprechauns hop? Well, they do. In fact they can jump really high straight up into the air making it easier for them to get into mischief.
While hopping around the laundry room the leprechaun left his green footprints everywhere…including the toilet seat…and grabbed onto the toilet paper to tp the house!
The leprechaun had unrolled the toilet paper all over the kitchen!
When he left the laundry room the leprechaun hopped onto the highchair and over to the table where he must’ve dropped some gold coins out of his pockets while running in circles. Next he hopped down to the floor and onto the wall!
The leprechaun’s next stop was the playroom.
We have tables lined up along the walls where the kids can sit and read books, build with blocks, or play with play sets. The leprechaun ran across the play tables to the art table.
The leprechaun unraveled paper onto the floor and scribbled a picture.
Next the leprechaun slid down the roll of paper and hopped onto a table in the middle of the room before going back to the kitchen where he left through the back door.
The kids were excited to see that the leprechaun had visited, especially since he had dropped some chocolate coins. Jon didn’t even bother to take off the wrapper before shoving them in his mouth! 😉
When the leprechaun visited 2 years ago I was stuck cleaning up the mess. The good thing about a 3.5 year old is that they think cleaning leprechaun footprints is fun, so I gladly let Adaline do all of the scrubbing 🙂 It wipes up as easy as Crayola washable fingerpaint! 😉
(**Click the image below or watch the video for details on how to make leprechaun footprints!**)
You can see the mess that the leprechaun made in 2011 and all of the mischief he got into by clicking the photo below.
Has a Leprechaun ever visited your house?
Let me know in the comments!
Making a Preschool Classroom Valentine
For Adaline’s Montessori Preschool class each child has to make one big Valentine to bring to school that their classmates will sign rather than bring in individual Valentine’s for each student. Honestly, I think that’s a GREAT idea and I’m so glad that she won’t be coming home with 25 different lollipops with eyes glued to them! 😉
I filmed the creative process of making “The Adaline Flower” with a 4.5 year old. Watch and be amazed!
(Video here)
(I post a lot of funny vlogs on my YouTube channel. Subscribe to follow along!)
To make the classroom Valentine for preschool we
-Cut a heart out of red poster board
-Colored craft sticks and glued them around a photo to make petals and a stem for a flower
-Made leaves out of fuzzy sticks
-Made a sun out of construction paper
-Made a pom pom lady bug
-Used glitter glue around the edges to make it shimmery
It was tough to reign in Adaline’s creativity. She LOVES art and wanted to draw all over the Valentine but she needed to keep it blank so that her classmates could sign it. I have a feeling her friends are going to end up with quite a few drawings of hers on their Valentines.
The pom pom ladybug was Adaline’s favorite part.
We used a black Sharpie marker to make dots on a pink pom pom, used a smaller black pom pom for the head, added googly eyes and adhered it all using craft glue. Adaline drew wings and legs around it onto the poster board.
Does your child’s school allow individual
Valentine’s or one classroom Valentine?
Let me know in the comments!
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Fun and Dysfunction 
