Saturday, December 10, 2011

My Latest Crush... Contact Paper

Ah contact paper.  I have always loved you.  Because you keep 7 year olds from peeling up the cute desk tags you worked so hard to make for them...  You line shelves with a little pop of cheer in an otherwise drab corner of the house...  and now I love you even more.

Contact paper is usually used sticky side down, but I got a great idea from Play At Home Mom to use the sticky side up...  Only I tweaked their idea.  Twice.  I started by painting a Christmas tree on the smooth/clear side of the paper (with finger paint).  Once it dried I peeled off the backing and hung it sticky side out, taping to secure on the front storm door.  I had intended for the kids to stick glittery pom balls on the pre-made tree for decorations (we're learning about "ormanents" as Addison says).  What I didn't know was that the pom balls didn't stick without me smushing them.  Note to self:  Channel your inner teacher, and ALWAYS test out the project before you ask your kids to do it.  You should have seen the look I got when the pom balls fell to the floor.  I'll translate for you...  If eyes could talk they would have said, "Yeah, this was a cool idea and all but you better figure something else out, stat...  because in about 5.4 seconds I'm making a run for the printer cables instead."

As fast as I could I grabbed some old scrap booking paper and quick-like cut out random shapes.  And shazayam!  They stuck.  And could be peeled and restuck.  Over and over and over.  Success!  Caden played for a while and then as foreshadowed earlier, he did make a valiant effort to reconfigure our computer connections.  Addison on the other hand, returned to the tree several times over the last few days.  "Kekting" (collecting) ornaments off the tree, repositioning them, and putting them just below my left shoulder and saying "heart" : )   So glad we tried this out, I plan to use contact paper in the same way for lots of other crafts in the future.


PS  One of my better ideas as a mom has been to use designed contact paper for place mats when the kids go to a restaurant.  Seriously hard for the kids to peel up, easy to transport in the diaper bag, and only pennies more than the disposable mats you can get at Babies R Us!  

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