Toys R' Us and Crayola

A few weeks ago I blogged about my partnership with Toys R' Us to get the word out about their "I want to be a Toys R' Us Mom" grand opening and store reopenings across the country. I'm excited to share that there will be another event coming up this Friday, August 6th in West Mifflin, PA. So if you live in Pennsylvania and can go and check it out, be sure to go to the store Friday morning. The first 100 mom's get a wonderful goody bag from Toys R' Us. I've seen these bags on another blogger's website and you won't want to miss out on getting one. Who doesn't love getting free stuff?

Also, you'll want to check out this special website http://www.blogger.com/www.iwanttobeatoysrusmom.com before heading to the store. You can go and download your own secret coupon and take it in to the store. You could be the lucky duck who gets a 50% off coupon! Man what I wouldn't do with a 50% off coupon at Toys R' Us!

For those of you who don't live in the PA area, I'd still recommend checking out Toys R' Us this week. They've got a great Crayola sale going on now. You can get 4 boxes of the 24 classic Crayolas for $1. Finger paints are $3, paint smocks are $2, scissors are $1, and there are many other Crayola products on sale too. If you don't need 4 boxes of crayons, I'd still buy them at that price. They would make a wonderful donation to schools. The schools in our area always need extra supplies.

Another idea is to buy these supplies and fill shoe boxs to give to the Samaritan's Purse organization. My MOPS group and church does this every Christmas. Wouldn't it be great to be able to fill a few shoe boxes with crayons, scissors, etc? http://www.samaritanspurse.org/

If you make it to the Pennsylvania grand opening be sure to let me know. I'd love to hear about your Toys R' Us adventure!

p.s. There will be a number of these events across the country so if you visit the website you can see when an event will be taking place near you.


So the FTC is happy, I want to share that I am receiving a promotional incentive from Toys“R”Us as a thank you for telling my blog readers about the Grand Opening weekends.

Fabulous Favorite Friday

TGIF! Happy Friday everyone! This week has flown by. I can't believe Friday is here. We've had severe storms come through our area in the evenings, so I am ready for that to be over.

I'm so excited that I've got fun pictures to share for today's post. I've been trying to come up with projects for Sawyer to do to change things up a bit. I decided that he was old enough to try his hand at painting, so I went on a quest to get all of the supplies we needed to make it happen.

My Fabulous Favorite Friday post features all of the supplies that we used to make the masterpiece you see featured in these pictures.

Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers has nothing on this yellow creation.

My favorite thing that I found was the smock that my budding artist is wearing. It is made by Crayola and says "Crayola Beginnings"on the front. I love that it is light weight and that it has the elastic around the wrists. It also has two velcro spots in the back to fasten it on. I purchased mine at Wal Mart and would highly recommend it. It was just perfect to help keep Sawyer from getting paint on his clothes. I am such a fan of Crayola products. I've seen so many unique items that they have come out with. I

can't wait for us to try our hand at some of their items. I think it is great for a child to have things that can help foster their creativity and use their imagination.

The paper that we used to paint on I found in the

Target dollar spot. They had just reset that area in our store a week ago. When I saw the paper I snatched it up quickly. The paper comes on a roll which is nice so you can just cut off the amount you need. They sold bigger rolls of paper at Wal Mart, but I believe it was $7 when I checked. So this was better for our budget. Plus, this size artwork fits on our fridge much better.

The paint that we used is by RichArt and it is washable paint that is non toxic. I loved that it was non toxic because you never know when your kid is going to go rogue on you and stick a paint brush in their mouth. Fortunately that didn't happen. I purchased the paint at Michael's crafts. I originally only bought one bottle of yellow. I wanted to make sure Sawyer was going to like painting before investing too much. By the way, the name of the color is Bee-Bopping Yellow. And it features a banana with sunglasses on the bottle. Who comes up with these names? LOL

Yesterday I went back to Michael's and purchased more colors. They have a variety pack that comes with 6 different colors and runs around $5 and some change. I used a 40% off coupon to purchased it. The multipack bottles are much smaller which I actually like better. Unless you are a doing a big project, the little bottles are better because you can store them easier. A little bit of this paint goes along way. The bottles do say ages 4 and up, but obviously if you are closely supervising a younger child then you can use this paint. I don't know many people who are just going to hand any child a paint brush and say "Run off and play." You might find your house with purple polka dots. Or your dog. Or your car. Or your other kids. Seriously.

I wanted to show you the last picture I took so you could see how I set up the paint station. I decided to try and save myself some work by putting down the plastic trash bags. I was able to use the ties to tie on the one bag to the art easel. Surprisingly, Sawyer is a pretty neat painter and did not get any paint on really anything except the paper. There was one stray brush mark that got on the easel, but it easily wiped off.

So, that is a little look into one of the summer crafts we've been doing this summer. Once Sawyer builds up his portfolio, I'm sure the Louvre will be calling. But for now we are displaying his artwork on our fridge.

Be sure to check back on Monday for my next installment of Mocktail Monday. I'll have another tasty drink recipe. Have a fabulous weekend!