Pillowcase Aprons

Dear Girlfriend,

Guess what I made? Last Sunday, our craft in Sunday School was fingerpainting with chocolate pudding. The kids had a blast and no, there was no dripped pudding on their good clothes, because I made aprons out of pillowcases for all of them! I found the idea online, but since that website has disappeared into cyberspace, this 2 part video shows a similar way of making the basic apron also.

You know our room is decorated with Veggie Tales, so I hit several thrift stores in advance looking for pillowcases in the colors of the characters – I found lime green ones, pretty yellow ones with daisies (thot the girls would like those), deep dark purple and a bright red and green plaid which the boys liked best – you know, Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber look swell in those colors!

Since I have 8-10 children, ages 3-6, in our preschool and kindergarten class, I didn’t know how long to make each neckband to go over their heads, so decided to just make ties instead (Update: see the above video about sewing one long tie). The girls didn’t mind lifting their hair to be tied into their aprons and hubby helped the boys with theirs.

While I was looking for the pillowcases, I also found about a 1 ¼ yard of bright yellow Veggie-Tale party material that was just enough material for teacher to have an apron too and I made Mr. Helper his own as well from the leftover bits and pieces from the ten pillowcases. I backed his apron with white fabric and topstitched it down the front. I didn’t whipstitch the ends of the ties, but just tied them in simple knots.

After painting their pictures, pudding goatees around their mouths came next! LOL! Remind me next time to bring spoons. One little boy nearly dipped his whole fist in the pudding cup to get enough to lick off! My sweet hubby came to the rescue with spoons he dug up somewhere and the kids happily sucked their pudding down. They had a rip-snorting good time!

Will write again soon.

DJ

Veggie Tale ATC’s.

Today I made Veggie Tale ATC’s for my preschool Sunday School kids attendance chart prizes.

Our kids love stickers, but don’t always know the appropriate places to put them (I remember a few sessions with goo-be-gone! *roll eyes*). Here they get two prizes in one – stickers and a trading card! I used two brands of stickers – Veggie Tales by Big Idea and Redi-Stix Word Stickers by Standard Publishing. Then I just dressed them up with a little marker and stamped an appropriate scripture stamp (Stampin’ Up) on the back of each.

As I made these today, I listened to our local Christian radio station and “Family Talk” came on. Ryan Dobson mentioned that his father, Dr. James Dobson was horse back riding recently, fell off and broke nine bones. OUCH! I thought of sending him a get well card. 

Update: Dr. Dobson passed away in August of 2025. See his memorial here on Findagrave. Pray for his family's continued peace and comfort.  

Veggie-Tales

As I've said before, our Sunday School classroom is decorated in Veggie Tales. Some people go for Disney, but not me, I go for those cute little talking vegetables with no arms or legs like Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato. I found the border and a plaque at the thrift store and have accessorized with items as I (or girlfriends) find them. Like for instance, I happened to see Veggie-Tale material at our local Walmart some time ago and sewed two pillows and velour blankets to make our reading center. And yes, those are Veggie-Tale board books in the basket!

Later I found a chili pepper piñata on clearance for three bucks and hot-glued two huge wiggle eyes on it which hangs in the corner over the reading center.

A girlfriend gave me a Veggie-Tale decorated picture frame and I computer-generated the insert which hangs outside our classroom door. I am using the the pictures cut from last years Veggie-Tale calendar as cheap posters in our room and cut out the small ones on the back cover to tape to attendance reward atc's. A Veggie-Tale cup is our pencil holder and a Laura the Carrot hand puppet stands guard over our Veggie-Tale VCR tapes. I've also computer generated some scriptures pertaining to the Fruit of the Spirit (Galations 5:22) and vegetables (Proverbs 15:17) to hang on the walls and found curtains decorated on the bottom with crocheted vegetables at a local salvage store.

Just recently, a couple of my students, in honor of the Lord's day, brought me a huge gift-wrapped box containing the Pirates Who Don't Do Anything ship which I will cherish because of their thoughtfulness. We opened it with excitement and giggles and already have had fun sharing this wonderful toy with our whole class. Thank you!