While nearly everyone knows the dates of Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, even the most with-it moms may not know this Sunday, September 13, is Grandparent’s Day. That doesn’t mean you have to break the bank on a pricey gift, but it is nice to remember the people who love to spoil your child.

Handmade gifts, or even a phone call or visit, might be the perfect offering. If your child’s grandparents live close, let your child spend the day, or even just a few hours, with them. What else can you do to make the day special for the grandparents in your baby’s life?

Handmade Crafts
While a greeting card is always a thoughtful gesture, if your child is old enough, a handmade card will mean even more. Even a preschooler or advanced toddler can make a card with construction paper and washable magic markers.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you may want to help your little one make this adorable “Cup of Love” mug. Let your child decide what to write on the cup, but you can help him along by suggesting phrases such as “#1 Grandma,” “I love you” and “You’re the best!”

Baked Goods
If your little one loves to help out in the kitchen, why not bake a special treat for Grandma and Grandpa’s special day? Keep in mind any special dietary needs older people may have, such as diabetes or high cholesterol. This recipe for oatmeal cookies, from Prevention’s Sugar Solution Cookbook, is true to its name: “Yummy, healthy oatmeal cookies.”

Unsweetened applesauce replaces butter and also reduces the amount of sugar required. The whole grain flour is absorbed more slowly than refined white flour, making this a safe snack (in moderation) for diabetics as well as anyone watching their weight. Kids can easily help by measuring and blending all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Be sure to keep preschoolers away from the hot oven, though.

Pictures, pictures, pictures
What grandparent doesn’t adore photos of their grandbabies? Ideally, we’d all have time to sit and scrapbook a whole album for every year of our child’s life, and then present it as a gift each Grandparent’s Day. In reality, we’re fortunate just to make time to upload digital images and order prints.

You can select one, two or three of your favorite pictures of your child and his grandparent and scrapbook just one page. Mount the page in a nice-looking frame and you have an inexpensive gift grandparents will love. Let your child select the photos and adornments.

Another creative and inexpensive gift is having pictures put on things like playing cards, a coffee mug, jewelry box or a calendar. Clark Color Labs has great deals on photography gifts as well as giving away free prints and free online storage of your photos!

A Day with the Grandparents
We all know that time with your kids is the best gift you can give to grandparents. Suggest some activities, or let the grandparents decide what they want to do with your kids for the day.

In honor of Grandparent’s Day, here are some more Babies Online articles about grandparents.

Happy Grandparent’s Day!

• Grandparenting from a Distance

• Fun Things You Can Do With your Grandchildren

• Why Granparents Are So Important to a Child

There may be nothing quite as thoughtful as a handmade gift. My mom and youngest sister are sewing many Christmas gifts this year. Last year, my mom made me the cutest flannel nightshirt; it was red with little cups of steaming hot cocoa on it, and extra-roomy for my then pregnant belly.

Another year, my sister created the most amazing velvet Christmas tree skirt for us and my mom made us an adorable angel tree-topper. This year, when it was time to take out the decorations, baby got a hold of the angel and pulled off much of her curly, blonde hair and halo. Fortunately, I was able to fix her!

Most years, the boys and I make handmade ornaments for family members. With such a tight budget this year, handmade ornaments would be perfect, but things are much busier with baby in the picture and we haven’t gotten around to it. Last year, we made beaded candy cane ornaments, which are very easy to make:

bend craft wire in the shape of a cane
thread beads, alternating red and white (be sure to tie a knot at the bottom so your beads don’t slip right off)
then tie a festive ribbon around the middle.
You can add a standard wire hanger or a simple loop of wire for hanging.

We made similar wreath-shaped ornaments, using wire shaped in a circle, green beads in alternating light and dark green, and a bow.

We also made a couple of different ornaments from inexpensive Martha Stewart kits I bought from Michael’s. Her line of craft supplies and kits are great—I highly recommend them for any holiday, birthday or just for fun.

There’s still time for making simple projects such as these; people always appreciate the thoughtfulness and time spent, especially when little kids’ fingers did the work!

I’m looking forward to seeing the amazing things my mom and sis are crafting this year. I also love the handmade gifts the kids make in school.

Gifts made with love, “especially for you” are always the ones I treasure most. Do you have any handmade treasures you’ve received over the years? Are you making any gifts by hand this year?

We’ve gone to cloth in our house – not only with diapers and re-usable wipes, but now in the kitchen as well. I’m talking about cloth napkins. Remember those fancy napkins they would give you at restaurants when you went out to dinner at places that didn’t have a drive-thru or a kids? menu?

Cloth napkins are great for casual dinners at home with the family and are much more environmentally friendly than their paper counterparts – just think of how many uses you can get out of them before they require laundering! What’s more, they can last for years with heavy usage, and won’t clog up the landfills or your trash can like those thin little paper napkins.

You can easily make your own cloth napkins at home with minimal effort – it’s even a great project to get the kids involved with. You don’t even need sewing skills; you can either finish the hems by sewing, or you can simply raveling the edges for a casual, fringed look.

To make cloth napkins, begin with 100% cotton fabric, which can be found at craft stores, fabric stores, or even discount stores such as Wal Mart for just $1-2 per yard.

Next, wash and iron the fabric. When it’s dry and smooth, carefully and evenly cut out 14-inch squares to make dinner-sized napkins. Fringe the fabric edges by gently pulling out the strands of string along the edges, starting at the top of the cloth. Pull about 1/2 inch of strings on all four sides for even seams.

Choose a different color or pattern design for each member of the family so everyone has their own designated napkin. Or, you can use a different napkin ring for each family member. Use the napkins over and over again until they require laundering.

To wash, simply toss the napkins into the laundry with like-colored fabrics on the gentle cycle and medium heat. Dry on low heat and remove promptly to reduce wrinkling. You can also line dry the napkins in the summertime. If they do wrinkle, iron with a warm iron to smooth out the fabric.

Babies need so many clothes, and they grow out of them so fast! What can you do with all those teeny onesies, pants, dresses and shirts?

The first thing that comes to mind is to save them for the next baby. Plastic bins or boxes are the best thing to store baby clothes in, or those plastic bags you zip up and suck all the air out with a vacuum cleaner. Store them somewhere in the house, not the garage or basement, to keep them dry and away from creepy-crawlies. The law of the universe, however, dictates that if you keep all your little boy clothes from your firstborn, the next baby will be a girl, and vice versa. It’s a good way to choose the sex of your next baby!

And if this little one completes your family? Women’s shelters, and teen maternity homes are usually in need of clean, good condition baby clothes, toys and supplies. Look in your telephone book, or contact your local United Way for a referral to a local charity.

Are you a crafty mom? Or can’t you bear to get rid of those tiny onesies? Why not turn those little clothes into a memory quilt? Ticche & Bea sell a $35 kit with all you need to make a quilt from baby clothes. Or, for an extra $40, they’ll make it for you.

Since my daughter has started solids, I have been accumulating those little 4-ounce glass jars from her baby food. A few of them went to a neighbor who wanted them for his wood shop, but the rest of them are piling up on the kitchen counter, around the sink, in grocery bags – almost as if they are multiplying when we’re not looking.

Time has come to do something about these jars. I don’t want to just toss them into the recycle bin; I would like to actually do something with them. Following are five ideas for how to re-use baby food jars – if you’ve found creative uses for baby food jars, please share!

1. Use them in the garage or basement to collect nails, screws, washers, and other loose materials. You could also use them to store small paint samples when you repaint a room and have just a little bit of paint left in the can.
2. Keep a couple on a dresser to toss in loose change or stray buttons.
3. In the kitchen, use them for storing spices – use one for each type of spice.
4. Make snow globes. A snowman made from polymer clay (available at craft stores) and some glitter make for a cute wintertime scene.
5. Root plants. Cut a branch off of a plant, then place it in a jar filled with water. In a few weeks, roots will grow and a new plant will be started.

How do you use your spare jars?

Isn’t it fun to browse the toy stores with your baby? You can really spend a fortune on products that say they will teach your baby to spell and count and appreciate music and develop their sensory skills, and improve fine motor skills, and just about everything else you can imagine.Or perhaps it’s depressing, when there isn’t enough money to buy the latest Baby Einstein gadget, and you feel guilty that your baby will miss out on the educational experience they promise.

But what do babies want? They look at the bleeping, singing toys with flashing lights in the store in wonder, and their parents think they will love the toy, and buy it, only to have baby be quickly bored with it. Because after pushing all the buttons, what does it actually do?

But there are toys that are good value (or even free), endlessly entertaining, and educational, and much more so than anything that needs batteries!

Every baby – both sexes – should have building blocks, balls, containers, and a doll.

Building bricks or blocks are great for honing fine motor skills, and fascinate babies, toddlers, preschoolers and beyond. Build a tower for a baby to smash! Older babies love to build their own towers to knock down. Blocks teach engineering skills – a baby must learn how to make a tower or a bridge stay up. And believe it or not, math skills too. If you count blocks, or show your baby how two small blocks are the same size as one big block, you are teaching her math.

Balls are cheap and fun to drop, roll, bounce, catch and kick. They are great for developing gross motor skills. Dads, and often grandads, can be shy, or even think it’s not masculine, to play with babies. Balls are a great toy to bring man and baby together.

Containers Give baby a container. Baby will put things in, dump them out. Repeat x 1000.

Containers are good to stack, nest, sort by size, fill and empty. Great for fine motor skills, and learning the concepts of spatial relationships, In, Out, On, Under. And size too, ask her how many balls fit in the big pot? How many fit in the little pot? Does a big pot fit in the small pot? Or the small pot in the big pot?

This one can be free – baby will be just as happy with the pots from a 6-pack of apple sauce or an ice cream tub as she will be with store brought toy containers. Any activity that entertains your baby, and involves eating ice cream has got to be a winner!

Dolls (If you have a son, and can’t bear to buy a dolly, then a teddy bear, or clown, or animal) are wonderful for teaching social skills, empathy, and last well beyond baby and toddlerhood. Dolls are wonderful for explaining concepts to a baby. A great way to explain about bedtime to an older baby is to help them put a dolly to bed. And it’s precious to watch your baby hugging a dolly who’s had a boo boo – even if baby caused the boo boo by throwing Dolly from the couch! If you are on a budget, there’s lots of websites with patterns to make a beautiful doll from scraps. What could be better than your baby cherishing a dolly you made?

What else is great, simple fun for baby to play with? Check out Part 2!

Reading one of the posts here by a new mom took me down memory lane. I started thinking about the first year and how I don’t recall dreaming at all. I breastfed and if I wasn’t waking up to feed my baby, then I was waking up to express. I also started thinking about baby books/journals and best laid plans.

My mom kept a baby book for me. I don’t know if it was because I was her firstborn or not, but I can’t recall if she did one for my brother. We’re 18 months apart so after awhile the entries stopped in my book or became sporadic. I remember when she showed it to me. I had to be about nine or ten. It was great to see the first picture of me taken at the hospital and my birth certificate. I enjoyed reading about how I used to keep my food in my cheeks like a little squirrel and how I walked without crawling.

I meant to have a record like that for my son. Yes, I used the past tense because it didn’t happened. I wrote in my journal about his birth and bringing him home, but I never got around to purchasing a book. It isn’t something that I think of when I shop for baby showers either. I’m sure that there are mommies out there who have a story or notation written for each month and I commend you. I’m just not one of them.

Instead of writing down my memories, I have what seems like fifty picture albums. I think I take a picture just about everyday. Using my digital camera, I recorded the first time he sat up for a period of time without toppling over, his first steps and first tricycle ride. When I look at a picture, I can recall everything like it was yesterday. I suppose it’s not too late to start while the brain is still functioning. If nothing else, I can tell him that he walked without crawling like his mommy.

Although, you can purchase baby books, I took a look on the web for some crafty ideas on creating your own and here’s a couple that I found:

http://www.babiesonline.com/articles/photography/prepbabysalbum.asp

http://stayathomeparents.suite101.com/article.cfm/keeping_a_baby_book_for_your_child

http://www.mycraftbook.com/Baby_Scrapbooking_Ideas.asp

Please, feel free to share your ideas for baby books with other moms or make suggestions in the comments section.

The holidays are so much fun–family, friends, presents, food. So what do you do with the other 2 weeks of your holiday vacation? Here are a few artsy craftsy things you can do with the whole family.

SILLY PUTTY—makes 1 cup

You will need: 1/2 cup Elmer’s white glue, 1/2 cup liquid starch, and 3 drops of any color food coloring.

Put the white glue in a medium sized, shallow bowl. Add the liquid starch, slowly, to the glue and knead with your fingers. Remember, the more you play with it, the better it will be. Add the food coloring and continue to knead it until the color is uniform. And WaLa…silly putty.

SPRAY CHALK—makes 1 cup

Start with: 4 Tablespoons of cornstarch, 1 cup of warm water, several drops of food coloring and a plastic mister bottle.

Grab a medium bowl and combine the cornstarch and warm water. Stir the mixture until it is smooth. Add the food coloring and mix. Now pour the mixture into the plastic mister bottle. Before you use it, shake it very well to break up any clogs. Now put some warm clothes on you and your kids. Go outside and color the snow and ice. If you don’t have any snow (lucky), you can still go outside and spray color stuff. What is your family going to color?

CHOCOLATE SCENTED PLAYDOUGH—makes 2 cups

You will need: 1 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 cup salt, 1/2 Tablespoon cream of tartar, 1/2 Tablespoon vegetable oil, 1 cup boiling water, and airtight storage containers.

Put a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Combine flour, cocoa powder, salt and cream of tartar. Next, add the boiling water and vegetable oil and mix very well. While stirring frequently, mix until it forms a soft dough. Take it off the heat and let it cool. After it has cooled, knead it with your hands. Store the delicious mixture in an airtight container. And remember, it really isn’t chocolate, so try your hardest not to eat it.

FINGER PAINTS—makes 5 cups

You need to get: 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons salt, 3 cups cold water, 2 cups hot water, food coloring, and storage containers.

Once again, get your medium saucepan and put it over a medium heat. Combine the flour and salt. Next, add the cold water and, while using a whisk or hand mixer, beat the mixture until it is smooth. Now add the hot water and bring it to a boil, all the while stirring until the paint is glossy. Take it off the heat and add the desired color of food coloring. Stir again until it is completely colored. You need to let the paint cool completely until you store it or use it to make fantastic painting.

—Now, here is my last artsy craftsy project—

SCENTED ROCKS—makes about 6 rocks

You will need: 1/2 cup wholemeal flour, 1/2 cup salt, 1/4 teaspoon essential oil–any kind you desire, 2/3 cup boiling water, and some food coloring.

Take a small bowl and combine the wholemeal flour, salt and essential oil. Mix very well and add the boiling water. Now add the desired food coloring and mix very well. Let the mixture cool to where it is easy to handle. Roll the mixture into 2 inch to 3 inch balls. Shape them into rock shapes, or any shape you want. Place these “rocks” on a cooling rack in a warm and dry area. Let the rocks dry for several day. Put these rocks anywhere you want in your home for a fantastic fragrance.

I hope you and your family have fun doing these arts and crafts. Do you have any other crafts you can do with your kids? Share those crafts with our other readers in the comments.