DIY Jelly Fish

First, can I just say that having kids makes growing older much more enjoyable!  Well, maybe not the growing older part but the birthday part.  Abby was super excited for my birthday.  She loved giving me my presents and insisted on having the cake in front of her and helping me blow out the candles.  So cute!  I think the cake is the best part of birthdays for her... what do you think?

Sometimes we get in a rut around here and seem to play the same things... over and over and over.  Abby never gets bored but there are only so many times that I can pretend to be Buzz Lightyear or Mama Minnie before I feel like I'm going to lose my mind.  So, I decided we needed to get a little bit creative around here.

Nemo has been a huge hit lately so I used that for inspiration and we spent one morning making jelly fish.  It was pretty easy, and there are lots of variations but here's how we did it.

First, we took coffee filters and dropped some food dye on them.  We initially used markers but Abby got bored with that really quick and you need way more color than these few little dots:

Then we took a spray bottle filled with water to wet the coffee filters down.  The colors will start to run.

While your letting the coffee filters dry (we ran out to the store so I'm not sure how long this took), take a plastic cup and tape tentacles to it.  We used tissue paper but I'm sure you can use plain paper or plastic bags.

That Halloween cup has nothing to do with this project but she saw it and insisted on playing with it... kids!

Once the tentacles are taped on and your filters are dry, tape the filter to the cup and voila!  You now have a jelly fish!  Abby was a little bored by this project at first but was super excited to see the finish product and now she can't wait to make more!

We hung hers from her fan, which she insisted needed to be on!  Turned out that Lilly loved looking at our DIY mobile... BONUS!

Unfortunately, by the end of the day all of her jelly fish had lost there tentacles so we needed to go back use glue to hold them on so experiment with what you have on hand and what works best for you.