Kid Friendly Patriotic Streamers

Messy Messy Fail - Last night for dinner, I made Rachel Ray's cowboy spaghetti.  However when I went to toss some salt into the water to boil the spaghetti, I accidentally dumped in what looked like a cup of salt.  It was probably only a 1/2 cup (not that that is really much better), but still enough to make the noddles a tad too salty.  Whoops.

Tidy Victory - The boys and I put together three of our homemade hanging baskets for the deck last night.  In a thunderstorm, but no one seemed to mind.  Will share in a later post.  Yay for pretty flowers on the deck!

As stated in this previous post, I was determined to come up with some kind of fun thing for the kids to wave at the parade that wasn't a pointy American flag.  Too tempting to stab each other with.

I looked around on the Internet for some ideas.  Lots of cute streamers with grosgrain ribbon - unfortunately my boys aren't the ribbon type.  Others used crepe paper streamers - those would last 19 seconds perhaps.

I found an idea that used thin tinsel for streamers, but unfortunately we are pretty limited in our party store supply around here.

Made a quick trip to the Dollar Tree and I found it - a metallic flag banner.  Perfect!

Here are the items you need:

metallic flag banner (or any type of patriotic material, just make
   sure you don't cut up a real flag!)
wood dowels 
packing tape (not pictured)
scissors

Here's what I did:

For each flag, I cut it into strips following the lines on the flag.  I stopped cutting about an inch from the seam so that the flag stays in once piece.  

Like my safety scissors?

I let the toddler help cut up one flag for his streamer (he has been practicing cutting with safety scissors) and then another just to practice cutting (which he completely destroyed but oh well).

Next, I placed two or three flags silver side up (flag side down) directly on top of each other.  Two flags will make for a thinner streamer while three for a thicker.

I had 4 pieces of 1-inch clear packing tape ready to go.

I placed the top 1-inch of the dowel on the right side of the cut up flags.  I put a piece of tape underneath the dowel and started slowly rolling it to the left, hence rolling the seam edge of the cut flags around the end of the dowel and putting tape in place as I rolled.  The tape is used to secure the seam of the flag in place on the dowel.

Ignore my hangnail, lovely isn't it?

Keep rolling and taping.  Be sure some of the tape covers the dowel so that the flags are secured to the dowel.

You may lose a strand or two of the flag as you are rolling but that's okay.

After you have rolled the flags into place on the end of the dowel, apply a few more pieces of tape to make sure nothing will budge as the kids are whipping them about.

Not only do they look fun but they make a great sound!

Action shot!

I'm sure these will last through only one parade but that's okay.

I was pretty happy with how these turned out - they only took about 40 minutes to make while the toddler refused to each lunch and the baby smooshed Chef Boyardee in his eyebrows.  

I would have liked to have used a pretty colored tape for the outside for a more finished look, but this will do for now.

No stab wounds this 4th of July for us!
Any patriotic crafts for you this holiday?

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