creative carnival | living peacefully with children

Please join us for a new monthly blog carnival focusing on families and creativity. Read below for details, both for the April carnival and for upcoming themes – we have a whole year planned!

Your co-hosts are Dionna at Code Name: Mama and Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children.

So what is the “Families, Create!” Monthly Make and Play Carnival?

Photo by trazomfreak

Families, Create! is a blog carnival with a purpose: we want your family to get creative and have fun!

Each month we will have a theme, things like “Heroes and Heroines,” “Fantasy,” and “Weird and Wonderful” (see below for a complete list of 2011’s monthly themes). You will craft a post (or 2 or 3) around one of those themes.

What will your post consist of? You are only limited by your imagination! You can create a handmade craft that embodies the qualities of the post (publish pictures and/or a tutorial!). You can write a story using the theme as inspiration. Your family can act out a story (we will have a handy list of on-topic books for you each month that you can use or ignore, as you desire).

All we ask is that 1) you and your family create something that goes along with the theme; and 2) you post about it sometime during the month.

Each month you will publish one or more posts on the theme no later than the last day of the month. You will submit your post’s details on our webform. And after we have compiled the links and sent you an email with a little html blurb, you will edit your carnival post(s) to add that blurb. For extra blogger love and good karma, you will comment on a few of your fellow bloggers’ posts and tell them how creative they are.

Sound easy? It is!

Here are the submission details for April 2011:

Theme: Fantasy: fairies, dragons, magic, and more. Childhood is a fascinating time, filled magic around every corner. What can your family imagine and create?

Here are some books to inspire cuddle projects, but feel free to select your own book if you want to base your creation off of a literary cuddler:

Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L-Engle
Bridge to Teribithia by Katherine Paterson
Wolf Speaker by Tamora Pierce
The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley
Not a Box by Laura Vaccaro Seeger
The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scienszka
Half Magic by Edward Eager

If you do use a book for inspiration, please mention it in your post so that we can read it too!

Deadline: Saturday, April 30. Your post(s) must be published on or before Saturday, April 30. Fill out the webform (at the link or at the bottom) for each post you publish for inclusion in January’s carnival. (If you publish three different posts for the carnival, you will fill out the webform three different times, each will include different carnival URLs and titles.)

Link-up date: Thursday, May 5. After we have compiled all of your links, we will send you an email with an html blurb to paste into your (previously published) submission(s) that will include all carnival links. Please edit your posts to include the links no later than Saturday, May 5. You’ll get lots of link love for your site and post(s), and you can check out all of the other creative ideas generated by this month’s theme! Please also help us spread the word about the carnival on your Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Please submit your details into our web form: This will help us as we compile the links list. Please enter your information on the form embedded at the end of this post, or click here to enter it on a separate page: Families, Create! April’s Make & Play Carnival

Please do: Write well. Write on topic. Write a brand new post for the carnival. Post great pictures and/or video. Please feel free to be creative within the gentle confines of the carnival theme. If your family is feeling so inspired, you could write a poem or children’s story, put on a one act play, craft a photo essay, or create a handmade craft tutorial instead of a regular blog post (though those are welcomed, too!), as long as what you write is respectful of the carnival’s intent. If you want help determining that ahead of time, please talk with us.

Please don’t: Please don’t use profanity of the sort that might be offensive to more sensitive readers or their children. Please don’t submit irrelevant posts or posts that are purely marketing for products you sell.

Editors’ rights: We reserve the right to edit your piece or suggest edits to you. We reserve the right to courteously reject any submissions that are inappropriate for the carnival. Please also note that since there are two co-hosts on different schedules and conferring over email, our personal response to your submission might seem delayed. Don’t be alarmed. We also reserve the right to impose consequences if the responsibilities of the carnival are not fulfilled by the participants.

If you don’t have a blog: Contact us (CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and LivingPeacefullyWithChildren {at} gmail.com) about potentially finding you a host blog to guest post. Please write your piece well in advance of the deadline in that case, so we can match you up with someone suitable. But if you really have something amazing to write — why not start your own blog? If you want advice, we find Scribbit’s free Blogging in Pink ebook to be a very helpful and down-to-earth guide, for beginners on up.

If you have questions: Please leave a comment or contact us: CodeNameMama {at} gmail.com and LivingPeacefullyWithChildren {at} gmail.com

2011 Monthly Themes :
January: Cuddle Up
February: Heroes and Heroines
March: Animals
April: Fantasy
May: Characters
June: Adventure
July: Swashbucklers
August: Weird and Wonderful
September: Friends and Family
October: Phizzwizzers
November: Rhymes and Verse
December: Favorite Books

Stay in touch:

Subscribe to our RSS feeds: Code Name: Mama’s feed and Living Peacefully with Children’s feed.
Follow us on Twitter: @CodeNameMama
Connect with us individually on Facebook: Code Name: Mama on Facebook

Show off: If you are a participant or supporter and want our button to put in your sidebar, grab this code and proclaim to the blogosphere that your family creates!

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February brought many heroic crafts to Our Family Creates! Check out some of the wonderful posts from last month’s participants:

The Artsy Mama made a personalized birthday hat for her son’s first birthday. Learn how to make a Hero’s Birthday Hat for your hero or heroine with very few sewing skills.
Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children found inspiration in books for some I-Spy items in her post, I Spy Items – The Last Olympians and The Lost Heroes.
Megan at Purple Dancing Dahlias found out how one random act of kindness can shower the world in kindness in the book Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed.
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Super Kieran! Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares the Superhero Capes she made to celebrate her son’s heroic qualities.
At Z Everyday Things, Mama G made easy and quick Super Zs!, personalized superhero appliques on shirts, for her children. Easy and quick!
Lauren at Hobo Mama has a son who loves to dream up stories and one heroic imaginary friend. Read her post about Space-Alien Hot-Dog Monster & Silly Guy .
Heroes are often everyday people. Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children was inspired by the gift of a sock in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, prompting her to make Dobby’s Sock as part of her Harry Potter ornaments.
Galit Breen at Three Little Waves used the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes as a springboard for a sensitive discussion and a fun origami project for her whole family in her post Families Create: Heroes and Heroines.
Need a creative gift idea for a toddler or preschooler? Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares a simple Tutorial for a Two-Sided Felt Playmat (one side is outer space, one side is a jungle scene).
Literature and adventure inspired Mandy @ Living Peacefully with Children to make these Treasure Bags for Imbolc.

Visit Code Name: Mama and Living Peacefully with Children to find out how you can participate in the next Families, Create! Carnival. Our March theme is “Animals” – what animals are your favorites and why? Get creative and share with us how animals are a part of your and your children’s lives.