Minions Movie

Summer fun continues with the release of the Minions movie. Well, at least it was an enjoyable morning with my kids. The movie wasn’t as great as I had hoped. I loved Despicable Me and I loved the sequel, so I had high expectations for Minions. The previews led me to believe it would be hilarious, and Sandra Bullock voicing Scarlett Overkill was just icing.

The previews tell us that this is the story of how the Minions evolved and continued seeking out the biggest baddie to serve. Scarlett becomes their new leader, until she turns on them. Well, if you have seen the preview, you’ve seen the movie. I hate when the movie trailer gives away the whole movie. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few surprises, but no shocking twists, in fact we know the whole plot already.

I do love the Minions, the merchandise, the clothing and so on, after all, they are adorable! The movie is definitely worth seeing, but I don’t think it’s worth going to the theater to see. Wait for the DVD and rent it!

For those who haven’t seen the previews, a basic storyline:

The minions evolved from single cell organisms, always following the biggest baddie they could find. Sadly, they’re unable to keep a boss. Dinosaurs fall into lava pits, vampires turn to ash in sunlight, cavemen get eaten by bear. Eventually, our three favorite minions, Bob, Stuart and Kevin, go out into the world looking for a new leader. They find Scarlett and it seems perfect. She sends them on a mission to steal the crown from the queen. When that goes awry, she turns on them.

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SPOILERS
Of course our heroes save the day, but they turn quickly back to a life of crime when they meet a young Gru.

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Did you notice how short the spoiler section was? Spoilers on a movie should be longer!

I do have to end on this note:

Ba-na-na!!

Seek and Find Jar

I’ve seen these seek and find jars for sale in a bunch of different places. I’ve always found them a little silly, but the idea has obviously been hanging out in my brain, since I decided to make one!

The idea started for me when I found an eight pack of these guys. I love the minions! Walmart has several mini-sets available for the release of the movie next weekend. Combining these with my plastic Voss water bottle, I had the makings of my own DIY seek and find!

I started by filling four sandwich bags with rice. I ended up putting twenty drops of food coloring in each bag, then had the kids help me shake them up.

The colored rice makes the searching a little more interesting. Looking for colored toys in white rice is a little too easy!

Chiara was a little mad at me for dropping the toys into the bottom of the bottle.

She was even more mad when I layered rice over the top!

I thought about using glue to seal the lid on, but decided that duct tape would be easier to remove if I decided to add more toys later. I just didn’t want to make the seal permanent!

It takes a lot of shaking to get your toys worked up into the rice. I’m talking arm workout shaking! Prepare your muscles, but it’s really fun to watch the colors mix together.

So far Arthur has played with it a little bit, finding six of the eight before getting bored with it. I think I’ll have to take it to my friend Jenna’s house, her little Ollie will probably really enjoy it!

Minion Goggles

Originally, I did have a pin for this one. However, my friend Jenna and I completely altered this to suit our own needs so there is no longer an original reference to this craft!

My friend Jenna asked if I would help her make minion goggles for her daughter’s dance recital. They are dressing as minions for their number and for whatever reason, they didn’t buy the goggles with the costumes. We kicked around several ideas before settling on this one.
We started off with canning lids as the lenses. We tried hot gluing them together, but it didn’t adhere very well to the metal lid.

I ended up taking a piece of the elastic she had purchased for the bands and used my über basic sewing skills to attach the two lenses, for the double eyed minions anyway.
Figure out the length you need to go around your head, or your child’s head, and give yourself maybe an extra inch to sew.

Attach the elastic to your lenses, like so.

We enlisted Tony to draw the eyes, going googly, as he’s the least likely to screw them up.
We also tested a few different methods of attaching the eyes in the lens before settling on a caulking like method.

Using the insert to the lid to hold the eye in place, I used my hot glue gun to lay a layer of glue around the edge and held it tightly together for a few seconds while it set.
The girls are using the goggles as headbands, that’s why we have eyes in ours.

This is a pretty weird look, yes?

Here is a sample of our googly eyed goggles.
Like I said, I will be adding a picture of the girls in costume with the goggles and hopefully they don’t look as weird as we do!
Happy crafting all!