The mag for the craft-a-holic- Family Fun.

I’ve been subscribing to Family Fun magazine for just over a year now, and I recently renewed my subscription for $34 for 3 years of monthly issues. I really like doing crafts with my kids, and a lot of times I need ideas for crafts for certain occasions- like when we make classmates something for Christmas, I need something new so I won’t repeat myself. So, that’s what led me to subscribe to Family Fun about a year ago.

So, I decided to pick apart my latest issue (November 2007) and tell you all the great things about Family Fun. The mag runs about 135 pages, and there are not as many ads in this mag as in others I subscribe to. But the ads in the mag are usually family or children related, and sometimes they have coupons for products I use a lot in them, so I really don’t mind the ads that much, especially if they have coupons!

This month’s issue features a Thanksgiving Fun Guide, and 10 Holiday traditions you can start this year. It also includes their list of the hottest Christmas toys for each age group. It also features a few pumpkin recipes as well.

On the first few pages, you’ll first see the “letter from the editor”, and then you’ll see the “Mailbox” feature where readers send in letters and pictures of the crafts and ideas from the previous issue.

After that you’ll see “Everyday Fun”, which is everyday stuff turned into crafts. This issue had little sandwiches shaped like turkeys made out of wheat bread, and then slices of almonds and peppers made the tail. It also had a cute idea to make swans out of pipe cleaners and pinecones, which is something I had never seen before. It also had a recipe or two, and a homemade game you could do.

Next, there will be a section called “Creative Solutions,” which sometimes I read and sometimes I don’t, this month’s issue really didn’t capture me, but ones in the past have. This one happened to be about a father writing letters to his kids and them writing back to open up the lines of communication.

“My Great Idea” is a few pages long, and it has different ideas readers have sent in, and this month’s had an idea for making popcorn sacks shaped like turkeys. This area has some cute and simple ideas.

Then, there is a section called “Family Traditions” where other readers send in traditions they have in their family. This month was about a family who passed a gourd around and dressed him up and he went to occasions with them and they had to keep a journal about what they did with him.

Next, there is a “Family Getaways” section that I never read, because usually it’s a place I could never get to in a day- such as this issue was Texas, which is a whole 8 hours from me.

Then, we have the “Gearing Up” section which shows you all this cute gear and it has a theme to it- this month was slumber party and it had a lot of duffel bags, sleeping bags, and pajamas.

“Healthy Fun” was the next section, which talked about Immune boosters this month. It said that each evening you should ask kid to talk about happy things, because studies have shown that a positive outlook can lower susceptibility to colds and upper respiratory infections- how easy is that to do? It also had a few other suggestions in there, and a few home remedies as well.

“Mom of the Month” each month features a different mom and all about her.

Next the feature article about Thanksgiving, and it had 5 pages worth of crafts! They had a particularly cute one where you made pilgrim napkin rings with your child’s photo as the pilgrim. They had 5 pages worth of crafts!

The next couple of pages were about pumpkins, and gave several recipes using pumpkin. They had a nice one that was like crab cakes but it only used pumpkin.

Then, the next 4 or 5 pages was about games you could make out of household stuff, but a lot of these games were for older kids rather than the age mine are.

There was another featured article about 㥶 holiday traditions to start this year” such as trim the turkey and then trim the tree.

Then, there were several pages dedicated to the top toys for Christmas this year, and they had a lot of toys of various prices for various ages, and they had all been tested by test panels at their magazine.

The “Let’s Cook” section then has a lot of recipes that you can include your children in making- they had a really nice homemade macaroni and cheese one that I might try.

“Our favorite Things” this month was about different thank you card sets out there available for purchase.

“Try This Now” always has some sort of cool science experiments that you can try because it always has simple stuff that you have on hand anyway. Back in July, you could make fireworks in a glass using water, oil and food coloring.

Experience:

Now, November wasn’t all that impressive when it came to crafts, but it did have several available. But, when the holiday issues come out, oh they have so many crafts! I really like the February issue where you can make your own Valentine cards-that is always fun. I love all of the Christmas crafts they have, they are inexpensive to make a bunch of them, so I have some variety when we make crafts for the classmate gifts. They also have a wonderful end of the school year issue, where you can make end of the year teacher gifts as well. Gosh, just about every issue is pure gold-I get at least 2 usable ideas from each issue-last month they had some great no sew Halloween costumes.

I keep a 3 ring binder around and cut out articles I need and keep them in the binder for future reference. For example, over the summer in Family Fun they had an issue that showed how to make a paper mache pig, and if my kid would have been in the 4th grade this year, I would have needed that, because they had a piggy bank contest where the kids could make a piggy bank and the winners got a savings bond- it just happened so that the winner was a paper mache piggy bank. So, it’s always good to keep the craft ideas, even the harder ones, because you never know when you might need them!

Other than crafts, the magazine really doesn’t have too many in depth articles, and I think they could do more to improve that- it would be nice to read more articles like the one they had this month about the home remedies. Also, if the travel section had more places that were closer to me!

Also, the family fun website is a wonderful source for some of the crafts, and they do have patterns on there as well, and they have a spot where readers have written reviews about the actual crafts.

Overall, if you are looking for crafts, this is the mag for you! I really enjoy the crafting section, especially around the holidays, and I find it does give feasible crafts that your kids can participate in, but some require more parental guidance than others. The recipes are really good as well, and it would be something your kids would actually eat. The science experiments on the last page are always fun too. I would recommend this not only to families, but I think teachers could use this in the classroom as well-there are great crafts!