The Week Before Christmas!

I'm not sure where the time goes.  The weeks just keep flying by!

This week, our elf was busy

making red and green cereal necklaces,

covering our tree in toilet paper,

infecting the house with Christmas pox,

and setting up a scavenger hunt.

Unfortunately, too much arguing over the scavenger hunt made Cherry return to the North Pole for some rest and relaxation.  Maybe he will come back, we aren't sure yet.

Earlier this week, Collin and Reagan made perler bead ornaments.

Collin made the tree, gingerbread boy, and bell, and Reagan made the star and angel.  I love the way they came out.  We just tied string through them and hung them on the tree.

This morning, I spent an hour helping in Reagan's class.  They spent the day doing all things GRINCH, and I helped them make Grinch cookies.

I have been LOVING the 12 videos of Christmas over at Becky Higgins' blog.  So many of them have brought tears to my eyes.  I wish I knew how to edit videos and set them to music!  I should work on that.  Hmmmm, sounds like a resolution!  I do want to take more video of my kids.  If you haven't seen the videos, go watch them now -- click here to go there right away!  So far, video #1 (click here to see it) is my favorite.

Fingerprint Ornament

This is officially K's first craft project.  Her little fingerprint is the purple light bulb!  Honestly, she was not happy to have her finger pressed into the dough, but I'm happy to have it there.

This ornament was made using salt dough.  I used a Christmas tree cookie cutter to cut the shape out of the dough and then had each of the kids make a fingerprint on the tree (T is blue, C is red, R is pink, and K is purple).  I baked the ornament at 250 degrees for about two hours.  Once it cooled, I painted it, used a black Sharpie to add the string for the lights and the year, and covered it in Mod Podge.  I didn't make a hole in the ornament, so I just super glued a loop of ribbon on the back.

This is a modified version of an ornament I saw on Pinterest.

Salt Dough Turkeys and Ornaments

While C and R were at school yesterday, I made a batch of salt dough.  I used some of it to form salt dough turkeys following directions from The Artist Woman.

The recipe I used is:

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 cups water

I mixed the dough and then rolled it out to about 1/2 inch.  Then I formed the turkeys by using a biscuit cutter for the large circle and a small biscuit cutter for the smaller circle.  I cut the dough into the feather shapes and attached them with a bit of water; then I used a skewer to draw lines to make them look like feathers.  I also cut out a beak shape and rolled a sausage shape for the head; to attach the pieces, I just wet my fingers and stuck the pieces together.  The eyes are cloves that I stuck in before baking.  For more detailed directions, click on the link in the first paragraph above - The Artist Woman gave very detailed directions about how to form the turkeys.  I baked the turkeys at 300 degrees for about two hours.

When C and R came home, they painted the turkeys and then we applied a coat of Mod Podge.

We had a lot of salt dough, so we used Christmas cookie cutters to cut out some for ornaments.  I used a straw to make a hole in them before we baked them.  The ornaments were thinner, so we baked those at 200 degrees for about two hours.  C and R painted them once they were dry.  Here are a few of the ornaments they made:

Shrinky Dinks Ornaments

I remember making Shrinky Dinks as a kid, so I love to make them with my children.  It is so much fun to watch them shrink to little trinkets in the oven. 

Did you know that you can buy plain sheets of Shrinky Dinks plastic to make your own designs?  This is our second year using the plain sheets to make ornaments for our Christmas tree.  They are super easy to make and definitely one of a kind!

First, I cut an 8"x10" sheet of Shrinky Dinks plastic in half and gave one half to C and the other half to R.  They used colored pencils to create whatever they wanted on the rough side of the plastic.  Here are the designs they drew before we put them in the oven:

C drew the winter scene with the snowman and candy canes.  R said that her drawing is a vacuum cleaner with the night sky above!!!!  I'm not sure what a vacuum has to do with Christmas, but I told them they could draw whatever they wanted and she did!  I actually have R's sideways in this photo; you can see it the right way further down in this post.

Next, I punched a hole at the top of each sheet of plastic.  This is important because without the hole, they can't be hung on the tree! 

Then, I placed the sheets on a cookie sheet covered with tinfoil and put the sheet in a preheated 325 degrees oven for 1-5 minutes (ours took 4 minutes but the time depends on the size of the Shrinky Dinks creation and the thickness of your cookie sheet), watching them the whole time. 

The end result is two more very cool homemade ornaments for our Christmas tree!

Cinnamon Applesauce Ornaments

Each year, when I pull out the ornaments to decorate the tree, I am surprised that the cinnamon applesauce ornaments we made three years ago still smell wonderful and are still in one piece.  C was three when we made them; R was not even two.  I had never heard of cinnamon applesauce ornaments and I really did not expect them to last very long.  

Since it has been a few years since we last made them, I thought it would be fun to make a few more for our tree and a few to give as teacher gifts.  I have seen a few different recipes, so I'll share the one we have used.

Ingredients:

• cinnamon
• applesauce
• That's it, nothing else!  Use equal parts of each depending on how many ornaments you want to make.  We made fifteen this year and they came from three cups of cinnamon and three cups of applesauce.  You can use as little as half a cup of each ingredient.

Directions:

1. Mix the cinnamon and applesauce together until it feels like dough
2. Roll it out (we keep it thick, at least 1/4 inch - usually thicker)
3. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes and place the ornaments on a cookie sheet
4. Use a straw to poke a hole in the top of the ornament; you have to do this now while the dough is still wet
5. Allow the ornaments to air dry (this will take at least twelve hours, but if you have thick ornaments like we do, it may take a day or two; our ornaments took two days to dry).  Once they start to get hard, I usually transfer them to a cooling rack so that air can circulate around the ornaments and so that they don't stick to my cookie sheets!
6. Once dry, tie a ribbon through the hole and hang on the tree or anywhere else you want to enjoy the cinnamon fragrance

Little Page Turners recently shared a recipe for cinnamon applesauce ornaments that they baked.  This will certainly shorten the amount of time you have to wait for them to be finished!  I only stuck with my air drying method because it was so successful for us; I'm afraid to change anything!

My Gingerbread Children

A few weeks ago, Leah from Almost Unschoolers posted some cute craft foam snowman photo ornaments that she made.  I love the snowmen, but I was particularly interested in the photo of the gingerbread photo ornaments she mentioned making a few years ago.  I knew we had an upcoming week of gingerbread fun and I thought I might have to make gingerbread photo ornaments myself.  I looked for a post on her blog, but I think she made them before she began blogging, so I didn't see any directions. I guess I could have asked her, but they seemed simple enough to make without directions.  And yet, I am posting directions now. 

Well, then I forgot about them until I was in the craft store and saw a kit to make your own gingerbread men photo ornaments.  The kit made 35 ornaments (I only wanted 4) and it was expensive ($15!), so I bought some materials (about $2) and decided to make my own.  This is how I did it:

Materials:

• one large sheet of brown craft foam
• one gingerbread man cookie cutter
• one sticky back white sheet of craft foam
• gumdrop stickers (these were left over from our paper bag gingerbread houses; they aren't necessary)
• photos (I used wallet size school photos for the kids and printed a small picture of Kelly (our dog))

Directions:

First, I traced around the gingerbread man cookie cutter using a white pencil on the brown craft foam.  I traced it four times and cut them out.

Then, I cut out some squiggly white sticky back pieces to look like icing.  Believe it or not, I could not freehand it to look right, so I drew some squiggly lines on the paper backing and cut them out.  I stuck the lines on to make two gingerbread girls (the line along the bottom makes it look like a dress) and two gingerbread boys.

I stuck the gumdrop stickers on to look like buttons.  You could use the white sticky craft foam to make buttons or you could use a different color. 

Finally, I cut out pictures of my three children and my dog.  I used the wallet size school pictures and tried to cut as close to their faces as possible so that the background would not show.  I used regular Elmer's glue to stick the pictures on.

The last step is to poke some ornament hooks through the top of them and hang them on the tree!

Shrinky Dink Ornaments

Shrinky Dinks are so much fun. You may remember when C made shrinky dinks backpack bling. We had so much fun in the past with shrinky dinks, so I was very excited when I had the idea to make Christmas ornaments with shrinky dinks paper.

I cut one 8x10 piece of shrinky dinks paper in half and gave C and R each a piece to decorate. Before they began drawing, I asked them which way they were going to draw their pictures so I could punch a hole in the top. They used colored pencils to draw Christmas pictures.

C's picture is on the left and it is an elf surrounded by some of the toys he made for Christmas. I love the little toy Wolverine up on the top shelf.



R's picture is Santa's sleigh filled with presents. She was so excited to do this.

Here they are when they came out of the oven:

We really loved this activity, and I love that C's and R's art can be preserved in the form of Christmas ornaments!