Holiday Bucket List

11 / 30 / 17

One of the things I try really hard to do as a mama is make to carve out a little bit of time each day to spend just with my little Miss G. It’s usually not a ton of time, but being that she was our one and only for more than 5 years, I think it’s important. Sometimes we read together, sometimes we read side by side, sometimes we chat, sometimes we colour, sometimes we watch a show, and sometimes we work on a project together… The list goes on, but a few nights ago, we sat at my computer together and created a holiday bucket list filled with all of the things we hope to do while she’s on break from school. {I can’t wait!}

Gingerbread People Play Dough and Cookie Cutter Gifts

12 / 18 / 1312 / 24 / 13

I truly love giving gifts and it seems as though Gracen feels the same way. Whether it is homemade ribbon wands or jars of pink sparkly slime for her ballet buddies, lavender rosemary bath fizzies or homemade cleaners for her grandmas, or fun play kits for her friends’ birthdays (we’ve done a craft kit, play dough kit, and a sensory play kit), she is genuinely tickled pink when she gets the opportunity to create something and give it to someone special.

Puzzle Piece Wreath Ornament

12 / 16 / 1212 / 19 / 12

Not too long ago, Miss G ‘s advent calendar pouch included jigsaw puzzle pieces and the instructions required to make a snowflake ornament. Gracen really enjoyed the project and loves her sparkly snowflake hanging on the tree, so she was excited to find more puzzle pieces and a note saying that they could be used to make a wreath ornament today.

This time, we started with an ‘O’ shaped cardboard base. Gracen glued her puzzle pieces (this time using just regular white glue) onto the cardboard doughnut, overlapping them as she went along.

When the ‘O’ was covered to her liking, we set it aside to dry for a while.

Later in the day, she came back and painted the puzzle piece wreath all green. She quickly discovered that dabbing the paint on gave much better coverage than brushing it on, so she went with that method.

When she was done painting, we let the wreath dry again.

Next came the really fun part – decorations! She chose magenta sequins as holly berries, but you could easily use buttons, mini pompoms, foam circles, or dot stickers too. Just add some dots of glue to the wreath and pop your decorations on.

The last step was adding a little ribbon bow I’d quickly made for her… Regular white glue worked just fine for this job too.

Later on in the evening, once the frontside was dry, I flipped it over and added a ribbon loop using my glue gun (I had it out already – you could just as easily use white glue or craft glue) and the pretty little ornament was ready for hanging.

♥

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Puzzle Piece Snowflake Ornament

12 / 5 / 1212 / 7 / 12

Today, Gracen’s advent calendar pouch included a handful of jigsaw puzzle pieces (from Urban Source) and a handwritten note telling her that they could be used to make a snowflake ornament (I originally found the idea here). She of course was ready to begin the project the very instant she opened it.

While puzzle pieces are the main material, a few other things are needed to make this pretty little ornament… Glue of some sort (craft glue or hot glue would probably work best), some white crafter’s acrylic and a paintbrush, a scrap of cardboard or card stock cut into a circle, a small piece of ribbon or string to hang the ornament from, and some glitter (completely optional, but not in Miss G’s opinion).

To get started, glued 3 puzzle pieces onto our cardboard circle, evenly spaced like this.

During the process, we quickly realized that pieces shaped similarly to this one were going to work the best, so we dug those out and put the others aside.

Next, we added 3 more puzzle pieces. We tried to place them on top of the original 3 as the instructions say to do, but when it didn’t work out very well for us, we slid the original 3 out closer to the edges, and added the next 3 onto the edges of the cardboard circle too. It worked out perfectly and was much easier for Gracen to do.

When our snowflake was completely dry about an hour later, Gracen gave it a good once over with white paint.

While the paint was still wet, she did the job I think she looks forward to most when crafting…. She sprinkled on a very generous amount of sparkles over the entire thing.

Later in the evening when her snowflake was dry, I hot glued a little loop of ribbon onto the back, and voila – a new handmade ornament to add to our tree.

♥

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A Yearly Tradition: Handcrafted Christmas Ornaments

11 / 27 / 129 / 22 / 13

I know I’ve said it before, but becoming a mama has given me an overwhelming urge to create special traditions with our little family of three. Things that we look forward to each year… Memories Gracen will hold onto for a lifetime. The holidays are extra special when looked at through the eyes of your child, aren’t they?

Looking back on my own childhood, the holidays were filled with special traditions I still remember vividly now as an adult. Trudging through the snow out at Imperial Oil (where my Dad worked) in the freezing cold and selecting the perfect tree to cut down and take home… Having a special evening dedicated to decorating the tree together… Visiting ALL of my grandparents’ houses over the course of Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day… Staying up as late as we wanted on Christmas Eve with our cousins… It all seemed so magical. The thing is, the times I remember most have nothing to do with wish lists, Santa visits, or presents received. All of the memories that stick out in my mind are about doing things as a family… Just us spending time together.

And that’s my hope for Gracen when it comes to the holidays… That she’ll come to cherish the time we spent doing things together more that any of the material indulgence that inevitably comes with Christmas.

This past weekend, we carried on a tradition that we began last year… An afternoon filled with holiday music and handcrafted ornaments. The hope is that one day we’ll have a giant tree filled with beautifully mismatched homemade ornaments that mean more to us than store bought ones ever could.

Here are this year’s additions…

First up are some very simple, but very beautiful beaded candy cane ornaments.

To make these, we used sparkly pipe cleaners cut in half and colourful iridescent pony beads Miss G selected at the store herself.

To get started, I simply folded over one end of the pipe cleaner to create a little nub to hold the beads on, and Grae began adding beads.

The wonderful thing about making these ornaments is that little ones get to sneak in a ton of fine motor skill practice while making them.

Once the pipe cleaner is nearly full, just flip over the open end to create a nub on the opposite side.

Then gently bend your beaded pipe cleaner to form a candy cane shape. (This is the one that Gracen made – start to finish – by herself).

Next, we did a remake of an ornament we made last year… A glass bulb decorated with a family of thumbprint reindeer. To make this one, select a solid-coloured glass bulb (one with a matte finish will photograph much better – duh!), then cover your thumb with a thick layer of brown crafter’s acrylic.

Carefully press your thumb onto the glass ball.

Hang your ball somewhere or carefully set it on a small cup and allow it to dry completely.

Once dry, use red crafter’s acrylic to add noses and a black paint pen or Sharpie to add eyes and antlers. Easy peasy!

The last batch of ornaments we made were out of cinnamon dough (2 cups of applesauce, 3 cups of cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of nutmeg, and 1 tablespoon of pure vanilla mixed like mad by hand ). With these ones, we used extra cinnamon to prevent sticking, assorted cookie cutters, stamps, straws to create ribbon holes, a rolling pin, and parchment paper.

This dough was quite tough and much easier to work with than last weekend’s baking soda clay.

It could easily be rolled, handled, and stamped without sticking at all, which was nice.

On the downside, handprints and thumbprints were out of the question. The dough just simply didn’t have enough give to it.

Once we’d filled our baking sheet, we popped the ornaments into the oven on the lowest setting and let them stay in there for several hours, flipping them once and a while.

I wish I could somehow bottle the smell of our house while they baked and share it with you all here… It was divine.

Before going to bed, I turned off the oven and let the ornaments sit in there overnight, just like I did with the baking soda clay ones.

When we awoke, they were fully dry and hard as a rock, but still smelled delicious. (These are a few of the ones G made all by herself). We added small loops of baker’s twine, and voila – they’re ready for hanging.

And how sweet is this little initial bunting Bradley made for Gracen?

Now we just have to get a tree so that we’ll have somewhere to hang all of these beautiful new ornaments.

♥

I am so thrilled to be sharing this family tradition as a part of ‘12 Days of Christmas Traditions with Vancouver’s Top Mommy Bloggers‘. If you haven’t already, please pop over to JulieNowell.com to read her post about carrying out traditions in a new home, and be sure to pop over to The Write Mama tomorrow to read all about Lori’s Christmas Village tradition. Enjoy!

Baking Soda Clay Ornaments

11 / 20 / 1211 / 5 / 13

My personal rule? All things Christmas wait until December 1st. Well, besides crafting or purchasing the odd little gift here and thereI guess…

This year though, I’ve broken my own rule. I’m not sure how it happened, but we were looking for a fun afternoon activity and somehow I ended up whipping up a batch of baking soda clay without giving any thought to the fact that it’s still November. Oops… It’s okay, though. We started the tradition of making special handcrafted ornaments together as a family last year, and I already have {more than a} few new types in mind for this year, so we’ll just call this our practice round…

I’ve always been a fan of salt dough ornaments. The dough is easy and inexpensive to make, it’s really easy to work with, and you can shape and mould it almost any way you like. The only downside to salt dough, however, is that it loses some of its appeal when it dries out. Last year we made several different salt dough ornaments, and though they are special because they are handmade, they did crack / puff up / brown a little bit during the drying process. So when I started seeing baking soda clay pop up all over Pinterest just after Christmas last year, I knew we’d have to baking soda clay ornaments a shot during our next round.

The dough itself is very easy to make. It involves just three ingredients (baking soda, cornstarch, and water) and a little heat, and before you know it, it’s done. I followed this recipe almost exactly, but added about a tablespoon more cornstarch. The result is this amazingly soft, smooth, bright white dough that feels silky in your hands.

UPDATE: The recipe link we used for this project no longer exists… Here is a similar baking soda clay recipe.

Once the dough was made and was cooling, I collected a few things from around the house to use to create shapes. Cookie cutters were the obvious first choice, but mason jar lids, the rims of glasses, and butter knives all work well for the job too.

Next, I gathered some materials to make impressions in the dough. After a visit raiding Gracen’s stamp collection and nature shelf, this is what I had.

I also got out a rolling pin, some kitchen scissors (for freehand shapes), some straw pieces (for creating holes to tie twine through), and some extra corn starch to prevent the dough from sticking to everything.

We got started by giving Gracen a chunk of the dough to just play with and explore at first, but of course she requested a cookie cutter and stamp and was right down to business. That’s just her style.

Now anywhere you read about baking soda dough, the instructions will clearly advise to leave the dough sit until completely cool, but we were too impatient for that. As a result, our dough was still a tad bit warm and sticky, which made it a little bit tricky to work with. My advice? Wait until it’s completely cool. Lesson learned.

What we found worked really well, even with our warm sticky dough, was using the bottom of a flat dish or glass to flatten the dough, rather than using the rolling pin. The rolling pin was just too sticky for our dough, but the dish bottoms worked perfectly.

As far as making the impressions went, we found that lightly dusting the stamp or object with cornstarch first, then pressing it into the dough and removing it slowly turned out great results.

The same technique worked best with the cookie cutters too – dust cookie cutter with cornstarch, then push the dough out of the cookie cutter gently and slowly.

When we’d used up every last bit of dough, I popped the ornaments onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and put it into a just-warm oven to dry out. We left them in there for several hours, flipping them every now and again, and before going to bed, I turned off the heat and left them sit in oven overnight.

The next day, we got out our paintbrushes and acrylic paints, and painted away.

These are some of my very favourite ornaments that Grae made. She pressed the dough, cut the shapes, and decorated them all by herself.

This little reindeer family was made by making 3 small balls, flattening them down with the bottom of a cornstarched bowl, and then pressing our thumbs into the middles. I cheated a little bit and used a Sharpie for the antlers and names, because well, we all know how they would have turned out had I used paint…

This heart ornament also started as a flattened ball, and then I used a cookie cutter to push just part of the way through to the dough to make the heart shape.

Once our paint was dry, we added some string to hang them from. Ribbon or jute would be pretty, but I have a thing for baker’s twine currently, so we went with that. Here are some of our finished ornaments…

Aren’t they pretty?

And because our yearly ornament making tradition is bound to leave us with heaps of special, handcrafted tree decorations one day, we added the year onto each.

♥

Though we didn’t do it this time around, giving the ornaments a light coat of Mod Podge or spray-on sealant make protect them and help them last longer.