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Friday, December 18, 2015

Lunch: Mac & Cheese, Snowman Pancakes, Candy Cane

Mac & Cheese:

I had to dress-up the leftover Panera Bread mac & cheese, so I added some rainbow non-pariels sprinkles - adding sprinkles dresses up just about anything!
Cut up Strawberries
Dried Cranberries and yogurt covered raisins
I used a Sharpie to draw a Christmas tree on a banana.  The kid REALLY likes when I draw on her bananas...


Snowman Pancakes:

Used cookie cutters to make a couple of snowman pancakes (I don't recommend this!  I used a TON of cooking spray and they still stuck!)  with faces, hat, and buttons added with white frosting - make sure they are COMPLETELY cool before adding frosting or it WILL melt!  Snowmen are hanging out in the "snow":  mini marshmallows and yogurt covered raisins.
Snowmen shaped carrots in some ranch dressing.
Fruit: Snowmen and star cut out of apple pieces and some green grapes.


Cookie Topped Sandwich:

Plain 'ole peanut butter and jelly cut into squares with a frosted sugar cookie with LOTS of red sprinkles on top.
Vanilla yogurt with tree shaped sprinkles.
Snowmen shaped Cheese out of mozzarella sticks and cheddar cheese block.


Happy Creating!


Friday, December 11, 2015

Lunches: Snowman, Gingerbread Man/Woman, Christmas Trees

Snowman Lunch:

Melted Cheese on an english muffin.  Chocolate frosting for eyes and mouth, carrot nose (this would have been better with a bagel, but we were out!)
Carrot sticks (my kid doesn't usually eat this, but occasionally 3 - 4 will get eaten!)
Cored and peeled apple (with the side cut off b/c that's the only way i could get it to fit in the space!)
Vanilla yogurt with mini chocolate chip eyes and mouth and carrot nose.


Gingerbread Man and Woman Lunch:

Turkey and Cheese cut out with a gingerbread man (buttons are mini chocolate chips, mouth is black frosting and eyes are white wafers for decorating) and gingerbread girl (buttons are bunny wafers).  Cut out using cookie cutters (similar to these
Fresh Fruit:  green grapes and pineapple
Carrot sticks with a bit of ranch dressing on the bottom

Christmas Trees:

Peanut Butter and honey sandwich trees cut from Christmas Tree cookie cutters.  Topped with fruit roll up stars (mini cookie cutters).
Little snowmen made from ⅓ of mozzarella cheese stick, pretzel arms, faces drawn with edible marker.
Pineapple chunks


Happy Creating!



Friday, December 4, 2015

Hand Glittered Photo Gift Tags

Not sure if you know this, but 4 year olds can't read :)

Which works out nice when you are passing notes to your husband or telling her something is on the grocery list when it really isn't.  

But at Christmas, when she wants to help pass out presents?  Not so great. 

So I thought it would be nice to put gift tags on presents that my little girl can "read":


Photos!  and to help with the reading thing, I added each person's initial.  

Which, let's be realistic, no one is going to be having a school lesson on Christmas morning.  But, she had been watching me make these over a couple of days and we talked about each picture, the sound their name makes and the letter it starts with.  So I guess that's something.


The very cute "Merry Christmas" portrait tags came from TheTomKatStudio.  I changed it a little bit b/c the bottom of their template says 'From our Family to Yours' and I wanted it to say from 'The M Family' instead. They also have a Happy New Year one that doesn't say anything else on it, so you could always write your name under that.  The inital tags were a template I found on the internet, but for the life of me, I can't find it anywhere.  If you know where it is, let me know?

I started adding glitter around the pictures with glue and Martha Stewart Course Glitter (which is AMAZING, btw!) but my templates had black lines around it for the photos; I didn't make my photos big enough to cover the lines, and the glitter wasn't dark enough to cover it up.  

I found some glitter glue at Wal-mart for 88 cents! (we got these for Christmas and the jumbo size is pretty awesome!)  I got red and silver to go along with the Martha Stewart Crystal and regular green glitter I had at home.  I added the green and crystal glitter to the red and silver glues to give some of the tags two colors :)

My in-laws only open one present at a time and don't hand them all out first, so the gift tags didn't really help the 4 year old :(

But Santa had also left some presents under our tree at home and he even used some of my tags!!  So when we got home, she was able to pass the presents out to our family of 4 before we sat down to open them...It all worked out in the end!

I'll definitely be making more of these next year :)

Happy Creating!


Friday, October 16, 2015

Lunch: Olaf/Sven, Fall, Hungry Caterpillar, Pirate Treasure

Olaf/Sven:

Reindeer Sven is a turkey and cheese sandwich made from a heart shape cookie cutter (affiliate link) black frosting eyes, a ghiradelli chocolate chip nose and square pretzels for antlers
carrot sticks (to feed Sven)
and marshmellow Olaf floating on a pool of blue jello (picture tutorial here)


Very Hungry Caterpillar turned to a Beautiful Butterly:

Butterfly Sandwich (affiliate link) - turkey and cheese, food coloring painted on for wings.  Carrot sliver for body and strings of celery for antenna.
Caterpillar:  Green grapes skewered on a bendy straw
munching on square pretzels



Fall Lunch:

Lunchables:  Leaf and Pumpkin shapes cut from cheese slices and turkey (link) with Big Wheat Thins.
Grape Witches - red grapes skewed on witch picks (link). Faces drawn with edible marker (link).
Witch Brooms - pretzel sticks (these are amazing!!) wrapped with Fruit Roll Up.
Applesauce pumpkin head - face drawn on cardstock and placed on top.





Pirate Treasure Map:

Map Sandwich - Turkey sandwich with slice of cheese on top for map.  Edible markers, fruit snack "treasure" and fruit roll-up x marks the spot.  
Red Grapes - skewered on carrots swords (would have been cooler to use actual sword picks!)
Cucumber Slices - with a bit of ranch dressing on the bottom
and how could a pirate lunch be complete without some Pirate Booty Popcorn?


Happy Creating!


Friday, October 2, 2015

Lunch: Owl, Mermaid and Dolphins

I was a little bummed when I couldn't get my daughter into morning preschool this year.  We were in the middle of looking for a house when registration opened and we still didn't know where we would be living!  By the time we closed on the house, ALL morning classes were full...

The school offers this activity called "Lunchbox Club".  They go twice a week to play sports and games for 30 minutes, then have lunch.  The class is mixed with morning and afternoon preschool classes; after Lunch Box the afternoon kids get walked over to their classroom!  This gets me an extra hour with one less child in the house - with the other kid napping this is my get-things-done-around-the-house time!

The bonus of having afternoon preschool?  I have plenty of time to make lunch in the morning!  

So far we've had 3 days of Lunch Club and I've made all 3 lunches a little special...

Day 1: Owl sandwich - carrot and cream cheese frosting eyes and cheese wedge nose. 
A+ Apple
Carrot sticks

  

Day 2:  Mermaid sandwich - shape cut by hand.  Ham Hair, slice of cheese for face, tail and shells. Eyes are a dot of frosting with a chocolate sprinkle.  mouth is a piece of cilantro stalk.  
Fish: fruit leather cut by hand
Goldfish
Blue dyed yogurt in a fish cup.


Day 3: Dolphin sandwich - turkey and cheese with frosting/sprinkle eye (affiliate link).
Sailing jello - blue jello with apple slice boat and carrot bear sailor
apple and carrot bears
BONUS:  i got to eat carrot and apple scraps for breakfast :)






Happy Creating!

Friday, September 18, 2015

Frozen Fever Birthday: Thank Yous

When one receives a gift for a birthday, a thank you card should be sent.

Even if it's a 4 year olds birthday.  With all the ripping, tearing, and flying of the gift wrap, I'm sure there was not nearly enough Thank You's going around at the party!


I designed this from a couple of images found online.  (The background was from Disney Rewards page and the girls were from the Disney wiki page)  I had to make a copy of the castle (with no background), put the girls on there, then stick the castle back over them.  A few etsy sellers had thank you cards with variations of this cute Frozen wording.  

There's room for you to write which gift was given, and space for a 4 year olds signature.  



These will print (3) 4x6 to a page.  There are two versions, one (shown above) that basically says, thanks for coming, and two (not shown) basically says thanks for the gift.

I also designed an envelope for these to fit it...I usually just print directly on store bought envies, but couldn't find my stash so I decided to use up some paper that I'm not very fond of to make up envelopes.  I needed less than a dozen, so it took me about an hour to cut, fold and glue.  TV time :)

Feel free to print these for your own private use.  Links will take you to google docs:

Version 1 card (thanks for coming) click here
Version 2 card (thanks for the gift) click here
4x6 envelope click here
5x7 envelope click here

Happy Crafting!



Saturday, September 12, 2015

Ribbon Sculpture Hair Accessories: Frozen's Anna. A Tutorial


Supplies:  ⅜" grosgrain ribbon in flesh, royal blue, reddish brown, light blue, black, fushia.
2 ¼" grosgrain ribbon in fushia (to match above)
⅛" skinny reddish brown (to match above)
⅛" skinny yellow grosgrain
(if you want the white streak in anna's hair, get some skinny (⅛") white grosgrain)

You'll want to seal all the exposed edges.  You can do this a few different ways:  
1. You can cut with scissors and seal with fray check - easy, but fray check can discolor, 
2. cut with a wood burning tool (i definitely recommend! see my post here)  
3. You can use a candle flame to melt the edges (easy enough on straight edges but you may need LOTS of practice to get even edges on rounded or v shaped cuts)

Start out by measuring one 3" piece for head/body, and one 2 ½" piece for arms in the flesh color.


With the 3" head piece, you'll want to fold over about ½" 


add a bit of hot glue to the short piece (above, on top), then fold over again.  You might want to practice that second fold; because it's small it can be a little tricky to fold and get the edges to line up.  And hot glue doesn't give you second chances...


Now you have your head body piece (I was making two at a time, so that's why there's two shown below!)  Make sure you haven't glued down the loop - you want the hole in the middle to give it the round head shape.  


Now for your arms.  


In the pic above, the arms on the left are not good - pretty jagged and uneven.  The arms on the right are much more even and smooth.  Ribbon is cheap...make it look nice if you can.


On top of your arm piece, lay a 1 ⅝" piece of light blue (depending on how well you cut your hands, this measurement may vary slightly, check your fit on your arms).  You're not going to do anything with this yet, so set it aside.


Now to start on the dress:  Cut 4 pieces 4" long.  The ends don't need to be sealed.
Glue one piece onto your body piece slight off center.  Fold in half and glue to the back.


Add next ribbon slightly off center and overlapping the first.  Finish with the last two ribbons on the outside - try to make it look symmetrical.


Anna has a black shirt that just peaks out underneath her cape.  You'll want to cut a 1 ¼" piece of black.


Fold it in half and glue it down with the fold facing her head.


For the belt, cut two pieces of the skinny yellow at 1 ½".  The ends should be sealed.  Glue it on so that it covers the ends of the black and will form a slight V.  Fold the other edge around to the back side and glue down.  Repeat for other side.


Glue the arms on so that the light blue side faces DOWN.


Now you'll fold the arms down.


They should reach just below the yellow belt.


I used 2" wide pink ribbon for the cape.  I thought it was a little too wide for the doll.


So I created a fan fold in the middle of the back.  It won't be seen once the hair clip is glued on, so just play with it until you get to a width you are happy with.


On one cape, I cut a slit, about ¼" long and then overlapped and glued.  It was easy and worked.

Glue the cap to the back of the doll.


Then fold the edges around towards the front and tack in place.


I didn't buy ⅜" pink for the cape.  I just cut the wide one in half using a metal ruler and my woodburning tool to seal the edge.  Then round the ends, just like with the hands.

You'll want to check your measurements.  The ends of the cape should JUST MEET when they fold over to the front.


Glue it on the back first.  Then fold over to the front and glue down.  You can add a white or black sequin here to look like a button holding it closed.

I wanted my head to touch the top of the black shirt, so I went ahead at this point and added a small dap of glue to the neck area, and glued the chin down.  


The hair on the head is made up of two pieces of ribbon.  The first is 1 ⅜" long and one end should be cut at an angle and sealed.  You'll glue the angle to the forehead, fold the remaining ribbon to the back of the head and glue down.


The second piece of hair is 1 ½".  Start by glueing in the back, fold up around the front of the head and finish in the back.  You may want to play with this a bit before glueing.  


Once you have it the way you like, you can move the ribbon up, add a small bit of glue to help hold the hair in place.


I thought she looked a bit like a cone head, so i folded more of the ribbon back and glued down.  


Braids all one color: cut 3 pieces of skinny brown 4" long.
Adding white to Anna's braid, cut 5 pieces at 4" and one 4" skinny white.
You don't want to deal with ribbon pieces shorter than this...braiding gets complicated.
Braid. Each side will be about an 1 ½".  
I finished my ends with some silver thread wrapped several times around the braid then tied off.  
Clip the ends so they are even.  Glue on the back.


To finish off the clip, cut a piece of coordinating ribbon about 4.5" long.  seal the ends.  Put glue sparingly on about 1" of the ribbon.  Working quickly, open the clip and position the ribbon along the inside of the clip, smooshing it flat.  Add a bit of glue to the back on the clip, fold ribbon in half and smooth flat against the clip and sealing to the other part of the ribbon.


Fold the ribbon around to the other half of the clip and trim.  I leave the other prong of the clip exposed so that it doesn't get tangled in the hair.  Seal the end and glue down.

Position the clip to the back of your Anna Hair Ribbon Doll and glue down. 

Congratulations, you're finished!!


This is my first tutorial, so let me know what you think!  

Happy Crafting!