Christmas Food "Hacks"

I hope that you all had and awesome Thanksgiving yesterday with your family and loved ones! I know we sure did at our house. I'm still cleaning up from it! :)

However, it's officially Christmas time!!! I adore this time of year! Everyone is always so cheerful and nice and the weather is wonderful (in my opinion) and then don't get me started on all the Christmas decorations that we get to put up and see!! I love it! Along with all those wonderful things comes a busy, busy few weeks as well... Especially for moms. We are constantly planning and prepping and cleaning and cooking and entertaining and wrapping and the list goes on. 

So, to make lives a smidgen easier this holiday season I've found some pretty creative hacks to share with you all! Some of these we've all seen before and some of them I've never even thought of doing! (And those that I haven't thought of before, were pretty spectacular in my opinion.)

Here you freeze chocolate into tree shapes and then add some icing to the backs and place them on a flat white cake to make it shine a little!

Fill empty condiments bottles with icing for decorating sugar cookies with the kids!

Dip cookie cutters in flour first to help the sugar cookies retain their shapes!

Look at this simple center piece! White candles and peppermints! Love it!

These are frozen dollops of coolwip/whipped cream to put in your mugs of hot cocoa! Such a great idea!

Three small candy canes glued together makes the perfect place card holders for your holiday tables!

Use the bottom of a crystal glass to make a unique design in your sugar cookies.

These were just a sampling of the hacks that I found on Buzzfeed! 

You can check out the rest of them over here: 38 Christmas Hacks

I hope that some of these come in handy throughout your busy holiday season this year and help you cut some corners!

-Stephanie

Snowflakes are falling

I ran across this tutorial for cutting out snowflakes the other day on Pinterest, which is perfect because I was just trying to show Joc how to cut out snowflakes from paper last week! I knew I wasn't doing something quite right with them and since I've found this one we've made a ton more that are really pretty!

These are another of those fun activities your kids could be doing while you're cooking this week for Thanksgiving and you could lay them out around the tables or on your buffet as cute hand made decorations for your guests to see!

The kids will love that, it'll bring them into the center of the attention for a short period of time during the day while their grandparents, aunts, uncles... comment on the snowflakes they made!

Here is the link for the print out of the tutorials:

Winter Is Coming!

 

This is a view of what the print out looks like... And who doesn't love Elsa and Olaf!

- Stephanie

Christmas is Coming....

So.... I promise y'all that I'm not one of those people that completely skips over Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving! It's one of my favorite holidays. I don't have my tree up already, I don't have a single decoration out yet for Christmas. I do have tons of pumpkins and pilgrims and scarecrows around, though! :)

All that being said, I'm sharing some fun looking Christmas themed activities for the kiddos to do in the coming days and weeks of no school for the holidays!

Here is the link for the activities: Christmas Time is Here You'll remembering doing some of these things from when you were a kid, too! But while you're slaving away in the kitchen preparing dishes for Thanksgiving in a few weeks the kids can entertain themselves while watching the Macy's parade that morning instead of complaining about being bored!

Here are a few of the crafts from this post:

Giant Popsicle snowflakes! 

These look really fun to make with your kids! I honestly can't wait to make these with Joc and hang them up around the house this season!

I made these when I was a kid! 

Super easy Christmas tree ornaments they can make (while you're cooking!) Just lay down some paper for them to work on and give them plenty of pretties to decorate with and then they can make tons of them! Not a bad idea for a handmade present for friends and family members from them either! :)

Cinnamon applesauce heart ornaments! 

I can NOT wait to make these! I bet they smell AMAZING while you're baking them!! These would make great gifts for some family members as well! I'm thinking of making them with Joc one day in mid December and then tying them onto gifts for people! 

Here is the direct link to make these heavenly things: Katy Elliott

There are so many more than just these to go and check out and do with your kids or have them do while you're working on other things!

Enjoy! :D

-Stephanie

Cute and Creepy Holiday Doors

Check out these super cute Halloween door decorations! I can't wait for fall you guys! It's my FAVORITE time of the year! Hot chocolate, beautiful colors, cooler weather, pumpkin everything, sweaters and jackets! Oh, and HOLIDAYS!!! :D

I'm so ready for the holidays to be here. I know, it's still only August, but school's back in session and (here anyway) it's been a bit cooler feeling in the early mornings and such and I'm just ready!

So... to help keep me calm until it's an appropriate time to start decorating I've been planning my decorating. (I totally asked my husband if I could go on and start decorating for the fall... I got a big no, of course.)

Here is a cute idea I found that I'm adding to my list of decorations for this year's Halloween:

 

I just love these guys! And, I mean, how much easier could they be to make... All you need is some streamers of your color choice and construction paper/paper plates, and some good tape!

Here is the website to check out a few more ideas other than these creepy guys: Spooky Doors

Y'all, enjoy the end of the summer months while they're here! I'll try to make the most of them! :P

-Stephanie

Bare Feet Welcome

I found a picture of a spring time wreath on Pinterest a while back... it was adorable! I couldn't wait to make it! And now that I finally have, I've been dieing to share it with all of y'all! :)

Here is my finished wreath:

Isn't it cute???!!

It was so simple to make! Here is what you'll need:

1. Hot glue (of course!)

2. Flower "lace" found at Walmart for nearly nothing! I think I had them cut about 20 flowers in length.

3. Long ball point pins. Use the pink tipped ones!

4. Hard foam wreath.

5. Green feather boas. I got the fuzzier ones to make it appear more as grass. Also, I only got two boas and I ended up having to kinda stretch them pretty far in between loops, I'd recommend getting three for yours!! I found these at Hancock Fabrics, they were a little pricy, but I REALLY wanted to make this wreath! :)

Take the end of the boa and glue it to the wreath for stability. Then just wrap it all around until the end of the line. Glue the end down and then repeat with your second and third boas. DO NOT glue the boa anywhere else around the wreath!!! It'll just end up being a huge mess!

 

Cut the flowers so that they are individual flowers now, instead of a rope of them. Then take your pink tipped pins and push them through the middles of the flowers and place them where you like around your wreath. 

Be sure to push a few in through the boa's centers so that they won't move around as much anymore!

 Here is my wreath with all my flowers pinned down!

I also added a little sign that I made! It reads "Bare feet welcome!"

It's made out of a toothpick and some card stock cut out into a "flag" shape. I did the flag shape double sided and then folded it over the toothpick so it would hold better and glued the two sides together around the toothpick.

Here is my completed wreath! Just needs a pretty little ribbon! My Walmart currently has all their spring ribbon on sale, as well! :D

 

I love this wreath!! Even on gloomy days or cold days even, it makes it feel like spring time around my home!! And my 5-year-old think it's just "the most prettiest" thing ever! (Wait till she sees my Easter wreath I'm working on!)

Happy spring y'all!!

-Stephanie

A Pirate Party for a Princess

So, my little princess turned five last month and we had a great party for her! She LOVES Jake and the Neverland Pirates that comes on Disney Jr (check it out if you have little ones, it's incredibly cute!) and she was Izzy, from the show, for Halloween. So it only made sense to have a pirate birthday for her this year, too!!

After the photos I'll share how this was put together for y'all!

 The kids "dug" for buried treasure.

 Shark bait.

 Eye patches and pirate hooks!

 These were for all the treasure the kids found!

 They decorated them all, too!

We also had a pinata that the kids had a lot of fun with!

1. I found the eye patches at Party City for around $3 and the hooks I actually found at a thrift store here in town! It was right after Halloween and the were about to get rid of all of them so I grabbed every last one they had for the party! (I was incredibly happy! They were a steal, too!!)

Some of these ideas I found on Pinterest. Here is a link to my Pirate Party board for you all to check out for more ideas, as well: Argh mateys!

2. The Pirate ships were very easy to make! I bought a couple of boxes of the blue jello and made it into the cups (and you HAVE to use the tumblers of the cups are way too big! I bought them at Party City for around $10.) The next day I sliced up my oranges and then put toothpick pirate flags in them!

3. For the printables I used two different sites. Catch My Party Pirates is one site I downloaded from. I used one of their templates to make my labels out of. I ended up copy and pasting them into word and then again into your PAINT program. In there you can select and area and then delete it. So I deleted the inner text and then copied it back into Microsoft word. After that I added a "text box" and typed up what I needed in a pirate font! (That was probably the hardest and most complex part of this process.)

Pirate Sales is where I found the sales for the orange ships. I sliced two lines into the top and bottom of each sale using an exacto knife and then slid in my tooth picks.

4. The rum floats were simple vanilla ice cream with the option of coke or rootbeer and the skewers were tropical fruits placed on the long sword toothpicks!

5. The treasure dig I used an old wash bin that I have and bought a bag of sand and filled it up with treasures! I used dollar store beaded necklaces, gold coins, some well wrapped candy, and other little party toys I had come across.

6. The last thing we did was to send all the kids on a real treasure hunt to find all their goody bags! They had a blast. We just sent them off in a direction... It was completely wrong at first, of course and then they had some clues that we gave them to help them along! They had a blast!

I hope you enjoyed these photos and the tips I shared with you all! As well, I hope that your pirate parties turn out to be just as much fun as mine was!! (And you if you have any questions regarding point number three please don't hesitate to ask! I'll help as best I can!!)

- Stephanie

Holiday Wreath

I'm sure you all have seen those oh so pretty ornament wreaths around this time of year before. And they do look slightly intimidating to put together... But they aren't!! All you need is the right tutorial to follow and work off of and you're set to go! Luckily I found a good one! :)

I made this one here a few weeks ago for a friend... It was so easy and kinda fun!

Here's what you'll need for this project:

1. hot glue gun

2. ornaments of any colors you choose, small and large

3. a wire wreath, found at Wal-mart for about $3.00

4. ribbon

5. some patience... I messed this one up pretty good while putting it together.

Oh, and a large workspace.. I used my floor.

 

Step 1. lay out your wreath and place the ornaments around the edges to get a visual of how you want it to look in the end. Don't worry about the space, it'll be there, but you can cover it up. You'll also need somewhere to place your ribbon. :)

Oh, and you probably won't use all the ornaments you lay out around your wreath... I think you have 3 extra by the time your done. You don't want to cram them together and possibly break.

Step 2. Repeat step one for the inner circle to view it as well.

Step 3. Begin gluing! Apply liberally... you can't have enough on the ornaments, really!

What I did on the outer rim was view the ornament on the wreath and then carefully figure where to put the glue so it'd stay. I glued them down to the first circle and to the second one on the inside. So you'd glue the rim of the ornament's hanger and then a little on the ball itself. Some times gluing the ornaments together was needed for more stability.

Here is the outer circle all glued down!

Step 4. Glue your inner circle.

For these I only glued the balls to the first inner circle on the wreath and then to each other around the rim. I wanted my wreath to look a bit bigger, so I decided not to glue down the ornaments till they were pressed into the outer rim of ornaments.

Both edges all glued together finally!

Step 5. (The fun part!!) Place all the rest of the ornaments onto your wreath to see how it all looks!

These are unglued here. Be sure to cover your gaps when doing this. Once you have placed all your large ornaments where you like them (I tried to place mine in larger spots to cover up), place your smaller ones around to fill in the left over holes! 

Step 6. Once this is done begin gluing them all down! I didn't remove my ornaments and start fresh from the previous stage. I simply started somewhere that wouldn't disturb my wreath much and began gluing where I needed to until I had worked my way around the whole wreath. I would simply glue one large ball at a time and then proceed to the smaller ones around that one and repeat!

Here is my wreath! :)

I wish I had taken a photo of the wreath I made for my mom... I think it's been my favorite so far to make! It was made with deep red and gold ornaments, it looked like Gryffindor's house colors for those that are familiar with the world of Harry Potter!

I wish you all good luck on your holiday projects and wreaths!

-Stephanie

Christmas Trees for Toddlers

Here is a cute idea for your little ones to do around Christmas time! I don't know about y'all, but I'm incredibly OCD about my decorations around the house... and the tree. Jocelyn likes to put everything all in one place. I had to constantly tell her to move stuff around last year while we were decorating our tree. And I still went behind her later on to move different things to empty spots on our tree. (I know, I'm bad! lol)

Anyway, I found this and thought it was an adorable idea to try out this year!

It is a felt Christmas tree for your kids to decorate however they please!!

I don't have a link for this to give you further information, I stumbled onto it on my Facebook and couldn't find a link through that.

BUT... It looks easy, right!? 

Get a large piece of green felt and cut it out in the shape of a tree then tack it onto your wall, with thumbtacks or maybe some fun-tack (that's the blue stuff you use to put up the glow in the dark stars with.) Then cut out ornaments of various colors in felt, and maybe some packages like they have here, and let the kids go to town! You could even do this for multiple children! Have them put up in each of their rooms and let them decorate them or something.

I'm taking mine a step further....

I'm thinking I'm going to use a big poster board for the tree. And the ornaments..... Well, you know all those strips and squares of wrapping paper that you have left over, the ones that are just too small to do anything with? Yeah, those.

I'm cutting out "ornaments" using those scraps!! Now I have a use for them!!! And the "ornaments" will be so much more fun for the kids to put up on their tree... They'll be sparkly, and shiny, and colorful!

I've been able to already start cutting out my circles for Jocelyn's tree because I'm wrapping empty boxes as props for my Christmas photo shoots for kids. So, I've been taking some of those and just cutting different sized circles out of them.

I can't wait to show Joc! She's going to be so excited!

I have solved two problems here... I love it! 1. "What to do with those wrapping paper scraps?" 

and 2. "How do I let the kids decorate their own way?"

Give it a try! I'm sure it'll be a fun new holiday tradition for your kiddos! :)

- Stephanie

All Smiles

Here's something absolutely adorable that you could do with your kiddos to celebrate fall/Thanksgiving, courtesy of: The Kids Activity Blog!!

Aren't these guys just too cute!!! And all you need are some festive looking leaves, a marker, some googly eyes, and some glue! You could so easily make these as Thanksgiving decorations for the kids tables or to leave around the house for your guests to admire and for you kids to brag to them about! :)

-Stephanie