Hair Clip Holders

3 years ago, for obvious reasons, there were no cute little hair bows residing around here. In the past three years, the population of hair clips/bows has grown by leaps and bounds. They threaten to put matchbox cars in the minority which is no simple feat!

Governing authorities have decided to restrict hair thingies to residing on reservations provided specifically for them so that they can be protected in their natural state and so that they can be used for their created purpose (which seldom happens if they're in the bottom of the toy box fraternizing with matchbox cars).

Here are some very simple hairbow reservations I created today. The addition of the little wood critters makes this super cute in my opinion.

Hand Print Stepping Stones

For a certain gardening grandparent, I decided to make a stepping stone with each child's hand print on it. That means six of these suckers. Here's one in the process of drying.

I used a sack of quick drying concrete. Not the best choice because, though it's not real expensive (it was a little more than $5 for a 50 lb bag), it has lots of little rocks in it making it difficult to stamp the letters and numbers. But it works.

I mixed it in an empty plastic ice cream bucket. Just enough to do one at a time since it sets within 30 minutes. We poured it into the clear plastic flower pot dishes (surely there's a name for that) that we got at Home Depot for less than $1. They have similar things at Michaels near the stepping stone kits that sell for nearly $4. Not a good deal if you want to do 6 of them.

I DID buy the letter stamps at Michaels.

Something I might try sometime is buying patio paint and painting the handprints onto already made stepping stones.

Home Made Gift Tags

Okay, remember the wiki stix that we made? Well, now is the time to make them into little cute gifts. I got some little bags at the dollar store to put them in and I made some tags that I think turned out kinda cute. I got out the pack of scrapbooking Christmas paper that I got a year or two ago and never used, my cutting mat that's quilting size (as opposed to scrapbooking size), and these little round cutting thingers that you've probably seen at Creative Memory get togethers. I haven't gone to any of those things for several years and I can't recall if they have a name (did you not catch my previous entry about my memory?!) but they're great for cutting nice smooth circles. The other option would be tracing various cups but the cutting part is tedious that way.

So, a little paper and a little glue and here are a few of our wiki stix gifts.

Cookie Cutter Ornaments

We had bakers clay left over from the bears (which dried but now need super glue to stick them back together because they've been handled and dropped a few times in the drying process) so we made cookie cutter ornaments out of it. Little Chef got a few cookie cutters for his birthday and we used those. A hole for hanging the ornaments was made with a drinking straw. we put them in the oven on 300 degrees for about an hour We've not done this before so we tried a variety of thicknesses. The star in the upper left was VERY thin. The ones in the shape of the blown glass ornaments were a little thick and got a bit fat in the oven. Here they are just baked.


Here are a few in the beginning stages of being painted. Obviously we have plenty more to paint.


And here are just a few finished ornaments. We used acrylic paints we had on hand as well as some shiny fabric paint.

New Clay Bears

Yesterday while doing language lessons and then while reading history to the boys, I made these two little bears. Multitasking at it's finest! Okay, I don't know that I would say that. We've been playing with play-dough since we were little, it's not like it takes a lot of concentration! One of these is for the smallest member of our family and one for another one of the kiddos. Our ornamental bear family is now complete! For this year anyway. No, that's not a hidden announcement.



I used bakers clay. You can find the recipe for this all over the internet but here it is:

2 cups of flour
1/2 cup of salt
3/4 to 1 cup of water

Mix the salt and flour and then add in the water. Knead with hands until smooth. Last time I baked the little bear but since these guys are a little chubby, his back cracked in the baking. FYI, I understand that less chunky pieces won't crack. I read that you can also just allow them to air dry over a few days. I'm going to try that this time and see how that goes. I'll paint them in a few days.

The kids really love playing with this stuff, too. I think we may make some ornaments by rolling it out flat and cutting it with cookie cutters, let the kids paint them and give them to adoring grandparents.

Making Clay Christmas Ornaments

Several years and several children ago, a family member gave us this Christmas ornament. It had names across the stockings or hats and our family name and year on the heart there on the left (removed for privacy). Oh, look! Little bear on the left has lost an eye!

Well, two years ago I decided it would be nice to have some matching bears for the rest of our family (since little people always ask where they are). I looked up a recipe for dough that you bake on the internet and took a shot at it. I only made one at the time. I painted it with some paints I had on hand. The white paint I used on the hat was old and ended up peeling so i think I'll redo that, but here's how the bear turned out. Since I have a sick kid today and we won't be doing much, I think we'll look up a recipe again and try to do two more. I'll let you know how it turned out!