Countdown to Christmas!!

My friend and I made these last week! I put a couple pieces of candy..1 for each kid, and an activity for each day inside the little box!

Boxes ordered from papermart.com. In bulk but a great price!

The boxes are 2” square. Cover them with paper a 2”x2” piece of paper and use a paper circle punch to punch out the tab. I used embossing, vinyl and paper for the numbers! and arranged the numbers as you can see…spelling some out, regular numbers, roman numerals and a combination of some! The boxes are able to slide in as drawers to a long box made of cardstock and then covered in contact paper so it will hold up against little kids!

Ideas:

1. Make homemade Hot Cocoa

2. Make Christmas Ornaments

3. Reindeer Candy Canes

4. Play with Little People Nativity and talk about Jesus

5. Gingerbread House

6. Christmas Caroling

7. Make cookies for Santa

8. Wrap Presents

9. Go for a drive to look at Christmas Lights

10. Ring a Bell for Salvation Army

11. Play in the Snow! Snowmen and Snow Angels

12. Make Snow Globes

13. Make Christmas Cards for Grandparents and Great-Grands

14. String Popcorn

15. Make Gift Tags

16. Make Napkin Rings for Christmas Dinner

17. Silverware Stockings

18. Pictures in the Snow

19. Visit Santa at the Mall

20. Make Paper Snowflakes

21. Make gifts

22. (Jesus

23. Watch a Christmas movie

24. read Luke 2

25. Letter to Santa

6 in1 Puzzle

Since my kids are 1 & 3 and don’t look at my blog! Here is something I’m working on for them for Christmas! Puzzles!

2x2 from Home Depot “Orange” was about $1.70ish (will get 2 puzzles from it!)

Calendar f/Target dollar bins $1 (..can get 2 if you cut right!) Here are some of the options. They also have a Pixar which (shockingly) my son did not pick..he chose the Madagascar instead.

Total Project: about $4 with paint and mod podge.

1. Cut blocks w/Miter saw to square: 1 1/2”x1 1/2” and sand! Cut as many as you need for how big the pictures are. For smaller kids, you may want to find smaller pictures, or a bigger piece of wood for bigger blocks somewhere, the calendar pictures I found will use 25 blocks.

2. Paint blocks. You could just paint all the edges, but I painted the whole block. I figure the wood will soak up some of the paint, so the mod podge would work better, rather than soaking up some of the mod podge!

3. While waiting for those to dry, pick your 6 most favorite pics. from the calendars. remember you will be cutting them down, and a little off the edges, so make sure your picture subject is somewhat centered!

4. Cut. Cut off the top (calendar hole) first.

Then you’ll want to cut the whole picture down to size. Measure you blocks first. I found my pictures would need to be measured at 1 3/8” square..since it is 5 blocks across..I need to cut the whole picture to 6 7/8” Square.

Then proceed to cut your 1 3/8” squares. should end up with exactly 25 – 1 3/8” square squares..be careful not to mess up and cut wrong!

Easies to cut strips first, then back to squares. You can cut one pic at a time and mod podge it on, or cut all 6, just make sure you don’t mix them up or you’ll have 2 pieces of the same pic on one block and that would mess the whole thing up!

5. Mod Podge the pics to the blocks! One picture at a time! Using the Mod Podge as the glue.

**Hint, for easier puzzles, keep all the blocks in order (ie… top left corner of ever picture on same block, etc.. For Harder puzzles, mix up the blocks or turn them for every puzzle!**

I don’t know what the difference is between the different types of Mod Podge, but I used the puzzle saver kind.

When done Mod Podging all the pics to the 6 sides of the blocks, run a light coat of Mod Podge over the top of all the pics on all sides of the blocks!

You could also do this with family pictures. I think you would just need to mod podge the back to help it stick..not the front of the picture..but I haven’t tried it to find out.

BACK TO TUTORIALS

Washer Necklace Tutorial

1. Pick your paper. Position your washer on the paper to see what you want to show on the washer. I like to off set mine a little bit because the washer has a hole in the middle you have to account for, and to get a bigger variety of color!

Trace it!

2. Cut it out and hole punch the middle to fit the center of the washer!

3. Decoupage the paper to the washer.

4. Sand the edges so they don’t hang over the sides! This way, after the Glossy Accents is dried, the washer will be water proof!

5. Apply Glossy Accents liberally to the washer, covering the paper completely.

(I like to put a ring around the outside and the inside, then just fill it in.) Slowly, going back and forth. Making sure you have an even pressure so you don’t create any bubbles! The thicker the layer of Glossy Accents, the longer it will take to dry though!

6. Let Dry! Overnight if possible.

7. Measure Cording. For an adult you’ll need about 32 inches. To account for the knots and being able to slip it over your head.

8. Tie the two ends around each other so you can slip it tighter and looser.

9. Find a bead that has a hole through it big enough to fit your cording width twice! And slip the bead on the opposite end of the knots.

10. Put the loop through the washer and pull the rest of the cording w/bead through to loop it around the washer. Push the bead down. You can put another knot over the bead if you wish!

Put it on, and wear it proud! Because YOU made it!! :D

BACK TO TUTORIALS!

Robots

Here's another little project I did for my nephew for his birthday. The town I live in is home of the coolest crafting store ever called Porters, Crafts and Frames. Well, I saw this there and I had to make it.
There was a packet with these different papers and robot stickers. I punched out the robot stickers and added paper to the back. Each robot has a magnet on the back and the little box everything is kept in is a metal tin so everything...um, magnets to it. Know what I mean? It was fun to do. I would do some things differently next time. I thought it would be a fun quiet time activity but the robots are great on the fridge too. Oh, and I made a matching card to go with it.

Honeybee Display

Hi, I'm Hailee. My sister Ashlee invited me to join this blog so I can show off some of my projects. I like card making but my mother-in-law had these honeybee stamps. My kitchen is honeybee's! She also had embossing machines and all kinds of awesome things so I made this. Now it is framed and adorning my kitchen. I love it.

I don't know how I found this..but this Dawn gal has the CUTEST cards! Next time I participate in a card swap..I know where I'm getting my ideas!



If you are in to cards, go check out her related videos at youtube! Have fun!!

Scrapbook

I've been working on my scrapbooking a bit lately. It's been fun!

A Few Christmas Ideas

All 3 of my sisters are getting married between Aug '08 to Jan '09. Here are just a couple ideas for Christmas or wedding gifts. As budgets are tight after first getting married, it is hard to justify spending money on decorations, so I am making them some!

Family Home Evening Chart

I've been working on a few crafts, but I've been traveling and busy with the holidays mostly. The crafts I have been working on are for Christmas presents, so I don't want to post them quite yet. However, here is one I have done for our family. I realize my family is not this big yet, so for now we will just double up our pictures. I have little tiles that I will put our pictures on and hang from the knobs with ribbon. Then we will just rotate them each week. This idea can also be used for a chore chart!

Scrapbook Layouts

My brother just turned 8 and will be getting baptized next month. He had his birthday last week, so I made some layouts for him as part of his Christmas present. He won't appreciate them as much now, (that's why it is part of his present) but he will more when he is older.

These are some layouts I made a while back for G's birthday.I like to make my layouts without pictures, then take them, print them, and they are ready to be stuck on the layout.