As promised, more Christmas craft photos

Here's the trash bag wreath, done and hung for under $5:


And here's a photo of me cutting the marshmallows. I tried a knife, scissors and a pizza cutter. The pizza cutter worked best. The key to stick-free cutting is to keep everything well dusted with powdered sugar.

Stuff we are making

The kids love to do crafts, but the finances are very tight. I found some really cheap crafts for us to do this year and we are loving it!


These are snowflakes we made from Borax (have it on hand for laundry anyway), pipe cleaners and thread. Total cost was $2 for a package of pipe cleaners and they were ready overnight. You can read the instructions here.

I also found some really cheap fresh cranberries at the store and made these:


I boiled equal parts sugar and water to dissolve, let it cool for a bit (so the berries didn't pop) and added the berries. After soaking them overnight, I drained off the sugar water and rolled the berries in a little sugar. Doesn't it look like snow? They are tart-sour-sweet-yummy, too. Oh, and all those good antioxidants surely make up for the sugar, right? Who cares, it's Christmas!

We also made homemade marshmallows, which are yummy but not as fluffy as I'd like since I was using a hand mixer instead of a heavy-duty machine (my Bosch broke in our move here) and a trash bag wreath. I'll post pics of those in the next couple days.

Call to Arms: The Turkey Army

A treasured tradition in our house is the Thanksgiving Turkey Army. This year, we are making gift bags by writing "We are thankful for you" on some plain brown paper lunch sacks. We add some stamps, glitter, and a reason or two we are thankful for each neighbor and stuff the sack with one turkey for each member of the neighbor's family. Here's how we make the turkey army:




First you either make a batch of Rice Krispie Treats or (if you're easily overwhelmed like me) buy the pre-made treats. If you use the pre-made treats, cut each treat in half and mold into a ball.





Now twist apart some Oreo cookies. You'll use half as the base and half as the tail. Use a little white frosting as "glue" to hold the ball onto the base and the tail onto the back of the ball.









Dip the flat, back side of the fat ends of three candy corn candies and arrange on the tail for "feathers."











One more candy corn for the head:










And voila! Your turkey army is ready to do battle!

Aprons

As requested, photos of the aprons we made. We used spray (fabric) paint, so it was less precise than small tubes.

Mine:

Blair's:


Christy:

Rose:

We somehow neglected to get a photo of Kate's!

The faster I get behind, the more time I'll have to catch up.

Ah, life. It's been kinda crazy around here. I've been working as a mystery shopper, a subject I'll deal with in a not-too-far-in-the-future post. So, life has been a little different for us. Suffice to say I got behind fast so I must have a lot of time for catching up!

John turned 16 this month. His big present was a set of golf clubs. His last set is about four inches too short for him, so he's passed those down to Kate. He also got Super Smash Brothers Brawl, a video game he's wanted since Christmas. He and I are great fans of the comic strip Zits, and I gave him a compilation book. Blair made his cake, with a magic theme.

I took my camera outside for some photos of the spring flowers coming up in my garden. This was the only thing in bloom:

The girls have been doing more cooking lately. I got some plain aprons and fabric paint, thinking they may as well enjoy the job with a hand-painted apron they designed themselves. It was a lot of fun, but mostly it was a mess. I'm glad we chose a windless, sunny day to do this outside.