Be Thankful Banner

Leelou Blogs has a fantastic Thanksgiving Printable Kit filled with all sorts of great printables for Thanksgiving.  I especially loved the Be Thankful banner printable.  Being the crafty person that I am, I saw it and thought to myself, "I'll bet I can make something like that".  It has been a while since I used my Cricut, and I have been itching to make something fun with it.  I pulled it out of the dust bunnies the other night and came up with my own version of the Be Thankful banner. 

As an additional activity for Thanksgiving day, I think we will use clothespins to attach all the things we are thankful for this year.

Cookie of the Month - October & November

I forgot to post October's Cookie of the Month, so here is a quick snapshot of what I did for October.  I made Carmel Apple Bites.  They looked like little carmel apples down to the stick, but they were actually cookies.  Because October's holiday is Halloween, I included a few plastic spiders to set the mood and wrapped them up all pretty.

 My mom found this fantastic cookie recipe that tastes just like Twix bars.  Oh my...they are so good, I could eat the whole recipe in one sitting!  Anyway, they are called Thousand Dollar Bars.  The recipe can be found here on the King Arthur Flour website.  I wanted something cute to package the cookies in, and I happened on this tutorial from Dandelions and Dust Bunnies.  Perfect!  I made the strips a bit longer (about 10 inches) to accommodate the cookies inside, cut a large leaf from green paper and wrote out the words.

So cute, now to start thinking about what I will do for December.  There are so many cookie recipes to choose from!

Halloween Foaming Soap

I am always looking for new ideas to get my 5 year old to wash her hands.  We already use foaming soap, which gets quite expensive, so I poked around online and learned that you can make your own!  I have been doing this for about a year now, but still have to fight with my daughter to wash her hands.  I was walking by the bathroom the other day, when it hit me...why not make the soap fun colors?  With Halloween coming up, I thought orange would be a great color to start with.  This was made with 5 drops of yellow and 1 drop of red food coloring.  My daughter noticed it right away and this week she has been using the soap without my prompting her!  I may try scenting it next

What do you think?  What fun colors would you use?

Halloween Subway Art

I recently ran across MaryJanes and Galoshes and their great Halloween Window Subway Art tutorial.  I just love all the subway art I have been seeing everywhere, and I was inspired.  I just had to make something similar.  I knew I didn't have the right picture frame at home, so I started to troll the garage sales and found this beauty for only $0.50.

With no nicks or scratches, the frame was in perfect condition.  Perfect!  One less step I would have to do.  I recently got the Sure Cuts A Lot software for my Cricut.  Oh my goodness....what have I done without this software all of my life???  I won't ever have to buy a font cartridge again!  I downloaded several spooky looking fonts* from DaFont and got started designing.

Once I was happy with the words, I used my Cricut to cut everything out on cheap Contact paper.  I laid it all out before committing and sticking everything down.

Since it was too late last night to paint my project, I went to bed and dreamed happy spray painting dreams until this morning.  After dropping my daughter off at school, I used Valspar's "Frosting" spray paint to frost the open spaces on the glass.  Then, the hard part, waiting for the paint to dry.  After I lifted the letters off, I was left with a very sticky situation!  Most of the sticky part remained on the glass.  Yuck!  Thank goodness for Goo Gone!  I spent about an hour or so scrubbing all the sticky residue off.  When it was finally off, I gave the glass a good washing and put some orange paper behind the glass and snapped it all back together.  This is the final product...

I apologize for this picture, this project was very hard to photograph!  In the right light, this looks really cool, and I love that I can change the back paper to suit my moods!

* The fonts I used were:  Yard Sale, Juice ITC, Mars Attacks, She Creature, Lunacy More, Trick or Treat BV and Jack Lantern BB

This project has been entered in the Halloween Extravaganza over at The CSI Challenge

Broken Heart Band-Aid Box

Way back in the day when I was in high school, whenever one of my friends broke up with her boyfriend, I would put a Band-Aid over her heart to help stop the pain. My mother-in-law spent the last week untangling a 38 year marriage to my father-in-law. Suffice to say, her heart is hurting, and while I cannot imagine the pain and hurt she is going through, I can be there for her, to put Band-Aids on her heart to keep it from hurting. To that end, I decided to make her something special to hold her Band-Aids.

I used a plastic box that once held drink mix pouches and used Mod Podge to cover it in fabric.  I added a fabric embellishment to the top and ribbon around the edges.  Then I used Mod Podge to add fabric and a note to the inside.  After everything dried, I added a bunch of Band-Aids.

Here is the inside of the box.

I really just wanted her to know that we are there for her and we love her and will support her in any way we can.

Cookie of the Month - August & September

I am a bit late getting this posted, but here goes...

I decided that I wanted to do a little something special for my daughter's teacher.  Teachers do so very much for our children, and they do not get enough thanks for all of their hard work.  One of my friends told me about something she did last year called Cookie of the Month.  Each month, she baked a new cookie recipe and gave it to each of her kid's teachers.  I thought this would be a great thing to start with my daughter.  Hopefully I can keep it up for the full year.  Here is what I have done so far...

August:  Chocolate Chip Cookies

 I included a note explaining Cookie of the Month Club and asking her to let us know if she has any allergies.

September:  Chocolate Glazed Shortbread

This actually isn't the finished product, because I wanted to show the cookies in the picture.  To make the bag:
* Cut down a 12x12 sheet of scrapbook paper to the size of a sandwich Ziploc bag.
* Fold paper in half and about 1/2 inch from the bottom of each end.
* Line up the bag and paper and punch 2 holes.
* Feed ribbon through the holes and tie in a bow.
* Glue bottom flaps to form a flat bottom to make the final presentation below.

I tell my daughter about the cookies in her backpack and she gives them to her teacher.  My daughter loves giving them to her and I love being able to say Thank You each month!

Recycled Homework Supply Caddy

My 11 month old adores these cereal puffs, we go through at least one or two containers each week.  They are made of a nice, heavy plastic and are just begging to be made into something else.  They are such a nice plastic, I can't bear to toss them in the recycling bin.  I have been collecting them in my craft room as I search my brain for ideas.  My 5 year old just started kindergarten, and what would be better to celebrate a new school year than a special place to store homework supplies?

After a tearful goodbye (tearful for Mommy at least, my daughter raced into the classroom  and never looked back) I went home and broke out my crafting supplies.  Between drying time and caring for the baby, it took me almost a week to finish putting it all together.  As this was going to be a surprise to celebrate getting through the first week, I could only work while my daughter was in school and the baby was sleeping.  When she got home last week on Friday, this was waiting for her on the table.

 Here is a view from the top.  Right now, we only have enough supplied to fill 4 of the containers, but I know this will quickly change as we get further into the year.

My daughter squealed in delight seeing all the shiny new supplies.  I explained to her that these were her homework supplies and we would keep them in a special place in my craft room.  She couldn't wait to pick out the perfect spot.  She was so exited to use her homework supplies that her homework (yes, she already had homework in the 2nd week of school!!!) was quickly done as soon as she came home from school all week.  I am going to savor this excitement while it lasts!

This was a great project because it cost me less than $5, I got to play with Mod Podge (one of my favorite things)  AND I was able to recycle something that most people would just toss.  I love it!!!

This post has been entered in the CSI Challenge:  Back to School Challenge