Cool Thing- Clair's Creations

Ok, my friend Clair is the most creative person I know, especially when it comes to baking. I've been wanting to post some of the things that she has made for a while. For our daughter's 5th birthday she wanted to have a ladybug party, and Clair offered to make her cake along with some cupcakes- so we would have enough to feed the crowd.

They turned out so cute!

Carissa loved it!

We also had a squirrel invasion in our house this past May. I went down to our basement to grab something from the dryer one morning before taking the kiddos to school. When I opened the door I noticed that a bag of chocolate chips from our food storage was opened and scattered on the floor. My first thought was that the kids had gotten into them, but then I turned my head to the left to be greeted by a squirrel perched on top of a shelf in our basement. He looked as if he were ready to pounce on me at any moment, so of course I did what any sensible person would do. I screamed, turned and shut the door as fast as I could, then ran upstairs and called my husband! Animal control came and got rid of that squirrel, but 4 more followed. They were hiding in the ceiling of our basement. We had to set live traps for them and then take them to the local park to release them. Seriously, who gets squirrels in their house? This whole experience was captured on Facebook (it was way too crazynot to be), so when we showed up at baseball practice Clair had these cookies for us:

Complete with chocolate chips! :)

Clair makes all kinds of cool things. If you are interested in contacting her to make something for your next big event or squirrel invasion, you can find her at:
http://clairscreations.blogspot.com/p/clairs-cookie-co.html

Lemonade Cookies

I got this idea from Parents Magazine in their Cookie Jar section of the August 2010 issue. The cookies looked so cute in the magazine, and I loved the idea of using lemonade mix in cookies. I thought the kids would love it! They were fun to mix up and make, but they didn't quite turn out like I thought.

The sugar melted, on the sides of the cookies, so they ended up being stuck together on the pan in one big sheet of melted sugar. I may have used the wrong kind of sugar, or maybe I should have altered the recipe and put the sugar on after the cookies were baked instead of before.

I also had problems with my cookies coming out nice and smooth like in the picture, and the icing that I mixed up ended up being too runny. I bet my friend, Clair, could have made these look even better than the picture. She's amazing!!! Anyway, I ended up with cookies that weren't that pretty to look at and with the sugar mess they were a little hard to separate, but I bet you're wondering how they tasted. That's the most important thing when it comes to baked goodies right!?! They were pretty good, but not a huge hit. The lemon flavor was kind of strong, and had a bit of an after taste. Maybe from the powdered lemonade mix? My 3 & 5 year old wouldn't take more than a bite, and the older people in our house ate them more because they were there than because they were yummy. LOL.

If you want to give these cookies a try you can find the recipe at:

http://www.parents.com/recipe/cookies/lemon-slices/

I'd love to see pictures of your attempt, whether it's a flop or a success!


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Super Great Idea- Edible Crayons!

My kids love to color, and these are just super cute! Check it out:

http://thecraftingchicks.com/2010/07/take-that-crayon-out-of-your-mouth.html

Foam Frames

This was an activity that my sister and I did with the kids in our family. It was super fun and easy. You just need foam frames, foam sheets, magnets, foam letter stickers and shapes. You could use anything you want to decorate the frames with. You could use glitter, paint, markers, pom pom balls... the list is endless. Then print off some pictures for the kids to choose from. Half of the fun for them was going through the pictures and picking the one they wanted for their frame.

You just glue the frame to a sheet of foam, then decorate the frame. We did this before adding the picture to keep the picture from getting messed up while we were decorating. Let the frame dry if necessary, especially if you attached your decorations with glue. Then attach magnets to the back of the frame. We found some really inexpensive magnet strips that were peel and stick. They worked perfectly. We attached a magnet to the top of the frame and one to the bottom as well. This will help the frame to stick to your metal surface better. Since we were putting ours on the refrigerator, we wanted to make sure they would stay put when the doors to the fridge would open and close, or people would walk past them, etc.

Some of the kids wanted to make more than one or two frames, and we didn't have enough foam frames. We found that gluing the picture directly to a foam sheet and decorating around the picture works well too.

This craft was anything but complicated, and it was a great way to keep the kids busy on a summer afternoon. Plus, even our youngest kiddo (age 3) made a super cute frame.

Book Purse Tutorial from Hungry Panda

I absolutely love this idea. I'm going to have to give it a try.

It's a purse made out of a book. I am a purse-addict. My family is always giving me a hard time because I buy a new one so often. Books are another one of my passions, so this project is perfect! I'll post pics. of my attempt to make my own book purse, in the near future. Hopefully I can pull it off! It looks so cute! Now to find the perfect book to use. Hmmm...

Check out the link below to try making your own book purse. I'd love to see pictures of how yours turn out.

http://www.hungrypanda.net/blog/2010/02/book-purse-tutorial/

Balloon People

This one was just a spur of the moment idea that I came up with because it's summer & the kids were bored and looking for a project. I looked around at what I had in the house & came up with this idea.

You just need a paper plate, a balloon, and some things to decorate the balloons with. We used googley eyes, yarn, markers, etc.

It was a lot of fun for the kids & the faces turned out pretty cute!

Accordian Style Birthday Card for Grandma

This is a Birthday Card that we made for Grandma. I started out by cutting a 12 x 12 piece of paper in half, attaching the 2 sides with ribbon, then folding the pieces accordion-style. Then I just decorated the pieces. It was super-easy to make. I didn't follow a pattern. I had seen accordion-style cards before, but I'd never made one. I just decided to feel my way through it, and it turned out really cute.

This first picture is the finished project tied up with a ribbon:

Front:
2 kiddos:
The other 2 kiddos:
The back:
Grandma loved the card! I wish I'd taken a picture of it standing up to show you, but I didn't. It is now standing up on her mantle, and she loved it!