Some Crafts, Some Cooking

The older my dear ones get, the more creative they seem to be, and more capable of making fun things!

I saw a cute idea on the internet, to buy some wallet sized picture frames with interesting lines.  On the back, you glue on a baby safety plug, insert art of your choice, and then plug it into your sockets to hide the plugs!  I looked for months, but found nothing exciting.  When Alice started robotics, I asked her if she would draw me up a frame, here was my original sketch:

She finished the design a few weeks ago, but I had to wait until I could find some baby plugs.  They are a common thrift item, so I didn't think it would take long.  I found some on Wednesday, and once I started gluing, Emily, Grace, and Juliet volunteered to make me some bird drawings to put in them!

They are super cute, even "Derp" who was a hurried first attempt. He hangs out in the least visible plug.

The Kroger magazine has my number, and when I saw these cute little chicks I knew that I needed to make them for my mom's group!

Grace made chocolate chip cookies from scratch, and wanted to bring them to school.  I'd been saving* the clear bags that waffles, cereal, etc., comes in, and was excited that she was able to wrap them up without adding disposable waste to the world!

Erin's grandson is coming up on his first Easter this year, so when I saw these cute little fabric eggs, I loved the idea, was sad that I hadn't seen it when my kids were younger (they store flat!!!) but thought a first Easter was a great time for a flat set. = )

The bag is lined, and would have taken me quite a bit of time to take apart, and the top was too tight to put through my machine as is, so I embroidered a patch, and sewed it on.  She sent me videos of him playing with both the bag and eggs, and I was happy to see that he enjoyed the bright colors at the very least!

12 fabric eggs are nice, but 24 are even better, right?  I gave a second dozen to the coordinator of my moms' group to use as a fun raffle item, but no new moms came that meeting, so she gets to keep them!  Or pass them along.  Hopefully someone will enjoy them this year!!!

They are small, but can hold at least 10 Hershey kisses!

Another mozzarella and tomato salad, with basil clipped from our 2 year old basil plant!

Emily added so many of the details to her group's World War II history board!

For Emily's birthday, I made her a bag for her batons.  She's actually at a lesson as a type this, try outs are sometime after spring break.  She's not sure if the twirler from last year is coming back or not, so she might be all alone, as a first year twirler, but she's been working hard, and is quite excited for marching season.

The sweatshirt that my mom bought for me years ago was looking really rough, so I cut it up and made it into a pillow.  William's band director just happened to mention that this was his alma mater the day before I found a pillow for it, so William gifted it to him.

Emily made some egg fried rice for dinner one night!

A fancier mozzarella and tomato salad for my moms' group!

More brown bananas that happily disappeared as soon as they were cut and drizzled with chocolate syrup. 

I tried my hand at a rag bowl, using a plastic bag rope as the core.  It takes time and patience, but isn't hard.  I just started my third one.  It feels nice to use things destined for the trash one more time. 

 

Alice needed a spiral notebook for her English class, so we pulled out an old one, gave it a new cover, and it saw its third use!  As of now, she said it's been enough paper for what she does in class.

One of those snowy days we did get a snow day!  Grace and I spent our free day in the kitchen!

We made some pasties with from-scratch pie crust.

The filling was beef ant potato.

They were really pretty, but we didn't have them for dinner, because there were a few other things in the refrigerator that we needed to eat first.  So, we froze them.

When we did have them later in the week, they were really good!  I read a neat little factoid in the cook book that miners would heat them over the candles on their helmets, and that some people would fill one of the ends with a pie filling!

We made from scratch chocolate chip cookies...

and Lemon bars!  These were much too sweet, and we ate through a few of them, but threw away many of them.

We had a little bit of leftover pie crust from the pasties, so I made Billy a single apple turnover.  He said it was pretty good!

We also made some fruit & peanut butter bird seed feeders.  The bush has definitely seen an uptick in bird visitors since we did that, so we should probably put out some more!

For Valentine's Day, Grace made reusable hand warmers.  

They were cute, and worked really well!  It was nice to have something warm in your hands on those super cold days!

Looking back at all the cooking and crafts, I see how much fun we've had over the past few months, while hiding from the snow!  It's nice to have something to show for it. = )

later days

*I wash it, dry it, then have a file folder in with my plastic bags to store it.