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.

Christmastime

We decorate for Christmas after Thanksgiving dinner each year, so our season is short, but we tend to be so busy, that it isn't such a bad thing.

I saw a cute little video online of someone wrapping their toilet paper, and I wanted to decorate our toilet paper too!  I didn't have the fancy patterned paper that they used in the video, but I liked our little candy cane toilet paper towers. = )

My mom helped me pull a years' worth of mostly thrifted Christmas presents from Sarah's basement, and it was more than I anticipated. = O

These were most of the squishmallows.  We pulled the ones with tags for the girls to gift to their friends for Christmas. The VOA that I bought them from informed me that they were donated by Claire's at the mall, since they weren't selling very well. I also set aside the Halloween ones that accidentally got mixed in with the Christmas bags. 

Billy was invited to his company's Christmas party at a bowling alley, despite only having worked there for a few weeks.  It was nice to meet some of his coworkers!

The set up was really cool, there were lanes in the party room!  And a private buffet/bar area!

Billy and I bowled with his coworkers Wendy and Sarah, and Sarah's significant other, Don.  I won game one, but our second game was cut short, but as Sarah was in the lead, we declared her the winner.

It was a nice evening.

Emily was helping me cook dinner earlier in the week, and I didn't hear her ask about the tomatoes, and she was already halfway through cutting up one of my Roma tomatoes, before I saw what she was doing. =- (  I feel like I was able to recover it for a salad display for my mom's meeting though!

Usually, the day I get the molasses in my Kroger order, Grace is after me to make the gingerbread houses.  This year though, without that prompting, it was Christmas Eve before I made time to make them!

We had a diminished supply of molasses, since we used it for the St. Lucia cakes at Alice's band concert, but the dough held well, it was just not as sweet. had Alice helped me make the dough the night before, so that we wouldn't have to wait for it to solidify in the morning.  Even so, it still took hours to make, because of the wait time between each round for the mold to cool back down.

One the gingerbread was done, and the icing* whipped up, the fun could begin!

Emily went with her bff Abby to see Santa.  Her mom sent me the pictures, and I love all of them!

I feel like this year has been just the right amount of festive!

later days

*Michigan is switching to requiring all eggs sold in grocery stores to be cage free, so the past two grocery orders, they haven't had eggs. = 0  So, we stretched a single batch of icing for two houses, because my egg stash is running low.

edit 12-30-28: added in the gingerbread houses, since we didn't make them Christmas day.