Salt Dough Handprint Ornaments

The other day I came across this salt dough ornament on Pinterest. I decided to do it with the kids this past weekend. All you need is 4 cups flour, 1 cup salt, and water.

Mix the flour and salt and then slowly pour in water until it forms a dough.  Flatten it out on a cookie sheet so it's large enough for your child's hand to fit. Press their hand into the dough and slowly lift it out.

I used a straw to make a hole at the top so we can hang it. After you do that, bake it at 150 degrees for 1 hour (my oven only goes down to 170 degrees so I used that).

Remove from oven and let cool completely. You can then leave it how it is and hang it from the tree with a pretty ribbon, or you can paint it. I painted them so the handprints would show a little better.  On the back I also painted 2014 so we'll always remember when we made then. These are something you could do every year or you could even do footprints.  I'm sure grandparents would love them too.

This post also appeared here as a guest blogger post

Craft Space Organization

We've lived in our house for 7 months already and I haven't gotten around to organizing my craft space.  Our living room is long so I have one side for my computer and craft stuff. It was definitely an eye sore. 

The first thing I did was go though my file cabinet and cleared out two drawers for my fabric. I just hung the fabric by color/design over the file folders. I was way too excited about this, and even said "ohh, ahh" when showing it to Mike. 

A few days later this awesome craft table arrived. Merry Christmas to me! I got right to work putting it together and loading it full of my stuff.  

I love that everything is concealed inside and I am totally in love with the drop side table part to increase my work space. 

Now, the question is, what do I sew first?!

Halloween Festivities

Here it is almost Christmas, and I realized I never shared our Halloween activities from this year. 

Mason was Elmo and Marley was a Ninja Turtle.

The Saturday before Halloween we decided to head to Zoo Boo at the Potawatomi Zoo in South Bend. They had booths set up all over the zoo handing out candy and the zoo was decorated. Usually around Halloween time, it's cold at rainy but on this day it was sunny and close to 65 degrees. We couldn't of asked for a more perfect day. 

Both kids crashed out on the way home and kept on sleeping through the night once we got them inside the house. 

The Thursday before Halloween, I took Mason up to the library for trick or treating and story time.  It was cute but there were a ton of kids. 

I didn't take any actual pictures on Halloween night because it was about 30 degrees and raining/snowing and there were crazy winds, so we were only out for about 20 minutes. Since the weather was awful there weren't many kids out and the houses were practically pouring the candy into the kids bags. 

Overall, we had a good time and Marley is already planning out what she will be next year. (another ninja turtle)

Our Elf is back

Well, it's that time of the year again. All the elves have made their way back to their families and ours has shown up right on time. We first met our elf 2 years ago, Mason was just 8 months old so he didn't understand and Marley hated it. She said it was creepy and scared her.  She did name him Jack though, but never really enjoyed it.  Last year, our elf didn't come because we were in the process of moving into our rental and he must of been lost.  This year, Jack didn't come again. A girl elf showed up instead. Mason's older and Marley still wasn't thrilled to have an elf, but we read the book and decided to name her Jingle Bell.  She's been around for almost two weeks and so far so good. Marley seems okay with her. Maybe because Mason likes the elf, Marley decided it's not too bad. Not sure, but glad there's no tears over an elf on the shelf.  Here's what Jingle Bell has been up to so far.

You can see all of our elf adventures from 2012 here- part one, two, three, four, five, and six