Holiday

Simple Cookie Decorating Gift for the Holidays

December 14, 2016 by Eileen 72 Comments

With the Christmas season upon us and holiday traditions in full swing, making and decorating cookies definitely holds a special spot in my heart.

This year rather than just exchanging cookies, think about putting together a holiday cookie decorating box for kids and their families to enjoy. This gift provides a festive activity that kids will long remember.

I made one of these boxes for my niece years ago. Each Christmas, we would always bake and decorate cookies together – it was our special thing.

However, one Christmas I had just had my son, so I made my niece this little box, so she would still be able to decorate Christmas cookies that year.

In addition to putting together a holiday cookie decorating box for others, you could also make one for your family.

Save it until Christmas Eve, when you can then decorate cookies to leave for Santa:)

Not only is this box super easy to make, but it doesn’t involve screen time nor is it another toy.

And, if you are even a little bit of a baker or crafter, you probably already have a lot of the materials.

Cookie Decorating Gift Box Materials

About a dozen roll-out cookies – Baking the cookies ahead of time cuts out on the mess, and let the kids go straight to the fun part – the decorating.
Candy Melts – I used chocolate and red
Decorating Materials – sprinkles, candies, etc
Small containers for the sprinkles/candies – You can use condiment containers, small tupperware, or you could buy the the sprinkles/candies in small containers
Decorative Box – Michaels always has great ones
Ziplocs – to put the cookies and candy melts in
Ribbon – to spruce up the ziplocs

Holiday Cookie Decorating Box Instructions

First, you’ll want to bake your cookies and let them cool.

My family eats pretty healthy these days (one day I’ll share that story). So, I always make things as healthy as possible.

Additionally, I made these cookies without dairy, egg, or gluten. I’ve gone through quite my share of recipes, as well as trying to use substitutes on my own recipes.

Hands down, the best one is from The Unconventional Baker. She also shares recipes for chocolate roll-out and vanilla roll-out cookies. Her instructions were great. And, the cookies rolled out very well! Also, they don’t use cane sugar, and they taste just as a roll out cookie should.

After they cooled, I placed about eight of each type of cookie in a stack and put them into a ziploc bag. I folded the bag, so you wouldn’t see the zipper part when placed in the box.

Then, I adorned the top gingerbread man from each pile with a little bow:)

Next, I took the candy melts and poured them into ziploc bags.

Afterward, I also tied ribbon around these to make them look more festive.

Additionally, I found these cute little containers at Dollar Tree (10 for $1) and filled them with sprinkles and candies for decorating.

I also had all of these items in my pantry – so no additional cost for decorating materials 🙂

Next, I arranged everything into this Michael’s box. They have the cutest boxes for all holidays and seasons – and I always seem to shop when they are 70% off, which made this box $3!

The last thing I did was add a few candy canes because they make everything look so festive.

If I had a little more room in the holiday cookie decorating box, I would have added hot cocoa, paper cups, and cute straws, which would have made for a nice touch.

I spent only around $7 on this holiday cookie decorating box, as I already had everything but the box and candy melts.

Spending only $7 on a gift is quite amazing, right?

This year, as you get caught in the whirlwind of the holiday season, remember that decorating cookies is something simple, thrifty, and delicious to give!

And, I’m sure if you start this Christmas Eve tradition of decorating cookies for Santa, your kids will remember and blissfully look forward to it each year.

How to Make a Spectacular DIY Advent Calendar

December 7, 2016 by Eileen 83 Comments

With the holiday season quickly approaching and my toddler reaching an age where he can learn from and enjoy holiday learning activities, I set out to find an Advent calendar that our family would enjoy.

However, I couldn’t find one that was suitable. Some were filled with chocolates (which negates our healthy lifestyle), some where filled with gifts (I don’t want him to get caught up in the gift aspect of the holiday), and some had numbers that were too small or simply didn’t stand out enough for a toddler to easily recognize.

So I did what I do best – I created my own.

And I’m sure you can easily guess that I made the homemade Advent calendar out of felt. 2016 has definitely been the year of felt for me 🙂

I’m going to cut right to the chase since we are already a few days into December! It was a little time-consuming, but I love the way it turned out. It provides quite a few learning opportunities, and we can use it year after year.

Homemade Advent Calendar Materials

Green Felt – for the tree and bottom layer
White Felt – or other background color
Felt Pieces in various colors – (I bought a new package for more colors but ended up using scraps I already had)
Free Printable for the Tree Outline (keep scrolling for printable and instructions)
Hot Glue Gun – for attaching the felt
Numbers – Make sure you have enough for numbers 1-25.
Ribbon – for attaching the ornaments to the tree
Buttons – to hang the ornaments on
Basic sewing materials – thread, needle, scissors – for attaching the buttons to the felt but you could skip this and use hot glue
Wooden dowel – for hanging
Decorative ribbon, if desired

How to Make the an Advent Calendar out of Felt

I was excited to get work on the homemade Advent calendar. I started with the background and large pieces and worked my way down to the ornaments.

Making the Background and Tree

First, I cut the large felt pieces, and I must say, this was the hardest part. I simply am terrible at cutting in a straight line. Why don’t squiggly scissors worked on felt?!

I cut a piece of white background to be 18 inches by 22 inches. My reason for this was that I already had an interactive alphabet of this size hanging from a wooden dowel. I figured I could borrow the dowel; although I ended up finding another one in the garage.

After that, I drew a Christmas tree onto green felt using a sharpie. It took me a few tries to get all of the branches right and to maximize my use of felt. I really marked up the back of it.

To save you the same work, I am sharing the outline that I drew. It’s on two sheets of paper, and I want to note that the bottom of the Christmas tree was a little too big for standard paper.

Therefore, the second page looks like it cuts off. However, it’s not a mistake – the tree was just a too wide. So I let it run off the edges, figuring it would be easy for you to just connect these few lines – easier than drawing your own tree, at least 🙂

Click here for the tree template.

Next, I cut a little brown rectangle out of my felt scraps for the tree stump.

Then I hot glued the tree and the stump to the the white background.

Attaching Buttons to the Advent Calendar

Even though felt sticks to felt, I wanted to use buttons and ribbon for this Advent calendar to provide another learning opportunity to my son – using buttons.

I found 25 buttons from a collection that I had. I love these buttons – especially their varying hues and textures all although within the same color family.

First, I spaced the buttons out, and then I sewed them on. Also, I put four buttons under the tree for the presents I was going to make.

You also could hot glue the buttons; however, I wanted the sewed look 🙂

Making Ornaments for the Advent Calendar

Now came for the daunting part – 25 shapes to make! Yet, an idea dawned on me… cookie cutters! I used my Christmas cookie cutters to trace a bunch of the shapes – the gingerbread man, snowman, and candy cane, to name a few.

If you are trying to cut down on the work, you could use just a few shapes and repeat them.

The rest of the shapes I outlined or I just cut. If I’m not sure how to draw something or I want a shape simplified, I google an outline of it.

Looking at just the outline makes it easy to emulate. I did that with the angel, and she turned out great!

Adding Decorative Ribbon

My shapes were looking a little boring, so I used holiday ribbon to spruce them up. Just a line of ribbon here and there, actually, went a long way in turning my boring felt shapes into cute pieces.

For example, on the snowman (pictured above), I used a line of ribbon instead of buttons.

The line of ribbon on the train spruced up its plainness. And, even the faceless gingerbread man look pretty spiffy. I didn’t want to fill them up too much though because I still had the Advent numbers to add.

Adding Ribbon Hooks

Next, I needed to attach ribbon to the felt, so the ornaments could hang from the buttons on the Christmas tree. I used this green ribbon (from our wedding programs!), and simply looped one end around the other.

To keep the loop, I put a bead of hot glue to hold the overlapping ribbon pieces (right above where my finger is).

Once glued, I added another bead of hot glue to the criss-cross and attached it to the back of the ornament.

Attaching the Calendar Dates

Next, I needed to add the dates. I went to Michael’s specially to pick these up – got caught up in all the sales, and completely forgot about it.

Not wanting to waste another trip out to a craft store (and not wanting to wait for Amazon prime delivery – two day seemed like too much!), I started to cut out my own numbers out of felt using a template. They looked horrible! It was just too many imperfect twos!

The next day, I picked the below numbers up at Michaels.

They are simply adhesive cardboard numbers, so they didn’t stick that well. I had to use hot glue to give them a good stick – and that was a lot of gluing plus a burnt pinky.

In hindsight, I should have gotten felt ones from Amazon. They have a bunch of felt numbers. When you do purchase your numbers, make sure you have enough 1s and 2s.

With these adhesives, at first I wasn’t crazy about the sharp contrast that the glitterly black created, but it’s grown on me.

And, they are very easy to read, which makes them perfect for my toddler.

When you are sticking on the numbers, make sure to lay them out ahead of time. Put the single digit numbers on the smaller ornaments – to make sure that every number has a good shape to fit on.

I barely was able to squeeze the 25 onto the star, since the star is the last thing that goes on the tree 🙂

The ornaments look so cute – and I think it was that ribbon 🙂 Faceless gingerbread man is definitely my favorite, yet, Frosty is a close second.

Finishing Touches

After the ornaments for the homemade Advent calendar were done, I went back to the tree. It looked a little drab with the white background, so I cut yet another piece of green felt and hot glued it behind the white. It provided a border, a little depth, and hid my sewing.

The tree still looked like it needed a little sprucing up (haha get it?!), so I ran a line of ribbon across the bottom.

I also used this same ribbon to create tabs to run the wooden dowel through. I was planning to use felt for this, but the ribbon was perfect – and tied it all together.

Here’s a close up of a the completed DIY Advent calendar.

I love how the homemade Advent calendar turned out, and my son is learning a ton!

He is learning to follow a number sequence, identify holiday shapes, create connections between the items on this tree and the items on our real trees, apply his fine motor skills on the use buttons, and practice responsibility, as it is his job everyday to find and hang up the next number.

He also loves that he has own tree and ornaments and that he doesn’t have to ask mommy in advance if he can touch them 🙂

Here is the entire tree, with some of the ornaments hanging. In the second picture, you can see how the tree is hanging.

The calendar is going to be a little crowded when all of the numbers are on – but they all do fit, and the homemade Advent calendar is the perfect size for small spaces and doors.

Not only do I love a great learning activity, but I love holiday traditions. This homemade Advent calendar will now be one in our home 🙂

Easy DIY Gingerbread Decorating Gift Basket

December 5, 2016 by Eileen 60 Comments

I love buying fun boxes, and I especially can’t resist when they are a good price. I usually buy them on sale and then I figure out what to do with them later. That’s how my ice cream sundae gift box came to be:)

Michaels Crafts always has beautiful gift boxes.

They run a lot of 70% off sales, especially at the end of seasons, making them only a few dollars. I wasn’t planning on making any Christmas gift boxes this year. However, they ran their 70% off sale last weekend, so I picked up quite a few boxes and baskets.

I picked up a gingerbread house decorating kit too – also on sale. My niece and nephew love to do these, but we usually don’t have enough candy to decorate the house with – so we end up buying more to supplement.

Thinking of this sparked an idea…

Making a Gingerbread House Gift

I was thinking I could unpackage the pre-made gingerbread kit, compile more decorating items, and arrange everything into a pretty gift box. I also added hot cocoa items.

Now what store-bought gingerbread decorating kit also has hot cocoa?! :)The best part is that I only spent $18 on this gift box! So many times gift boxes are filled with things that really add up. This one is cheap and the items were easy to throw together.

Materials for Making a Gingerbread House Gift

As far as materials, you can really use anything you like – you could even use graham crackers, a container of frosting, and decorating icing, rather than buying a pre-packaged kit.

However, I thought $6.99 (plus my 25% off coupon) that I spent on the gingerbread house was worth it for all of the materials it provided

So, here are the materials that I used:

Gingerbread House Kit – Craft stores have the best prices on these (the one I used is pictured below and was pre-made!)
Additional Decorating Materials – Candy and sprinkles
Containers for Candy – I used a combination of cute little tupperwares I found at the Dollar Store (10 per pack!) and condiment containers that I bought a while back and keep using for various projects 🙂
Holiday Cups and Napkins – Dollar stores are great for this
Hot Cocoa – I used two individual packs
Tissue Paper – to line box or basket
Gift Box or Basket
Icing Spatula – I found a holiday-themed one at Michaels
Ribbon – to add a little flair

Instructions for Making a Gingerbread House Gift

First, I unpackaged everything in the gingerbread kit to see what I had to work with.

Then, I added in more candy that would be fun for decorating – twizzlers, smarties, peppermints, gum balls, starbursts, skittles, and tootsie rolls. I probably bought too much candy, but variety makes for fun decorating.

I also grabbed a few kinds of sprinkles that I already had, and then I simply filled the containers with all of the sweets.

Speaking of sweet, my little toddler helped me, and of course, everything is a lesson with me – so we counted, sequenced, and sorted the candy. 🙂

Then, I put together the non-food items – cups, cocoa, straws, the spatula, and napkins.

I tied a few of the things together with some holiday ribbon, as pictured below.

Next, I put together the icing. The kit came with three icing packets along with disposable icing bags and plastic tops.

All of them were in boring packaging, so I spruced them up using these little holiday cookie bags that I have had for years! It definitely made a difference 🙂

Then, I started arranging everything. I love arranging things, whether it be cookie trays, home decor, or gift boxes. It’s always my favorite part of projects. It takes me forever, but I love the results 🙂

The gingerbread house looked a little plain so I adorned it with ribbon (another 70% off Michaels find). If anyone has an easy bow-tying trick, let me know because I am the worst at it!

Also, I found a cute Merry Christmas tag (from a Dollar Store photo prop kit!! Check out our DIY photo booth post).

The tag was simply the perfect touch 🙂

And, last but not least, my plan was to glue a picture from the original box, along with the instructions (for the icing) to some scrapbook paper, so my recipients had this information. It’s always nice to look at an already-made gingerbread house for inspiration.

I love that this gift cost under $20. The kids will have to much fun making a gingerbread house. It turned out so cute, and I love that I used so many items I already had 🙂

That’s the great part about doing crafts – your craft bank grows and grows, and then you have so much to work with.

Adorable Thanksgiving Place Cards Kids Can Make

November 11, 2016 by Eileen 82 Comments

Looking for a Thanksgiving craft to do with your kids this week? Whether or not you are hosting Thanksgiving dinner, making place cards for the holiday meal is a great activity for kids of all ages.

Not only do children love painting and decorating, but they get to design a special setting for the special people in their lives. It’s a great way for kids to participate in the holiday preparation.

The best thing about the template is that it’s completely customizable.

Using this free printable, you can have your toddler making fingerprint turkeys or your older children painting more elaborate turkeys.

Thanksgiving Place Cards that Kids Can Make

With this thanksgiving place card template, you can be as creative as you like: you could have your kids use finger prints for the turkey feathers or they could glue on skittles or feathers in the shape of a turkey. You could even skip the turkey design altogether and have your child practice writing their letters.

The possibilities are truly endless, as the place card template has lots of open space for creativity.

There are even dotted lines for you or your child to cut out the place settings 🙂

Thanksgiving Place Cards Materials

Free Thanksgiving place card printable – see above
Card stock
Kids paints
Scissors
Sharpie
Any other decorating materials (stickers, crayons, markers for decorating the back or inside)

Instructions for Thanksgiving Place Cards

First, I printed the template on card stock. There are four per page, and remember that it’s always good to have a few extra. My toddler smeared paint across quite a few of them before we even started 🙂

Next, I had my toddler paint the turkeys on. You can have your child make finger prints or use q-tips. I love using q-tips (rather than paintbrushes) for toddler painting. It’s more controlled, easy for kids to use, and quick to clean up!

After they dried, I drew on the eyes, beak, and feet with a sharpie. Then you (or your child) can cut them out. The dotted lines make it easy 🙂

After folding, the thanksgiving place cards that the kids made are ready!

If you have a little one and are doing fingerprints rather than painting or q-tips, your place cards might look more like this (see picture below)… a little sloppier but still adorable 🙂

For extension ideas, you can also have your child decorate the inside or back of the place card – through coloring, through choosing stickers for each person, or through writing a note.

Pumpkin Carving with Cookie Cutters & Drills

November 3, 2016 by Eileen 25 Comments

Ash and I decided to be a little more creative with our pumpkin carving this year. We brought a few new accessories to the carving table: his drill AND my cookie cutters. Pumpkin carving with cookie cutters and power tools certainly made for some cute pumpkins. 🙂

Our son loves playing with my cookie cutters – digging through the boxes, guessing the shapes, imagining his own shapes, and stealing a few for use in his play-doh. He has difficulties with eating, so I’m always looking for new distractions to get us through each meal. And, my never-ending cookie cutter collection has been working like a charm lately.

All of this time spent digging through cookie cutters sparked an idea. We could probably use cookie cutters to punch out shapes in our pumpkins. I googled it – and realized it was a thing. So, we picked out a few cookie cutters to get us started.

As for the drill, Ash is rarely apart from his tools, and he figured that drilling holes into the pumpkins would be fun to make some cool designs.

Preparing for Pumpkin Carving

The first thing I did was cover our table with a plastic, disposable tablecloth. I usually pick these up at the dollar store – this one happened to be Easter themed:)

We probably should have worked outside, but it was much easier to push my son’s high chair up to the table inside.

Here were our materials, plus the drill (not pictured below). We also found that a mallet worked better than a hammer, so we swapped that out after doing the first pumpkin.

After cutting open the top and scooping all the goop out, we were ready to start the fun part – hammering in the cookie cutters.

Using Cookie Cutters for Pumpkin Carving

Pumpkin carving with cookie cutters was really fun, and we made lots of cool shapes.

We took the mallet and tapped the cookie cutter into the pumpkin until it made a clean break.

The larger the cookie cutter (like the ghost pictured above) the harder it was. This was because the cookie cutter didn’t lay flat on the pumpkin.

The heart worked perfectly. It was a good size, easy to tap in, and made a perfect heart on the pumpkin.

Using the Drill for Pumpkin Carving

After we used cookie cutters for pumpkin carving, we used the drill to make some designs too.

We did a bunch of circles in the shape of a flower, spelled out the word Boo, and just drilled a bunch of evenly spaced circles.

I had a blast drilling through the pumpkin. After cutting off the pumpkin tops and scooping out all that seedy goop, running a drill was undoubtedly the fun part.

Now, it did make a huge mess, so you might want to drill outside. Yet, I just used the drill on a lower speed, and the flying pumpkin goop was minimal.

Here are a few shots of the pumpkins sitting out on our front bench.

And, here they are all lit up 🙂

They turned out pretty nice 🙂

Overall, the pumpkin carving with cookie cutters and power tools were a fun combination to work with. If you are looking to mix up your pumpkin carving, definitely give it a try 🙂

Making a Firetruck Costume from a Diaper Box

October 31, 2016 by Eileen 27 Comments

What do you get when you have a crafty mama and handy, tech-crazed daddy? A decked out diaper box that makes all your friends jealous.

Our sweet little guy rocked an awesome costume this evening – a firetruck made from a diaper box complete with blinking lights and sound effects.

The poor thing was a monkey more than once (hey, when the costume fits…), so this year we owed him.

Now that he’s carrying on conversations, I had been asking him for weeks what he wanted to be for Halloween, and 80% of the time he said a firetruck.

I tried to clarify, “You mean a fireman?”

I got a very definitive response, “No, mommy. A fire truck.”

Thank goodness for Google images – there were lots of great pictures of kids dressed in firetruck costumes, and it seemed it could be easily made from a box.

I always save diaper boxes (I usually make storage boxes from them), so I had a ton on hand. I grabbed one and got started on the fire engine costume. How hard could making a DIY fire truck Halloween costume be?

How to Make a Fire Engine Costume from Cardboard

In making my toddler a DIY fire truck costume, the first thing I did was cut off all of the flaps – but in hindsight, I should have left just one short flap attached, for the front of the truck costume (I added this back with tape later).

Next, in making the fire truck Halloween costume, I covered the whole box with red construction paper.

I meant to run to Dollar Tree beforehand for red wrapping paper – that would have been a lot easier than using sheets and sheets of red construction paper; however, I was set on making the costume that day and didn’t want to lose time running out.

So, I used what I had and hot glued red construction paper to the entire box for the DIY fire truck costume.

Next, I hot glued on white construction paper to the front and sides (as seen below) and the top too (the part with the flap).

I then added black windows, and a little design made from shapes and stripes on the front. It was shaping up to be a pretty cool fire truck costume.

After the front was completed, I worked on the sides of the costume. I made similar designs on both sides – so I cut out two of everything. I also added wheels to the cardboard costume.

Just when I thought I was done with this part of the costume, I realized I had forgotten about the back, so I did a quick little design there too (see pics further down).

Below is the cardboard box fire truck costume, made using just construction paper and glue 🙂

How to Attach the DIY Fire Truck Costume

At this point, my little guy was running around the house holding the firetruck diaper box costume up with his hands, so I knew I needed to attach something so he could wear it hands-free.

I found some black ribbon and cut two long pieces.

I then hole punched a hole in the front of the box and back, pushing the ribbon through the holes and tying it.

It worked just like suspenders, holding up a pair of loose pants.

How to Add Lights to the Fire Truck Costume

Just when I thought it was done again, Ash said that it wouldn’t be a firetruck without lights and sound. So, there he went altering the fire truck costume.

To make fire truck lights, he grabbed a couple of clip-on lights that he goes running with at night. The lights clip onto your clothes and have a bunch of different settings, including a slow blink which would be perfect lights for a diaper box firetruck costume.

Ash stuck them onto the fire engine costume with plastic cups, cutting out a little piece of the bottom of the cup (which became the top of the light), to clip them on.

How to Add Sound Effects to the Fire Truck

The sound effects were the most impressive part of making a fire truck Halloween costume.

Ash actually attached his iPhone to the back of the diaper box fire engine. Then he used my phone as a remote, playing fire engine sounds on demand using some custom software he took a few minutes to write.

To securely attach the phone to the fire engine costume, he used a small box we had lying around. So impressive, right?! I have to admit the lights and sound effects of the fire engine were my favorite part 🙂

How to Make a Fireman’s Coat for a Halloween Costume

The last part of making a fire engine Halloween costume was figuring out the fireman’s hat and coat. Thinking ahead, I picked up a plastic fire hat from a giveaway table at a community event not too long ago.

As for the fireman’s coat, I had been procrastinating.

I was thinking about getting yellow tape to run across one of his coats or shirts, but I hadn’t made it to a craft store or Home Depot or any store other than the grocery store.

Then, I remembered my love of felt and found a couple of sheets that I cut up into strips.

I duct taped them on, and ran another half width piece of duct tape in the middle of the yellow strip.

The coat I used was a $2 red raincoat that I found at a thrift store months ago – what a unknowingly, perfect find for the fire truck costume.

The coat was the perfect touch to a cute fire truck costume. In pictures, the fireman’s coat totally looks store-bought. I love when my DIYs look like a store purchase 🙂

Time & Cost of Making a Fire Engine Costume

The total cost of making a fire truck Halloween costume was nothing! We made it all from things around our house. I love a project with a free cost! It took a couple of hours to put together.

More importantly, our little sweetheart had a wonderful Halloween, in the fire engine costume he specifically requested.

We were a little afraid that he wouldn’t wear the diaper box for too long. Yet, he got right into the Halloween spirit when he saw the smiles and sweets he was receiving.

Next year, it’s going to be hard to top this year’s diaper box fire engine costume. What are your most creative Halloween costumes? I’m going to need some ideas :))

Fun Fall Turkey Craft for Toddlers

September 29, 2016 by Eileen 92 Comments

I just love everything about fall – the decorations, the food, the crafts, and the fact that it means Christmas is coming. 🙂

My son is at such a fun age right now because we can start doing seasonal activities together.

Of course, the teacher in me always has to tie learning in, too. Today, we worked on color sorting and color matching with this paper bag turkey craft.

Paper Bag Turkey Puppet Materials

The materials for the fall turkey craft are so simple that you probably already have all of them around your house.

When collecting my materials, I couldn’t find any orange tissue paper, so I just used orange construction paper in its place. Tissue worked better, but the construction paper also turned out fine 🙂

Construction paper – 5 or so colors
Tissue paper – colors that match the construction paper
Brown paper bag
A pair of googly eyes (you could also just use white paper and draw the pupils on)
Scissors
Glue
Pen, if needed to draw feather outline

Paper Bag Turkey Craft Instructions

First, I made sure I had 5 colors of construction paper and 5 matching tissue paper colors. Then, I cut strips of the tissue paper into little squares that could be easily crumbled. I put all of the squares in a big messy pile, and let my little one sort the colors into piles (first learning task:)
Next, I put the five sheets of construction paper in a neat pile and cut out a turkey feather. With the sheets of construction paper in a pile, I only had to cut out one feather 🙂
After that, we glued the eyes on the paper bag, and I made a few little construction paper shapes for the turkey’s mouth – two triangles and a teardrop shape.
Then, I had my little helper crumple the pieces of tissue and match them to the coordinating feather. He had a great time matching the colors to the feathers (second learning task:)). After he matched them, we glued all of the pieces down, feather-by-feather.
Once all of the tissue was glued to each feather, we glued the feathers to the back of the brown bag with a strip of glue.

Here’s my little helper adding a few more pieces on at the end.

The finished paper bag turkey craft! It took very little time to prepare and was a great learning activity to do together.

And, my little guy loves that it’s a puppet! We might be making more puppet friends for Mr. Turkey tomorrow 🙂

Looking for more thanksgiving craft ideas? There are some awesome fall projects on All Free Holiday Crafts that inspired me with this paper bag color-sorting turkey puppet.

Make an DIY Photo Booth with Four Things

August 30, 2016 by Ash 26 Comments

For our son’s birthday last year, we had a small party with just our immediate families. We had just moved to a new house and barely had anything done.

Even though we were just having close family, Eileen, of course, went all out with zoo animal theme. She always does all of the planning – but asked me to help her create a DIY photo booth.

She created a bunch of photo props, while I looked for free photo booth software. To my dismay, I could not find any simple to use programs out there.

Most of them you had to pay for, and the free ones were terrible. What seemed like a simple task was turning out to be quite problematic.

So I decided to just write my own photo booth software.

By the end of the day, I churned out an app I dubbed Easy Photo Booth. Eileen was totally impressed, and we’ve been using the app at parties ever since.

To create your own a DIY photo booth, you need four simple things:

- Backdrop
- Props
- Easy Photo Booth software – free download, see below
- PC with a webcam

1. Photo Booth Backdrop

This can be as simple as a blanket or a large piece of felt. It shouldn’t be too complicated of a design because your party guests will be sitting in front of it.

At the zoo animals party, we used a lime green blanket as the backdrop and that worked out great.

At the Sesame party, Eileen created a nice Sesame Street scene.

She got a large piece of blue felt from a craft store, and then hot glued on white felt in the shape of clouds.

For the classic Sesame Street lamp post, she used dark green and white felt, and printed the Sesame Street sign on the printer.

Here is the background in the making:

Here’s a picture of the backdrop set up on our deck:

2. DIY Photo Booth Props

Props are pretty much anything glued to a thick popsicle stick.

Choose props that have to do with the theme of your party. Cute signs like “I came for the cake” are always a nice touch too.

If you do make signs, make them very large and easy to read. On the first go around, some of our signs were too small or written too thin to be able to read.

For the zoo animals party, we used these props (pic below). Eileen made the faces from foam, and the signs from card stock.

3. Easy Photo Booth App

I previously had trouble finding a photo booth app that was simple and free. Therefore, I made my version as simple and straightforward as they come.

This simple program is available at no cost to our readers. You can download it using the form above,

It’s an easy-to-use program that runs just like a digital photo booth. For more details on exactly how it works, keep reading 🙂

4. Laptop (with a web cam)

The last item you will need for the DIY photo booth is a laptop with a web camera.

In front of the backdrop and props, I placed a laptop (with a web camera) on a small table.

The guests would then see themselves on the laptop screen. Easy instructions on how to proceed popped up.

I even setup the software to save the film strip images to DropBox.

This allowed me to run a slideshow on the large family room TV of a live photo stream from the photo booth (via a second laptop I had plugged into the TV).

This way, other guests not taking pictures got to partake in the DIY photo booth fun.

Using the Photo Booth App

My photo booth software was a huge hit. It’s now a staple event at our parties, and even our friends/families use it at their events. So I wanted to make the software easily available for everyone for free.

Simply, join our mailing list to access our library with the PC version of Easy Photo booth. I’m sorry, I don’t have a MacOS version of it, but I can port it over to Mac if I get a lot of requests for it.Here’s a screenshot of the program in action:

Easy Photo Booth also offers an advanced mode if you want to fine tune the functionality:

Here’s what the software shows the guests after taking their pictures:

Film strip images like the picture above are generated from the software. It also saves the images individually in case you wanted to use a snapshot outside of the film strip.

I also added an “overlay” feature, which superimposes foregrounds onto your images. Check it out in action below (I’m hiding behind some tree coverage):

So if you’re looking for free and easy-to-use photo booth software for your party, you should definitely check out Easy Photo Booth.

You can host an awesome DIY photo booth with just four things – a backdrop, props, a laptop, and our photo booth software.

It’s fun, free and who doesn’t love a photo booth?!

Making a Simple Ice Cream Sundae Gift Basket

August 19, 2016 by Eileen 31 Comments

I love making cute gift baskets – so much that I have a board on Pinterest entirely devoted to homemade gift baskets and boxes.

Whenever I’m stuck for a gift, whether Christmas gifts or shower gifts, I always think about what I can put in a gift basket as a themed gift.

My sister-in-law and her family were staying with us for their family vacation this year, and I wanted to do something special for them. I made this cute DIY ice cream sundae gift basket, and it was a hit!

Collecting Materials for the Gift Box

First, I collected the materials that I needed for DIY ice cream sundae gift box. I went to Michael’s and they were having an awesome summer blowout sale on gift boxes.

I got this gift box for just three dollars! Of course, I bought a few of them for later projects.

Next, on my weekly trip to the grocery store, I purchased a few of the ice cream box necessities – chocolate syrup, strawberry syrup, cherries, and cones.

I also bought a few boxes of candy that could be used as toppings. The boxes were on sale for .99 cents.

As for other toppings, I already had tons of sprinkles and a box of walnuts at home.

My final trip was to Walmart for a cheap but cute ice cream scoop. I found one for .88 cents! (Side note – if you are looking to get a better scoop, there’s an awesome scoop on Amazon that uses the heat from your body to heat up the ice cream!)

Also at Walmart, I found polka dot napkins and turquoise spoons for a dollar per pack. I also found ice cream cups there for $3 per pack.

If you are looking to buy a kit, there’s a great ice cream sundae kit on Amazon, which has the cups, spoons, straws, and little umbrellas in bright and cheery colors.

Last, I purchased the condiment cups on Amazon. Love Amazon! I also needed the condiment cups for my son’s Sesame Street themed birthday party, so I bought a big bag.

I already had scrapbook paper and ribbon in my craft collection, so I didn’t need to buy those things 🙂

Putting the Ice Cream Sundae Box Together

The next step was the fun part – putting everything together into a cute ice cream sundae gift basket.

I poured the boxes of candy into the condiment cups. The boxes were a perfect fit because I had little to none leftover.

I also filled condiment cups with rainbow sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles, and crushed walnuts.

I unwrapped two different kinds of cones (I bought a variety pack) and wrapped a stack of them in cellophane for freshness.

Then I took a piece of ribbon and tied a few spoons to the ice cream scoop with a sign that read, “Just add ice cream.”

I took scrapbook paper and cut pieces to cover the store labels – to make them prettier 🙂

Then I printed my own labels that read “chocolate syrup, cherries, etc” (see download below) on regular white printer paper.

I glued the labels to the scrapbook paper and then taped them to the jars, for a cute, uniform look.

I didn’t love the design on the ice cream cups, so I wrapped a polka-dotted napkins around the cup, to match the napkins and make for a brighter box.

Last, I added a sign to the top of the box, covering up the bicycle design.

I love the way the box turned out! My sister-in-law and her family loved it too. We had a great time creating ice cream sundaes at home 🙂

As far as cost, I saved a lot of money with the discounted box, grocery store sales, and good finds at Walmart.

Altogether, I spent just less than $35 dollars (with the condiment cups being $10.50 and tons of these leftover for other projects) on the this DIY ice cream sundae gift basket.

Considering we had ice cream sundaes for seven people and tons of leftovers, I still think that’s a great deal!

It’s a great summer gift basket, housewarming gift, a sunshine gift for someone who needs some positivity – the list is endless, and everyone always loves it!

Making Adorable Cards from Toddler Art

August 7, 2016 by Eileen 7 Comments

I’m always looking for cute greeting card ideas for my kids to make. There are so many fun cards out there that creatively use kids’ hand and footprints. Although cute, I always had trouble getting one decent hand or footprint for a greeting card. Not to mention the mess it makes.

As soon as my son was old enough to paint, I had him “paint” with cotton swabs, instead of paint brushes, so he could easily dab the paint onto the paper. This kept the paint really confined but still allowed him to create artwork. (Sponge brushes and foam stampers are great for making cards with toddlers too.)

As any toddler’s paintings would be, my little guy’s artwork was very abstract.

I was having him make birthday cards for all of the August birthdays in my family. Yet, rather than give messy toddler paint prints, I thought of a great way to showcase his art but to also turn it into a nice-looking greeting card.

So after my son did a little painting, I did a little cutting and gluing – and voila! Don’t the birthday cards look nice?!

Materials for Making Greeting Cards from Toddlers

Making these greeting cards is so simple. The materials are so easy too. Most likely, you will even already have all of these things.

Card stock – I like having toddlers make artwork on card stock because it is so thick. When they layer paint on paint on paint, the card stock works really well. I mostly used this bright color pack. The brighter the colors, the better the cards turned out. (Looking at the purple card (below), I wished I used a brighter color for the actual card.)
Kids paint – I love this washable Crayola paint. Lots of color choices keep my son very interested in painting!
Paintbrushes – sponge brushes, cotton swabs or stampers work too! My son loves making greeting cards with these foam painting stampers. He has this farm set, but they have transportation ones, animal ones, sea-life ones, and even holiday sets too! He only uses the paintbrush for so long, but the foam stampers keep him interested for longer
Scissors – just the regular ole pair you have laying around the house 🙂
Glue – or even tape 🙂
Sharpie/Marker (if needed) – I used a sharpie to add the balloon strings. You could use ribbon too!
Stickers or embellishments (if desired)

Making Cards with Toddlers

After my toddler painted on the card stock papers, I let them dry for a few hours or so. Then, I cut his paintings into shapes – cupcakes, presents, balloons, and layered cake for the birthday cards.

I then took a new piece of card stock (a contrasting color), folded it in half, and trimmed off the top (unless I was going for a tall card – like the balloons and train). After, I took the birthday items that I cut and glued them down to the card.

I even did a train cut-out for my train-loving dad. I used a nearby water bottle cap to trace those perfect circles 🙂

Using Patterned Scrapbook Paper for Toddler Cards

After making cards for all the August birthdays, I was running low on paintings, so I substituted printed scrapbook paper (here is a similar one) that looked like a cupcake wrapper.

The greeting card turned out so cute that I wished I thought of it sooner 🙂

Birthday Shapes

As far as the shapes, I free-handed them as I cut. You could certainly draw on the paper and then cut.

Adding Embellishments

While making cards with toddlers, you can dress up the cards by adding some embellishments to the front of the card. I added the word happy with letter stickers because the present birthday card looked a little plain.

A Personal Touch

Last, to give the greeting cards just a little more of a personal touch, I had my son decorate the inside. He colored with his crayons and picked out stickers. This gave him another opportunity to be creative making birthday cards.

I just love how the birthday cards turned out! My son got to be as creative as he wanted with no restrictions (like finger prints or footprints), and I got to help my toddler create something to give to others that was refrigerator-worthy.

Even though I used birthday shapes for this batch of greeting cards, you could easily alter the shapes for holidays too.

Making cards with toddlers is a win-win for everyone involved. Your child gets to do a fun activity, you get to save some money with homemade cards, and your family members/friends get a creative, cute card, showcasing your child’s work.

And, the best part is that there is no need for hand or footprints. Now that’s a win right there 😉

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