I was looking for an easy and cheap gift to make for my niece and nephews for Christmas. Since there are four of them it can get a little expensive. In addition to an angry bird toy that I got each one of them, I wanted to make something that maybe they wouldn't want but hopefully like. I came across several different projects that used cardboard as the base. Knowing I could get cardboard boxes from work, I was keen on finding a project that used cardboard. I found several pins but finally found one that used regular cardboard from boxes that you cut letters out of it and wrap yarn around it.
However when I started wrapping it with yarn I had difficultly getting around the corners. I took it to my mom and was hoping she would be able to help me. Instead she came up with a better idea.
I had seen some pins that used nicer cardboard letters that you bought at a craft store and glued paper to, but I wanted to use my free cardboard. So we applied glue stick to the cardboard and laid the paper faced down on the table. Then just matched up the edge of the letter with the edge of the paper and pressed down. Then using an utility knife, just traced around the letter and cut the excess paper off. After we got all the letters done we embellished them with supplies from scrap booking and others items we had around.
For each kid, we made their initials. We added a little something to each letter.
For my niece, of course we had to use pretty pink flowers and a butterfly. Luckly my mom had some lefft over supplies from another project.
I was also glad my mother has a Cricket so we were able to cut different things out for my nephews! Theirs aren't as pretty but I really hope they like them just as well!
I recently bought a coffee maker and have been wanting to use it for something other than heating up water for hot chocolate.
I have a friend that always had a batch of homemade Kahlua on hand to make an easy drink for whenever. So I took to the internet to find a recipe for Kahlua and couldn't find one that sounded any good. Most recipes I found called for instant coffee. One I saw said to just stir coffee beans in with vodka and sugar. What? How could that one be any good.
I finally just had to ask my friend for her recipe, and I'm so glad that I did.
What you will need:
Coffee (regular brewed coffee)
Vodka
Sugar
Vanilla
After the coffee has cooled, just mix equal parts of coffee, vodka, sugar (use a little less sugar if you don't like it as sweet is fine) and a splash of vanilla.
It's that simple!
Then just pour into an empty bottle and keep on hand for anytime!
Kahlua is a great drink mixer to have on hand. While I'm writing this post I'm enjoying a nice glass of White Russian. It is so easy to make, just add 3 to 4 oz. of Kahlua to a glass of milk!
Now for this project I didn't need my mother's help with because it's easy even I could figure it out.
Hope you enjoy, I know I will!
This past October I was looking for a creative and easy fall decorative project to make. I found a Pin that looked fun and easy enough. It said to glue crayons on the top of a pumpkin then take a hairdryer and "melt" the crayons with it and the melted wax was supposed to drip down the sides of the pumpkin. However when I tried it I just made a big ole mess. So I went over to my mother's and she came up with some new ideas to help my pumpkin out.
First I bought a fake pumpkin because I didn't want to have to throw it away after working so hard on this project.
I did try gluing the crayons onto the top of the pumpkin first, however they kept falling off and the air from the dryer did melt them but it also made the melted crayons splatter all over the place. So word of advice, if you do want to melt the crayons on top of the pumpkin with a hairdryer, make sure you use clear tacky glue and let it dry for a while before turning on the dryer. Also make sure you cover the surrounding area with newspaper.
After I had crayon wax everywhere and my pumpkin didn't look like the picture, we got out the lighter. I really wanted to set the whole project up in flames but my mother had a better idea. Using a pair of metal kitchen tongs, we "held" the crayon above the pumpkin and melted it with a candle lighter. This way we could better control where the wax dripped. That worked a lot better and the second layer of wax looked pretty good over the thin first layer.
Of course my mom had an old fall wreath laying around, so we took some of the fall flowers and hot glued them around the stem of the pumpkin.
Thanks to my mom we turned out with a pretty cool looking fall pumpkin. Now I can put the crayon dripped pumpkin out every year.
