cute ornament idea

I know a lot of people are "done" with the holidays but I'm not. So you'll have to put up with a little more holiday ideas...at least til we get into the new year anyway! 

My daughter's class did these ornaments at their class party and I think it's such a cute idea. I didn't come up with it, of course, but I wanted to share it. You take a regular ball ornament (I think the blue ones look the best) and cover your child's hand with white acrylic paint. The palm of their hand should be placed on the bottom part of the ornament so their fingers come up the sides forming the "snowmen". Once it's dried you (or your child) can draw the faces & hats on the snowmen. Wouldn't it be cute to do this every year and see how the snowmen grow?!!

Here's the poem that goes along with it. I made these cards for the kids to take home with their ornaments. (The blurred out part is where I put the school, class & teacher's name).

easy Advent wreath for kids

(excuse the not-so-great photos)

Yesterday I had my kids in Sunday School put together a cute little Advent wreath. I wanted to have them do an actual wreath but without the candles (they are, after all, only first graders!) So I came up with this simple idea. I got some green foam wreaths at Michaels. I would've preferred to get styrafoam but they were all out. Go figure! Anyway, I made the candles out of foam, taking a small piece and rolling it into a cylinder and using a hot glue gun to hold it together. I glued them to the inside of the wreath and also used a pin to hold it in place til the glue set. Then I took some of the branches that we cut off the bottom of our Christmas tree and used some wire to hold it on the wreath. 

Again, styrafoam would've worked better because we could've just stuck the branches into the wreath. But I had to work with what I could find. For the candle "flames" I used yellow tissue paper. 

And that's it. The kids have their very own Advent wreath with candles they can "light" every Sunday!

Diaper cake

My friend Elizabeth just posted something on her blog about diaper cakes. This is the one I made for a friend last year. Let me tell you, if you've never made one of these they are a *lot* of fun and not super difficult. You basically roll up each diaper and secure with a rubber band. Place them in a circle and secure the whole big circle with a big rubber band. You then cover that up with blankets, netting, ribbon, toys, whatever. And you can tuck toys, washcloths, lotions, etc in the sides. I had a pretty cake plate so I displayed the diaper cake on that. I decided to put a Care Bear on top but you can also leave room in the center of the diapers for a bottle or something like that. The best thing about this cake is that everything is functional!

There's lots of ways to create and decorate these. Just do a search on "diaper cake" and you'll find a ton of ideas!!