Leaf placemats

I love our new placemats! And we had so much fun making them. I got the idea of collage pictures made out of clear contact paper and tape from the internet (can't remember where), and I thought it would be really pretty with leaves. So on Monday I told everyone to collect leaves after school, and then we put them together for our family home evening activity.

First I cut the contact paper into 13.5 X 18" pieces and took off the backing. We put them on the counter, sticky side up, and covered them with our leaves. When we were done, we put another piece of contact paper on top and pressed them together. Then we took black duct tape and folded them over to make clean edges. So easy and cute.

Spencer's


Brennan's


mine



Tyler's


Dallin's

Christmas crafts

Now that Christmas is over I can post pictures of some gifts I made this year. Here is the family tree we gave to Dave's parents. It was one of the projects at the super Saturday craft day in October, which I couldn't go to because Levi was just a week old. But I loved it so much I made them later on my own. I also did one for Josh and Megan and one to keep. If you're interested, here's the tutorial.

The other major project this year was shell ornaments. It all started when Spencer begged to make something to sell at the school's annual craft bazaar. I am always against this kind of thing. Emphatically so. I hate to sell things. I don't need more work right before Christmas. And as much as he promised he'd do it all on his own, I knew I'd end up getting hugely involved. He was coming up with all kinds of ideas that made me cringe. He even collected bags full of pine cones. Then one day I looked online for simple Christmas craft ideas, and I found these. Now this was something I could actually get excited about. It was simple. Cute. Something I would want myself. Even if he didn't sell any, I'd love to give them as gifts. And since he's all about the ocean, it seemed like the perfect thing for him to do.

So we made a trip to the Shell Shop (my kids' favorite store in the world) and bought a variety of shells. They sell ornaments there too, which helped give us ideas.

There were some shells he really liked, but they were so expensive that he'd have to sell them at a high price to make a profit. We were going for cheap. Like this cut shell that only costs 50 cents. He painted it green and added glitter. Then he sold them for $1.

These longer ones looked like icicles, so we painted them white and added glitter. My favorite thing about these ornaments was that the boys (Tyler helped) could make them almost completely by themselves.

These sand dollar snowmen were a little more complicated, but I thought they were so cute. I'm not artistic, but I can handle decorating with dots.

Here's another snowman. More dots.


We had the most fun with these starfish santas. They were the biggest ticket item at $3.

Don't you just love the polka dot swimming suit?! I got the idea for this one from google images. Kristen's boys also made these, and they glued theirs to shell surfboards.

Spencer really wanted to buy these heart-shaped shells, but they were kinda small and we didn't know what to do with them. So we stuck them on these circle shells and added some things we had around the house - beads for heads and silver rings for halos, and we ended up with these cute angels. We only made 3 of them, but they were the first to sell. After all our work, the school decided not to do the craft bazaar this year! But his teacher, who had gotten him all excited about doing it, said he could go around the school and sell them on his own anyway. They were a huge hit, and he made $26. He had SO much fun selling them! I can't even begin to tell you. He came home with his pockets full of quarters and dollar bills every day, grinning from ear to ear. Then we gave some as gifts and kept the rest. We might even do it again next year.

Enrichment

Hard to believe these started out as boring old paper bags.

Here's the inside. You can fill the pockets with tags, gift cards or pictures. Or you can put a few bags together to make a photo album.

Last night was one of our quarterly enrichment activities at church. The leaders made one fatal mistake - they asked everyone to bring a paper bag meal to trade with someone else. I didn't want to make anything, so I picked up a mandarin chicken salad from Wendy's on the way there. I thought I was super early because I was the first to arrive, besides the relief society presidency. But as time went on I was still the only one there. Eventually, three more people showed up. Then the two girls teaching the craft came, but they had already eaten dinner. So we decided to all just eat our own food we'd brought. The craft was making paper bag cards, where you take a brown paper bag, fold it in half, and glue cute scrapbooking paper onto all the sides, bind it with paper and tie it with ribbon. I know that sounds confusing, but they were actually pretty easy and fun to make. As I was making it and wondering who the heck I would give it to because I'm not much of a fancy card person (I always think they are very cute, but then what do you do with them? I'm not a keeper of stuff. In fact I like to throw everything away. So when someone gives me a cute card, I'm torn between wanting to throw it away and yet feeling bad that they put so much time into making it just to be thrown away), when someone had the idea of giving them to their kids' teachers for end-of-the-year thank-you cards. What a great idea, I thought. Teachers love cute things. So I made 3 - one for each teacher and one to keep. We had a lot of fun visiting, laughing and munching on cookies late into the night (I stayed until 9:30). It was kinda nice having a small group because it felt more intimate and we got to make more cards.