Christmas Advent Calendar

I do an amazing job at looking at peoples' blogs, getting ideas, thinking about doing their idea, and not following through with the idea. I have been wanting a Christmas advent calendar. I have looked around in stores and couldn't find anything that appealed to my eyes or taste. I goggled "Christmas advent calendars" and got the idea to make one from a muffin tin. The most amazing part about it is that I got the idea Wednesday and completed the project two days later! It was a very fun project.

Here is how I made my Christmas advent calendar:

1. I bought a 24 cup muffin pan from Walmart for 4 dollars.

2. I bought sheets of magnetic paper from Hobby Lobby.

3. I bought cute Christmas paper, stickers, and embellishments.

4. I cut 24 squares that were 2 1/4 inches.

5. I glued the paper squares to the magnetic paper and cut out the squares again.

6. I used punched out circles to put number stickers (1-24).

7. I inked the edges of the circles and squares.

8. I added embellishments to some of the squares.

9. My amazing husband drilled holes on the top of the pan so that I could thread ribbon to hang it on the wall.

You can put treats in each cup. I am going to put a piece of paper that has something for us to do for the day. Such as bake cookies, watch a Christmas movie, look at Christmas lights, make hot chocolate, etc.......

The finished project, hanging on my wall.

Craft Night- Believe

My Aunt Jan invited me to go with her to a craft night to make signs that say "Believe." It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot too. It especially felt good to finish a project in one sitting.

Pumpkin Dinner

Here is our dinner Garrett and I ate on Halloween. We cleaned out the inside of the pumpkin and through in all kinds of delicious food.

Bone Bread sticks

I went to my friend's house for a Halloween party. I made bread sticks for our dinner. I tied the ends of the bread sticks into knots so that it would look like a bone. The only problem was that I let the bread rise too long so they got a little big. They tasted good though.

Halloween Rice Krispy Treats

I wanted to make a treat so I decided to spice up rice krispy treats. After making a normal batch of rice krispy treats I cut them into rectangles. I dipped them into melted white chocolate and sprinkled them with Halloween sprinkles. We gave them to the families Garrett home teaches (people from church) so we only got to eat one each. But what we did eat tasted delicious.

Glass Etchings

I was trying to figure out something fun Garrett and I could do/make for a wedding gift for our friends. I found the idea to etch on glass cookware. So Garrett and I went searching for the perfect pan, contact paper, and armour etch. After searching we found the contact paper and armour etch at Michaels.

The supplies you will need for the etching includes:

1. Armor Etch (Michaels); I bought mine with a 50% off coupon.
2. Contact Paper (Laminating sheets, found at Michaels with a 40% coupon)
3. Exacto knife (razor blade)
4. tape
5. Template (We printed off the writing from Word)
6. foam/ paint brush

Garrett and I weren't too confident that the etching would turn out or look good so we first etched on glasses that we got at the dollar store. Next, we etched a bread pan for us with our last name on it. Then we etched a pan for a wedding gift.

Here are the steps to etching a glass surface:

1. Wash and clean your glass surface.
2. Cut out a peice of contact paper that is bigger than your stencil. You will want the contact paper to cover quite a bit of your glass surface to protect the glass from coming in contact with the cream where you don't want it. Carefully peel the backing off of the contact paper and stick it onto the glass. Be careful that there aren't bubbles or creases in the contact paper. You may need to rub some of the smaller bubbles out with your fingers.
3. Put your stencil where you want it (on top of the contact paper).

4. Tape down your stencil to keep it in place.

5. Take your Exacto knife and carefully cut out your stencil. You will have to push harder to make sure it cuts through the paper layer and the contact paper.

6.Remove the contact paper where you want your glass to be etched.


7. Paint the etch cream over the glass you would like etched. We left the cream on for about 10-15 minutes. You can also reuse the etching cream. So when the time is up scrape it back into the bottle.

8. Then leaving the contact paper on your vase, rinse off the cream with water. Be careful where you rinse your cream off. The package cautions you from using porcelain sinks since the cream may damage the surface.

9. When the glass is clean peel off the contact paper.
*** When etching a pan you need to etch the bottom of the pan, this means that you will have to etch the name backwards so that when you look at it from the top you can read the name correctly.

Here is our finished bread pan:

Homemade Crayons

I have been trying to think of something I can give my students for Christmas and for Valentine's day. I was searching around the blogging world and found a great idea and the best part about it was that I had all the supplies and didn't have to spend a cent.

In my class I have a bucket of old crayons. I always find crayons laying around my classroom so I throw them in the bucket or students put their old crayons in the bucket that they don't want anymore. Most of the crayons are broken and very dull. Thus, creating a difficult time coloring with the crayons. I thought it would be fun to "recycle" the crayons and make something useful again. I found this idea over at Making Memories... One fun thing after another.

Here are the instructions to making cute homemade crayons. They are so easy, fun, and exciting!

* Make sure all the paper is removed (Garrett discovered that removing the paper is easiest by slicing the paper with an x-acto knife).

* You can use any kind of baking pan. I used a silicone one that has six heart shapes in them. (Thanks to my mother-in-law)

* Add like colors. I think it looks neat when you mix the same colors but one color is a darker shade. It makes for a cool effect!

* Bake in a 200 degree oven for about 30 minutes. The bigger the pieces the longer the cooking time.

* Remove from the oven and let them cool completely!

* Once cool, pop them out of the pans.

I put two in a sandwich bag and tied a ribbon around them to give to my students. Hopefully they will appreciate them. I sure had fun making them.