A Wreath (a franklin)

I know, I know, bad title joke. We just couldn't stop saying it, so I thought I'd share our silliness with you! I like to think of it as my service to society; making people everywhere feel a little better about themselves by showing how odd their family COULD be. You're welcome.

Today we made fabric wreaths. This is a great craft because it's easy, not messy and a great way to re purpose those old clothes with stains and holes. The hardest part for me was finding a wire hanger. I still have "No More Wire Hangers" echoing through my head. Note to parents, don't let your 10yr old kid watch the film! Thanks for the mental scar Mom.

What you need:
Wire hanger or pipe cleaner for wee little ones
Fabric cut into strips about 1 inch wide and 4 inches long

First shape the hanger into a circle. We untwisted ours and wrapped it half around itself to make the circle smaller and left the hook part as is so we had an easy way to hang them.

For the munchkins we shaped the pipe cleaner in a circle and used a piece of ribbon as a hanger.

Once you have your circle, simply tie the fabric strips on until the wreath is full.

Being as Danielle doesn't know how to make a knot yet, I did the looping part and then let her pull the ends to make it tight.


This goes surprisingly fast. Molly had her's done in about 15 min. You can then add a little bit of "flair" to hang in the center (ornament, candy cane, picture of the munchkins,etc).

And look, Sam didn't eat them!!!!!

Glue Ornaments

This is about as thrifty and easy as you can get for ornaments! The best part is if the toddler snags one off the tree and runs to a corner to eat it for a snack, it won't put him into toxic shock!

Simply draw designs on a piece of wax paper with some glue (Sam seems to enjoy the "bouquet" of RoseArt's non-toxic washable school glue). Then cover the glue with colored sugar (you can buy it in the baking isle or make your own with granulated sugar and a touch of food color). Let them dry for 24 hours and then peel off the paper. Add a ribbon to tie it to the tree/mantel/door knocker and viola Christmas memories!

FYI: if you don't have to worry about mini eating machines, you can always use glitter or tiny beads. Also you can color the wax paper first then cut around the shape, instead of peeling it off, for a neto stained glass effect.

Frosty The MINTman-Starring Molly!

Yes it's true, that really is a TEENAGER SMILING! (she's going to kill me for this picture) The secret, my friends, is unbelievably cute snowman mints that you make yourself.

Here's what you need:

1 Tbsp softened butter (don't substitute)
1 Tbsp light corn syrup
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 tsp mint extract
1 cup powdered sugar

Mix together butter, syrup, salt, and mint, then gradually add the powdered sugar.

When it becomes too stiff to stir, knead with your hands.

Form dough into little balls to build snowmen. We added food coloring to some of the dough to make little hats and accessories for them. It turned out to be a giant pain in the arse so we turned to our handy dandy food markers and drew on buttons and just ate the rest of the colored mint dough. I do so love tasty mistakes.

After you have your little snowmen all decorated, put them in the fridge to harden.

O Christmas Tree, How Felty Are Thy Branches

I'm a weeeeeee bit behind in my postings so be prepared for a landslide of Christmasy posts. Oh and a couple Hanukkah/Chanukah/ חנוכה treats too (whoot bonus holiday! See, there are advantages to having a Jewish mother). Anyhooo, as we all know we have a couple of mini-munchkins, one of which thinks all things should be put into his mouth. Like so...

Sam eating the end of the marker

Sam eating his shoe
Sam eating Puff Paint (I'll blog that later)

So we always have the challenge of finding crafts that won't kill off the toddler if (more likely WHEN) he tries to eat the project. Fortunately, I ran across a great post at That Artist Woman's blog for Felt Christmas trees. I loved this project because you get to turn scraps and trash into something beautiful and my son can't die from it! It only took about 10 mins to prep everything. Please see her blog for detailed instructions (including a loverly template). We had major camera malfunction so there's no step by step to show here. But, here's the basics of it.

All you need is an empty toilet paper roll, some felt, glue and beads (we also used cupcake sprinkles). You cut the toilet paper roll so the end comes to a point and glue them together. Then cut varying sized circles out of the felt. We used 2 different greens and some white for snow. Next cut an "X" in the center of each felt circle and slide them over the TP roll. Then glue beads on as ornaments. As I stated we also placed a line of glue on the "branches" and sprinkled cupcake sprinkles over it, much easier for little hands. Only thing that's left is to add an Angel!

What, you didn't know that angels had invisible heads? Oh yes, it's a new plan used to ensure that they stay humble. If you can't recognize their faces then you can't keep track of who's been on Oprah more often. Brilliant, don't you think?

Be Frugal or Burn in HELL!!!

Ok, so maybe it's not quite that bad, but I did have frugalism burned into my brain by Pastor John Hagee. Even though he says his church is a non-denominational evangelical church, he can preach some fire and brimstone like a Baptist preacher at a Wiccan convention, so you may want to wear a helmet to avoid head dents from bible thumping. Anyhoo, I saw one of his "keeper of the home" sermons and the point he made was that being careless with your money is the same as saying your life is insignificant. For example, let's say every night I over cook and end up throwing out $1.00 worth of leftovers. It may not seem like much, but let's say that my husband makes $10 an hour (hey, I like easy math, lol), after a year, I have thrown out $365 or 36 hours of his life.

Take a moment and let it sink in, I'll wait......

• $1 per day in trash=1 work week wasted
• 1 week that could've been spent, lying on the beach
• enough money for movie tickets for you and 34 of your best friends
• a super sweet new pair of shoes
• a Wii

Just think, all this could be yours if you'd just eat your leftovers.

So, let's say you're one of those people (like me) who enjoy a cup O' flavorishous java in the mornings and let's say that every morning on the way to work you stop and buy yourself an ex-large iced mocha latte with 2 shots of raspberry (not that I did that every morning for 2 high strung years). Now let's say that each cup of caffeine love cost $4 (yes, I'm pricing low, because "I can't handle the truth"). So $4 per day, 22 days a month, 12 months a year comes to a whopping.... hold on tight, this is ugly...

$1056.

Hurts, doesn't it? If you make it at home the cost is $.72 per day for the big as my head jumbo sized cup, or about $190 per year and a savings of $866. Which, btw, is enough to pay for a plane ticket from Los Angeles, CA to Abu Dhabi.

Please understand that being Frugal is not the same as being Cheap. Frugal is making wise choices with your money. Cheap is putting so much importance on money that you can't let any of it leave your hands. Let me share a few examples of the difference:

Frugal: making coffee at home. (click here for a few recipes)

Cheap: adding dirt to water to make it brown and trying to pass it off as coffee.

Frugal: wearing a sweatshirt and socks around the house and turning the thermostat down a notch.

Cheap: cutting down your neighbor's tree to use as kindling for a bonfire in your living room so you don't have to use the heater at all.

Frugal: mixing washing soda with your automatic dish soap to give it a boost and save some money.

Cheap: having the dogs lick the dishes "clean".

Frugal: taking turns carpooling with a friend to work or trips to the store.

Cheap: roof surfing the city bus "Teen Wolf" style to get around paying for a bus pass.

Frugal: making your own bath salts (click me for how tos)

Cheap: scrubbing up with spit and a washcloth.

Frugal: adding shredded veggies to ground beef to stretch the meal.

Cheap: adding shredded carboard found behind the grocery store to ground beef to stretch the meal.

Now that we all have a better grasp of frugalism, I challenge you all to find one simple way to save some money!

Olfactory Inspiration

What do you get when you combine a smoker's chest of drawers, two hole filled socks, and the last remaining lavender herb bag from your hippy days?

Lavender Sachets!

One of the fun things about moving is that unpacking is a bit like Christmas. It's amazing the things you never knew you owned until you unpack them from a moving box. I was lucky enough to uncover a stash of holey socks and the aforementioned bag O lavender, with which I was amazed of the power of Zip-lock! I opened the bag and instantly the fragrance carried me away to a loverly meadow filled with butterflies, fairies, white unicorns, chocolate waterfalls, and Jonny Depp dressed in his best grunge undershirt giving me a piano serenade ......
What you can see him too? Told you that stuff was potent!

Anyhoo, my BIL gave us a wonderful chest of drawers that unfortunately had absorbed a bit of Essence du Cigarette no5 (I quit smoking earlier this year so I'm now one of those OBNOXIOUS people who can smell cigarette smoke from 50 yards out). We cut the socks into 4 inch-ish squares (remember they stretch), piled lavender in the middle, pulled up the sides, gave it a twist to form a ball with the herbally goodness, and wrapped gumbands around them so they looked like fresh little ghosties. Just toss them in your dresser drawers and you'll have the best smelling undies on the block!

With A Banjo On My Knee

As stated here, Khris and his guitar have been making many appearances in the living room. Being as the mini-munchkins think everything their big brothers and sister do is the coolest thing EVER, I decided it was time to make a mini-munchkin guitar upon which they can pluck to their hearts desire, without the threat of elder siblings lobbing off fingers.

I'm sure you all remember making these when you were little, but in case you need a refresher, here's what you do:

First you need a box (about the size of a shoe box), enough construction paper to cover the box(we used 2 pieces), glue, crayons or whatever instrument with which you wish to decorate, rubber bands (to use as strings), and eager munchkins.

I was lucky enough to find all these things waiting for me at the dinning table. FYI: I've found the children to be more artistic if one of them is very slobbery and the other has wild crazy hair.

Now cut a hole out of one piece of paper and use it as a template to mark the hole on your box.

Then just cut it out. No, those are not my kitchen scissors that I'm using because I can't figure out where we packed the paper scissors. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Owoooo a hole! Very cool and artistic-ish.

Time to let the wee artists go crazy! Please note that Sam has decided he's too big for the fat round crayons and is ready to step up to big kid crayons.

If you look closely, you'll notice on his chin the blue crayon crumb evidence proving that, although his taste buds say otherwise, he is NOT ready for big kid crayons.

Remember crayon joy? It looks like this:

Now glue your paper to your "guitar box"

Fold the corners in like you're wrapping a present. If you are a gift bag baby who doesn't know how to fold wrapping paper, just take your paper and box to your local Macy's and for $5 they'll do it for you (and make fun of you all though the holidays).

After giving it a few minutes to dry a bit, stretch your rubber bands around the box to make the "guitar strings". Everyone wave to my mommy who came over just in time to bust me standing on my dinning room chair for that sweet aerial shot 3 pics back. HI MOM!

Musical bliss! She's almost perfected "Stairway to Heaven" too.

Looks like Khris may be ready to trade in his Fender.