Salt Dough Ornaments

Hello Dearies!
Hope everything is happy and wonderful in your world. We are super busy  around here. My son has a new study group, the baby has early preschool, which is insane because he’s 1!!!! But I guess that’s how people do it now days. Daughter is in basketball and my hubby has volunteered to coach. Oh and we’re also doing the whole getting ready for Christmas thing because I volunteered to have it at my house. I honestly don’t remember the last day I had to just sit at home and not do stuff. I miss not doing stuff. Haha!
 Ok so first on my projects list is gingerbread houses. My daughter and her friends are making a whole village of these to be auctioned off. They are using the money to put together food boxes for families that that can’t afford the big Holiday dinners that most of us are used to. They are nine years old and they came up with this idea all by themselves (Proud mommy moment). I’ve never done gingerbread before so this is from a kit. One of the moms is amazing at this kind of thing so she’s doing all the baking for the actual house build party. My son didn’t want to be left out so we bought a kit to put together. It was fun and actually pretty easy. The kiddos loved it. They also ate it VERY quickly. I think this thing lasted maybe two days.
 
 The baking I did do myself this week was not for eating. We made salt dough ornaments. The dough is super easy to whip up and to handle. We used cookie cutters for the tradition shapes. Then we used a straw to poke a whole so  we’ll be able to hang them later. At first, we decided to air dry these. Most recipes claim it takes just 24 hours and they are wrong. After 2 days, these suckers were still soft. I put them in the oven at 200 degrees for a couple hours and they came out perfect. Our plan is to paint them but like I said, we’ve been busy I still have some time before Christmas, I’m not too worried.
 Dough recipe is:
 2 cups flour
 1 cup salt
 1 cup water
 Mix until dough forms and then roll out and use cookie cutters to shape.
 My favorite is my baby’s footprint. I always wanted to do those with the older kids but I never got around to it. I love how it turned out.
 
 I’d love to see all of your fun projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Kids Snowflake Ornament

Hello Dearies!
 Hope your December is going well. We have been so busy. I’m looking forward to the holidays but I’m also looking forward to January when all the Holidays stop and things slow down a bit. This mama needs a break
 Anyways, onto todays project. I did these with my kiddos at a school party so I don’t have any before or during shots but the instructions are pretty easy. Still feel free to ask any questions if I confuse you.
 What you will need.
 * Cue tips
 * White construction paper (or whatever color you would like)
 * Glitter (we used silver and red)
 *A photo of your child (or dog, cat, fish, or whomever you like)
 * Glue (plain old Elmers will do just fine)
 * A small amount of string or yarn
 * Scissors
 Step 1: Take your cue tips and glue them onto your construction paper in a circular pattern. This will make your snowflake. You can stagger them so some appear longer or shorter than the others. My daughter (silver one) made them different lengths. My son (red one) did them almost all about the same.
 Step 2: Put extra glue on top of the cue tips and cover with your glitter.
 Step 3: Cut out your photo. (get creative and do different shapes, it doesn’t have to be squares like we did) Then glue photo to the center of your snowflake.
 Step 4: Let dry. Depending on how much glue you use, this may take awhile.
 Step 5: Cut out your snowflake. You can see from the photos that my kiddos took two very different approaches to this step
 Step 6: Tie a string onto one of the cue tips on your snowflake and you are ready to hang!

 I’d love to see all of your fun projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Holiday Cards

Hello Dearies!
 Happy holidays! Hope everything is amazing and lovely in your worlds. My sister is hosting Thanksgiving this year so I have this holiday off. I just get to show up and eat. Woohoo! Instead of spending the week in preparations for the big meal, I’m working on designing this years Christmas cards. I like to use photo editing programs on my computer to make my own. Sometimes I just drop my photos into premade templates I purchase from online digi scrapers. Other time I use a digi scrapbooking kit to fully design my own. It is really fun to design your own and it saves lots of money. Cards you order online or through photolabs are between 2 to 6 dollars a piece. That adds up real quick when you send out 75 + cards a year (I have a lot of friends. Haha) Making them myself allows me to order prints at only 15 cents a piece. That is HUGE HUGE savings. My new card (this years) will be a surprise but I want to share my past cards to maybe add some inspiration to your card designing. I think my cards get prettier the older my kids get

 Well that's it for me this week. I hope that all of you that are celebrating travel safe and have fun and enjoy some yummy food!

Getting ready for Christmas presents

Hello Dearies! Christmas can be expensive. Especially when you have a lot of friends. I think it's fun to make baskets for Christmas so to help with the cost, I start collecting things a bit early. All baskets will have certain matching basics but then each person will get one individual item just for them. This year each one included a coffee mug, hot cocoa mix, specialty chocolates, yummy dip mix, homemade bath salts and sugar scrubs, a handmade goats milk bar of soap, fuzzy socks and a candle. 

I am then making a special piece of jewelry and a crocheted item for each girl that will be customized to their favorite things and colors. For example, one of my friends is a hunter's wife so I made her a deer's head bracelet and some camo finger-less gloves. Another friend is a new mommy so I made a necklace with her child's initials and a nursing scarf. Another friend is a total Potterhead so I made her some Slytherin colored slippers and a Harry Potter owl charm bracelet. 

Doing baskets that include a lot of items are fun and the girls love them. They are also very affordable for me. The base items (that everyone gets) cost me under 15 dollars. When I add the other homemade items, each basket ends up costing about 20-30 dollars. I made 10 baskets this year. I kept track of my reciepts and the whole cost ended up being just about $265. since I had been picking up little things here and there throughout the year, the most I ever spent at one time was 32 dollars. I didn't spend a bulk amount all at once so it never hurt my bank. I plan on making baskets again next year and I would recommend them to anyone that likes DIY-ing and putting their own spin on things.

Since my friends read my blog, I'm not including any finished photos but this is a photo of some of the basic items I had ready for me when I was putting the baskets together :)   

Ugly Christmas Sweater

Hello Dearies! If I had been given a warning that there was an ugly Christmas sweater party happening, I would have sewn it together nicely but I was told the morning of. I had too many things to do that day, so I quickly made a design, cut it out in felt and used hot glue to stick it all together. It's not as fun as elaborate as I would have liked but it was cute and it stuck together way better than I thought it would. There was really only one spot that had started to peel off when my husband got home from his party so this project counts as a win!

Don't skip Thanksgiving!

Unless of course, you live somewhere where Thanksgiving isn’t a thing… In that case forget it. Haha.
 Hello Dearies!
 Where I live, all of the stores and television commercials go directly from Halloween to Christmas. It is a lovely time of year but with Christmas being shoved in our faces so soon, sometimes I feel all Christmas-ed out before the Holiday even gets here. Plus, I LOVE Thanksgiving! It’s such an amazing holiday. It’s all about being surrounded by loved ones and eating yummy food. Why would you ever want to skip that? Since moving into our new place, I have super super excited about decorating and I’m making an effort to do a little something different every month. My wooden pumpkins will stay out. I have these cute little turkeys that the kiddos made and this fun fall banner I made with my scrapbooking club.
 
I want to do more so I have been browsing pinterest for fun Ideas and I want to share my favorites here.
 The Thankful Tree. This is super cute and I think everyone should have one these out all year long. It’s always good to remind yourself of all of the good things you have in your life. This tree would do just that. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/179440366381121722/
 Felt Cutlery Holders. These I love because I could do this all year round in different colors for each season. It’s a very fun way to add some beautiful color to your table. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/283937951480864936/
 Giant Wooden Tags. How awesome are these? They would work perfectly on my new orange door :) https://www.pinterest.com/pin/507429082989495356/
 Wooden Pumpkins. These are so cute. I have loads and loads of extra wood from the new house so this project is totally happening https://www.pinterest.com/pin/430656783097202725/
 And lastly these awesome blocks that switch from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Very cool! https://www.pinterest.com/pin/198088083587698205/  
I’d love to see your projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Tile Coasters

Hello Dearies!
Hope all is well in your worlds. I scheduled this post because I am currently in the hospital with my youngest tiny human. He’s having a quick surgery on his nose. It’s not super serious but I always get so anxious when the kiddos have to go to the doctor. Hospital waiting rooms are just the worst. Please send happy thoughts! Anyways, onto today's project. One of the big things I did at my house was add a tile boarder and back splash to my kitchen. It looks really really cool plus it is functional. My kitchen (and the rest of the whole old house) is crooked so we had to actually cut into the wall to get the cabinets in properly. They weren’t huge noticeable cuts. Just an inch here and there and the tile covered up the edges perfectly. I ordered 100 each of the 4 inch and 2 inch tile. The four inch tile had 5 of each design. The 2 inch tile had 2 of each design. It took a LONG time for me to decide how I wanted them on my wall. Like a really long time. I’m so indecisive.

The hardest part was doing the backsplash behind my oven. The spot where my oven sits and the space above it are off so they don't line up properly and also there is an outlet there so I couldn’t do a perfectly symmetrical design. In the end though, I was very happy with how it looked.

After I was done with my wall, I had so many extra tiles. I’m still searching for fun things to do with them all. First up is coasters.  I also had some slate coasters that were cracked and busted that I wanted to fix up so I’m showing those here too.
What you’ll need
*ceramic tiles. I used 2 inch tile and some 4 inch slate coasters
*ceramic adhesive. It’s very possible that other adhesives would work for this too. I had this left over from all the tiling I’ve done and didn’t want to waste it.
*cork board. The stuff I got came in 12 inch by 12 inch sheets.
*scissors
** optional plastic butter knife.
 
First measure out your cork board. Since the coasters I was making were 4 inch squares, my measurement worked out perfectly to cut nine squares out of 1 sheet.

If you are using multiple small tiles like I am, pick out your design ahead of time. For indecisive me, this took longer than it should have. Haha!

After you make up your mind on a design, glue your tile onto your corkboard squares. This glue took FOREVER to squeeze out. It was a giant pain in the butt. That’s why I used the plastic butter knife to spread the glue out.
 
 With ceramic glue you have to press down very firmly to make sure the glue is touching all corners of the tile. Once all the tiles are in place, allow glue to dry at least 24 hours before you use your coasters. Aren't these fun? I really love how they turned out.

 I’d love to see your projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie