Five Years Coming! Month 6

Halfway through the year and another delicious treat!  For my work Christmas party I whipped together a pumpkin Cheesecake I improvised along the way. 

Here's the recipe:

For the crust I used crushed gingersnaps and melted butter and baked it off and cooled it before I made the cheesecake.  Enjoy!

Snow Globe Soap

When I saw these on pinterest I knew it would be something Fender, mC and I could do together.  I already had glycerin soap on hand it was just a matter of finding small animals to fit in the ice cube trays.  While in Seaside visiting my parents, it was my lucky day when I came across tiny arctic animals (and a few elephants for mC) perfect for this craft!

It's as simple as melting glycerin soap, pouring it into ice cube trays, adding the figurine and topping with shaved white soap (for the snowy ground when they pop out!)  We used sand colored soap for the elephants which turned out the best.  The trick is to wait until the soap sets a bit (30 seconds or so) before adding the animal.  Otherwise they'll sink to the bottom (and look like they're floating to the top).

Like this polar bear that we say is "swimming"

Fender loves washing his hands because it gets him closer to the toy!





Fender's Name Plate

While at Ruffles and Rust we came upon a bin of old alphabet blocks and I decided to make a name plate for Fender.  Jessica and I dug and dug until we found all of the letters for his name.  We even had the man running the booth in on it!  Then after a few minutes we noticed that we had mainly red letters and I got the obsessive thought that they should all be red, so the hunt continued!  We finally found them - all red, but different sizes and styles. 

 I made a snowman, painted him and glued him on top.  I cut out a tree from an old Christmas Decoration, covered it in snow and topped it with a star anise (dC's genius idea!)  Now to find a place to put it!

Christmas in a Vase

I've been seeing these EVERYWHERE!  From pinterest to "enter your favorite blog here."  So while I was at my mom and dad's house in Oregon, I noticed they had a ton of unused vases, which they donated to my cause.  And though they are not vintage apothecary jars, I thought it would be fun to create my own winter scenes for our dining room table!

I used a few of Fender's pine cones from his collection, a piece of wood, dollar store animals, old Christmas decorations, and $2 ornaments to create my scenes.  If the object wasn't glitzy enough I just spray painted it white (or shall I say dC did the painting) and then covered it in glitter!

I think they turned out great and can see myself looking all year long for random little things that will fit inside them for next year. 

Christmas Countdown

  I wanted to make an Advent Calendar this year, but once I was finished with my idea, it looked more like a countdown than a treat filled calendar.

Fender, mC and I were making ornaments using this great homemade clay recipe and the idea came to me that I wanted to make 24 snowflakes and hang them up somewhere in the house.

Once the clay was cooked and cooled, I simply rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters for the shapes.  But before they dried I stamped in numbers and skewered a hole in the top for hanging.  Then I let them dry for 24 hours or so.  DO NOT bake these.  The recipe said you could, and they reacted more like cookies - browning, bubbling and warping!  You can easily get 40 medium sized ornaments out of this dough and it can be painted and sealed!  It costs less than $2 to make a batch!

Fender's race car.  He's really good at rolling out clay!