Remembrance Ornaments
I’m calling these “Remembrance Ornaments” because they show what level/age your child is at for their creation and because it’s fun to see how your kid has changed over the years and how ornaments have improved. 
You can also add as many elements as your child wants. My son had a friend over today and he was excited to do a craft with us. He was much more patient and clean than my son!!
*Oh, and don’t forget to put your child’s name and the year on the back of the ornaments!
Before our friend arrived I prepped the table. Our local newspaper also prints the paper in town. After running the newspaper they have rolls of newspaper paper left over that they recycle. My husband grabbed me a roll and we put it on the table whenever we’re going to paint. I also used painter’s tape to secure the paper.
Materials I used:
Scrapbook paper (or any heavy-weight paper)
Hot Glue
Paint
Glitter
Glitter Glue
Sequins
Ribbon
Felt
*I used what I already had on hand. Feel free to do a lot or do something simple.
First the boys got painting aprons on and rolled up their sleeves then they got painting.
First Ornament:
We did hand prints in paint on red scrapbook paper. Then the boys wanted to use glitter glue. I put the sticks on before they used the glitter glue. My son’s friend was much better at taking directions to try to get glitter on the sticks.
Second Ornament:
They painted on red scrapbook paper again, used glitter glue, and then we used felt instead of sticks for a wreath boarder. Our friend wanted to put bells on his (sorry I forgot to take a picture) and on my son’s (he was finished with the craft by then) I just put red glitter glue on the wreath like berries.
Third Ornament:
Our friend just wanted to keep painting and painting which was great! So I gave him yellow paper, he wanted to use red paint. So he painted it red and then he wanted to put glitter on it. Gold and red. I originally thought this would be a star because the paper was yellow but then decided to make a traditional ornament shaped ornament! I even cut a rectangle out of some of the extra paper to make it look more like a ball ornament.
Heritage Ornament:
Two years ago my husband and our son took four generation pictures with his dad and grandpa and last year I made an ornament for my husband’s grandparents using those pictures. Well I forgot to mail it and dug it out with our Christmas stuff. My son pulled the ribbon out so I had to do some quick repairs on it but it’ll make it into the package for sure this year. This is a two-sided ornament.
Hiding Presents
Now to be honest I haven’t been a mother long… in the way that some people are. This is my third Christmas as a mother so it hasn’t been hard to hide Christmas presents but it has me worried for the future; where will I hide Christmas presents? Currently my husband’s and child’s presents are in our office closet, which is truly the only place I can think of right now, except our garage mounded with boxes from our move. And I would be tempted to hide gifts out there if I wasn’t pregnant and waddling around.
I have no idea where my dad hid our presents, I think maybe at his office at work. My husband and his brothers were angels, and I mean it. I didn’t know people like them existed. Their parents told them where the presents were and asked them not to look. Did they look? No. Angels… In his family if you even picked up your present it went back to the store. I love to shake my presents; one of the hardest things about our marriage at first was that I couldn’t touch my presents. I did a lot of pouting. In fact the first time I shook a present my husband’s eyes got as big a frying pans and he was completely shocked. That’s when I learned the no touching, no shaking rule; it was a sad day.
So I am interested. Where do you hid your Christmas gifts and what are your rules? Shaking is okay? Open them with a butter knife so the paper isn’t damaged? No touching?
24 Days until Christmas
23 shopping days! Are you freaking out? Are you done? Almost done? Not even started? Well true to my earlier post I plan on being done shopping this Saturday. Then I just have to mail out Christmas cards, and out of town presents, and wrap the gifts I’ve bought. We also already put up our Christmas tree and decorations, granted we don’t have much in the way of decorations yet but what we have is up! We waited until the day after Thanksgiving to put up the tree and pull out the decorations but I was surprised to see how many friends put up trees before Thanksgiving… interesting. I guess because that was not allowed at my house growing up I just assumed the vast majority of people waited but I seem to have a lot of impatient friends!
I am excited for the first day of December, Christmas is coming and I’m getting closer to my due date. I hope you all are excited to read reviews on breast pumps and nursing bras! Just kidding… kind of. But before the baby comes you can look forward to more posts on baked goods, holiday crafts, and reviews. I know you’re excited! If any of you have any request on post topics, or a product I should review feel free to leave a comment and let me know. Or send me an e-mail at: domesticwonder dot gmail dot com!
My First Turkey Adventure
Well as you all know this was my first Thanksgiving in charge of the turkey, it was big, and daunting and I took it out of the freezer 3 days too late. But it was in the fridge for 3 days so we had to thaw half the turkey.
Wednesday night I put the turkey in cool water, for 2 hours; changing the water several times. It felt quite thawed and I was really tired because I knew we’d be up at 4am getting it in the oven. So I put it back in the fridge and at 4am my wonderful husband got up with me because I didn’t think I could mess with turkey insides because of my pregnant status. I was right.
After about half an hour of thawing the inside of the turkey with more water submersion and after my husband pulled out the neck, etc I lost it. I was starving and the only thing I could smell was turkey blood and raw meat… yuck. I went running for the bathroom while my husband finished the turkey preparations. The turkey got in the over about 10 to 5am when all was said and done and was done in plenty of time for our appointed party/food time at our friend’s house. Yay! Glad it’s over and the turkey was really yummy. I am thankful for pop-up timers!
Apple Raspberry Pie
I have this broken up into two parts, the crust and filling. I hope you enjoy and make some yummy pie this Thanksgiving!
Pie Crust -makes a total of 4 pie crusts
Crust Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup Crisco
1/2 cup cold water (or Sprite)
Directions:
1. Sift flour add shortening and salt.
2. Cut together.
3. Add cold water a little at a time and mix with fork until dough holds together.
*Don’t overwork dough.
4. Lightly flour counter and rolling pin
5. Take out a handful of dough (about the size of an orange)
6. Coat ball of dough with flour and roll out to thickness of 1/8 in-1/16 in and size of pie pan
7. Put dough in pan, pat in and cut off extra
I found this filling recipe on Allrecipes.com. It was originally a crisp that I converted to a pie and I made just a few changes.
*This filling make for a really big pie. I used my largest pie pan and it was still mounded, this could make 2 smaller pies.
Filling Ingredients:
4 apples
1 cup raspberries
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp flour
Directions
1. Core, peel and slice apples. I used my apple peeler/corer.
2. Put apples, raspberries, brown sugar, and flour in a large bowl and mix together.
3. Pour into pie crust.
4. Add another crust on top, be sure to slice some marks in the top so the juice has somewhere to go.
5. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes or until crust browns.
Thanksgiving Cooking Questions Answered
Thank you so much for those of you who gave advice on thawing and cooking turkey, because it was badly needed! I was doing some turkey day research and found this site: Diana’s Desserts. There was some great information there and I thought I’d share!
Also, for those of you who saw and acted on my Free Christmas Cards post – good job! I just ordered mine and now they are charging a very small shipping fee (less than $4) but the offer is still good and going strong until November 30th so be sure to check it out and get your Christmas Cards for a steal! You can click on my post link above to to go straight to the site click here for Freebies 4 Mom.
Thanksgiving Week
I’m a little freaked out… I’m in charge of the turkey this Thanksgiving, and I’ve never cooked one… did I mention it’s a 25-pounder, that’s frozen? As of midnight last night we moved it to the fridge… I wonder how long it takes a turkey to thaw. Should I leave it out on the counter today and then put it back in the fridge tonight? *Shakes head*
Who knows. Anyway if any of you have any turkey tips I’d love to hear them along with any turkey recipes!
I have to admit I’m feeling a lot of pressure, I mean, the turkey is the main part of the meal right? Turkey and the mashed potatoes are my favorite dishes at Thanksgiving along with rolls – yum! What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish? This week I’ll be posting my favorite recipes for yummy holiday food: rolls, pie, and I’ll report on my first turkey-baking adventure.
Reindeer Ornaments
Okay, just for the record I’m not trying to give you holiday confusion with Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff all mixed together, but if you wanted to make these ornaments I thought it best to share them before Christmas trees were put up and if you are like me, the day after Thanksgiving the tree will go up and that leaves zero time for my ornament posts… now, on with the post:
I remember growing up we had candy cane reindeer ornaments on our Christmas tree. This year we were looking to save some money and so I decided to make our ornaments and among them I HAD to include the reindeer!
What you need:
Candy Canes
Pipe Cleaner
Pom Pom Balls for noses
Googly Eyes
Ribbon (optional)
Bells (optional)
Hot Glue Gun
I did some more traditional reindeer with the peppermint candy canes.
And I also did some fun, wacky reindeer with cherry candy canes.
My main reason for doing this was that I couldn’t find an all-red set of pom poms. I think as Christmas gets closer you’ll be able to find them. I also only made one Rudolf, so there is only one traditional reindeer with a red nose, the rest have different colored noses. So I thought I’d go all out and have multi-colored, fun reindeer.
How to make Reindeer:
1. Get your pipe cleaner and wrap it around the top of the candy cane twice, then twist the top to secure it. Shape into antlers.
2. Glue on eyes.
3. Glue on nose.
At this point you can call it good and hang these cute guys on your tree. I decided it would be fun to hang them and have them look like they were flying. So the rest of these steps are optional.
4. Cut a fairly long piece of ribbon (be sure to cut the end at an angle) thread on a bell.
5. Pull bell to the middle of the ribbon and wrap around the reindeer’s neck twice then knot.
6. Knot the end of the ribbon. Be sure to leave enough room that you can hang the reindeer on your tree!
You’re done! Doing the ribbon and bells does get time consuming. I ended up doing bells on half the reindeer and just ribbon on the rest. Feel free to even out antlers or curl them at this point. I also did two cyclops reindeer with funny antlers. Have fun!
Gratitude Wreath
I saw this on No Time for Flashcards and thought it would be a WONDERFUL activity for Thanksgiving and would be an easy and fun activity to do after the big feast is over and people are settling down, or in the days ahead to talk about the meaning of Thanksgiving and what it means to be thankful.
On the No Time for Flashcard’s wreath they say thank you in several languages but I thought it would be fun to have our family write down things we are thankful for in our lives.
What you need:
Construction Paper
Glue
Crayons/Pen
Paper Plate
Scissors
1. Trace Hands
2. Cut out hands and write what you are thankful for on them. While I cut out hands my husband worked with our son to write down things he was thankful for.
3. Cut out the middle of your paper plate.
4. Glue finished hands on plate. I used hot glue so we didn’t have to wait long before our son got to play with the wreath. We also put ours on our harvest display, it’s a little big for the pine tree but that’s okay! We also put our hand turkey from yesterday on the top of the wreath.
Hand Turkey
My little boy loves drawing turkeys with his hands so I decided we’d make them really look like turkeys… well kind of. I still don’t know of any multi-colored turkeys but that’s okay!
What you need:
Construction Paper
Scissors
Glue,
Crayons
Hands
1. Choose what color you want your turkey feathers to be.
2. Trace hands on construction paper.
3. Cut out hands and layer on top of each other with glue in between each layer.
4. Cut out an “8″ shape of whatever color you want your turkey’s body to be.
5. Glue to turkey feathers.
6. Cut corner off orange or yellow paper for a beak and a heart shape out of red paper for a waddle.
7. Glue beak and waddle, draw eyes with black crayon.
8. Cut out legs and color (optional).
9. Let dry!
