Ornaments as gifts

I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas, or other holiday that you may celebrate. I just love the times that family gets together because we have such a good time.

I made these ornaments for my mother-in-law. She loves things that are made with the kids' hand prints on them. I started doing it when they were little and since they just turned 13, I'm starting to run low on ideas that will still work.

When I say I'm running low on ideas on the hand print gifts I am totally serious. We have done everything I could think of on my own....reindeer with hand print antlers, hand print Christmas wreath, footprint fish, footprint ghosts, to name a few. It's been so hard to think of new things that when they were still little I put paint on their little butts and sat them on a t-shirt and turned those prints into butt-erflies. LOL Thank goodness for other crafters out there to keep me going with this. I wonder how much longer I can get my kids to still participate in this madness. HA!

Anyway, thank goodness for pinterest! ....which is where I saw the idea for these.

This is a Rudolph ornament made with a thumb print.

And these are snowmen ornaments made with three fingers. Their hands are too big now to do it any differently -- unless, of course, if I had bought giant ornaments for them to do these on. lol

I also made her a set of coasters but didn't get a picture taken of them before they got wrapped up. Then I forgot to do it after presents were opened. But, picture this: I used tumbled marble tiles from Lowe's that were about 4" X 4". I printed out a variety of pictures of the grand kids (both our kids and Dax's sister's kids). Using mod podge I glued them to the tiles. The pictures didn't take up the whole tile but I mod podge-ed the whole tile so that it would all be sealed good. I think I went over the top of the pictures with the mod podge three times to be sure to get them well attached and well sealed. I hope that putting a drink on them won't mess them up. (fingers crossed). But, my mother-in-law liked them. She couldn't wait to take them to work and show them off!

Just In Time

I had made this wreath weekend before last. However, I was too lazy to go and dig through my ribbon so that I could hang it.


Well, since we had family coming over the weekend I finally got around to finishing it on Saturday morning. I mean, I wouldn't want the Christmas decorations up too early. LOL

I just love these wreaths made with the ornaments but I'm too cheap frugal to buy one. I bought these ornaments a couple of years ago after Christmas when they were on sale for about $1 a box. I've had them just sitting around waiting for me to do this, but the last time I tried, the ornaments kept falling off.

I saw a tutorial somewhere (I can't for the life of me remember where) that showed stringing the ornaments on an old coat hanger that had been made into a circle. Could it get any easier than that?!

I hot glued the tops onto all of the ornaments and let them set before I strung them onto the coat hanger. Seriously, that took longer than anything else.

I wish I had known this two years ago when I bought these things. I could have had this wreath a long time ago!!

Oh, and here's a little lesson that I learned along the way. It might save you some drama. Either do this with your wreath laying flat on some surface or attach one side to something to hold it up if you want it up. My ornaments are the thin, breakable ones. I let one of them drop too quickly and it broke when it hit the other ornaments. One of my daughters was at my feet sweeping up that mess when I dropped one side of the hanger and about 10 ornaments fell on and around her. We have cement floors so you can imagine the shattering of ornaments that was going on around the two of us. 8-) Lesson learned!

Pancake Balls

I've done it again. I've managed to go ages without posting. Shame on me!!!  In my (slight) defense, though, Dax and I were out of town for 9 or 10 days. Does that count? lol

Anyway, I have lots of things in the works, but nothing finished quite yet......and honestly, I'm running out of time to get some of them finished. (read: Christmas gift giving panic is setting in!!!)

But, aside from that, there was this going on.


For their birthday, the kids got gift cards to Target. While Dax & I were gone, my parents took them to spend their gift cards. Addison got one of these:

 It's a cake ball maker. She's made lots of brownie balls and they're great.

Here's a little secret.....if you don't cook them quite as long as the instructions say and leave them a little gooey in the middle, they're like molten lava cakes! Heaven!!

Anyway, the other morning I decided to make banana pancakes because I had bananas that needed to be used but didn't have time for banana muffins. I had seen these banana bread pancakes and decided to give them a try.

And, just to make it completely different, I cooked them in Addison's cake ball maker.

I put a few in a bowl and drizzled syrup over them.


The kids thought they were great, and a little fun since they were in a different shape.