Family Updates

Relatives... . AVERT YOUR EYES!!!

If you are a relative of me or my children please close this post...

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Unless you want a gift from your grandchildren/niece/nephew/cousin to not be a surprise

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in turn breaking Paige & Fynn's little hearts

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mmm kay? Close it. Yup. Close it

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Alright, for the rest of you... I wanted to share a little project that the kids and I did Sunday before all of our noses started running. Snowmen ornaments made w/ hand prints. {Warning: they are far from perfect, but cute!}

I love giving Christmas tree ornaments for gifts. Our ornament collection is one of my most prized possessions, and I could tell you where we got, or who we received each ornament from. But the ones I treasure the most are the handmade ones, whether by myself, my mom, or anyone else. My mother (I don't know if I've mentioned this before) is super craft woman. She'd give Martha Stewart a run for her money, except she loathes her, so she wouldn't even compete with the woman. But I digress...

In any case, these were relatively fun and easy ornaments to make. Last year we held a playdate with our mommy group and a bunch of kids and their mom's came over to make these. They didn't turn out quite as well as they did this year (and this year was a bit messy, so you can only imagine!!) Here's what you need:

as many plain glass or plastic ball ornaments as you want to create (we used clear this year, but last year used red & green balls and were just as cute!)

white craft paint

whatever kind of colored paint (or markers) you want to use to embellish

raffia or ribbon for the ties

a wonderful sense of humor

children's hands

Now, take a look at the finished product and then I'll fill you in:

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What you'll need to do is somehow cover your kids hand with paint. I put a bunch of paint on a paper plate and then dunked each kids hand in. Then, somehow get your kid to hold onto the ornament, imprinting their hand print.

Let the handprints dry.

Then, using whatever paint/markers you want, draw a snowman on each finger print. I used those tubes of puff paint that we used back in the day to make t-shirts and other crazy craft projects...

And voila! you're done. And hopefully you've been a little more successful than I was w/ the cuteness factor when it came to the snowmen's hats and scarves :)

But you get the idea. Grandparents eat this stuff up!

And the kids end up being pretty proud as well...

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Now, I will say that with Paige's handprints I had to get a little creative in finding the snowmen...

But as long as you have a sense of humor, and even a trace of a creative eye, I think you'll be fine!

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**you might notice the photos are a bit bigger... with the help of Laura I'm now using Flickr for uploading photos, which is a bit of a change, but I think it'll be a good one! Thanks Laura!