DIY Pocket Calendar Cover

All you need is a pocket calendar with a plastic protector, markers, high quality copy paper and scissors. I found the calendars at the dollar store.

Make sure the calendar has a removable plastic cover.

Open up the calendar and draw around it to mark how big to make the copy paper, cut out.

Have your little artist color a fun picture. If you have loads of friends and family that would appreciate this gift, you can have your child draw one drawing and then make color photo copies. You might also consider cutting up artwork that comes home from school to fit inside the protector.

Slip paper around the calendar and place it back into the plastic protector. Now you have a thoughtful and useful gift that anyone would love to receive and a child would be proud to give!

If you are looking for more gifts kids can make, you won’t want to miss my e-book Gifts Kids Can Make! Kids will have fun making a wooden paper towel holder, and artistic key or jewelry organizer, keepsake magnets, whimsical note cards and a yummy jar mix! The e-book comes with printables and even editable gift tags, perfect for handmade gift giving. The ebook is ready for immediate Download.

You might enjoy browsing my Handmade Gift Guide!

Painted Santa Ornament

To make the Santa you will need one medium size round ornament, paint (flesh color, white, black and red),  Snow Tex by DecoArt, paintbrushes.

Paint a flesh color rectangle on the front of the ornament. It will need at least two coats.

With the end of the paint brush handle make dots for the eyes and nose.

Mix the Snow Tex with a little white paint (about 3:1 ratio) to make it a bit thinner consistency. Paint down the sides of the flesh rectangle and around the top of the ornament.

Paint a mustache, beard and add a small little dot for the mouth. Be very generous with the Snow Tex. It will shrink slightly as it dries.

{Drum Roll} you have a darling Santa Ornament.

If your looking for a Holiday Craft for younger kids you might enjoy this tutorial for these Christmas idea’s pictured below.

Pom pom ornaments

Paper candy canes

I promise you next year when you get the decorations out your child will grab for the decorations they created first; all while telling you exactly what you did together to create it. This is how I create memories while spreading holiday cheer.

Now I’d love to know, how do you spread real cheer with your holiday decorating? Show me with your photos! Click “Add me” in the Cheer Tree below to upload your holiday decorating photos and share them with your Twitter followers and Facebook friends. Be sure to click on “Special Offers” to unwrap the hidden coupons and deals exclusively from Sears. Keep checking throughout the holidays–new deals are unlocked every day! For all your holiday decorating needs and solutions, don’t forget to visit Sears and discover real deals, real cheer!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Sears. The opinions and text are all mine.

We painted the cans, drilled holes in the sides and added  wire handles.  The numbers were cut on the Silhouette out of white vinyl.

We will fill the cans with a tiny sweet or trinket for each child and then a slip of paper with an idea for a family activity.

50 Family Activities

1. Go Ice Skating
2. Make Christmas cards
3. Go Christmas caroling or sing Christmas songs at home
4. Give everyone manicure & pedicures
5. Let each child choose a favorite dinner
6. Push the furniture back and dance
7. Watch It’s a Wonderful Life or the How the Grinch Stole Christmas
8. Play a game
9. Decorate Christmas cookies and share with neighbors
10. Have a special friend for dinner
11. Make Christmas ornaments
12. Make hot chocolate and read Christmas stories
13. Make a Gingerbread house
14. Make a simple pine cone bird feeder
15. Have a special breakfast
16. String popcorn and cranberries
17. Play cards
18. Make a paper ring garland
19. Have a fireside meal (we use this and make grilled cheese and apple pies in the fireplace)
20. Cut snowflakes for the windows
21. Make and hang beautiful wrapping paper stars
22. Drive around to see neighborhood Christmas lights (put hot cocoa in to go cups and put on pjs)
23. Go to a holiday movie
24. Roast marshmallows in the fireplace
25. Offer to help an elderly neighbor with their Christmas decorations
26. Work together as a family to make some handmade gifts
27. Make decorative sugar cookies
28. Purchase gifts for a needy child or family
29. Invite friends over in their pajamas to read Christmas  stories
30. Play in the snow, build a snowman
31. Go for a walk at night and look at the stars
32. Try out these printable crafts
33. Make paper candy canes
34. Make some yummy peppermint candy covered popcorn
35. Make gift tags and wrapping paper
36. Make super simple sugar cookies
37. Make snow paint
38. Make homemade stickers
39. Make homemade playdough
40. Make a pie and take it to a friend
41. Have ice cream sundaes with this special ice cream topping
42. Make a candy wreath to give to a friend or decorate your own home
43. Make shrinky dinks
44. Have breakfast for dinner (serve smiley pancakes)
45. Make glittery snowflakes
46. Make Candy Cane Mice
47. Make Candy Cane Reindeer
48. Invite Santa for breakfast and serve snowman doughnuts
49. Hand write letters to  friends that live away.
50. Write something nice about each family member on a slip of paper and place it under their pillow

If you would like to make a paper stocking Advent Calendar here are the files you will need for cutting on the Silhouette.

Silhouette Stocking Advent Calendar

If you are cutting by hand here is a pdf.

Paper Stocking Advent Calendar

Cut out stockings and lightly fold on score marks.

Glue about an 2 inch circle of white paper on the back of the stocking.

Fold stocking and glue flap. Allow to dry.

Push in bottom and top flaps of the pillow box.

Glue a ribbon for hanging.

Glue an embellishment to the top if you like. I used a fur trim (two yards will be enough for all the boxes) found at the fabric store for mine. Hot glue to top front.

TaDa! You are ready to countdown to Christmas!

If you would like a Silhouette for Christmas, make sure Santa’s elves know about this  Black Friday Silhouette Deal.

 Details for Black Friday Sale

Exclusive Reader Discount

Gear up for the best Black Friday sale this year – Friday, Nov. 25 through Monday, Nov. 28, save 40% on everything* at silhouetteamerica.com. Best of all you don’t have to wait in any lines or camp out in a tent. Just be sure to visit silhouetteamerica.com before the end of the day on Nov. 28 (MST) and use the promo code SKIP during checkout to save 40% off your entire order*. Everyone else will use the code Black Friday to get 30% off.

* Offer excludes Silhouette CAMEO™, download cards, and gift cards. Promotion valid 11/25/2011 12:00 AM through 11/28/2011 11:59 PM only at silhouetteamerica.com. 30% off sale only includes physical products purchased at silhouetteamerica.com while supplies last.

If you want the CAMEO { and I know you do}  then you have to go to this secret page and enter my code ‘skip’ (it will have a great discount too): http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/blackFridayCameo.aspx

Don’t forget to enter to win the Silhouette Cameo here. It closes tonight!

Linking up with these parties:
1. Tip Junkie- Tip me Tuesday

Jessica from Zakka Life writes…..

Hi, I’m Jessica Okui from Zakka Life and am happy to be here today to kick off Craft Camp.  It’s always truly a pleasure to contribute to one of my favorite craft blogs, Skip to my Lou.

How to Make a Pennant Necklace

This cute little pennant necklace is a great way to introduce sewing to a child.  It gets them familiar with a needle and helps them prepare for making running stitches.  This craft is also a great stash buster for all those felt scraps.  Enjoy.
Supplies:
Bakers twine or Embroidery floss – Embroidery floss is easier to sew through the felt so depending on the age of the child, you might want to use it over the bakers twine.
Felt cut into small triangles
Sewing needle
Scissors

Have child line up their triangles the way they want their necklace to look.  Tie knot on one end of string (refer to picture).

Start sewing on the triangles by pushing the needle through the front side of triangle and coming back up on the other side.

Continue doing this until all triangles are strung. Tie a knot at the end of the last triangle.

My favorite way to finish off a child’s necklace is to make a sliding knot.  The sliding knot lets you adjust the necklace’s length without untying the knot.  With the right-hand end of the necklace, tie a not onto the left-hand side.   Now, take the left-hand end of the necklace and tie a knot onto the right hand side (refer to pictures).  Trim ends.  Done!

Thanks Kate, for sharing!

Kate writes…..

I‘ve discovered lately that its really easy to dye homemade playdough with natural ingredients. We dyed ours using raspberries, rose petals, beetroot, blueberries, turmeric and oak tree bark. Check out the results in the picture below. Pretty good eh?

As well as creating some great playdough it’s also a lovely way to teach kids that some of the most beautiful dyes can be found in your own back yard.

First of all you need to extract your dye:

Raspberries and strawberries

Put a big handful of raspberries and a cup of water in a pan. Bring to the boil then gently simmer on stove for 20 minutes (until liquid has reduced to about half). Once cooled pour through sieve then follow playdough recipe below

Rose petals

Roughly tear up the petals from about six red roses and put in pan with a cup of water. Bring to the boil then gently simmer on stove for 20 minutes (until liquid has reduced to about half). Once cooled pour through sieve then follow playdough recipe below.

Beetroot

Chop up one medium sized beetroot and put in pan with a cup of water. Bring to the boil then gently simmer on stove for 10 minutes. Once cooled pour through sieve then follow playdough recipe below.

Blueberries

Put a big handful of blueberries and a cup of water in a pan. Bring to the boil then gently simmer on stove for 20 minutes (until liquid has reduced to about half). Once cooled pour through sieve then follow playdough recipe below.

Turmeric

Put approx two teaspoons of turmeric in a pan with a cup of water. Bring to the boil then gently simmer on stove for 20 minutes (until liquid has reduced to about half). Once cooled pour through sieve and follow the recipe below.

Oak tree bark

Put a big handful of oak tree bark in a pan with a cup of water (its best not to take it directly from the tree – if you scout around you will find plenty on the ground). Bring to the boil then gently simmer on stove for 20-30 minutes (until liquid has reduced to about half). Once cooled pour through sieve then follow playdough recipe below.

Playdough recipe

½ cup of flour

½ cup of dyed water

¼ cup of salt

½ tbsp cream of tartar

½ tbsp cooking oil

♥ Combine all the ingredients in a pan (don’t worry about sieving the flour).

♥ Put the pan on a medium to low heat and keep stirring until mixture forms a ball. It will probably stick to the bottom and sides of the pan too!

♥ Allow it to cool a little and knead it on a well floured worktop.

Needless to say, this recipe is for a non-edible playdough. Please also remember that natural dyes stain…so make sure you wear a pinny and try to avoid using your best pots and pans! Lastly, please don’t let your little one/s anywhere near hot or boiling water.

You might also be interested in the this  how to make playdough tutorial and this homemade playdough recipe.

If not, stick around and see how we made loads of homemade taffy!

Here’s our recipe

Homemade Taffy

2 1/2 cups white sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup light corn syrup

1 1/3 cups water

2 tablespoons butter (plus lots extra to butter hands, we probably used over 1/2 of stick of butter on our hands)

1 teaspoon salt

1 – .21oz (6g) package unsweetened, fruit-flavored drink mix (like Kool-Aid) (we used cherry)****however I used Great Value brand from Wal-mart and those were the measurements on the package and it said it made two quarts of drink. On the Kool-Aid packet that makes two quarts it has different amounts (far less) I would still only use 1 packet since it is still flavoring the same amount of water.

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Butter large jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet with sides really well.

In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar and cornstarch.  Add corn syrup, water, butter and salt and stir well until butter is melted. Bring to a boil over medium heat and stop stirring. Cook mixture until candy thermometer read 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). This takes some time to get it to 250 degrees. Once it approaches 250 degrees watch very closely because it cooks quickly at the end.  Immediately remove from heat. Carefully stir in vanilla and drink mix. Stir well. We should have stirred ours more– notice some bits of drink mix (dark spots) on our taffy. Pour mixture onto buttered baking pan. Allow to cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes.

Directions:

Once the taffy has cooled enough to handle, butter hands and begin pulling. (It starts kind of translucent)

Then pull…and pull…butter hands again…pull…

and stretch…pull…more hand buttering…pull…

It will become more opaque and lighten in color depending on the attention span of your workers! This takes about 10-15 minutes of pulling.

Pull into long ropes and cut with buttered scissors.

and cut!

Wrap pieces of taffy in pieces of waxed paper

and give it a good twist on each end.

Finished!

Sweet!!

A few pieces of felt, a 5 oz cup, wiggly eyes, thread (for whiskers), large Popsicle stick and glue is all you need.

I made groundhog finger puppets for my crafting partners.  To give the ears dimension, I folded the sides of the ears to the center and place them between the two body  pieces and machine sewed around the edge.

Add some facial details and you have a groundhog finger puppet.   To use the finger puppet for the hiding groundhog just place it over a large popsicle stick.

My crafting partners also made their own groundhog puppets. To make it simple for them they glued their groundhog pieces directly to the popsicle stick.

Then they added the face.

Cut a hole in the bottom of the cup for the popsickle stick to fit through.

Next they glued felt to the outside of the plastic cup.

Then they cut slits in the felt around the top edge.

Fit the groundhog through the hole. Now you see him.

Now you don’t.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Just when you think you have thought of the most clever craft ever, you then find others have thought of it also.  I have seen similar groundhog puppets around the web. If you have a similar craft or fun idea to celebrate Groundhog Day please leave a link in the comments so everyone can check it out!

Can you believe this is a groundhog shaped meatloaf? It was made by Sommer, a Skip to my Lou reader.

Sommer said she was surprised at how easy and fun it is to shape meatloaf.  She says if you bake your normal meatloaf on a foil covered cookie sheet, you can pretty much shape it into whatever you want.  The eyes are olives and the whites of his eyes and teeth are mashed potatoes.  Her family calls it the Ground-Groundhog Meatloaf.  I think she should be a food sculptor. Sommer has some skills!

I have linked my hiding groundhog puppets to Today’s Creative Blog’s Get Your Craft On! Go check her out and be inspired. Don’t forget link up a project and show her what you’ve got!