Plastic Canvas Kissy Creatures

I like to make a new Homemade ornament every Christmas to add to my tree. While digging around in my craft closet this month I found the supplies to make one of my most favorite ornaments of all time. It was on my Grandma's tree every year and it was always so magical to me.

 

Santa from LifeAtCloverHill.com

When you squeeze Santa's cheeks, the ornament opens up and there is a space for a candy to hide inside.

During my Grandma's Anual Christmas party, she must have come back and filled the ornaments with candies when we weren't looking because it seemed like no matter how many times we emptied the ornament, if we came back to the tree 30 minutes later, there were candies inside them again.

I found a tutorial on how to make them on the site LifeAtCloverHill.com

https://lifeatcloverhill.com/2015/12/squeeze-santas-cheeks-ornament.html

But while searching for the tutorial, I found a lot of other fun designs that follow the same concept. They all had different names to describe them, but my favorite is Kissy Creature

Christmas/Winter Themes Kissy Creatures

Elves from CraftTGram on Etsy

A video tutorial for the Grinch with a hat on top from Caroline's Plastic Canvas Crafts on YouTube

The Grinch simplified

How cute would these mice be for Nutcracker Cast Gifts.

found on Pintrest

Artic Penguins from CraftTGram on Etsy

I'm loving this Olaf

These ones were not Kissy Creatures, instead they were Popourie boxes, so you have 6 sides of plastic canvas decorated as you like, and you fill them with something scented for the holiday before you close them up.

Found On Pintrest

Fox or Dear if you add Antlers from CraftTGram on Etsy

Haloween Themed Kissy Creatures

From CraftyLauries on Etsy

Frankenstine from Pinterest.com

Character-themed Kissy Creatures

Mickey and Minnie Mouse from CraftTGram on Etsy

It was so fun to find all of these and realize the sky's the limit on what you can dream up for your kissy creature. Aside from an ornament, they would be a great party favor because you can make 11 kissy creatures from just 1 sheet of plastic canvas (Plastic canvas is so cheep it normally comes in a multi pack, but each individual sheet is probably worth about $1 to $1.50)

The kids and I will be selling items at a local bazaar next month, we will see how much time I find before the Bazaar to make more than just Santas. 

I think my favorites are the Olaf and the Grinch with a hat because the face shapes are a good match to the kissy creature shape.

Homemade Christmas Ornament 2017

Every Year I like to make homemade ornaments to add to our collection.  We move so much, that I just can't justify buying new decorations to customize every home we find ourselves in each year.  So a tree full of homemade ornaments helps us to add other homemade decorations to the rest of the house and it pulls together very well.

This year my daughter helped me choose a kid friendly ornament.  We found it here

And my Son brought home a gingerbread man cut out for homework that he was to decorate and send back to school for the classroom bulletin board.  I decided that our kitchen would be cute lined with gingerbread men along the top of the bead board.  So I just traced his cut-out on a bunch of paper bags and we had fun decorating them on black Friday after we set up the other decorations in the house.

wish list ornament

One set of ornaments done, lots more to go.

Here is how my nephews ornaments turned out.  I think they are adorable and I'm fairly sure they are going to just love them.  I just used some empty black spools that I had in my sewing area and some ribbon from my box so they were basically a free way to say 'I love you' and 'Merry Christmas' all rolled into one.

Here is the link to the original tutorial where I found the idea.

Homemade Ornaments

I was in charge of the activity for playgroup this week, so I searched for a fun activity on-line to do. I found a great one and was all prepared. But sadly, that morning everything was iced over and traffic was HORRIBLE!!! I spend 1 hour in the car and only got 10 minutes away from my house. Everyone else was in the same boat, so I guess we will save the idea for a playgroup next year. But I figured I had already spent the time cutting 18 wooden discs from a tree in our yard, so I let my kids do all of them.

I got the idea here. and I also searched google images for "Christmas thumbprint art" for some other design inspirations. There were some very cute ideas and projects there too.

This is how ours turned out

The project is easy to figure out just by looking at it

1. cut up a tree/branch into thin slices. (Mine was a little moist on the inside so I put them in the oven for an hour or 2 on 350. It made the house smell nice and piney.)
2. sand them
3. drill a hole for a ribbon to go through
4. write the kids name on the back with the year in a permanent marker
5. and let those cuties go to town with the paint
6. when dry thread some ribbon through and hang on tree

Gifts for Teachers-

Here are the gifts we are handing out to our Teachers this year.

We included 1 candy cane cookie, 2 squares of fudge and 2 sticks of our caramel. My oldest wanted to write notes to go with them. So we cut up some wrapping paper and she wrote on the back of it. She came up with the message herself "I am glad your my teacher." She signed it with a little heart sticker and her name.

Don't you wish you were her teacher now?

Holiday Bake-A-Thon

We have begun our holiday cookie/candy bake-a-thon. Every year I always tell myself I will make a bunch of treats, then package them up for friends and hand them out. I remember doing the same thing with my Dad when I was growing up. However, I don't think I realized then how hard that actually is to make, wrap and deliver so many treats to such a long list of people you want to spread some holiday cheer too. So most years, I start out with the intent to deliver holiday Joy to those I love but somewhere along the way i give up. I'm posting now to prevent that from happening this year. And to share this kid involved idea with those of you who might play this same game as me year after year.

We did Gingerbread candy cane cookies. The kid involved part was the candy cane dusting.

1. I did the cookie cutting on my own
2. While I did that I let the kids stomp the candy canes into dust. (I put the canes in a ziplock baggie and gave the kids something to hammer it with. Every once in a while there would be too many holes in the bag and we'd have to put it in a new bag.)
3. When the candy canes were made into a small/fine dust I put it into a cereal bowl.
4. Once the cookies were cool I striped frosting with a slanted icing tip (I used wilton #47)
5. Then as soon as a cookie was frosted I gave it to one of the kids who dipped it frosting side down into the candy dust and then put it back onto the cooling rack.

It went great. I'm happy because they look so cute and the kids were happy because they got to help. You can see in the picture our first cookie (The one in the top right corner) has candy chunks that look a little bit too big. After we did it we realized that we needed to crush the candy up into finer pieces.

I also made homemade caramel and I gave fudge a try again.

Last year I made batch after batch of flops with fudge. I wanted to learn how to make it without just melting down a bunch of chocolate chips as part of the recipe or using marshmallow cream, I wanted to make "real" fudge. I had one that I think I burned, another that never set (like hot fudge for ice-cream) and one that was so dry it was just a bunch of crumbles.

Well this year my fudge turned out almost perfect (My Dad would be so proud :) my one and only problem was that at the very moment I turned off the mixer to pour my perfect fudge into the pan to cool, Gwen's school called to tell me that I missed Gwen's bus. In the 10 seconds it took to take that call the fudge began to set. I scooped it out of the mixing bowl and pressed it into the pan as fast as I could. I know that it will still taste great, but the top just doesn't have that beautiful look that fudge has when it is poured before it sets up.

So I guess next time I just need to pay better attention to the clock, otherwise Gwen's bus driver will hate me.

Happy candy making