Elf on the Shelf Ideas ~ Week One (2012)

The kids have been really excited to see the antics of our Elf on the Shelf this year.   Our Elf isn't super fancy in his adventures, but the kids have fun with it nonetheless.  For TONS of awesome ideas to inspire your Elf, make sure you check out our Elf on the Shelf Party.  There are literally hundreds of different ideas you can use for inspiration ~ some are simple, some more elaborate, some sneaky, and some sweet!

Here's what our Elf has been up to this week...

Day 1 ~ He brought all the fixings for a yummy breakfast!  (more details HERE)

Day 2 ~ He left a message on the bathroom mirror, written in lipstick!  (Since I rarely wear lipstick, the kids asked where he got it.  I proposed that he might have borrowed it from Mrs. Claus and they got a kick out of that idea!)

 Day 3 ~ Our Elf was practicing his fine motor skills by stringing Fruit Loops on a pipe cleaner.  Notice how our smart little Elf picked out all the red and green ones and made them into a pattern !

Day 4 ~ The kids spotted our Elf sitting in the pantry sipping syrup through a straw!

Day 5 ~ He really practiced his camoflaging skills when he hid on the shelf in my son's room, blending in with a red foam finger!

Day 6 ~ We had just picked out our Christmas tree the night before.  It was set up in its stand, but had no decorations yet.  We found him perched on the curtain rod with the perfect vantage point to watch the tree trimming festivities.

 

Day 7 ~ Oops, he's still in the same spot.  My son theorized that he was so busy looking at all the ornaments and lights that he forgot to move.  I told him that was a very likely explanation.  (Not that Mommy was exhausted after a day at an amusement park with the kids and a night of tree trimming and fell asleep ;)  )

What has your Elf been up to?  Has he or she remembered to move every night?  Have there been any funny tricks or cute scenarios set up?   Tell me about your Elf in the comments or share your posts HERE if you've blogged about it.

Faux Gingerbread Houses

With three kids, I've had many attempts at Gingerbread Houses over the years.  They love the idea of making a house out of cookies and candy, but every year we end up being disappointed by the final results.  We can never get the royal icing to actually hold the walls and roof together so the whole house ends up being lopsided, if we were even lucky enough to get it to stand up at all.  Then, that same darn royal icing ends up dripping and glopping all over the place when we try to attach the candy pieces.  If they don't get too frustrated, they do enjoy the process, but I knew I wanted to come up with a better idea for this year.

Check out our houses...

 

Don't they look cute?  They look like real gingerbread houses and they even SMELL like real gingerbread houses.  We got to plan our designs and choose fun candies to put on them.  They even have what looks like royal icing on them as decoration  ~ but we didn't have to deal with the real thing.  Best part, the girls and I had an awesome time making them.  (My son opted to let me make his while he watched his usual Sunday afternoon of football!)

Now, do you want to see what made this project so easy?  Check out what we used as our house forms...

 

That's right!  Our cute gingerbread houses started out as some unfinished birdhouses from the craft store.  

I realized that every year,  we enjoyed the process ~ designing, working with candy, snacking on some of the candies and seeing our finished houses ~ but we really never ended up actually EATING our finished, lopsided, drippy houses.  I figured, why not make an inedible house and save ourselves some of the hassle.  To add a little extra bit of fun, we scented our paint with some cinnamon so our houses actually have a slight gingerbread smell (and it really smelled awesome while we were painting them.)  For the royal icing look, we made some microwave puffy paint and to attach the candies we just used hot glue.

Here's what you'll need:

• unfinished wooden birdhouses (less than $5 a piece if you use a coupon at the craft store)
• brown acrylic paint 
• cinnamon
• paint brushes
• 1 cup of flour
• 4 tsp. baking powder (not baking soda!)
• 4 tsp. salt
• water 
• squirt bottles (we used the Wilton ones, but any squirt bottles should work)
• assorted candies (we used lots of non-chocolate candies ~ chewy Sweet tarts, gumballs, candy canes, peppermints, Mike & Ikes, etc)
• hot glue gun

Here's what to do...

The first step is to paint your houses.  We poured some brown paint into a small container and then added cinnamon for the fun scent.  Mix it together, adding some water as necessary to get the right consistency.  You'll want it a bit thicker than regular paint, but still spreadable.  Once you have your scented paint mixed up, paint away.

 

The houses looked nice and realistic and it smelled AWESOME while we were painting!

For the next step, you'll want to mix up some microwave puffy paint.  We've done this several times, but I've never posted about it.  It's really simple though.

In a bowl, mix together 1 cup of flour, 4 tsp of baking powder, and 4 tsp of salt (you can half or double the recipe if you need more or less ~ this was plenty for 3 gingerbread houses).  Next, gradually add water and stir until you have a mixture with a consistency of a thick pancake batter.  You want it squeezable but not too runny.  Put the batter in a squeeze bottle and start adding the icing details.  Now here's the cool part, after you add a few details (we did one side/section at a time), pop the house in the microwave for about 45 seconds.  The "paint" will puff up and dry instantly.  Now, you'll have a hardened icing look in just seconds. 
 (NOTE:  when we used the puffy paint on paper, we just microwaved it for about 30 seconds, on the houses, it seemed to take a bit longer about 45-60 seconds.  You'll want to start at about 30 seconds, see if your paint is setting up, then add time as needed.)

Once you have all your icing details in place, it's time to add the candies!  I allowed my 10-year old to handle her own hot gluing, but I did the gluing for my 7 year old (she gave me very precise directions on which candies went where!).

That's it!  We really had a fun time and the girls were so proud of their finished houses.  They still have a slight gingerbread smell and they look really cute.  I'm sure you could eliminate the cinnamon scent, but I figured since we had to paint them anyway, it was a fun little addition.  You could also try another type of  3-dimensional white paint for the icing details, but we loved the quick drying aspect of the puffy paint (and it really does look like icing!)

Oh, and we still got the fun of eating some of the extra candies too!

Here's one last look at a finished house...

Sharing our fun project at:
 Craft-O-Maniac
Brassy Apple 
Skip to My Lou 
Frugal Girls

Easy Puzzle Saver Technique

Last month, when the kids were off school for Election Day, we worked on a 1,000 piece puzzle of the U.S. Presidents.  We enjoyed doing it and with all four of us working together, we actually completed it in just one day.  However, once it was done, it sat on the floor in the corner of my living room for nearly a month.  The kids wanted to save it and hang it up, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of using the puzzle saver glue.  I'd tried the glue before  ~ it was kind of messy and I didn't think it held the pieces together all that well.  I knew there had to be a better solution, but it took me a month of stepping around the finished puzzle before it finally came to me ...  Use iron-on adhesive!

It turned out awesome and it was super quick and easy to do.  Seriously, like 5 minutes tops!  All you need is some Heat n Bond Iron on Adhesive.  It's meant to be used on fabric (I use it all the time) so you can find it in most fabric stores like JoAnn's or even in the fabric aisle at Walmart.  

Check out how it works on puzzles...

Here's all you have to do...

1.  Put your completed puzzle on a piece of poster board.  This puzzle was a large one, so I had taped two pieces of poster board together as we were doing it to give us a work surface.  

2.  Put another piece of poster board (here I used two to cover our big puzzle) over your completed puzzle to make a puzzle sandwich ~ poster board, puzzle, poster board.
 
3.   With your puzzle sandwiched in the middle, carefully flip over your pieces.  Remove the top piece of posterboard and you'll now have the back of the puzzle facing up.


Now get out your iron and Heat n Bond...

4. Cut a piece of the adhesive paper about 1/2" larger than the size of your puzzle.  

5.  With the paper side up, use the medium heat (no steam) setting on your iron the paper onto the back of your puzzle.  Go over it a few times to make sure it sticks to the back of each puzzle piece.

6.  If your puzzle is large like mine was, repeat with another piece of the adhesive paper so the entire back of the puzzle is covered.  (It's okay if it overlaps in places.)  Go over the whole puzzle, making sure the paper is sticking all the way to the edges and to each piece. 

7.  Once it's adhered, you'll be able to easily lift your whole puzzle up.  Flip it over and trim off the excess adhesive paper.  I found that an exacto knife gave a much better and closer trim than scissors.

I originally thought I'd have to mount the puzzle onto a piece of foam board or something after I ironed on the adhesive, but it worked really well without it and I didn't think it was necessary.  As you can see in the picture above, I'm holding the whole puzzle just by one corner.  It was as stiff as a sturdy piece of cardboard and didn't flop around at all (unlike another puzzle we'd done before using the puzzle glue).  All of the pieces were securely attached, but there was no brush strokes from any kind of glue to distort the image.

I just used two small nails to hang our puzzle on our playroom wall.  ( I drove the nail through a spot in the corner where the puzzle pieces joined )

I think it looks awesome.  It was super quick, not messy at all and it made our puzzle nice and sturdy.  The adhesive comes in a large roll for just $10 or so.  It's enough to do several puzzles (or puzzles and other fabric projects) ~ so it's way cheaper than buying frames to display your hard work.

Sharing our puzzle saving idea at:

The Frugal Girls