Team Francks

making: the christmas edition

1. Reindeer Cookies

I found these cute reindeer cookies on Pinterest (have I mentioned my complete and utter love of Pinterest?!  LOVE!)

The Pinterest version is way cuter... but they were just for my Nursery class... and thankfully the 2-3 year old crowd is easily impressed!  

Recipe found here.

 

2.  Easy peasy crafts... Walmart had the best selection of easy foam crafts this year... and for under $2 (everything included!)... Buddy loved doing it and I just let him do it.... I didn't try to micromanage (which is what I usually do when crafting)... especially when it comes to sprinkling glittered... but I just let him go crazy!.  It was a really fun activity together.

 

 

3.  Holiday Pretzel Treats... Hugs and Rolo's versions.

The boys are awesome candy peelers (is that word?).

 

4. reindeer thumbprint ornaments... gifts we made in nursery... the kids loved them... we loved them... hopefully the parents loved them.

5.  Easy Peacn Pie... My friend Amy makes the BEST Pecan Pie... I love Pecan Pie... but I've never attempted to make it... she sent me her recipe and now its on the menu for Christmas Dinner. Super excited!

The secret (in my opinion) to good pecan pie is having the pecans chopped in to small pieces... I'm not such a fun of big huge pecan pieces.

Easy Pecan Pie

1 stick of butter

1 cup sugar (I use 1/2c. brown and 1/2c. white)

1 c. Karo syrup

3 eggs,beaten (add to cooled mixture)

1 cup chopped pecans

1 unbaked 9 inch pie shell

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a saucepan, melt the butter but don't let it brown.  Mix in the sugar and corn syrup and cook, stirring, over medium heat until the sugar dissolves.  After mixture cools-- Stir in the eggs.   Mix well. Stir in the pecans.  Pour into the pie shell and wrap edges with foil.

Bake 40-50 minutes until pie is only slightly jiggly in the center. Remove foil the last 15-20 min. Allow to cool.

What are you making??

on the second night before Halloween...

On the second night before Halloween I share with you a Halloween Book Basket!

I soooo love this idea!  We love reading.  We love Halloween.  Perfect combination!

I originally saw the idea on one of my favorite blogs Brown Paper Packages.

The concept is to count down the 31 days to Halloween--starting with October 1st.  Read a FUN (not gory or gross) Halloween book every night until Halloween.

The original Halloween Book Basket is so so so cute.  I TOTALLY recognize that mine is not nearly as cute (and my terrible picture does nothing to help my cause!)

BUT

I ran in to several problems when I went to make mine... I couldn't find the big black tub she used for hers (even though I've seen them at Target for the last million Halloweens)... AND I didn't have nearly the collection of Halloween books.  And since I was limited on time and funds this year I decided to improvise. 

Here's my version of our Halloween Book Basket:

 

I got the "basket" for $1 in the Halloween section at Albertson's (it alreaady had the ghosts on it)... and I filled it with the Halloween books that we already had.  I added two new small books this year and thought it would be fun to buy a few new ones over the year and then supplement each year with Library books... (I did score a few new-to-us Halloween books at a consignment sale after this picture was already taken).

The basket has been a hit and every night Buddy brings me a few Halloween books and we read together.  Makes this mama very happy!

Another fun and easy project!  Thanks Kierste @ Brown Paper Packages!

And maybe next year I'll be able to find the cute Target bucket!

Here's the original posters list of 31 books: (most of these books are targeted for ages 3-8)

1. Too Many Pumpkins, Linda White
2. Pumpkin Soup, Helen Cooper
3. The Biggest Pumpkin Ever, Steven Kroll
4. Pumpkin Circle: The Story of a Garden, George Levenson
5. How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin?, Margaret McNamara
6. Pumpkin, Pumpkin, Jeanne Titherington
7. In the Haunted House, Eve Bunting
8. Room on the Broom, Julie Donaldson
9. The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything, Linda Williams
10. The Night Before Halloween, Natasha Wing
11. The Berenstain Bears Trick or Treat, Stan & Jan Berenstain
12. The Big Pumpkin, Erica Silverman
13. The Vanishing Pumpkin, Tomie dePaola
14. Humbug Witch, Lorna Balian
15. Bug That Go Bump in the Night, David A. Carter
16. Five Little Pumpkins, Iris Van Rynbach
17. Scary, Scary, Halloween, Eve Bunting
18. Peek-A-Booooo!, Marie Torres Cimarusti
19. Mrs. McMurphy’s Pumpkin, Rick Walton
20. It’s Halloween!, Jack Prelutsky
21. Thirteen Nights of Halloween, Rebecca Dickinson
22. Miss Fiona’s Stupendous Pumpkin Pies, Mark Kimball Moulton
23. Ten Timid Ghosts, Jennifer O’ Connell
24. The Bumpy Little Pumpkin, Margery Cuyler
25. Halloween Night, Arden Druce
26. Haunted Castle on Hallows’ Eve, Mary Pope Osborne
27. All Hallow’s Eve – The Story of the Halloween Fairy, Lisa S. Johnson
28. Pumpkin Hill, Elizabeth Spurr
29. Skeleton Hiccups, Margery Cuyler
30. The Ugly Pumpkin, Dave Horowitz
31. Trick or Treat Countdown, Patricia Hubbard

 

I'd love to hear if you have any favorite Halloween books!

on the third night before Halloween...

On the third night before Halloween I share with you Mummy jars.

Another project I saw on Pinterest... I have to admit this is one of my very favorite projects... I absolutely love them! 

A friend invited me over for an afternoon to make these... and despite all the distractions (kids) we knocked out a ton of these in two hours.

sooooooooo easy!!!  seriously.  and so cheap.
i could have made 100 of them!
just old canning jars
or whatever you have on hand
and sterile medical gauze
that you can buy at walmart (in the pharmacy section)
and then you paint modge podge
all over the bottle
start at the top
and start wrapping
you'll need to put
modge podge between the layers of gauze
you only do one layer of gauze
but slightly overlap each layer
and then when its all how you like it
you paint a layer of modge podge on top of the whole thing really quick
and then glue on googly eyes with even more modge podged.

that's it. 

easy peasy.

we liked the really really big googly eyes for the big bottles (i think the really big eyes come in a pack of 12)... but the other size works great too... these would be super cute with baby food jars too.

p.s. If my instructions don't make any sense... just google mummy jars and I'm sure there are more detailed tutorials out there!

p.p.s.  outside I just put regular tealight candles in them... inside I'm using battery operated candles.

Oh, and they make fun neighbor gifts too... not the best picture... but you get the idea.

Happy Halloween!!!

on the fourth night before Halloween...

On the fourth night before Halloween I share with you vinyl spiders.

Saw this pin on Pinterest and knew they would be so fun... lucky for me I have a Silhouette machine gathering dust in my craft closet.

Downloaded the spider from Silhouette and got busy cutting... little sspiders hanging in the kitchen and dining room.  My little man LOVES them!  Every day he points out all the "piders" to me. 

Cute and so easy!

 

over the front door.

over the door way in to the kitchen... I know you're jealous of my 1970's cabinets and trim. awesome.

 

Hanging from the cabinets in the kitchen

 

hanging from the holiday shelf.

You can buy vinyl spiders at craft stores... on Silhouettes site... or if you have the cricut cartridge... fun fun!

on the fifth night before Halloween...

As I've shared many times before... I loooooove Halloween. Loooooooooooooooove.

And Halloween wouldn't be complete with a little crafty... and despite an insanely busy month I managed to squeeze in a tiny bit of crafting... mostly at two in the morning... but a little bit of crafting nonetheless.

Thanks to Pinterest my holiday crafting has taken on a whole new level!

Over the next five days I'm going to count down to Halloween with a few favorite projects this Halloween season! 

On the fifth night before Halloween I share with you my Googly Eye Frame:

I loved the original project on Pinterest... but I didn't have a square frame... and I wanted to use what I had on hand...  so I just improvised.

I love googly eyes. Love.  And I usually have a large stash on hand.  I found non-adhesive worked best on this project.

 

Spread modge podge... I found it was easiest to work on one side at a time... otherwise the modge podge starts drying and gets too hard to work with.

place googly eyes in wet modge podge... no rhyme or reason... just whatever you like.

move on to the next section of the frame... spread w/modge podge.  place googly eyes.  repeat.

 

I promise it looks much better in real life without the glare of the camera flash... in real life you can't see all the flash induced flaws.

 

I like some areas better than others... but thats what happens when you go willy nilly with modge podge and googly eye.

Super fun.  Super cheap.  Super easy. 

Easy Valentine's T-shirts

Ok, what can I say... I'm a sucker for holiday T-Shirts!

I bought $3 t-shirts at Walmart and some digital designs (you can use the designs in Mircrosoft Word, Photoshop Elements, etc)

I printed out the design on Iron T-Shirt paper, ironed it on and voila... a fun little shirt for my cute valentine!

If you make this project be sure to read the t-shirt iron directions closely.

And the best part... using digital designs is super easy and makes the t-shirts way more affordable than buying them in the store!

Digital Kits: Love Shack and Heart Throb both available from the Ettes & Company

Zoo Book

None of my family scrapbooks (I know... totally shocking!)... so I'm a nice sister and put together a Shutterfly Photobook of our latest trip to the zoo...  I made it semi-scrapbookish....nothing fancy but that way they can all order their own book (if they want) and feel like they have fun pictures from the day. 

Some day I'll do an Ode to Shutterfly and how much I loooooove them and their photobooks!

Click here to view this photo book larger

Etsy & an easy Easter Craft

Ok, I've mentioned my uber talented friends Leslie and Liberty before... and lucky for us they both now have Etsy shops!!

Leslie creates the most wonderful hand sewn items... I've been so lucky to be the recipient of her quilts and other masterpieces... here's my most recent "Leslie Original"... a beautiful pink quilt that lives in my living room for everybody to enjoy.

Check out Leslie's Etsy Shop here...

Liberty creates beautiful, one of kind watches... the bands are bracelets with lobster hooks on them so they can be changed out... change the band and have a whole new look...I love them and currently own two of them... they're so fun and I know I'm going to need another one before too long!

Check out Liberty's Etsy shop here.

(picture borrowed from Liberty's blog)

Easter Project:

This is a fun and super easy project... you can use any clip art,  digital art or graphics.

The frame I used is from Ikea and each opening is a 5x7 slot... I scaled my chicks to the size I needed in Photoshop Elements (but you could use Word too) and then printed it on Photo paper.

It hangs on the wall in my dining room making it all festive and Easter-y... I totally love how it turned out.

Cute digital chicks available here.

Ghosties...

Here is a fun and totally easy Halloween project... I've made a couple of batches and its so easy... I made a huge batch to take to the girls at church and spilled water all over them... nice... 

 The trick that I found that works for me is keeping the heat super duper low and just stirring until you get a nice smooth texture... easy peasy!!  Directions, pictures and commentary are here... thanks Hilary for the fun and fabulous idea!

P.S.  A very happy birthday to my mom... who encourages and enables my love of all things Halloween.