Our Crafty Day

Ok so Ava and I have been making some crafty endeavors lately... mostly just today.

This morning we decided that her crayons had gotten too small for her to use so we decided to make them into new ones. We pealed the paper off of all of the broken crayons and put them into a muffin tin to make our new crayons.

We baked them at 250 F for about 8 mins. Once they were out we let them cool for 5 mins. Then we discovered that they were sticking... oops.  So we put them into the freezer hoping they would shrink and come out... it worked! YAY!!!

Ava has loved using her crayons today. She has used them to draw, build towers, tease the dog, and throw... her fave.


Our second endeavor was to make salt dough hand prints for (spoiler alert) Christmas gifts for the grandparents. So I've been meaning to do this since Ava was born... like most things just because I mean to do it doesn't mean it will happen.

So to start I made the dough while Ava played with her new crayons. It took me a little more effort than I thought it would. I started with a promised no fail recipe and of course it didn't really work... so I made my own recipe and method.

 recipe:
4c flour
1c salt
2c warm water

So I combined all of the ingredients and then took handfuls at a time and kneaded them in my hands to make sure they were warm. (If the dough is cold its hard to roll out and wont stay together... one of my many mistakes from my first batch... thus the warm water).

Next I rolled them out to about 1/4" thick and used a bowl to cut out circles.

Now to Ava's favorite part! She made her little hand prints and it was the cutest thing ever! She loves to play in the kitchen! She plays with all of the spoons and mixes and rolls the dough, its darling! So any way back to the recipe.

I used a straw to cut a hole in the top to hang them from and wrote her name and the year on it. We then baked them for 12 mins. at 300F. (Another oops was that they bubbled, so to prevent this make sure you poke holes in the dough especially where the palm of the hand print is. I did it from the side (not the top) with a tooth pick so you can't see the holes.

Then to finish them off I painted then gold and tied them off with some twine and some cute pearl beads. Pretty cute!

So any way we plan to have many more crafty days to come!