December 2011 – Page 3 – The Creative Salad

Dollhouse Challenge + Bedroom Preview

We’re restoring a family heirloom, the dollhouse made for my husband’s grandmother when she was a little girl. Click here to see all the posts about our Dollhouse Redux Project.

Last month I had every intention of finishing our dollhouse in time for today’s I’m a Giant Challenge deadline… and then I realized that the majority of the dollhouse furniture will be under the Christmas tree this year and far be it for me to open up our daughter’s gifts ahead of her.

So I don’t have a completed dollhouse to show you.

In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever have a completed dollhouse to show you because, well, we don’t have that kind of dollhouse. A family heirloom we inherited when David’s grandmother passed away last winter, this dollhouse belongs to our daughter.

Any time I start to make decisions regarding colors or fabric or decorations, I remind myself to step back, because quite frankly this dollhouse isn’t at all about me. It’s completely about her. She gets to make those choices. She gets to shape, play with and love this special dollhouse that belongs to her.

So while I’ve enjoyed painting and sewing away, I’ve been helping our daughter in realizing her dollhouse vision. And it’s beautiful.

I can’t wait to share more with you soon.

The Night Before Christmas Children’s Book

We keep finding more special holiday books to read time and again.

This week’s find at the library was the classic poem “The Night Before Christmas” illustrated by Eric Puybaret featuring a CD with music by Peter, Paul and Mary.

While the CD is fun for adults (our three year old wasn’t terribly impressed), the book’s illustrations are stunning — so richly colored and enchanting.

We’ve been pouring over the pictures and finding new fun details with each read.

Eric Puybaret is so incredibly talented!

A true Christmas classic.

This beautiful hardcover book with CD is available at Amazon or in your local bookstore or library. Pick up a copy today!

Pinned: Chocolate Bark Recipes

One of my favorite holiday treats to bake is chocolate bark. It’s a tasty treat that’s easy to make and a great gift to share with others.

Here are some variations on chocolate bark that look particularly delicious:

Featured above:
1. Dark Chocolate Bark with Ginger, Pumpkin Seeds and Apricots
toasted pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, crystallized or candied ginger, bittersweet chocolate, fleur de sel
2. White chocolate bark
walnuts, dried cherries or cranberries, and white chocolate
3. Easy Fruit & Nut Bark
chocolate chips, mixed salted nuts, dried cranberries, and candied ginger
4. Festive Chocolate Bark
pistachio nuts, semisweet chocolate, white chocolate, and dried cranberries
5. Christmas bark
semi-sweet, bittersweet and white chocolate, dried cranberries, pistachios, and dried apricots
6. Chocolate Marshmallow Bark
bittersweet chocolate, butter, and mini marshmallows
7. Three-Layer Peppermint Bark
white chocolate, red-and-white-striped hard peppermint candies, bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, peppermint extract
8. Almond Roca
butter, sugar, almonds, and chocolate chips

Last year we couldn’t find peppermint extract in our small town grocery store to make the Bon Appétit version that Amanda Soule loves, so we used a more simplistic recipe instead and we were pleased with the results (shown above).

Super easy, with just three ingredients, this simple peppermint bark recipe makes for a kid-friendly baking experience that’s fun (hammers are involved!) and each step along the way tastes delicious. (Not that we were sampling. Ahem.)

View these and many more delicious recipes on my Tasty Treats Pinterest board.

(images obtained via Pinterest)

Handmade Ornament Roundup

We believe in crafting a handmade holiday, making our own ornaments for our tree, baking and making as many gifts as we can. The holidays feel so much more special when there’s heart involved.

I’ve been thrilled to see that our daughter remembers last fall’s activities and now sees them as tradition. Come November she eagerly reminded me that we needed to start sewing ornaments for this years tree.

And so our home transforms into a Craft House with every surface covered with holiday projects, glitter, glue, feathers, felt, string, and stickers:

Here are some of the ornaments we’ve made, some from last year, many created in the last few weeks.

I love this time of the year.

Shown above:
+ Felt Christmas Tree Ornaments
+ Bird Ornaments (from Skip to my Lou)
+ Beaded wreath ornaments
+ Felted stars, wooden stars, and felt hearts
+ Popcorn garlands
+ Popsicle stick six pointed stars
+ Grape vine wreaths with tinsel and bells

Still to be made:
+ Dehydrated orange slices (try dehydrating ruby red grapefruit for a beautiful pink color!)

Picture Bottle-Cap Magnets

Making these bottle-cap magnets turned out to be one of the most fun and rewarding projects that my daughter and I have done together — right up there with our felt salad, toddler art napkins, and favorite book character magnets that we use every day!

The idea for making glittered bottle-cap magnets came from Anna Getty’s book, I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas: Gifts, Decorations, and Recipes that Use Less and Mean More. By adding our daughter’s photo to the magnets, we’ve made a great holiday present for family. (Boy did I blow the surprise by posting this!)

Note: this project involves several layers of paint and glue, so you’ll need to allow several days to complete in order for each layer to fully dry between steps.

We started by gathering twist-off bottle caps. Since we rarely drink anything but water, milk or coconut water it took us several months to gather this meager collection of seven twist-off bottle tops:

We painted the bottle caps with white, blue and silver paint and let them fully dry:

After selecting favorite photos of our daughter, we used Photoshop to make photos with a 1 inch diameter circle around her face:

We printed the photos and cut them out to fit in the bottle caps:

Then we mod podged the circular photos to the inside of bottle caps. After they dried, we sealed the photos by painting another layer of mod podge on top:

We put glue around the inside lip of the caps (just barely touching the photos inside) and sprinkled silver glitter over the top:

After the glue dried, we shook off the extra glitter and painted one final coat of mod podge to seal the glitter on:

We cut small magnets (from magnetic strips) and adhered them to the back of the bottle caps:

Ready to use! (Or send off to the relatives.)

I’m not gonna lie. We did save two for ourselves. They were entirely too cute to give away.

Now to save up bottle-caps so we can make some more…

Updated 1/13: Click here for more tips and helpful ideas in making these magnets!