Do It Yourself – Page 4 – The Creative Salad

Make Your Own All-Natural Essential Oil Air Freshener

We make a simple, non-toxic, inexpensive essential oil spray for our bathrooms as an alternative to chemical-laced air freshener.

First gather a 4 oz spray bottle (we reuse an empty deodorant spray bottle!) and the essential oil of your choice. We purchase a locally-made, organic product from the Simplers Botanical Company, but any essential oil should suffice. I particularly like the lavender oil in an air spray, but I imagine that rose or jasmine would be rather lovely as well.

Place 10-30 drops into your spray bottle, then fill the bottle with water.

Do a test spray or two to see if you need to add more essential oil.

Voila! Spray to your hearts content. (Oh, our daughter particularly loves “the spray!”)

DIY Photo Decoupage Platter

The round-up of decorations from this year’s birthday extravaganza continues. To see all the birthday party posts, please click here.

Growing up, the Spritzer family had a special glass platter (with etched hearts!) that came out for birthday celebrations. My daughter and I thought it would be fun to recreate this tradition, while adding a Creative Salad twist to make it our own.

First we cut out some of our favorite family photos that we had printed on plain white paper:

We played with the layout of the photos until our daughter found an arrangement she fancied:

We adhered the photos with Mod Podge on to the underside of a circular, glass Pyrex platter that we found at our local thrift store:

Then we glued small pieces of brightly colored tissue paper on top of the photo layer:

As we placed the pieces of tissue paper, we brushed glue on top to smooth and adhere the paper:

We added glitter glue before adding another layer of colored tissue paper:

Then we sealed the paper side of the platter with several more coats of Mod Podge, being careful not to get any glue on the front side of the platter. Here’s how our birthday platter turned out:

Festive, personalized, and very fun!

A special birthday treat.

Party Preparation

Oh, dear. It’s that time of the year: nonstop talk about our daughter’s upcoming birthday. Do forgive me. What can I say? It’s what we’re occupied with right now.

We’re slowly, slowly finishing the multitude of projects strewn throughout the house.

Watercolored thank you note cards are made, stacked, and ready to be written.

Candy treats that will adorn cupcakes are taking over the kitchen counters.

And photo colleges featuring our daughter and her friends adorn the living room walls.

We have so many other projects in progress that we can’t wait to share with you. It’s coming together!

Melted Crayon Hearts Tutorial

This may look like a Valentine’s Day project–and, yes, it certainly could be!–but in our house these adorable crayon hearts are for a certain little girl’s birthday party at the end of the month!

These melted crayon hearts are super simple to make and a great reuse project for any old, broken crayons you have lying around.

First gather your crayons and peel the paper off each of them, a favorite kid activity in our house:

Using your hands, break each crayon into several small pieces so that they will fit inside your mold. We used silicone molds that are meant for candy-making and are available in a wide variety of shapes including dinosaurs, shoes and purses, or the hearts shown above. Amazon or your local baking supply store has you covered.

Unfortunately, the downside to using these cute molds for this project is that once you’ve melted crayons in them you can no longer bake with them. Sigh.

Place the molds in a preheated 250 degree oven for 10-15 minutes until the crayons have completely melted:

Let them cool for twenty minutes and then pop them out of the mold:

Your new, adorable chunky crayons are ready to use!

Or, in our case, ready to place into favor bags for our guests. Such fun!

Thanks to From An Igloo for the inspiration and how-to! Found via Pinterest.

The Dollhouse Gift on Christmas Morning

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.

After a frantic painting marathon late last week, we placed the dollhouse under the tree…

It’s furnishings were opened with glee…

and our new (multicultural!) dollhouse family has moved in!

(Yes, all before sunrise.)

It was a hit.

After seeing her play with the dollhouse for hours today, I’m entertaining fantasies of her waking up tomorrow morning and going to play with the dollhouse on her own, giving us a few additional hours of sleep. Wow, does that sound good. If only…