Native Woman Sews, Crafts, Writes, and More

Sugar Skulls and Chocolate Pumpkins

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We finally used the skull and pumpkin ice cube trays yesterday! The kids didn’t have school and I have a cold so I figured we can hang out for half the day and the other half we can make a few things.

For the sugar skulls and pumpkins, I mixed the sugar and water according to this recipe. I also added a few drops of gel food coloring so we had orange pumpkins and purple skulls. I left the kids in charge of the skulls – which is why they got to sweep, I’m not nearly as messy!

purple sugar skulls & orange sugar pumpkins

After the sugar pieces were done, I melted chocolate wafers. This page shows making skull pops with almond bark being used – that’s probably a better choice then the Wilton’s wafers. The wafers just aren’t pourable and it’s so thick once melted. This time I looked up how to thin it but made the mistake of reading too quickly and added a little corn syrup. That just made the clump up together, which was okay because I rolled some into a ball and stuck the ball into the mold. I love the color choices of Wilton’s, but realize I can just use almond bark and add food coloring and it may be easier to use.

Orange & Purple Pumpkins & Skulls

I thought that putting some sugar into the mold before the pumpkins would add a sparkle, but it didn’t work out that way. I was thinking of glitter I suppose, which with food is different. I love making candies and decorating and next up is something from Cake Pops!

Friend Makin’ Monday – Traditions

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Friend Makin' Monday

My friend Andrea is hosting this week’s Friend Makin’ Monday. I’m glad she is because I’ve wanted to participate for ages now!

What are your holiday traditions?

Halloween

Since I’ve had kids, I love making their costumes. The first year Alice went as a caterpillar. And by “went” I mean I made her costume and took pictures of her. We lived in an apartment complex and didn’t even take her anywhere. A couple of years ago they were a boiled egg and she was a black fairy. Last year it was Fancy Nancy and a mouse.

Alice & Jake - Halloween 2009

I can’t wait for Halloween this year because their costumes are so cute!

I also love seeing other costumes and admit I get disappointed when I see so many people picking the wear the plastic costumes you can buy. I know not everyone feels like they can make a costume, but I wish a little more effort was put into it. I love passing candy out so I can see kids dressed up. I think back to being a kid and while I liked going out trick or treating, once I got a little older I liked seeing the costumes more then anything.

Thanksgiving

I lived in the same town (or one town away) from most of my family growing up, and so we always spent Thanksgiving eating. All day long. We would start out at Grandma’s house, but not officially, just having a snack or a few bites. She always ate earlier then we did at our own house. Then we would eat at home. After lounging around, we would go to my Uncle and Aunt’s house and either eat again or at least have a snack of some sort.

Since being married I try to invite people over for Thanksgiving. It always made it easier to be away from my family if we had friends over as well. When we lived in SC we had 20+ people! It was awesome. Now that we are closer to my Mom, we spend Thanksgiving with her.

Christmas

Since I grew up in a very rural area, we never went Black Friday shopping. I never even knew something like that existed until several years ago! The day after Thanksgiving in our house was always the day to put up the Christmas tree and decorate. Even after I discovered shopping on that Friday, I still set it to be a decorate the house day. It’s always worked out fine because I get up and shop super early, then take a nap, and the decorating gets done in the afternoon.

As a child we usually went to midnight mass and after church we were allowed to open one gift. I loved midnight mass, it helped that we lived literally two houses away from church. It was great going to a packed church, with tons of snow on the ground, and just being able to run up the street minutes before it started and being able to just run home afterward.

I started the tradition of opening two small gifts on Christmas Eve with my kids, and one is always new pajamas. I wonder what it is about Christmas that makes people buy or give new pjs? Why not at Easter or Halloween? Maybe I’ll start that as a new tradition!

For the past few years I’ve made breakfast the night before and had it ready to put in the oven, so it bakes while we open gifts. I love this because of course you are hungry but if you have kids, you know they are anxious to see what Santa brought them and they don’t want to wait for you to cook.

Another thing I’ve bought to my kids from when I was younger was opening the stockings later. As in we do gifts, we have breakfast, we look at what we got, we hang out, etc. – then we open the stockings. They are always fun little things, like candy, lip glosses, lotions, and the like. Last year I put spatulas in my Mom’s stocking because she needed new ones.

Silicone Tray Crayon Plans

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Kudos to Heather! She started a Dollar Scores video series over at the Dollar Store Crafts site. The first one was very inspiring to me.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-kHhFgAeQQ[/youtube]

I immediately made a short list of things to get at my dollar store. I shared my bulletin board recently, and I also purchased the skull ice cube tray mentioned in the video. There was only one skull tray left at my dollar store! I also bought the pumpkin one. My plan is to melt crayons and make the shapes, then send them to school with my kids.

Does anyone else like to recycle crayons into other shapes? You saw my Lego crayons (LOVE these so much!) and I tried to make flowers and stars, but they didn’t work out. I’m not sure if I had the oven too hot or if they were just really not that great of silicone trays, but they basically melted. And the crayons I did manage to get out of the mold took way too long to remove and broke in the process. I didn’t buy them at the dollar store but they only cost a dollar at the place I did buy them.

Photos While They Are Deployed

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I already made an appointment to get the kids pictures taken – JW hasn’t had a professional photograph yet, and at (almost) eight months Alice and Jake both already had two sets! That’s what happens when you are born in August, you get the holiday pics in.

JCPenney has an offer from the beginning of September through the month of October for deployed service members. You will get:

*free sitting fees
*one free portrait sheet
*one free portrait sheet sent to the military member’s APO address!

I also made contact with a local photographer through Operation Love ReUnited. I knew this existed, but didn’t think about it until last week. It would have been nice to have pre-deployed photos as well as during and/or after. The website says to bring uniform items, and I’m not sure what (if anything!) we have at the house! Chris took everything with him, but maybe there is a hat in storage. I wonder if it has the right rank on it?

She already contacted me and we are working out the details to do a photo shoot while he is gone, then she will also be there for homecoming. What a fantastic service, check to see if there is a photographer in your area.

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