Category: Holidays

Holiday Cover Up

Let’s be honest. I panicked when I looked at the calendar and saw that I’m hosting a family get together on Christmas Eve.

I panicked a lot.

My house is tiny and very much lived in by three small children. And the state of this door says it all.

That hole in the paint, that’s where my oldest scrubbed the door until the paint came off. It was a stubborn pen stain. And who knew you could scrub the door so much the paint would come off???

We’ve lived in our house for over a decade. And I know it’s past time to repaint everything. In fact I have the vision for how I want to update our house interior. But I seriously can’t pull the trigger until we’re out of the color on the wall phase. All three do it. The oldest knows better but does it to push buttons when he’s angry at us. And evidently scrubbing his retaliation isn’t enough to break these outbursts.

Let’s just say that with all three back to back, I tell people it’s kind of nice because when you hit a phase you absolutely hate you only have to go through it once. Well the “wall art” phase is the first one that I hate. I just have to make it past this phase and I won’t have to go through it again!

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The inspiration for this “hide my ugly doors” Holiday Cover Up was inspired by this YouTube video from Life of Style Blog, Dollar Tree Christmas DIYS 2022. I can’t improve her walk through for making a Paper Bag Snowflake, so I’m going to direct you to the 4:50 minute mark in the video. However I will give you some tips on how to make the snowflakes without making some easy to avoid mistakes.

Paper Bag Snowflake Tips

The paper bags that I used were not brown paper lunch bags. I happened to have white paper 2 lb bags that measure 4″ x 2.5″ and 7.5″ tall. Yes, my bags are smaller in proportion than the ones used in the video. But the shape of the bag is going to behave the same way no matter the size of the bag. I do want to mention that this 2 lb bag created about a 16″ snowflake. So if you do go with a lunch bag size paper bag, you are going to end up with a beautiful large snowflake!

  1. Leave large spaces between your cuts. I tried making delicate lines. And as you can see (picture 1 above) the spokes snapped when I glued the snowflake together.
  2. If you glue to the bag’s open end corners, 7 bags is only going to give you a half circle. Picture 2 shows you how stressed the paper becomes when you take it to the bag corners. You end up taking away the flexibility of the paper because you limit yourself to the length of the small side of your bag base. In my case, I limited the distance between spokes down to 2.5″.
  3. If you glue to the edge of the bag’s open end, 7 bags may not be enough. (Picture 3) I started off with 7 bags, but when I went to fold the two ends together, the 3D snowflake structure started to collapse and flatten. I cut more of the pattern and added in 2 bags first, but found that wasn’t enough. At that point I just made another 3 to bring the number to 12 bags and that was enough to take the stress out of the paper. It no longer looked like it was going to collapse and flatten.
  4. If you glue to the middle of the bag, the snowflake will be loose enough to not be stressed looking. I was most happy with everything about picture 4 (below). The paper was not stressed at all. There was flexibility. And it was the least frustrating in closing the snowflake. (If you are craft challenged, I think this tip will be the option that you will find most forgiving and less stressful for you.)

If you want additional ideas on who to close the snowflake AND make it reusable, check out the comments under the video. The velcro comment is ingenious and I will be making reusable snowflakes for the rest of the ones that I make for the season.

And let me just say this, I will not make a snowflake the old way again! Until a new idea comes around, this is my go to for making snowflakes. Depending on how intricate your cut design, I estimate that it took me about 7 minutes to make the snowflake (below) with three triangles down each side.

Please don’t limit this craft to just snowflakes. You can easily purchase bright fun color gift bags and make bunting for baby showers, birthdays, bridal showers, anniversaries, and anything else that you are celebrating. If you opt for the bunting, non-snowflake option, I highly recommend Tip 3 (above). It gives a full circle that reminds me of Latino bunting. And the airiness fits perfectly with Boho style.

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Rigging Snowflakes

As I mentioned earlier, I have a small house. Most decorations I use are the ones that I can hang somewhere. So I made these snowflakes with a hanging line installed in the hot glue between two bags.

The easiest way of doing this is to make a loop on the end that you will be putting in the hot glue between the bags. Experience, through the years, has shown me that just gluing in the string with no further feature for the glue to hold on to, the string is just going to pull right out. So I’ve always used a loop, like you see here.

The loop allows glue to connect and hold on to three points of the string. Think of it acting like a Y. There is a natural pooling space between the arms of the Y and in the arm pits. And with paper also glued on either side, the string is anchored in pace.

In fact, my youngest swung at a snowflake hanging from my ceiling, with a roll of wrapping paper, like a piñata and the paper broke but the string held its place.

Hide the Ugly Door

At the Dollar Store I found rolls of candy striped wrapping paper. 1 roll of 40 square feet is enough to cover one door (front and back with a little left over for patch work).

I decided to wrap my doors instead of scrubbing and/or painting them because I have zero time to move this task to the top of my to-do list. I don’t have time to paint on top of the normal craziness that December brings every year. Not to mention that the only space I have to paint doors is outside and currently we have off and on snow. Wrapping the door did take me somewhere between an hour and two as it was. I couldn’t keep an active count because I did this while chasing and feeding kids. So I count this a success.

This door, I wrapped while it was still on its hinges. I’m pretty sure that this was the time suck because of how much time I had to spend in sliding the paper under the door and through the hinge space.

With the exception of working around the door handles, wrapping a door would most certainly be easier to do when it’s removed from the doorway.

That being said, I’m going to show you how I did this while keeping the door in place.

Do the front of the door first.

With some prepped pieces of painter’s tape, I draped the top of the paper over the top of the door and held it in place with a piece of tape. This freed me to go to the back side of the door and position the paper before anchoring it down.

TIP: Painter’s tape is amazing for this first part because it’s strong enough to keep the paper in place but release the paper and door without ripping the paper.

Now that the wrapping paper is going to stay in place, I went back to the front side and dealt with the door knob.

Take an exacto knife. With your free hand, run the paper down smoothly from the top of the door down to the top of the door knob. With the paper held in place, cut around the edge of the door knob with the exacto knife.

If you find it difficult to cut smoothly without ripping your paper (I did because the Dollar Store paper is cheap and very thin–it rips when you look at it funny) than cut an X or + over the door knob. This allows the knob to come through the paper and becomes easier to work around.

TIP: If your cuts are too big, it’s not a problem. Grab your clear tape that you use for wrapping presents. No one is really going to notice if the tape is glossy. They have to look for it to see it. But if you want to be thorough, use a matte finish tape. It will become invisible and no one is ever going to find it.

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TIP: If the cut lines are jagged and uneven, don’t worry. When you’re all finished you can hide this by tying a thick ribbon around the door knob, hang a door decoration or even a stocking from the knob. When in doubt, place an accent decoration piece over the rough edge.

Once the door knob has a clean cut circle around it, this is now another anchor point to help you wrap the paper around the edges of the door.

For the hinges and the latch for the door, use the exacto knife and cut from the edge of the paper to the edge of the door. The flap that you want to remove you can either cut it off or fold it and slide it behind the paper on the face of the door.

TIP: The most difficult areas for me to work around were the top and bottom corners on the hinge side of the door. If you need to, cut the diagonal so that you’re only wrapping around one side at a time rather than two at the same time.

When you come to the bottom of the door, cut the paper from the roll a little longer than you think. I thought I gave myself about two or three inches to come up the back side of the door, I just barely had enough to come up onto the back face of the door. So don’t be afraid to give yourself more paper than you think you need.

Once the front face is all taped down, pick up the remnant of paper and hold it up to the back of the door. Find out where you need to cut to cover the exposed door, width wise. Lengthwise you will see that there’s not enough. And that’s okay. The excess width that you cut off will be enough to cover that bottom section and some pieces to patch around the other side of the door knob and anything you want to clean up (like painter’s tape that you used to tape down the front face).

With the pieces cut and ready to go, start taping those up. I started with the bottom so I could hold those pieces up with painter’s tape (which would then be covered by the larger back face paper). With these edges being seen (much like a present that you wrap in a piece meal fashion because of an oversized box or using paper scraps because you ran out of paper on Christmas Eve), use the clear tape and be as liberal as you would like to.

TIP: With the right printed pattern, it is possible to make everything line up perfectly and not have that piecemeal look. I had hoped that this candy cane print would have done that, but I got caught a few times where the stripes just wouldn’t line up.

Decorating the Door

There are so many options that you can go from here.

For example, one of the fads right for the last couple years is wrapping mirrors or paintings on the wall as presents. The door can be decorated the same way with ribbons and bows.

Don’t have enough wide ribbon. I found colored metallic duct tape in the auto aisle of my local dollar store. They weren’t on my shopping list, but I did take note. And if you hate ribbons slipping (like they will on a door), the metallic duct tape would be a perfect alternative because those “ribbons” will definitely stay in place once you lay them down.

Another idea is to take a poster board and make a “Do Not Open Til Christmas” sticker. (I probably won’t do it this year, but it’s on my list for future ideas.) Or an over sized gift label.

The Paper Bag Snowflake Video that I shared with you above was one video that my kiddos watched with me and they wanted to make those. So the snowflakes are my go to this year for decorating. It’s an easy enough craft that they can do with me. And now that I know how to optimize our production, even my young preschooler can practice his cutting skills and be able to make something for Christmas.

Please share with me your snowflake or door decorations.

How did these crafts go for you? What accent pieces did you use to complete your projects?

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2 responses to “Holiday Cover Up”

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    Pacific Northwest Event Design

    When I add the comment block, I hit the + (add block icon) and type “comments” in the search bar. The comment plug in is then automatically added into the post. (It’s a feature that is already available and no additional download was needed.)

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    I hasve read so many posts regarding thhe blogger lovrs excep thi arrticle
    iis iin fact a nice article, keep iit up.

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Lost on What to Bring?

It never fails that there is a family get together that you don’t know what to bring. Or maybe it’s an office or friends get together. And this is especially painful for those of us who cook well and bring an amazing dish but no one wants to touch it because it’s not one of those Pinterest fad dishes.

This is what you want to bring!

Back at Easter I found a Pillsbury cream cheese and crescent appetizer. I can’t find the exact one, but this link is their fall version in case you want to use an official recipe.

The problem I had was that after more than a decade of marriage, no one in my husband’s family told me that they preferred salty/savory dishes over sweet dishes. And I love cooking pastries and sweets. So once I got that bit of information I finally got the secret to making something that they always want to eat, I feel loved, and I’m not bringing tons of leftovers home of my dish (because they don’t want to take any home).

Again, the above link is for the thanksgiving version. But the Easter version focused on fresh parsley instead of the cranberries. I wanted to keep my Thanksgiving appetizer simple, so I just recreated the Easter version and put it in a cup instead of in a carrot shape, like I did this past spring.

You really don’t need the recipe. For the parsley version all you need on hand is:

  • Pillsbury crescent rolls (feel free to use the generic brand, it’s just the carrier for the cream cheese!)
  • Cream cheese
  • Parsley
  • Flavored Salt (I love garlic so I use garlic salt, but feel free to use any herb/flavored salt you have on hand)

Create Your Shell

For Easter I made a carrot shape by wrapping strips around a cone of foil. For Thanksgiving, I made a bowl by cutting squares and baking them over the bottom of my silicone cupcake molds.

Here’s the trick! If you want to create bite size pieces, use mini cupcake molds. The standard cupcake molds creates pieces that take about 4 bites. Know the people at your party. My family wants the bites that they can just pop in their mouths (or take two bites if they’re being dainty and polite). So the mini is perfect for your grazing appetizer get-togethers. If you’re doing something like a sit down side, the larger (regular size cupcake mold) is perfect for preparing pre-made plates for your get together.

TIP: Use the oven temperature on the package of your crescent rolls. But cut back on the cook time. The minimum cook time on the package I used was 9 minutes. The perfect golden brown I found came at 7 minutes.

Mix Your Filling

For the two packages of crescent rolls that I used, I mixed up about 32 oz of cream cheese. At Easter I found that 16 oz was barely enough to fill my carrots. In fact, I scraped from some carrots to fill others just to make sure that there was “enough” for all the carrots. And this filling is great to have leftovers with because you can spread it on bagels or toast and you will love it just the same!

Taking from my days at working in a University Dining Hall, if you want creamy cream cheese, you want to take the 10 minutes or so to aerate your cream cheese. All you do is take your cream cheese and put it in a bowl and use a hand mixer on high speed. (The Pillsbury recipes never tell you this trick, but believe me you want to do it!)

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When you first start mixing, you will feel the chunk and clunk of the dense cheese. After 10 minutes you will notice that it feels like you’re mixing a thick butter cream frosting. At this point is when you want to season the cheese. Everyone’s salt preferences are going to be different, so I’m not going to tell you an exact measurement to put in. I prefer to barely taste the salt, in fact I would never salt cream cheese for feeding me or my boys. For my husband’s family, though, I salt it a touch beyond my comfort zone–this hits their food pleasure center. So if you are no or low salt making these for people who love salty food, season the cheese enough that it’s just outside your comfort zone but not a salt bomb. If you like salty food, season it to your exact preference. If people tell you that you like salt too much, season the cheese so that it tastes bland to you, but you can still barely taste the salt.

Once the cheese is seasoned, then you want to add your seasonal flavor embellishment. Parsley is good no matter what time of year. I like using just parsley because it’s not going to clash or taste bad eating before or after another appetizer. Plus, parsley is known as a palate cleanser. So if someone eats an appetizer that did not sit well on their tongue, they can come right back to yours and reset their mouth to go on with their party eating.

TIP: Right before Thanksgiving, Monday to be exact, all the parsley was severely picked over and the bunch I bought, when I got home and opened it had some slimy wilted parsley in the center. I couldn’t serve that to family, so I grabbed my dehydrated parsley off my herb shelf. While I love fresh herbs, I keep dried herbs for this precise reason. So don’t be afraid to use any dried herbs that you have on hand!

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With the above recipe link, you will notice that Pillsbury used cranberries and jalapeño. Don’t be afraid to use other flavors during the rest of the year. For example, back for Easter I grated some carrots and put carrots in with the fresh parsley. For spring and summer you could definitely use dehydrated or freeze dried berries. (Just be careful of your water content from berries if you use fresh. They can loosen your cream cheese so it becomes too soft and sloppy.) For a fall and winter option, don’t be afraid to add some Pecans, Walnuts, or other winter nut. Even a candied nut can be your friend for a little bit of sweet and savory combo!

Putting it Together

It is possible to pipe the cream cheese mixture into your crescent shell. You will want to do this when you’re finished mixing your filling. And if you don’t have a piping back and tips in your kitchen, all you have to do is put your cheese into a zip lock bag, snip and bottom corner (after you zipped it up with all the air pressed out). The only drawback to this method is that if your cheese was put back into the fridge or not aerated, then the bag is going to burst.

What do you do if the bag bursts?

Take two small spoons from your drawer. I teaspoon full of cream cheese is more than enough to fill the shells made from the bottom of the mini cupcake molds.

Once your shells are filled, you can finish them off with a dusting of parsley or other flavoring that you put into the cheese (crushed nuts, berries, fruit, etc.).

There you have it!

This is how you can make an impressive appetizer without spending a fortune and doesn’t require a degree from a chef school. But even if you have even less time or say that you burn boiling water, if you can bake crescent rolls then you can spend a little more and get the fancy flavored cream cheese that is pre-made for you.

Even if you seriously can’t cook the crescent rolls, skip the chip and dip route. Pick up the pre-made flavored cream cheese and swing by the bakery department in your local grocery store. You can find pre-sliced bread or even baguettes. Slice up the bread, spread some cheese on top, and sprinkle some parsley (or other ingredients mentioned above).

What’s your favorite appetizer to take to a party?

Items that might interest you for making this appetizer

These links are affiliate links. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.

Standard Sized Silicone Cupcake Molds

Mini Sized Silicone Cupcake Molds

The silver platter I used was a wedding present. Here is a Silver Tray available in a similar style.

Or perhaps you’re looking for a Ceramic Tray.

Various Freeze Dried Fruits to choose from. These Cranberries are a seasonal favorite that’s unique from the fresh berries in the store where they are good for a year after opening.

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Desk Tree

This year is an interesting year to go into for Christmas. For some families, they are facing a tight budget and want to still have some wow while still meeting other necessities. Other families have taken the last few years to simplify their homes with a minimalistic look. And yet there are other people you will gift this year who are limited by space, be it home or office.

The first gift I want to present to you this year is the Desk Tree.

The beauty of the Desk Tree is that it is minimalistic in design and fits into small spaces at the same time. Not only that, but it is a blank canvas for other ideas that you already have in place for someone on your list. But I’ll come back to all these possibilities in a few moments. As well as the announcement of a special treat!

Let’s Make a Desk Tree

The fundamental components are the base, tree, and present. Everything else is completely customizable and based off of what you can find in your local shops or what you already have in your craft room. This time the only thing I purchased recently was the tree.

Other supplies I had on hand:

  • acrylic paint
  • paintbrushes
  • wood glue
  • Mod Podge
  • hot glue gun
  • clamps
  • craft paper
  • glitter
  • gold embroidery floss
  • styrofoam balls (different sizes)

Prep All Wood Pieces

I didn’t choose to sand the wood, because I wanted to keep rough surfaces for the wood glue to adhere to well. In fact, where I glued two pieces of wood together I roughed it up by scratching into the wood with a wood carving blade.

Option: you can paint the base before or after you glue on your tree. For the example in this set of photos, I glued the tree on first and worked around it. For the other copies I made, I painted the base first and glued on the tree afterward. The disadvantage of adding the tree first is that you have to have a steady hand as you paint around the tree. The disadvantage of adding the tree after the base is completely finished is that you run the risk of scratching the “floor finish” if you rough up the spot where you will add the tree.

Paint the Base

I could have painted the tree base before gluing it on. But let’s be honest, I didn’t think about it until later. So just know that it is easier to paint the tree base before you glue it, but entirely possible to paint it while on the base. Just remember to paint the tree base before you paint the floor. Because I chose to go with gold accent to my teal tree, the gold tree base paint doesn’t ruin or effect the floor at all since it blends in with brown. This is another good reason to paint the tree base first. If your paint brush slips, it’s not going to throw off your paint job. And as you can see here, in the first picture, I cleaned the gold off my brush by just painting it on the “floor” going with the grain of the wood.

When you paint the “floor”, paint in the direction of the wood. This allows you to use thin coats of paint (making it a faster dry time) and if the wood grains show through, it adds to your paint job instead of competing with it.

Picture 2 I took to show you that you have the option of leaving any decorative edges of your wood different if your creativity is taking you in a different direction.

Picture 3 shows you the direction that I went, changing the color of the pine to more of a mahogany wood color.

Option: Perhaps you don’t want to paint the base to another wood color finish, but have a wood stain in your garage. Go ahead and use the stain!

Stylize Your Tree Set

Sometimes you have to pause and put things together to see what direction you want to go with. Originally I had planned on painting my “present” and then add dots of glitter to make my own “wrapping paper”. Let’s just say that my polka dots looked like my preschooler made them. It wasn’t the vibe I was going for so I present to you my second option, glitter “wrapping paper”. For a different project, I might choose this option, but it wasn’t working for me either.

While I was staring at the teal tree with the “ornaments” that I put on it I asked myself what it was that attracted me to this tree. And the answer was the playful was that geometry was used. And then it hit me! I had geometric crafting paper.

As you can see here, the geometric triangles brought symmetry to a very asymmetric and quirky tree. And the crafting paper just made my job of wrapping this “present” so much easier.

Wrap the Present

This is simpler than actually wrapping your Christmas presents because you get to use glue!

Once I trimmed my paper (leaving the bottom exposed, with enough left over to wrap the top), I created the folds in my paper before gluing it down. The one thing I hate about gluing down craft paper is that if you have to lift it to reposition it, the paper doesn’t look as nice. So to avoid this pit fall, I made sure to make all my creases first. This allowed me to put the edge of the wood block in the crease and line up before laying down the Mod Podge.

Plus there is the added bonus of knowing where your finishing end will land. In this case, I started my first crease by thinking of this blind end finish and placing the paper edge on the corner of a short end. By the end of my creasing job, the tail end had the paper over lapping around halfway on that same small end.

Start by gluing the paper down with this small end tail.

Work one end at a time and smooth out the paper as you lay it down. This will prevent the paper from slipping, having bubbles, or making creases as you go around your wood block.

When you come to the end, your last flap will be the section that lines up with the short end of the wood block. Apply glue to both the wood block and on top of the paper that you already glued down. The “present” how has a hidden seam where you don’t have to worry about hiding a back side of the present.

Put this seam side of the “present” table side down and place a weight on top of the block. This frees your hands up to do another step of the project while the glue dries, keeps the paper from lifting or wrinkling.

Once this seam side is dry, you are able to know wrap the top of the wood block. For this step, pre-creasing will also make this step easier.

Fold the seam side of the paper down first. Then fold the other short side of the block down next. Finally fold the long sides down.

Reopen the paper and apply Mod Podge down on the full top of the wood block. Fold down the seam side. Apply Mod Podge to the paper of the other short side and fold it down. Then put Mod Podge on the paper of the long side flaps and press them down in the order that you folded them.

When you “present” top is wrapped, you will want to add a weight to the top until the glue dries. (This once again frees your hands up to work on something else of the project.)

You will probably find that you need to put the “present” in between two items to keep it from falling over. You will see that I put it between a craft bin and one of my bottles of paint

Finishing Touches

In order to tie in the glitter from the teal tree and the pain finish of the craft paper, I decided to add some gold glitter trim to the bottom of the “present”.

TIP: To keep the glitter from shedding, consider applying a top coat of something. It’s whatever you have on hand. If you have some glitter glue, that seals in the glitter you just applied without adding a dull layer over the sparkle.

Once the glitter dried, I opted to add an embroidery floss ribbon. All my ribbons were disproportionate to the present. And I didn’t have any tiny premade bows to stick on top. So if your craft room also is limited in tiny items, consider things like embroider floss, thin hemp twine, baker’s twine, or even sewing thread wrapped around a few times.

Depending on what you use to finish off your present will determine how you attach your present to the wood base. Ideally, you would want to add the present with wood glue. In this instance, wood glue would have created more of a mess to clean up than hot glue. I placed hot glue on either side of the floss so that the glue would balance out the thickness of the floss and make the present secure.

Gifting Options

Desk Tree is perfect as is for gift exchanges and teacher’s gifts. But it’s even better when paired up with the little something extra that just wasn’t enough on its own.

Here are two examples of adding a little something extra to a gift that can still be brought out year after year for holiday decor. Match this up with that perfect scented candle that you found. Or maybe that person you gifting only wanted a gift card. This is a festive way of dressing up a gift card!

No matter how you decide to gift this Desk Tree, you will not go wrong with this project!

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!!!

Starting with Desk Tree, I’m going to make Limited Editions available of crafts that you see in my blog.

There are many people who would rather “I can make that!” But there are others who are not so crafty inclined. I don’t want you to feel left out on ideas that you love.

For right now, shipping is only going to be made available for the United States. And all purchases are only through my website, Order Here. I will keep you updated on any changes as they become available.

If you have any questions about Limited Editions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at info@pacificnorthwesteventdesign.com or here:

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Thank you for your response. ✨

Items used in the making of this project

These links are affiliate links to products used in this project. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.

These are generic Jenga blocks that are great for crafting on a budget when your local dollar store is out of stock.

Last Christmas, my husband put these Dewalt clamps in my stocking for crafting. And they are definitely one of my favorite project tools.

At the time of this posting, this Mod Podge is on sale. There are many varieties and finishes, but I wanted to send you to the sale link.

I originally bought these Marble Tiles for working with HTV. But I’ve found that they have had other uses in my craft room, such as a weight for holding certain projects down.

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A Cup for Me and You

Being crafty, I love it when I have the opportunity to bring a craft to any of my kiddo’s class. This week I got to dress up and have fun in a 3’s Preschool Class for their Harvest Party.

Whether you’re a parent, teacher of a class, or helper in a co-op class, you find out real quick how quickly the sticker price adds up on crafts. Needless to say, a dollar store is very handy when gathering items for a craft, especially when you can find blanks that are in a bundle.

I found these cocoa cups and thought they were perfect for a craft. (The co-op preschool class that my kiddo is in is a wonderful blend where not everyone believes in celebrating all the holidays on the calendar. And I love these classes because there’s an opportunity to bring a little different.) So for this craft, I focused on embracing this comfort drink for the cooling weather.

For the mock up that I made for the teacher, I painted the mug with a single coat of sage colored acrylic paint. The one thing I love about balsa wood crafts is that it absorbs the paint and dries rather quickly with great coverage.

The next step was to add the whipped cream. For this I used hot glue and a cotton ball. For playing around purposes, to build up a 3d effect, I started with putting down a line of glue at the top of balsa wood swoop. I pressed the cotton down and pulled it up to keep a wispy and light effect. Then I added one more line and applied the cotton (continuing to pull it upward) and worked my way down to the lip of the mug. There were about 4 rows that I put in, with additional spots added, to fill in any bald spots.

On the flip side I glued on two sprigs of lavender before laying down the cotton on the back side. If lavender is not your thing, the mini coffee stirring straws would be perfect substitutes because they’re thin enough for the cotton to overlap without any bulges and gives the illusion of something coming out of your cocoa.

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To decorate the mugs with a fall theme, I also grabbed these rub-on transfers from the dollar store as well. Each packet of transfers was enough to decorate the packet of 8 mugs.

In order to prevent fussing with all the elements with preschoolers, I put a mug and 3 transfers (a large, medium and small) in an envelope. Mainly I did this to keep things fair so the first group of kiddos wouldn’t take all the large pumpkins and leave the smallest leaves behind for the last group.

Here’s the thing with these transfers, they take some work. My original expectations were that these would be true to their name and take a little bit more rubbing than traditional stickers. In fact, the directions on the back of the package inferred such an expectation. But that’s not what I experienced. They don’t rub on at all. You have to scrape these babies onto your surface. I used a plastic crafting scraper and that tool failed to apply the rub on. I didn’t try using a coin like a scratcher ticket, but that idea is still in the back of my mind. The thing that worked for me was scraping the rub on with my finger nail.

Even with a thorough scraping of my nail, the transfer didn’t apply fully on the larger pumpkin groupings. And this was my biggest disappointment. BUT the transfers are forgiving. You can line these failed transfer sections back up and apply with relative success.

My biggest tip with these transfers is to take your time and gently lift up the clear transfer sheet. If the transfer doesn’t release, put the transfer back down and scrape it some more.

The original plan was to have the right above picture the completed project. The fact that I could see the hot clue peak through on the cotton prompted me to pull out my can of spray glue and glitter. Just by adding this little additional detail was enough to transform matted rough looking cotton back into something frothy and light looking.

That and I like glitter!

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I kept this mock up to be pretty basic in design because I wanted it to be re-creatable for the preschoolers. Now if I were making this mock up for older kids or even a MOPS (or other ladies’) group then I would have dressed up the mug and made it more ornate with either some hand designs with acrylic paint pens, glitter pens, metallic embellishments, or so many other crafting items. In fact, I really wanted to take a small cluster of crafting fall leaves and make a little thin ribbon embellishment on the top of the mug handle.

There are other options for the whipped cream portion as well. I used cotton and my hot glue gun because I wanted the kids to be able to take their mugs home that day. But if you have more time with your class, you can use other materials and glues. I thought it could be fun using more glitter, or the tiny foam balls. Chunky white yarn could be amazing, especially for incorporating more whipped cream swirls. And I know kids would have amazing fun gluing marshmallows on top of the mug. (But I’ve seen kids pull off and eat food items off of crafts way too often. So I tend to opt out of that option. But… if I were to throw caution to the wind and let the kiddos play with marshmallows, then I would skip the glue entirely. Instead of glue I would use a royal icing. It dries like glue but is much more child friendly for those who eat crafts!

How did the craft turn out?

Oh my goodness! That day was just as chaotic as you think it’s going to be when you sign up to help in the class on a party day.

First, the schedule got blown out of the water and my party craft was slotted for right before the end of class, and parent pick up. I think it pretty much averaged where the kiddos made these mugs in about 3-5 minutes each.

Fortunately, this craft is easy to punt with and save time. First, skip the painting! Balsa is a wonderfully creamy color. And with the “rub-on” transfers, the focus goes to the transfers. To be honest, one of the girls really did beg to paint her mug the “pretty green”. She loved it and wanted it too. Fortunately the glitter saved me from a meltdown.

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Kids love glitter!!!

I probably should have sprayed not just the cotton, but the whole mug to let them glitterfy the whole mug in lieu of the painting portion.

For the cotton portion, I just stretched the cotton ball out and handed it to the kiddo. I applied a liberal amount of hot glue and let the kids put the cotton down. (There was no incident with the glue. This 3’s class did an amazing job!)

The last step was to spray the cotton with spray glue and send the kids back to the table to finger sprinkle glitter onto their whipped cream over a paper plate. (If you spray from the mug toward the top of the whipped cream, you keep the spray entirely on the cotton.)

All of the mugs turned out differently. Some added more transfers than others. These kids lost interest in the transfers because they were not able to scrape hard enough to get them to apply. So if you’re doing this for young children, find a tool that lets you (preferably the kids) to apply with ease.

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I wish I would have had time to take pictures of the ones that got made. This one was the one my kiddo made. Of course the one that followed me home was one of the less decorative one. So please don’t assume that this craft was too much for young kids. Time was the failure for this craft. My 6, 5, and 3 year olds were all excited for this craft and I stashed the extra mugs so that they could make them this weekend. I’ll update this post with how the mugs turn out when kids have time to do this project at their pace with the materials they want to use.

Now that November is around the corner, and winter on its’ heels, there is still plenty of time for a craft like this! Change up the colors and decoration add ons for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and even Winter Theme for January and February. Cocoa is something that kids love year round. (In fact, mine begged me for cocoa regularly during the summer!) So feel free to incorporate this easy craft into your curriculum or busy box for when you need something for kids to do. Or even do this yourself for those moments when you want to let loose on some creative steam but need to have it finished in a 10 minute crafting window!

Let me know how your crafts turn out!!!

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Saucy Saves

It all started when I had a West Coast Clam Chowder that was too thin….

I learned how to make clam chowder from my mom. And she started her chowder with a roux. Nothing says “please give me a headache” more than trying to fix a roux based sauce or soup than your sauce being too thin. It’s not like you can add more flour because it’s not cooked out. And you can’t make corn starch slurry to thicken it up. I mean technically you can, but it’s not the same. The flavor gets thrown off and the texture is also not the same.

That’s when I had the brilliant idea of adding instant potato flakes. I put diced potatoes in my chowder and so the potato flakes made sense because it’s dehydrated powder that absorbs your excess liquid AND you get to keep the potato flavor.

Over the years, from this dehydrated potato beginnings, I have started dehydrating more and more of my vegetables.

It just made more and more sense, because if you really look at all the seasonings in the seasoning aisle in the grocery store, just about all of it comes from plants, herbs, and their seeds. We already season our food with produce. It’s not a far leap to move to use vegetables as seasoning.

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From my chowder I moved to thickening my brown sauce made in my caste iron pan when I once again added too much water. This sauce the water evaporates relatively quickly. But this time I added dehydrated mushroom powder. It added an earthy note to my brown sauce and thickened up in just a few minutes instead of the several minutes that cooking off the water takes. Once again, the flavor improved.

And to be honest, I’ve hated working out the lumps of flour when I tried to re-thicken with flour like my mom use to. Depending on the day, I’m convinced that the flour was giving me attitude, “I’m just going to stay lumpy because there’s nothing you can do about it!”

So my comeback to my lippy flour has become, “Oh yeah? Well I’m going to use vegetables then. They don’t lump up like you do.”

I’m still waiting on some of my produce to finish growing in my garden to replenish some of my vegetable powders, but I’d like to introduce you to some of my favorite powdered veg.

From left to right you Zucchini, Spinach, Mushrooms, and sliced Mushrooms. The orange powder on top is the combination of yellow, orange, and red sweet peppers. You know that bag of small peppers in the produce department? Those are the ones that I dehydrated and turned to a powder.

I’m all out of my powdered Butternut Squash. This one is actually my work horse. It has a nice sweet flavor that my boys don’t know that I’m adding vegetables into a meal.

Not only does my powdered veg work as a thickener, it doubles as my mom hack of hiding vegetables from my children who don’t want to see certain vegetables on their plates. Peas and Carrots are still acceptable on the plate, but all the others, I have to get pretty creative. And instead of renaming vegetables to some weird name, like my mom did, I just prefer seasoning everything with it.

Do you have a recipe that your family is always asking for?

Do you always tell them “Absolutely not!” because it’s your recipe and you don’t want anyone else to have it?

If you want to be generous this Christmas, you can dehydrate and turn your secret ingredients into a powder and make a seasoning pack or bag of instant soup.

This is particularly a great idea for loved ones who live across the country from you and shipping out a sauce or soup just isn’t practical! You don’t have to ship glass containers, liquid, or even have the weight of the ingredients that still contain their water content.

Maybe the person you’re gifting is a hiker or camper. But gifting them dehydrated food, in the form of seasoning, you’re able to give them the nutrition they need and taking up a fraction of their pack space.

Not sure about that statement?

Take another look at the pictures of my powdered vegetables. The Spinach is contained in a 9 oz jar and is currently holding two bunches of spinach. Yes, that is two grocery store bunches of spinach.

Looking for a funny gift for your cook or baker this Christmas?

Here’s a design that can take on many different meanings. It’s perfect for your secret recipe cook, a white elephant present, or for that home cook whose mystery meals are not exactly the best surprises to hit the dinner table.

Here’s a sneak peak for Abstract Cooking, which is officially released on Monday.

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2 responses to “Saucy Saves”

  1. Lyle Avatar
    Lyle

    This article extremely informative, I have learnt so much from it.

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    1. Pacific Northwest Event Design Avatar
      Pacific Northwest Event Design

      Thank you for reading! I am so glad that you were able to learn from me.

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      Reply

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