School "Letters"

I mod podged this cardboard mailbox with cute scrapbook paper for Everett. Each day we do 'school' together. I call it school because he thinks it's cool. We really just read books, do flannel board stories, sing songs, do play dough, color, go on 'field trips' and play together for about 30 minutes. I've only been doing it since the beginning of January and he already recognizes about half the alphabet letters! It's so fun. Today we saw a stop sign and I asked him what letters he saw and he said 'S' 'O'. I was pretty proud of him!

Anyway I got off the subject. Back to the mailbox. I'm going to use it each day to introduce part of my 'lesson' to him. He'll open the mail box each morning and find either a letter that we're going to learn, a piece to the flannel board story, a book, some sort of art thing, a treat....whatever we're doing for school that day! I showed it to him last night and he was SO excited. He said he wanted to get his vitamins in the mailbox each day. So maybe we'll use it for that too.

I also made this little mail box as a love box for my husband and I. We'll keep in in our bathroom window and write little notes to each other, put chocolates or whatever else in there. I think it will be a fun and creative way for us to express our love to each other all year long!

Salt Dough Ornaments Tutorial

Making and decorating your own ornaments is a tradition that my family used to do and now my husband and I do it. It's a great family activity and makes many memories. Each year when we get the ornaments out it's fun to remember who made which one and to remember Christmases of the past.

So, for those of you who don't care if your tree has 'unique' ornaments....here's a DIY tutorial.





Description: Handmade painted Christmas ornaments

Materials Needed:

Salt

Flour

Water

Paint



1. Make this salt dough recipe

4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1.5 cups water
Knead for 5 minutes.

**This recipe makes A LOT!! I made about 30 cut-outs and still have extra salt dough for Everett to play with. If you're just doing it for ornaments and don't want left overs I would recommend doing half the recipe or even 1/4 depending on how many you want to make.

2. Roll out the dough and use cookie cutters to make the shape of your ornaments. You want the dough to be fairly thin, try to keep it about 1/8" thick or so, I would definitely not go more than 1/4".

3. Cut holes in the ornaments so they can be hung with ribbon, yarn, thread...etc. I used a pen cap to make my little circles.

4. Place ornaments on a greased baking sheet or with parchment paper.

5. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes.

6. After they are cooled down, go to town and PAINT!

7. Run a ribbon through the hole that you so delicately cut out!

8. Hang on your tree and enjoy!

Everett painting his first ornament, good job!

I wish I could say this bell and the star were ones that I painted, or my husband, but, they aren't. We invited some friends over and they busted out their hidden talents of painting! Who knew!

Can you see the palm trees and the building on this one? My camera kept giving glare...

Check out this shepherd scene!! Good job!