Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas everyone!

Birthday Card

 

Another week already!

This week I made a Birthday card for a friend so I thought that I would share it with you.

As Summer wraps up, I thought I would go with a bright and fun card.

I used the regular size that we do for cards, 6 ¾ x4 ¾. I picked a bright green as my base and then layered a 6 ¼ x 4 ¼ bright pink layer on top.

Before doing that I stamped the pink layer with beige ink and then used white embossing powder over it to make for bright white words. I left some space under the words, an inch or so. Then I flattened this layer.

                                   

I punched some bright green hearts, three to be exact. Then when the layer was flat, I glued the three hearts under the words.

                                                       

Then finally I glued the layer onto the card and then a bright cheery Birthday card was created!  

                                                       

Green Smoothie

Only a couple of days before St. Patrick’s Day and we’re kind of sticking to our holiday theme and we’re going to look at healthy green smoothie recipes for this week’s post. As you remember, we did a heart healthy food list for Valentine’s Day.

Green smoothies are an ever popular trend. Some are very simple and some have lots of ingredients in them but they all are super healthy. Take a look and see our green smoothie guide that can help you create a drink to feel healthy and to help celebrate St. Patrick’s Day!

Simple Green Smoothie:

So a green smoothie has a basic outline. You want to add milk/liquid, greens, fruit, protein, and seeds. If you’re making a big batch of green smoothie, follow this rule, 2 cups of greens, 2 cups of liquids, 3 cups of fruit plus whatever add ons you want.

First of all, a green smoothie wouldn’t be green without the greens so some possible greens that you can use are...spinach, kale, lettuce, Swiss chard, bok choy, collards, dandelion, carrot top, celery, or beet greens. Feel free to use just one kind of green or mix it up and use a couple different types.

Next you’ll need to choose a liquid to add to the smoothie. You can use water, but for an extra bit of flavour try... dairy milk (1%, 2%, skim), soy milk, almond milk, coconut water, cashew milk, rice milk, oat milk, coconut milk, or cold brewed green tea.

Now add some fruit. Frozen bananas are always good to use but also try adding in some other fruit as well. Good fruit to add to your smoothie are mangos, pineapple, berries, peaches avocados, oranges, grapefruits, pears, apples, and grapes.

Finally add in some extras if you want. Some examples of extras are... your favourite protein powder, matcha green tea powder, flax, quinoa, chia seeds, honey, and other seeds.

Here is a recipe for a small batch of green smoothie...

1 ½ cups of milk (you choose what kind)

2 cups of frozen spinach

1 frozen banana

1 cup of fruit, your choice (good ideas are...mango, pineapple, berries, peaches, citrus fruit, green apple)

A scoop of your favourite protein powder

Blend all the ingredients together and drink. You can freeze this smoothie in individual containers so if you’re in a hurry you can pull it out and let it defrost in the morning.

Turtlette - Turtle Backpack Tags

We are starting a slow wind down of our Summer theme and this week we are looking at a shade called “Turtlette” by Tarte. I know you’re thinking green but this shade is actually metallic silver. Maybe they had a Silverback Turtle in mind? It’s a nice party shade.

We thought we’d do something for back to school. We had some of our key rings leftover from our Father’s Day post so we decided to make use of those and we are making turtle shaped nametags for kid’s backpacks.

There are a couple designs that we came up with so take a look below and see how to make your very own turtle backpack tag.

The first one is very easy and simple. All you need is a turtle template. We chose this one...

You will also need some green felt and some twine.

We printed the turtle so that when it was cut out it was about 4 inches long. Then we traced the turtle with a felt pen onto the felt and cut it out.

Instead of an eye we made a little hole where the eye would be and we strung through some twine. To make sure that the twine knot is secure, you can put white glue or clear nail polish on the knot to prevent it from coming undone.

Lastly, we wrote a name (with a felt pen r Sharpie) on the body of the turtle.

Our second turtle is a foam turtle.

We found another turtle template and printed that and cut it out. We actually printed it twice (more on that later). It measures about 4 ½ inches.

On a quick shop at the Dollar store, we bought some light green foam sheets and then also found a darker green foam sheet. The darker green was sparkly and also had an adhesive backing.

On the lighter green foam sheet, we traced the outline of the turtle. We used a black felt pen, it smudged slightly but we were able to fix it by wiping it off with a damp paper towel. You can use a regular ball point pen if you prefer or even a pencil might work.

Now cut that turtle out.

Next on that other turtle that we printed, we cut out just the shell pieces. We had six of them.

Then we traced those onto our sparkly foam. To keep track of them all, we numbered them so that we knew where to put them when we attached them to the turtle.

After tracing them all, cut out all of the shell pieces.

Punch some black “eyes” from a black foam piece (you could also use googly eyes) and glue them on with a glue stick and then attach the the foam shell pieces to the turtle.

When that’s all complete, we grabbed some floral wire and pushed that through one of the legs. Then we twisted it like a chain (feel free to use a chain if you have one) and then attached the end to the key ring.

Write the name of your child on the back in felt pen and you’re done.

DIY Ornaments

Once December 1^st hits, then it’s time to put up the Christmas tree. Mine went up this weekend. Usually it’s a work in progress as the first step is putting up the tree and then the next few days and weeks, we add ornaments to it.

We thought that it might be a fun idea to make some ornaments this week. In the past we have painted ceramic and wooden shapes, but this year we thought we’d use the plastic ornaments that you can find at the craft store which open up. We’re going to open them up and fill them to decorate as well as paint them.

Again, this one is a really inexpensive craft to make with items that you can easily get at the dollar store or probably even find at home.

Painting the ornaments takes more time so you’ll want to do this further in advance if you want to give them away or hang them up. We’ve picked a variety of colours for paint to use; some are Christmasy and some are not. We also have a bunch of different sizes of brushes and some sponges as well. You can pre-sketch out some designs or you can free style it and come up with your design as you go. Do whatever you like. Here’s what we came up with...

This is a drip paint ornament. What we've done is pick a couple of matching colours and dripped them into the ornaments and moved the paint around by turning the ornaments. We did this process a few times to get all of the area covered. Then we let them hang upside down overnight to drain out the excess paint and this is what we got...

Another option to is to fill the ornaments with curled ribbons, shredded snow, larger glitter bits, small punched shapes, or coloured paper or paper from old books so that you can see the words.

For both, you can put ribbons/bows on the outside to adorn the finished ornaments.  

Now you can hang them up in your tree or around your house or you can make a bunch and hand them out as gift this year.