Let's Get Crafty - Reindeer Ornaments

Last night, my galpal Hillary and I had craft night. She wanted to make these cute Reindeer ornaments for her tree and to give a couple as gifts.  Her inspiration was this cutie from Craftelf.

Source: craftelf.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

So we took a quick spin over to Michaels and got our supplies for 8 ornaments.  We couldn't find red ball ornaments so we had to get creative and we decided to get some styrofoam balls and wrap them with yarn.  We bought a big skein of red yarn and two packages of 6 4inch styrofoam balls, some black pipe cleaners, brown felt, pop poms and small gold jingle bells as well as some red glitter ribbon.  We also got some googly eyes (in hindsight we should have gotten bigger eyes...)

So basically we (well, Hil) wrapped the balls with yarn.  I cut out the antlers from the felt using the antler pattern from the craftelf website (I had to resize it to make it smaller..) and we hot glued those on. Hil made these cute little corkscrew tufts from the black pipe cleaners by wrapping it around a glue stick and the pinching the ends together to make it round.  We glued one of those between the antlers.  We hotglued jingle bells to the inside of each antler. We strung a jingle bell onto a length of glitter ribbon (getting glitter everywhere, fyi) and tied the ends to make a hanger. That was hotglued behind the antlers.  Then eyes and a pom pom for the nose.  As you can see, we probably should have used larger eyes. But they have a lot of homemade character!!

craft madness

i think i'll call him Felix

Reindeer Gingerbread Cookies

In preparation for a cookie exchange I decided to try my hand at making some gingerbread cookies.  I always see those peanut butter cookies with the hershey's kiss stuck in them and I thought that doing that with gingerbread cookies would make a nice festive holiday cookie.  I found this recipe on the McCormick website and thought I would give it a try.  I found that refrigerating the dough is a must and that 1-1.5 inch dough balls make a nice size cookie as these do not spread very much.  It is also a pain in the butt to unwrap 60 kisses so have your little helpers lend a hand (with a few extra kisses to be lost to little helpers' tummies, no doubt).  With a couple of successful batches under my baking belt, I decided to up the ante and try my hand at reindeer gingerbread cookies (and you know you've seen these all over pinterest!)

Makes 5 dozen or 30 (2 cookie) servings.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Refrigerate Time: 4 hours

Cook Time: 8 to 10 minutes per batch

3 cups flour
2 teaspoons McCormick® Ginger, Ground 
1 teaspoon McCormick® Cinnamon, Ground 
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon McCormick® Nutmeg, Ground 
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg
1 teaspoon McCormick® Pure Vanilla Extract 
1/4 cup granulated sugar
60 kiss-shaped candies

1. Mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, nutmeg and salt in large bowl. Set aside. Beat butter and brown sugar in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add molasses, egg and vanilla; mix well. Gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until well mixed. Press dough into a thick flat disk. Wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate 4 hours or overnight.

2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar to coat. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. 

3. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until edges of cookies just begin to brown. Immediately press a chocolate candy into center of each cookie. Remove to wire racks; cool completely. Store cookies in airtight container up to 5 days. 

For reindeer decorations, have on hand red (for Rudolph) and/or brown (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen..you know, the normals) peanut M and M's, chocolate chips and pretzels for antlers.  You MUST insert the reindeer face decorations while the cookies are hot otherwise they will not adhere to the cookie.    I had a dickens of a time getting the pretzels to stick in and thus half my cookies are antler-less.  I guess they are female reindeer?? The ones that did stick in are pretty fragile and will be a pain to transport intact.  (After a quick google seach, it turns out that both male and female reindeer grow antlers and that most male reindeer actually shed their antlers by December. Only non-pregnant females usually retain their antlers until about April. Interesting)

Super Easy Lightweight Holiday Card Display

Here's a fun and easy tutorial on how to make a lightweight card display on the cheap.

Materials:
Corrugated Cardboard
Felt
Scissors
glue stick
tape
Fabric ( I found mine cheap in the remnant bin at Joanne's)

1. Cut the cardboard to desired size.  Mine is 8" x15".
2. Wrap cardboard with fabric and tape as if you are wrapping a present.
3. For Tree, cut two felt squares 5" square in light green and dark green.  Fold on the diagonal and cut to produce two triangles of each color. For snowman, find three circles of increasing diameter to use as tracing guides for snowman body circles.
4. Glue stick on the felt shapes.
5. Hang and use pushpins or tacks to hang holiday cards.

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