Art Adventure: Gingerbread Houses

One thing that is so much fun to make with kids around the holidays is a gingerbread house because they just love the piles of candy to choose from. But who has the time and patience to make an actual gingerbread structure that will hold up to young kids' hands? So I cheat. And I'll teach you how too.

Art Adventure: Gingerbread Houses

Supplies:

• milk cartons
• graham crackers
• hot glue
• candy
• coconut
• any other goodies to decorate with
• frosting (recipe follows)

I had Gabe bring home four milk cartons from school. Milk cartons are harder to come by now-a-days, but a school will give them to you if you go in and ask at lunchtime, as long as you are prepared to dig them out of the trash yourself. Me, I let my kid do the dirty work. Crafty, I know.


After washing them and letting them dry. I hot glued them shut and then glued two together so I had one long ridge line on the roof.

Then I hot glued graham crackers to the milk cartons. You heard me, hot glue them. For mine I used half a graham cracker that I had to trim a bit with a knife to make it fit on the short end. I glued those on first.

Then one full size graham across the long side. There was a bit of a gap from the edge of the graham to the top edge of the wall, but this will be covered by the roof, so don't sweat it.

Next, the ends need triangles. This is a little trickier, but not hard. I took half a graham, laid it on my cutting board, and used the house itself as my template. I laid it on top and used a knife to cut it to size, and then hot glued it in place.

Last, the roof, each side needs a full size graham. The cracker is slightly larger than the roof itself, allowing for a little overhang like a real roof. When you glue them on, make them meet on the ridge line.

Now you need glue. Here's a good stiff frosting recipe that makes great glue:

Cast of Characters:

2 egg whites
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
2 tsp. water
Beat until frothy.

Slowly add 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, beating after each addition until you achieve something inbetween soft and stiff peaks. It will be thick and pasty. Perfect for strong glue.

Now the fun part. Use whatever candies you desire. Or cereal. We had some coconut which made great snow.

Just plan on extra for eating. For the boys, especially Chi, it was easier to just cover a side at a time with frosting and let him go nuts adding whatever he wanted. 

If you wanted to be more sophisticated about it, you could just put the frosting where you wanted glue something on. But that's all there is to it. 

Fun and simple.

(Obviously, don't eat the graham crackers now that they have glue, but you can pick at the rest.)

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Can't forget the Eggs.

All right. I never really expected to post this many things related to Easter crafts like this or this, but it's been fun. I have wanted to try Onion Skin dyed eggs for a long time. It's been in my book for years. Pretty sure it was originally from Martha.

You will need old fabric or nylons cut into squares bigger than your egg. I used nylons. Lots of onion skins. I use onion in a lot of my cooking, so it didn't really take long to save some, I just stuck them in a paper bag. Rice and rubber bands. Oh, and eggs. Don't forget the eggs!

Lay the nylon or fabric on your counter.

place about 6 layers of onion skins on that.

Sprinkle with a bit of rice (you could use small leaves instead) 

and top rice with a few more onion skins.

Place egg on top of that.

Doesn't that nestled egg look precious?

Place more onion skins on top of the egg, then carefully wrap the nylon or fabric around your egg 

and secure with rubber bands. You want the onion skins tight against the egg, but, you know, don't smash your egg. :)

Get some water boiling. Gratuitous boiling water photo. :)

Carefully lower the eggs into the water and boil for 20 minutes. Yeah, those are the instructions.

Take them out and let them cool a bit. Unwrap. And to shine them up, you can rub them with a little vegetable oil.

So pretty!

Gabe thinks they look like wood.

The affect from the natural ingredients is amazing.

So, we tasted them because 20 minutes cook time on an egg is a lot. They reminded Matt of "cafeteria" eggs. They were edible, but a definite gray ring around the yolk. I'd recommend using them IN something like egg salad if you are into that sort of thing. I'm not. I'll just make some more to be pretty for Easter and then pawn them off on people. It's how I roll. :)

Linking to:
Somewhat Simple 
Centsational Girl

Spring has (almost) sprung

I promised myself I'd do some Spring and Easter crafty things with the kids this year. So, project number one turned out to be not so kid friendly because it worked best with hot glue. The best laid plans...

 

Have you ever used hot glue and not burned yourself? I haven't. It seems to be more successful if you sacrifice a little flesh.

So, bunnies and chicks. You need plastic eggs, felt, googly eyes, and a cotton ball, optional - wire and beans.

 

I matched my egg and felt colors. I drew out the ears and feet for the bunnies and let Pumpkin Noodle cut them out. 

 

I drew a little fringe and wings for him to cut out for the chick. He also colored some card stock orange for the beak and feet because I didn't have orange felt. But actually the card stock worked great. 

That's about all the help the kiddo could provide because then I hot glued the pieces in place. For the bunnies, I drew the rest of their faces on with permanent marker and I also glued a bit of cotton ball on the back for the tail.

 

 Now, you may have noticed that eggs don't stand on end by themselves. I solved it by bending a piece of wire and hot gluing it under the feet.

 

It does show from the back a bit, but the wire bends and holds it up. Also, I found filling the eggs with some dried pinto beans gave them a little weight that helped them stand on the wire.

And here's a shot of Monkey Bean playing with a bunny - which was about all the help he could actually provide. And, yes, he's wearing a pajama shirt all day long. Why do you ask? :)

 They are pretty sweet even if the kids couldn't actually help much.

 

Mission: Birthday Cake

My little man turned three and he wanted a Lightening McQueen cake. He also told me he wanted chocolate cherry cake. This is not a common flavor around here (though I do love it!) so I was a bit surprised. He doesn't usually eat chocolate cake so when I pressed him he wanted yellow cake, but also chocolate and cherries.

I have made a habit of making elaborate cakes for my family, particularly my kids. So my oldest had high expectations. To pull the elements together, I decided on 2 ten inch rounds of yellow cake. I use a mix. Yeah, yeah. I've made cake from scratch before but I feel the good people at Hines, Betty Crocker, and Pillsbury have done a fabulous job with basic cake mix -- and it saves time and effort. I made rounds because I thought it would be easier to deal with the filling and because I could use the shape as the racetrack.

On the bottom layer, I cut out small well in the center and filled it with cherry pie filling. (Look at me go with all these pre-made products! Sandra Lee would be so proud.)Oh, just use a serrated knife. I cut a thin layer of cake off the bit I had removed and replaced it over the cherries so it would be easier to frost with my chocolate frosting. I stacked the top layer of cake and frosted with chocolate. Here you can see the inside, not the prettiest image, I know.


I knew I wanted a track around the edge with a grassy center field. I also decided to parody the Cars logo and put my son's name in place of Cars. I used a toothpick to draw all the elements in place before I started adding other colors. If I messed up with the toothpick I could just smooth the frosting out and try again.

I divided my white frosting and colored some green for grass, some red for the logo, and added edible shimmer to some for the metallic parts of the logo. (They do make gray and silver food colors, but I was lazy, I used what I had on hand. Feel free to plan ahead better than me.)I outlined my sections with a small piping tip and then filled in. I used a small star tip for the grass.



And then, the easiest part: I dug out his own toy cars and placed them on the cake! I thought the cake was fun and one of my easier ideas.And, most importantly, Little Man was happy.


P.S. the art table/storage wasn't finished this weekend. I told you! :)