December 2005
Dear Friends,
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and found my Turkey Tips helpful. We enjoyed an early Thanksgiving meal with our oldest daughter and family from Baltimore. Our four-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, has a new name for me: “Craft Granny.” I was tickled and think the name will stick! Perhaps your children will enjoy some of the activities I set out for Sarah and two-year old Ben.
I set up a
card table in the kitchen with drawing and construction paper, crayons, colored pencils, glue stick and decorative scissors for Sarah – a real hit! As her mom said, she’ll probably make lots of confetti. She enjoyed all the different edges she cut with the various scissors and created lots of pictures with waves, clouds, grass, and pretty dresses, all cut from construction paper and glued onto white paper. You can buy the scissors for a dollar or two at Wal-Mart and craft stores. They go on sale from time to time and I just bought some for 50 cents. What great stocking stuffers! You can even make your own pretty stationery by cutting the top and bottom edges of your paper with one of these craft scissors.
While I was working in the kitchen, I gave the children some
bread dough they had helped mix. We pinched off golf ball size pieces and they rolled them into snakes, and then shaped those into their initials. We made one for each family member, then brushed them with melted butter & sprinkled them with Parmesan cheese. Fifteen minutes in a 350 degree oven and we had
delicious bread sticks to go with our meal. Even very young children enjoy patting and pounding the dough and it really doesn’t hurt the dough no matter how much it’s pounded. I told the children to play with it like play dough and they “went to town.” Hint: You can buy pastry brushes at dollar stores and discount stores. Use them to brush butter on bread dough, and to brush icing on cookies.
The children also enjoyed decorating Christmas cookies. Since our time during their visit was limited, I had baked the cookies ahead of time and set out icing, colored sugar and sprinkles. Little Ben is in love with Thomas the Tank Engine, so my train cookies were a hit with him – but they had to be blue! If you don’t have a particular
color of sugar on hand, it’s easy to make your own. Put about a half cup of sugar in a zipper bag. Add a drop of food coloring, seal the bag and shake. Add more coloring if needed, but don’t get the sugar too wet. If necessary, you can lay the sugar on a cookie sheet to dry. Our blue sugar worked just fine for Ben’s train cookies.
Let me suggest a few more
simple Christmas crafts. Before snow covers the ground for you folks up north, collect some pine cones. Cut colored tissue paper into 2” squares. Place a little white glue on some foil and turn the edges up a little to create a disposable bowl. Have the children take one piece of tissue, put their pointer finger in the center of the tissue square, press it around their fingertip and then dip the center of the tissue into the glue. Stick the tissue into the pine cone. Continue until you fill all the spaces in the pine cone. Tie with some ribbon or yarn to hang it up and you have a pretty ornament. You can also try inserting pieces of white cotton instead of tissue to give a “snow effect.”
Another fun activity with pieces of tissue paper is to make what I call
“Stained Glass” pictures. Get a bottle of liquid starch in the laundry aisle at the supermarket. It’s usually blue and comes in a quart-sized bottle. Don’t use spray starch for this activity! Pour a little starch in a dish. Set out lots of tissue paper cut or torn into random shapes and sizes. This is a great way to recycle used tissue so save tissue paper after opening gifts. Give the children a piece of white paper; construction paper or a heavy white drawing paper works best (regular printer paper will curl). Brush some liquid starch onto the paper, stick pieces of tissue onto the wet paper and brush over it with more starch. Overlap the tissue to create new colors. When it’s dry, it has a pretty stained glass look. Once it’s dry, you can cut the paper into hearts or other shapes, color on top of it with markers, or just enjoy it as it is!
Save scraps of Christmas wrapping paper and the used paper after you unwrap gifts. The children will enjoy cutting out the candy canes, snowmen and winter scenes. Glue these to paper and use crayons or markers to create their own pictures and cards. This is a great way for children to make their own Christmas cards and gift tags.
Older children can
decoupage pieces of wrapping paper to Styrofoam balls to create pretty ornaments. For this purpose, it works better to tear the paper and create jagged edges, then overlap some of the pieces, totally covering the Styrofoam. Use Mod-Podge with a 1” foam brush – all readily available at most craft stores and Wal-Mart. Mod-Podge looks like white glue. Tear all the wrapping paper first into small pieces about 1 – 2”. Brush Mod-Podge onto the Styrofoam ball, stick the paper onto the ball, and brush over the paper again with Mod-Podge. Do just one side at a time; set the ball in a glass so the wet side can dry, and do another side later.
I guess “Craft Granny” better move on to some recipes before this letter gets too long! I love to do all sorts of creative activities with the children. I hope these will help you pass the long days of winter and give your children something creative they can do.
Earlier, I mentioned our bread sticks. We also used yeast dough to make
Monkey Bread. We rolled balls of dough in melted butter, then in a mixture of ¾ C brown sugar, ¼ C granulated white sugar, and 1 T. cinnamon. Lay the coated balls of dough in a bundt pan. Let rise 30 minutes and bake at 350 degrees for 30 - 35 minutes or until nicely browned. As soon as you take it out of the oven, carefully invert the bread onto a plate. Be sure the plate or platter is larger than the bundt pan so it catches all the ooey-gooey goodness of the melted sugar. It is HOT, so please do this carefully. The sugar hardens as it cools so you must remove it from the pan while it is still hot. Monkey Bread is a nice treat for Christmas morning.
You can make the bread sticks or monkey bread with refrigerator biscuits as well as yeast dough. I prefer making my own whole wheat yeast dough, but refrigerator biscuits will work too. Don’t have time to make yeast dough? Why not try
frozen bread dough? Check your grocer’s frozen food section. I especially like Rhodes frozen dough; it comes in rolls and bread loaves. Either will work for the activities above; just thaw it first and pinch off the balls of dough or cut the dough with clean scissors.
Rhodes has a wonderful website with many great holiday bread sculptures. Visit
www.rhodesbread.com and click on Sculpture. You’ll find Frosty the Doughman, Rudy Reindeer, Christmas Moose, Santa, Trimmed Trees, and much much more. Click on “Basics” and you’ll find a list of easy recipes using frozen bread dough including Holiday Rolls and other goodies for the holidays. Type in “Christmas” in the search field and get a nice list of Christmas recipes. There’s just nothing like the smell of yeast bread baking in the kitchen on a cold winter’s day. And Rhodes makes that easy with their frozen bread dough!
My dear friend, Martha Greene, has a wonderful new book out just in time for holiday giving.
“A Treasury of Vintage Homekeeping Skills” is a truly beautiful book full of resources for the homemaker, recipes, and space for you to record your recipes, tips and important information. This is a keepsake book meant to be handed down to the next generation. Chapters include helpful information on just about every and any topic a homemaker needs to know: Cleaning, Laundry and Linens, Hospitality, First Aid, Gardening, Canning & Preserving Food, Cooking & Baking, Sewing, Quilting, Tatting and other Handiwork, Home Repairs and much more! Over 240 delightful pages in a lay-flat, spiral binding, this book is sure to delight all homemakers. Martha has given us a book with elegance and grace as well as helpful information and encouragement. Take a look at Martha’s site:
www.marmeedear.com I am often asked where to find things like a
cookie gun or large turkey lifter forks. Well, ladies, this is the time of year you’ll find them, and often they are on sale. I recently saw both of these items on sale at Linens & Things. The cookie gun (sometimes called a cookie press) was just $9.99 on sale. These turn out hundreds of little shaped cookies in no time as you just fill the cookie gun with dough and press the trigger. These and many other handy kitchen items make nice gifts and are more readily available at Christmas time.
Speaking of Christmas gifts, I hope you’ll use the link from our site to
Christian Book Distributors to order our books as well as others. When you use the link from our site, it helps us offset some of our web expenses. We truly appreciate it!
I wish you and yours every blessing this Christmas! Please remember during this busy season to schedule ample quiet time for personal and family devotions, as well as some “down” time for a bit of rest. I know; it’s hard! But I pray we will all keep the true meaning and spirit of Christmas.
Until next time ~
Yours in Him,
Copyright, 2005, Laurie Latour.
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