Need a fun playdate craft that makes no mess? These bracelets that I made for an issue of Make it Yourself magazine are so fun and easy to make, and your kids will get so into that they’ll have arms full of them when you’re done!

What you’ll need:

• -Clothesline rope
• -Duct tape
• -Scissors
• -Parchment paper

Make it!

1. 1. Measure wrist and cut rope so as a ring, it’s large enough to slip over your hand.
2. 2. Wrap the rope in metallic duct tape.
3. 3. Adhere strips of colored duct tape to the parchment paper and cut strips of varying size. Apply strips around the cord.
4. 4. Connect two ends together with a piece of metallic duct tape.

All kids, boys and girls, go through a pretend food phase. Cooking, tea parties, picnics…and you can go far down the rabbit hole buying plastic peppers, wooden watermelons, or felt fettuccine.

Especially if you suspect this is a short lived phase, craft these treats to play with your kids. Pizza, a big pretzel, popcorn, and cotton candy…all made from upcycled materials.

So fun to make, but not so tasty to eat!

What you’ll need:

• Brown paper grocery bags

• Tacky glue

• White, red, and yellow paint

• Paintbrushes

• Newspaper

• 1 popsicle stick

• 1 square cracker box

• Scallop scissors

• Red crayon

• Resealable gallon-size plastic bag

• Packing peanuts

• Cookie sheet lined with wax paper

• Cardboard

• Magazines

Pretzel:

1 Cut a grocery bag into 3-inch-wide strips and glue them together to make a 24-inch-long piece.

2 Roll and crumple the strip into a rope shape, being sure to keep any labels or writing on the inside.

3 Fold the tube into a U shape, then bend the ends toward the bottom of the U, twist them, and glue them down, crisscrossed. (You may want to put the pretzel under a medium-heavy book until it dries.)

4 Paint white dots on as the salt.

Popcorn:

1 Unfold the cracker box. Measure 7 to 8 inches from the bottom folds to where the top of the popcorn box will be, and cut a line straight across with scallop scissors.

2 Paint the inside surface (nonprinted side) of the box white. Let it dry.

3 Color red stripes vertically on the painted side of the box with the crayon.

4 Reassemble and glue the box so that the decorated side is on the outside.

5 To make the popcorn, squeeze a quarter-size dollop of yellow paint into the resealable bag, add enough packing peanuts to fill the cracker box, and shake. Start with a little paint; you can always add more.

6 Set the popcorn out to dry on a sheet of newspaper. Once the popcorn is dry, fill your box.

Pizza:

1 Cut a triangle from cardboard, with two long sides of about 7 inches and a short side of about 5 inches. The short side of the triangle (the crust side of the pizza) should be slightly rounded.

2 Give your pizza some tomato sauce by painting the cardboard red and let it dry.

3 To make the crust, roll and crumple a 4-inch-wide-by-7-inchlong strip of brown grocery bag into a tubelike shape and glue it across the rounded edge of the pizza. Trim or glue any excess underneath.

4 Paint a 10-by-10-inch piece of newspaper yellow on both sides. Once it’s dry, fringe 1⁄4-inch strips of the paper (see the Fringing lesson on page 120) and then cut across to make tiny strips, about 1 inch long.

5 Cut pepperoni and peppers (or whatever toppings you like) from magazine pages in the appropriate colors.

6 Brush watered-down glue (in about a 1-to-1 ratio) onto the cardboard, then sprinkle the “cheese” on top. Glue the toppings on top of the cheese.

Last-minute DIY gift sounds a bit like an oxymoron, no? DIY is usually time-consuming, requiring a trip to some special store to get the supplies that are probably expensive or sold out. Not this craft. This craft can…

1. be made from materials from your drug store.
2. be made from materials on a routine visit to Target.
3. be made from things you might already have at home.

What you’ll need:

• Plain bangle bracelets
• Socks
• Scissors
• Hot-glue gun

1. Slip bangle into the sock and cut. Leave at least a 1/2 inch on either side of the bangle for gluing.
2. Hot-glue the edges of the sock to the inside of the bangle.

Voila! A fun gift to make and give…plus helps keep wrists warm this winter!

True story:

My daughter Sommer came home with a flyer from school, assigning a different holiday wearable for each day of this week. Holiday hat day, holiday scarf day, holiday sock day. And to be honest, Hanukkah-wear is not so easy to come by on short notice. So this crafty momma had to think fast.

And literally, this crown was made in 3 minutes flat on the kitchen counter the morning of! I wrapped nine gold pipe cleaners around a simple head band, slipped trimmed colored straws onto the pipe cleaners (she arranged them in rainbow order, of course), then twisted the ends into flames. No glue, no drying time, nada!

I think I’ll make her one for each birthday from now on, adding a candle for each year!

This post is sponsored by my friends over at Minted.

Every November, I mentally commit to crafting holiday cards. And then the frenzy of December happens, so I’ll swear I’m going to get busy making my New Year’s cards. Take a guess if either actually get done. (A: Nope. Never.)

So this year I’ve decided to let the professionals handle the job. Check out these cards that just arrived in the mail from Minted. Part of my lack of organization with holiday cards is that I’m never actually looking for the typical “holiday card photo” throughout the year. Lucky for us, my kids and their new bedroom were featured in the August/September 2016 issue of FamilyFun magazine so I got a slew of amazing photos from the photographer, Biz Jones. This one didn’t run in the issue but it totally captures Oliver and Sommer as their goofy, yummy selves.

We sat down this weekend to write notes and stuff the envelopes (of course we had to add a little sparkly confetti to each). Oliver and Sommer were excited to pen messages to their friends on the backs.

And then, I tried to capture a photo of them in the same position, but as you can see, there was no recreating that perfectly sweet, joyful moment. Instead we made about sixty more (mostly blurry), with these nine being my faves.

And wait…if you are panicked about getting your holiday cards in time, Minted has your back. Through 11:59pm PT on Monday, December 19th, you can get free rush shipping or 15% off your holiday cards. Go go go!

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