Handprint Daddy

With Father's Day fast approaching here's an idea that is both cheap and a wonderful keepsake when kids are grown.

Putting your kids' handprints on either clay or even paper.

Salt Dough Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup salt
1 cup cold water
Directions: In a large bowl, mix table salt and flour together. Gradually add 1/2 cup of water and mix to desired consistency. Knead the dough on a flat surface, adding a few more drops of water as needed (but not making it too moist).
Once the dough is made, you can divide it up into small portions to roll into 1/8" thick pieces with a rolling pin. Use cookie cutters to cut out a variety of shapes, and place the shapes on wax paper or other surface to dry. If you want to make hanging ornaments, pierce the dough through with a toothpick while it's wet.
Allow the shapes to dry for a day or two, turning them over periodically to speed up the drying process. You may need to re-pierce the hole several times during the drying process. After the shapes dry, you can use a fine grit sandpaper to gently smooth any rough edges.

Baking Alternative
Instead of allowing the dough shapes to air dry, you can bake them in the oven at 200 degrees F until hard. Baking times varies depending on oven and dough thickness. Make sure the dough is completely baked. You can cover the dough with aluminum foil if it starts to darken before completely baked through.

Salt Dough Project Suggestions and Tips:
~You can store prepared salt dough in a sealed container in the refrigerator for a day or two before using.
~Add color to the dough by mixing food coloring or paint into the water before adding it to the flour/salt mix. Alternatively, you can paint the finished baked dough with acrylic paint.
~Painted objects should be sealed on all sides with polyurethane spray or clear varnish to make them lasting gifts or keepsakes.

Here's an idea for puffy paint. It really puffs up and it has only a few ingredients.
Puffy Paint
For either make sure you put the child's name and the date.

And here's a fun and cute little poem you can attach to the paper or clay with a ribbon, raffata, etc.

DOWNLOAD 5X7 HERE

Symbolic Easter Lesson

I'm up way early in the morning, I hate it when you're mind just keeps going and your body says stop! But I do have to admit that some of my best ideas come to me when I'm in bed trying to go to sleep, and I just can't sleep without getting those thoughts out. Here's one of them. I hope you like it and can use it, I'd love to hear how it goes with your family! I have a lesson with my extended family tomorrow (Sunday) and I wanted to do something about Easter, not the store celebration, but the real reason, Christ dying for us and then rising again. I had the main part of the lesson that I wanted to share, but I didn't know how to present it, now I do!! I'm using this as a FHE Lesson but it could easily be used on Easter as an activity to do in between sessions of General Conference to get the wiggles out and to teach about the real reason for the season.

Items you will need:
- a ton of shredded paper, Easter grass
    OR if you don't want all that stuff or the mess!
      You can just hide the Easter eggs around the house
-12 Easter eggs
-1 nail
-1 sacrament cup (that'd be easy to snag if have a little kid that takes too long to get it back in the tray, or you could probably ask the ward clerk, or if push comes to shove keep yours)
-3 dimes
-1 piece knotted twine
-1 piece of hand soap
-1 piece of red cloth
-1 piece of white cloth
 (for the cloths if you go to Walmart and ask for 1 inch widths of each, it's a swatch so it's free - learn something new every day don't ya :)
-3 different lengths of sticks (small they need to fit in the egg)
-1 broken pot (the little ceramic pots- Michael's has them for about 70cents)
-1 stone
-1 bay leaf or cinnamon stick (I found bay leaves, at Walmart, in the spice/baking aisle, the brand that I found was Spice Islands)
-permanent marker or a piece of paper with the numbers 1-12 and tape them to the eggs or just number them so you know what number goes with what part on the page (see below)

Put each item in an egg and then either set up a spot with the grass or the shredded paper and put the eggs in there, or just hide the eggs.  (My FHE is at my grandma's house and I don't really want to pick up the mess of at least 10 kids rummaging through the mess so I'll be going early and hiding them).
Then here's a DOWNLOAD with the paper that talks about each item. Included on the page for each number there is a set of scriptures that go along with each.
Enjoy! Now I'm off to bed (9am) I hate when I can't sleep!!
                                                
(Background is for Preview only) Be sure to set printer margins to zero- or it says borderless.

Easter Morning Collab Kit

Are you ready for the newest wordart addition and my first collab? It's called Easter Morning. We would love to see any layouts you make. What do you think? We will also be collabing on a couple more throughout the coming months. One a month, so look out for our next one in April for Mother's Day!

You can snag Hot Pink Pansy's part from her blog along with 2 QPs

And here's my part, 10 Easter themed wordarts

DOWNLOAD HERE

Credits: Frame around Easter Egg Hunt from Twin Mom Scraps