Christmas presents for Andy's cousins

For the cousins' Christmas presents this year we are making DIY Bird Feeder Kits!  I came across the idea of making bird feeders out of pine cones a while back but then there's the issue of peanut butter smearing everywhere so how do you store it to gift!?  So I came up with the idea of making up a kit so each cousin can make his/her own feeder. :) 

So if you're still looking for gift ideas here's what I did...

First make the instruction tags.  I cut out squares of green card and used some pictures from a roll of Christmas gift wrap to decorate it...

Punch a hole in the top corner of each tag and write step by step instructions on the back of the tag.

Now gather your supplies.  Pine cones (we collected ours when we went camping last week), Peanut butter, bird seed, ribbon (1m per kit), containers for peanut butter, containers for seeds, sandwich/or freezer bags, tags and Popsicle sticks (I thought the Popsicle stick would be the perfect size and shape to get into the grooves).

Now fill your containers with peanut butter in some and seeds in the others (we found the pill containers were perfect for the seeds).

Fill each bag with a pine cone, a container of peanut butter, a container of seeds a popsicle stick and a piece of ribbon cut into a length of 50cm.  Thread another 50cm length of ribbon through the punched hole in the tag and tie the bag shut with a knot and a bow.

Now make a bird feeder with your lil' 'un.  Take the Popsicle stick and smear peanut butter onto each 'spike' of the pine cone (or you can simply roll it in the peanut butter and then roll it in the seeds).  Cover the p. butter with the seeds. Tie one end of the ribbon round the top and the other end round a branch in your tree.

Happy bird watching and Merry Christmas! :)

I linked this to:
ABC and 123 Show And Tell
Christmas Sharing Time

Holiday Baking

Yesterday Andy and I felt like baking so in the morning while I was busy with breakfast I quickly made a batch of sugar cookie dough and kept it in the fridge till we were ready to bake it later when the housework and other activities for the day was done.

First we cut out gingerbread boys and girls and stars with our cookie cutters and decorated them with choc chips and other sprinkles...

Then when they were baked and cooled I put different colour butter icing in bags and snipped the tip to make it into a piping bag.  To get white butter icing use the white wooden spoon margarine not the yellow marg.  We used white for the facial features and hair and red and blue for the clothes..

Andy iced his own ones...

But got a little carried away with the excitement of icing...

So Mommy had to doctor them a little to avoid hectic hyperactivity...

And then of coarse we ate them...

It was my dad's birthday 2 weeks ago so for the fun of it we thought we'd try our hand at decorating cupcakes in a special way - not just icing and sprinkles.  We were first inspired to be more adventurous with cup cakes when our neighbour blessed us with the most gorgeous gift of gorgeous cup cakes a few weeks ago.  So we found this video and just HAD TO make these super cute sunflowers for my dad's birthday.  The middle is made with oreo's which give the perfect colour and hight and we made the ladybird's out of mini smarties...

To give the petals that variegated, realistic look you put yellow on one side of the piping bag and orange on the other so the two colours pipe out together.

Hope everyone else is also having fun in the kitchen these holidays!