Homemade Snow Globes

Recently the Girls Team was at Anthropologie shopping for Christmas gifts. Luckily for us and our current mason jar obsession, we spotted mason jar snow globes! As we grabbed them in excitement, our hopes were dashed when we saw the $30 price tag. "We could make those!" we exclaimed and so my mom went to Michaels and bought a variety of Christmas craft supplies, including Model Magic clay to use as a sturdy base for our decorations and pint size mason jars. And we were on our way! 

We used toothpicks to hold the snowman together. Then we secured the snowman and tree into the mason jar lid with the Model Magic clay and sprinkled fake snow to cover the Model Magic. 

We wanted the snow to stick to the inside of our mason jars so it didn't all pile together at the bottom but we were having a hard time deciding how to glue it in the jar. Then we had a genius idea - hairspray!! It worked perfectly. Just spray a few times inside the jar, and roll the fake snow on the inside until it dries on the side of the walls. 

The fun part about this project is that we didn't have to follow any directions or rules so we were just messing around until we had created something we were happy with. Here are the four snow globes we made:

Dried cranberries in a pint sized mason jar. 

 A smiling snowman and his fluffy Christmas tree in a 1/2 pint mason jar. 

A snowman and a Christmas tree in a 1/2 pint mason jar. 

The perfect Christmas tree in a pint sized mason jar. 

These snow globes were really fun to make because we had creative freedom. Since we've been cooking and baking a lot lately, it was nice not to have to follow a recipe or directions to make something perfect. We could try as many different designs as we wanted before deciding to seal up the jars. Our snow globes turned out cuter than we anticipated and were much cheaper than the $30 we would have paid if we bought them at Anthropologie! 

Quick and Easy Gift Idea

This isn't an official Make It Happen Monday project but I still want to share! This year I was looking to make crafty, inexpensive gifts for my friends. Since I'm currently obsessed with the endless possibilities of mason jars, I decided to combine them with my other life obsession - nail polish! I found an awesome mini 12 pack of OPI's top selling nail polish colors of 2011 at Ulta to create a manicure/pedicure set in a jar :) Here is what the finished gift looks like:

Each jar contains 2 nail polish colors, 2 toe separators, half of a nail file (cut to fit inside the jar), q-tips for nail polish remover and one pumice stone. 

Mini bottles of OPI Russian Navy and You Don't Know Jacques

Strategically placed to fit in a 1/2 pint mason jar...

All sealed up with a home made gift tag!

These jars and supplies cost $12 total and were put together in about 10 minutes. Easy, cute and personalized for each of my friends. 


The Girls Team is off to make our project for tonight! Hint: It's Christmas related and in a mason jar - we can't get enough of these! Tonight's Make It Happen Monday post will be up in a few :)

Candy Cane Blossoms

All members of the Girls Team are back this week! Continuing our Christmas projects, we decided to make Candy Cane Blossom cookies and followed this recipe. The recipe is rather simple, but it was nice to make a new type of holiday cookie. Each year the Girls Team bakes a variety of cookies and fudge to give to friends and family at Christmas. Tonight's Candy Cane Blossom cookies turned out to be an exciting new cookie to add to our traditional holiday cookie list.

Ingredients, including peppermint Hershey Kisses. 

First, my mom made the dough for the sugar cookies...

While I peeled the wrappers off the peppermint Hershey Kisses.

Then we rolled the dough into one inch balls...

And rolled them in festive sugar sprinkles! These sprinkles were so awesome because they had a glittery affect to them. (Although it is hard to tell in the photos.)

Ready for the oven!

After the cookies baked for about 8 minutes, we took them out, let them cool for 1-2 minutes and then placed the peppermint Hershey Kisses in the center of the cookie. Just one small peppermint Kiss really added a burst of minty flavor :)

First batch finished.

Finished product, ready for Santa!! 

Do any of you have holiday baking traditions? Share your recipes with us! It's hard to believe there is only ONE more Monday left before Christmas! 

Cupcakes in a Jar

Cupcakes have been stealing the dessert show for quite some time now! I've been wanting to make cupcakes in a jar for awhile and was finally able to use my work holiday party as an excuse to make them. I was inspired by this darling picture on Pinterest: 

My mom was out of town, so I was forced to tackle this challenge alone this week. Let's just say that after this week, I am never participating in a "Make It Happen Monday" event without the other half of the Girls Team! Between baking, frosting, cleaning and photographing solo, I was wiped out after this project!

I found really cute Christmas sprinkles at Michaels, and at the suggestion of my boss, bought candy canes to crush up as a topping too!

I love mason jars. They are so classic and you can literally use them for anything! But, 1/2 paint mason jars were a little more difficult to find than the larger sizes. After searching at Michaels and Target, my mom eventually picked these up at Raley's. After running them through the dishwasher, they were clean and ready to go!

Before I started baking, I made sure to get all of my decorative supplies ready so I had something to keep me busy while my cupcakes were in the oven. I used a giant circular punch to cut out circles from holiday scrapbook paper. These would add a festive touch to the lids with a small piece of tape. Initially I thought I would tie raffia around each jar, but my raffia bows weren't staying just right, so I scratched that idea as the night went on. 

The baking begins! I used a Pillsbury cupcake mix because nobody would be able to tell the difference :) I bought both chocolate and vanilla, but ended up making 24 chocolate cupcakes. If you can read this blog, I don't need to tell you how to make these cupcakes since the simple directions are on the back of the box :) 

I made the vanilla frosting from scratch. It was my first time making homemade frosting and I have to say I will never go back to store bought stuff! This was vanilla cheesecake frosting. It was thick, sweet and delicious, and only took about 10 minutes to make. You can find the recipe I used here.

Once the cupcakes cooled, I cut them in half. Each jar calls for 3 cupcake halves. 

Because my Girls Team partner was MIA this week, and because the frosting process was RIDICULOUSLY difficult, I wasn't able to get a photo of the frosting step. The frosting is added in layers, piped into the jar with an extra large frosting tip. Something I learned about myself this week - I'll stick to spreading frosting with a knife in the future, not piping it. I did not have the patience for this tedious task and the subsequent mess it caused!

Starting at the bottom of the jar, you layer: 1/2 cupcake, frosting, 1/2 cupcake, frosting, 1/2 cupcake, frosting and sprinkles. This was by far the most challenging task I've faced on a Make It Happen Monday. First, piping the frosting down into the jar was really hard. It was tough to get a thick enough layer of frosting set without hitting the sides of the jar and making a mess. Once the frosting was placed, topping it with the next layer of cupcake proved to be problematic. When shoving the cupcake down into the jar, I was essentially squishing down the frosting, which was disappointing (after all of that hard work!!). Each jar took about 10 minutes to complete, yep, 10 minutes. This project, including baking the cupcakes, took about 4.5 hours. 

Here is my completed cupcake in a jar:

View with toppings:

12 completed cupcakes in a jar, ready for the cupcake competition at work!

While I received many compliments from coworkers and family members on my cupcakes in a jar, I can say with certainty that I will never be making these again. They turned out cute, but were SO much work and didn't even come close visually to my Pinterest picture inspiration. I also think in the future I won't be taking on any large, time consuming products like this without my motivational and domestically skilled Girls Team Partner around!! 

Crafty Christmas

The Girls Team spent the majority of the weekend decorating our house for Christmas. The tree is up, the lights are on the house, and snowmen have taken over our interior decor! Christmas comes and goes so quickly, so we are taking full advantage of the season for our blog. Tonight we decided to make Christmas gift tags.

One really great thing about getting crafty in the age of the internet, is that you don't always have to rely on your own creativity or artistic abilities. It is very easy to be inspired and helped by others. Using templates we found from other blogs, we made very cute, festive and easy Christmas gift tags.

Our supplies for the evening: cardstock, string and raffia.

Scissors, a ruler and a hole punch.

We found our first gift tag template at a really awesome blog called Eat Drink Chic. Every once and a while, the creator provides free, printable PDF templates for her readers to use! Click here if you want to print them for yourself.

After printing two copies of this design, for 12 tags total, we cut the tags using a paper cutter.

Next, we hole punched the tags at the top, and used matching string to complete them!

Here is the final product. The backs are plain white, perfect for a short message.

Next, we made these ornament gift tags from Martha Stewart, click here for the template.



Cutting all of the circles may have been the most time-intensive part of this project!

We then used a push pin to make holes in the ornaments for the string.

Using a needle, we then strung red and white string through the tops for the final product!

The Girls Team is very happy with how our homemade gift tags turned out! This project took about one hour to complete. The Christmas season comes and goes so quickly, so it's nice to be able to take time out to have fun and make something that will add a special touch to our gift giving this year. 

No Sew Infinite Scarves

This week's Make It Happen Monday project was inspired from a post we saw on Pinterest, our new favorite website. We made No Sew Infinite Scarves out of t-shirts. Here's our easy step-by-step process:

Buy an XL or XXL t-shirt from the craft store; ours were $2.50 from Joanne's.

Cut the bottom seam off. 

Then cut a straight line from under one armpit to the next, leaving the rectangular mid-section of the t-shirt to work with. 

Stretch, stretch, stretch!!! 

Finished product draped around once...

Single loop, pink infinite scarf.

Double-looped black infinite scarf. 

These cute and comfortable scarves took 10 minutes to make, literally! They are a quick, easy and cheap pop of color for any outfit. Overall, the Girls Team was impressed!