The Creative Salad – Page 48 – Crafty fun and homeschool adventures in Sonoma County, California.

Paper Fun with the Toymaker

This past weekend we attended a fantastic paper craft workshop with artist, illustrator and author Marilyn Scott-Waters of the award winning Toymaker website.

Remember these adorable paper dolls? They came from her site!

I’m excited to have discovered that the instructions for many of the fun projects we did in our class are also featured on her website, so you can do them too!

We made and decorated: fairy books, koi kites, mini books, and paper butterflies.

We even learned how to transform a single sheet of paper into a circle big enough to jump through! (More on that another time.)

Marilyn’s Toymaker website contains a wealth of other fun paper crafts. Check out her Hanukkah Crafts for a gelt box, menorah lighting activity, coloring pages, gift boxes, and more. There is also a fun filled Christmas Crafts page including beautifully illustrated gift cards, paper balls, boxes, and stars to print out and enjoy.

You can also find Marilyn’s affordable books at your local bookstore. She is the author of The Toymaker’s Workshop: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself and The Toymaker’s Christmas: Paper Toys You Can Make Yourself, two beautifully illustrated books containing hours of paper-crafting entertainment. We’ve had such fun assembling toys from The Toymaker’s Christmas, which she kindly autographed for us!

Be sure to subscribe to her fantastic, FREE newsletter for monthly updates on new paper toy projects. We also highly recommend picking up her books, which feature punch out paper toys (no scissors involved!). We are hooked!

Dollhouse Challenge + Bedroom Preview

We’re restoring a family heirloom, the dollhouse made for my husband’s grandmother when she was a little girl. Click here to see all the posts about our Dollhouse Redux Project.

Last month I had every intention of finishing our dollhouse in time for today’s I’m a Giant Challenge deadline… and then I realized that the majority of the dollhouse furniture will be under the Christmas tree this year and far be it for me to open up our daughter’s gifts ahead of her.

So I don’t have a completed dollhouse to show you.

In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever have a completed dollhouse to show you because, well, we don’t have that kind of dollhouse. A family heirloom we inherited when David’s grandmother passed away last winter, this dollhouse belongs to our daughter.

Any time I start to make decisions regarding colors or fabric or decorations, I remind myself to step back, because quite frankly this dollhouse isn’t at all about me. It’s completely about her. She gets to make those choices. She gets to shape, play with and love this special dollhouse that belongs to her.

So while I’ve enjoyed painting and sewing away, I’ve been helping our daughter in realizing her dollhouse vision. And it’s beautiful.

I can’t wait to share more with you soon.

The Night Before Christmas Children’s Book

We keep finding more special holiday books to read time and again.

This week’s find at the library was the classic poem “The Night Before Christmas” illustrated by Eric Puybaret featuring a CD with music by Peter, Paul and Mary.

While the CD is fun for adults (our three year old wasn’t terribly impressed), the book’s illustrations are stunning — so richly colored and enchanting.

We’ve been pouring over the pictures and finding new fun details with each read.

Eric Puybaret is so incredibly talented!

A true Christmas classic.

This beautiful hardcover book with CD is available at Amazon or in your local bookstore or library. Pick up a copy today!

Pinned: Chocolate Bark Recipes

One of my favorite holiday treats to bake is chocolate bark. It’s a tasty treat that’s easy to make and a great gift to share with others.

Here are some variations on chocolate bark that look particularly delicious:

Featured above:
1. Dark Chocolate Bark with Ginger, Pumpkin Seeds and Apricots
toasted pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, crystallized or candied ginger, bittersweet chocolate, fleur de sel
2. White chocolate bark
walnuts, dried cherries or cranberries, and white chocolate
3. Easy Fruit & Nut Bark
chocolate chips, mixed salted nuts, dried cranberries, and candied ginger
4. Festive Chocolate Bark
pistachio nuts, semisweet chocolate, white chocolate, and dried cranberries
5. Christmas bark
semi-sweet, bittersweet and white chocolate, dried cranberries, pistachios, and dried apricots
6. Chocolate Marshmallow Bark
bittersweet chocolate, butter, and mini marshmallows
7. Three-Layer Peppermint Bark
white chocolate, red-and-white-striped hard peppermint candies, bittersweet chocolate, heavy cream, peppermint extract
8. Almond Roca
butter, sugar, almonds, and chocolate chips

Last year we couldn’t find peppermint extract in our small town grocery store to make the Bon Appétit version that Amanda Soule loves, so we used a more simplistic recipe instead and we were pleased with the results (shown above).

Super easy, with just three ingredients, this simple peppermint bark recipe makes for a kid-friendly baking experience that’s fun (hammers are involved!) and each step along the way tastes delicious. (Not that we were sampling. Ahem.)

View these and many more delicious recipes on my Tasty Treats Pinterest board.

(images obtained via Pinterest)

Handmade Ornament Roundup

We believe in crafting a handmade holiday, making our own ornaments for our tree, baking and making as many gifts as we can. The holidays feel so much more special when there’s heart involved.

I’ve been thrilled to see that our daughter remembers last fall’s activities and now sees them as tradition. Come November she eagerly reminded me that we needed to start sewing ornaments for this years tree.

And so our home transforms into a Craft House with every surface covered with holiday projects, glitter, glue, feathers, felt, string, and stickers:

Here are some of the ornaments we’ve made, some from last year, many created in the last few weeks.

I love this time of the year.

Shown above:
+ Felt Christmas Tree Ornaments
+ Bird Ornaments (from Skip to my Lou)
+ Beaded wreath ornaments
+ Felted stars, wooden stars, and felt hearts
+ Popcorn garlands
+ Popsicle stick six pointed stars
+ Grape vine wreaths with tinsel and bells

Still to be made:
+ Dehydrated orange slices (try dehydrating ruby red grapefruit for a beautiful pink color!)