And in case you weren’t around a few years ago when I posted it, be sure to save those little champagne cages around the corks tonight. You can make really cute tiny chairs with them!

And she has some great tips on how to ice cookies too…I also love that when she had a homemade cookie failure, she iced storebought cookies–the decorating is the most fun of all.    Go check it out.

I won’t be posting much over the next few days due to Xmas (yes, I know, I’ve been a slacker for 2 months!) but I will keep posting new links over on the Dabbled Facebook Page (and the Foodwhirl Facebook Page too, for food related goodies!) so come “Like” me and keep up with the linky goodness!  And say hi while you’re there, too :)

If you missed it, other Christmas-y posts:

• Santa Raincheck Certificate (free downloadable)
• Christmas Cookies and Sweets Ideas
• The Ghost of Xmas Past: Some Crafty Ideas
• Tips for throwing a White Elephant holiday party
• Downloadable Gift Tags and Make an Altoids Tin Gamebox
• My Sweet potato casserole

Plus a few more Holiday Recipe Posts from Foodwhirl:

• 12 Days of Cookies
• Nanny’s Sour Cream Poundcake
• Homemade Twix Bars!
• Holiday Treat: Sugared Cranberries
• How to Make Eggnog

Just a few more days til Christmas….

Hope your holidays are just wonderful!

xxoo

Dot

Here’s a free downloadable “Santa Raincheck” which you can print out and give!  Hope you like it…

Download it here: Santa Raincheck pdf Download (8×10) and print it on fancy parchment paper for best effect…

Brush Credit: christmas photoshop brushes from MediaSlap via Brushking

• 12 Days of Ass Friendly Christmas Cookies from The Novice Chef… Some really tasty looking treats, and under 100 calories… I love the Chocolate Hazelnut Pinwheels– They can double as an edible ornament! (though I think I’ll make some with Jam inside instead)
• From Tip Junkie: Semi-homemade food gifts – from peppermint bark, to ‘ready to make’ rice krispy treats.
• Also from Tip Junkie:  A roundup of peppermint treat ideas… lots of good ones.
• Chocolate-Hazelnut Spritz Cookies at La Mia Vita Dolce
• Norwegian Sand Cookies at Pam’s wonderful site: Gingerbread Snowflakes
• Candy Cane Cake pops at Hostess with the Mostess  (and check out these Rock Candy Trees!)
• Gingerbread houses and More at Crafting in a Green World – and here’s some great ideas for a Gingerbread house party from Chica & Jo
• Chewiest Molasses Cookies at Can You Stay For Dinner – I LOVE molasses cookies.
• Almond Joy Truffles at Duhlicious.  These are so pretty.
• Chocolate Crinkle Cookies at Little Brown Pen.  Easy and Pretty!
• Salted Toffee Chocolate Squares at Pink of Perfection
• Super Easy Last Minute treats – Holiday Pretzel Kisses at Little Birdie Secrets
• Cookie Tree ideas at the Kitchn (Dabbled’s own Cookie Trees are pictured above – I just recently reposted the recipe at Foodwhirl!)

Make a TreeSkirt from a Tablecloth

(keep an eye out for a good one at the after Christmas Sales this year!)

Make  Resin Christmas Star ornaments

with this great tutorial from Kerry.

Haven’t you been wanting to try
making something out of Resin?

Lindsey shows us how to make your own terrarium…

a perfect gift for that hard to shop for person on your list!

Another cute handmade gift idea

perfect for the little kids on your list:

Felt M&M cookies from Melissa

Want more?

Here are some other holiday posts from Dabbled…

• Christmas Ornament Tutorials – a Roundup of several good ones.
• A Bunch more Christmas Ornaments, with Tutorials
• Tutorial roundup of Handmade Christmas Gifts
• How to have a Hassle free handmade holiday, from Rachel
• 2008 christmas Roundup
• Recycled Shrinky Dink Christmas Ornament How To and Template
• Environmentally Friendly “Green” Crafting for the Holidays

Hope you have a great holiday season!

xxoo

Dot

If you’ve never done a White Elephant Party, I have a write up on how to throw one, with all the rules that we use.

Basically, it’s a gift exchange party where you steal gifts from other people.
A couple of key points you’ll need to make sure your guests understand:
– Gifts can be bought new or regifted (in the true spirit of a white elephant) – we give a general amount to spend (like between $15 and $20 for example) but a regifted gift can be worth more than that.
– Impress on your guests that they must arrive by a certain time. Start the party at 7:00 but tell everyone they must be there by 8:00, for example.
– Everyone needs to bring a gift (not one per couple).
– For maximum enjoyment, we usually instruct people that gifts “can be funny, but not crappy”. I always suggest that if you’re going to regift a crappy gift, at least throw a bottle of wine in there with it!

A couple of other tips:

• As host, I usually have an extra gift on hand for that one person who doesn’t show up with one, or if not needed, provide as a consolation prize for the poor person who ends up with the crappiest gift.
• Decide up front if you’re going to allow collaboration (“you steal from me then I’ll steal from you”) or allow spouses/significant others to steal from each other.

Get all the instructions to throw your own party!.

Get the invitation, a ‘steal sheet’, and numbers on flickr

Simple Times: Crafts for Poor People

First off, let’s get this straight that this is much more of a humor book than a craft book.  Although there are a few actual projects and recipes in it, most of the projects are tongue in cheek or downright weird.  If you were around during the 70’s, you’ll probably remember a few of them from when you were a kid (I totally remember making sweet gum ball Christmas ornaments, and tissue paper stained glass candle holders!).   So definitely don’t buy this book if you’re looking for actual craft instruction.

But if you’re a fan of Amy Sedaris’ humor, you’ll like this.

There’s a section on sausages, making real sausage, and also a knitted chorizo neck warmer. And in the coconut section, along with a couple of interesting looking coconut recipes and a how-to on tinting coconut, she also explains how to make coconut chip and bamboo earrings (“run a wire through a piece of coconut shell so that the razor sharp shards dangle freely close to your face”)

In the Crafting For Jesus section, you can make Jesus sandals or a matchstick cross (but the guy who made the craft is on a boat and can’t be reached, so she’s sure you can find the instructions as your local library).

There’s crafting for Shut-ins, and the Handicapped (pick your craft based on your handicap: If you’re bi-polar, make a rusty nail wind chime!) The Safety Meeting section is not for the faint of heart (the photos of Amy’s crafting accidents are pretty gory) and the Making Love section (Fornicrafting!) is painfully 70’s.

How Are We Using Our Crafts?
1. Camper decorations
2. Old people presents
3. Chew toy
4. Dust accumulator
5. As evidence that we don’t spend all our time doing absolutely noting
6. Salvaged for parts to make other crafts

All in all, if you liked her last book (on entertaining: I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence) you’ll find this one funny too. Amy’s offbeat humor and crazy characters are the main point to this book, but you might actually find a crafting idea or two in there too…

And hey, if you’re thinking about getting this, as a gift or for yourself…  why not use my amazon link so I get a kickback!

Christmas Gift Label Downloadable Tags

I was looking back at some old posts, and I thought these deserved some front page space!  Download these adorable (if I do say so myself) little gift tags for your Christmas gifts… Click here to download as a pdf or from flickr!

Make a “Little Game Box”, with an Altoids Tin and these cute downloadable cards

Here’s a great little stocking stuffer you can make yourself. A pocket sized game is a great little ‘handmade’ Holiday gift. I’ve included (almost) everything you need to make one for yourself as free downloads! Just grab the file, print, and add your own Altoids tin for a cute little gift that fits perfectly in a stocking!  … Download the instructions and all the cards here:

A holiday gift from me to you… Thanks for reading Dabbled!

You might also like:

The matching Thank You Note templates for kids downloadable:  Just download the thank you note and let them fill in the blanks!  Either full color, or with a snowman the kids can color themselves…  Go get the Downloadable thank you note template

Sweet Potato Casserole

…perfect for any holiday meal!  I don’t know if sweet potatoes are on your typical Holiday menu, but they always are on mine.  This is an easy and quite tasty dish, that is very kid friendly too.  My 5 year old loves it.

.

We’re looking for more holiday recipes with the Christmas season now upon us, so if you have some good ones, let us know!

As a typical 5 year old, he loves Star Wars, Batman, and Phineas & Ferb, and he wanted to be Mr. Freeze (the Batman villain) this year. (As you may remember last year I made Perry the Platypus).  Obviously this is a kid’s version of this costume, but no reason this couldn’t be adapted for an adult as well.  (See more photos on Flickr)

The Mr. Freeze Costume Video at youtube.

Video also available on the Dabbled Facebook Page!

How to Make a Mr. Freeze Costume:

Since this costume is primarily made from recycled materials and thriftstore finds, it may be hard to replicate exactly, but here’s an idea of what we did:

The Husband spent a ton of time on this one… the gun is a modded Hulk watergun, painted with plastic paint. Tubing brings dry ice smoke from the bottles in the backpack. The ‘boots’ are made from sleeves of a puffy jacket–spraypainted silver.  An old kids backpack was also spraypainted silver to hold the water bottles.   Water bottles were recycled Simply Orange bottles. The overall silver outfit was a lucky thriftstore find — it was a Power Rangers costume and we blacked out the Power Rangers logo with fabric paint. The Helmet was a tough one – a friend (Thanks, Anne!) finally found a plastic container for us from some toys that was big enough. Pipe insulation pads the bottom. LEDs on the gun and helmet complete the look!

If anyone is interested, I can get The Handy Husband to write up more about how to make the gun and helmet… and I can also write up more of a tutorial on the rest.

Song credit: Mr Freeze, K’s Choice

This guy as Mr. Freeze, from Dragon-con this year, was the inspiration for The Boy’s choice of costumes