Gingerbread Snowman Christmas Craft!

I adore Christmas and even more so now I have an imaginative toddler to join in the Christmas fun! I actually, for once, didn't get this idea from Pinterest (which is my usual place to get nifty fun ideas from!)

Rocket loves gingerbread men so we have a few cookie cutters in gingerbread men shapes and one afternoon I thought it would be fun to make some salt dough gingerbread men with a snowy twist!

The salt dough mix is pretty straight forward. 2 cups of plain flour, 1 cup salt and 1 cup luke warm water and mix to a dough. It was fun to see Rocket enjoying this bit as he usually doesn't like being messy or getting things on his hands!

After you have formed a soft dough but without the stickiness, you can go ahead and roll it out. We used the kitchen floor (clean) to do this as we don't have much kitchen worktop space.

We then pressed out our Gingerbread men and put them onto a separate baking tray with backing paper on so they didn't stick. I had to learn that they didn't need to be perfect, especially not when they were made by a 2 year old ;) some kind of therapy for me!

There are a few different methods of drying salt dough out but we baked ours in the oven on a very low heat (just under 100) for approx 4-5 hours. Time will vary depending on how thick your salt dough is but it is very important not to get impatient and turn the heat up as your salt dough will burn on the outside and not dry out in the middle properly.

The next day we got onto painting the Gingerbread Snowmen.. another job that the littlies can help out with (although I got the brush in all the nooks and cranny's afterwards). When the paint is dry you can pencil on the design you want, I went with the classic snowman design and as he has feet, some cute black shoes.

Once your Snowmen are completely dry, you can choose to varnish them with gloss (this will make them last many Christmas's) or go au naturel, which is what we have done this time.

I wanted rush this post through so I haven't actually got a Christmas tree to put the on yet but they will be hanging pride of place and Rocket will be happy knowing he made his own Christmas decorations this year! (maybe a little disappointed they don't taste like gingerbread men ;))

Best thing is they cost next to nothing to make and you can be as creative as you like! Get some cheap cookie cutters and make Christmas trees, angels and stars!

Family Photos

This last week has flown by and I have been tking many photos for other friends of mine in the run up to Christmas. As we already had the background up I thought we would get some snaps of us as a family, my husband and his handy long arm snapped these for us! One of them is being used for our Christmas Card this year so it worked out well!

Because some times...

you need to be in a box!

Peppermint Bath Salts!

After spending literally hours looking for things I could make for Christmas presents, I stumbled over a gorgeous idea of making candy cane bath salts! (Scented with peppermint oil). It looks so pretty when displayed and its also really good for your skin! Here's how I did it:

You will need:

Epsom salt
Sea salt (I used course)
Food colouring
Peppermint oil
Mason jar or similar


First you need to get 2 bowls and mix the Epsom salt in one, along with the peppermint oil and red food colouring. Make sure you thoroughly coat it well so the cover and scent is even. Then get tr next bowl and mix the course sea salt with the peppermint oil (I used about 6 drops in each bowl but you can add more or less depending on personal taste.

Once you have the two bowls mixed well, take the jar and tilt it to the side (this will help provide the candycane effect) I think you are supposed to use a funnel for this bit but I didn't have one so used a teaspoon.

Layer slowly, the White Sea salt then the red Epsom salt and repeat until you've come to the top of the jar. Make sure you compact the salts down or they may crumble when turned upright.

If you've stored the jars and salts for a while before you gift them, you can always add a few more drops of the peppermint oil in the top to refresh the scent!

That's it! A gorgeous smelling simple but beautiful gift! Best thing is it can be tailored to different occasions! Valentines day you could use rose or jasmine oil... Cheer someone up with and orange or yellow jar with orange oil! The list is endless!

Enjoy!

Gone

I did it, I finally deleted my blog (it will be back but not self hosted) . It's quite sad to see when I tried to load it after it was cancelled for the first time but its refreshing to move onwards!

My mum actually printed off my entire blog for me (took me about 4 hours copying and pasting it!) and now I had a proper diary of all the things that have happened in my blog life to go through whenever I want.

Now I can focus on my fresh start here, it feels good, energising!

Watch this space!

Start of a new era

Today is when I move over to RocketBum the blog officially. I know I have had this blog for a little while now but it was slightly dormant as it was confusing running the two. The mummy life will no longer be self hosted and will exist on basic wordpress and I've just spent the last 3 hours copy and pasting my entire blog into word so If it all goes tits up then I wont lose any of those important posts from when Rocket was a little squidge!

The last week we went to a fireworks display across the road from my parents house but Rocket hated the banging so much he pretty much freaked to the point we couldn't take him and he ended up hiding in my dads computer room with my dad.. I felt bad for the little scrap as even a week on he is telling me the fireworks are gone and they are sleeping.. in a desperate bid for reassurance! I'm really hoping next year at 3 and a half he will enjoy the fireworks and not miss out.

I've been totally snap happy recently and have been taking christmassy photos and have ended up with over 50 from which I now have to chose the best for a Christmas card and I cant choose! argh!

I'll leave you with a few catch up photos ;)

Family