Silly Nilly Day #9—Monster Pops

Monsters, Ghouls, and Goblins, oh my! We had a little cool snap here in Texas in October. That means it's in the 80's :) and it means it's time for all things Fall!

I found these Monster Marshmallow Pops in a Phyllis Hoffman, Celebrate magazine a few years ago. My girls had so much fun making them that I had to take a moment and share the pics and the recipe. It is super easy but on a scale of 1-5 (5 being the messiest), be prepared to do some cleaning. My kitchen was a 4 but if your children are older then it might not be so bad :) Besides, the finished product was well worth the mess. The pops were so cute!

MONSTER POPS (makes 2 dozen)

24 large marshmallows
24 (4-inch) lollipop sticks
1 recipe Royal Icing (recipe follows)
assorted Halloween sprinkles
candy corn
sanding sugar
Royal Icing Eyes (we didn't have these so we just used icing)
3 (9x4x3 inch) pieces floral oasis

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Insert 1 lollipop stick in one flat side of each marshmallow. Dip each marshmallow in desired colored icing, gently shaking off excess. Place dipped marshmallow, stick end up, on prepared baking sheets. Let stand until icing begins to dry but is still slightly sticky, about 5 minutes. Decorate as desired. Insert finished Monster Pops in floral oasis to dry completely.

ROYAL ICING (makes 2 cups)

1 (1-pound) box confectioners' sugar
5tablespoons meringue powder
1/2 cup water
Assorted food coloring

In a medium bowl, combine confectioners' sugar, meringue powder, and water. Beat at low speed with an electric mixer until smooth and creamy 7 to 10 minutes. (If icing is too thick, add water, a teaspoon at a time, until desired consistency is reached. If icing is too thin, beat for 2 to 3 minutes longer.) Divide icing among small bowls. Add food coloring to achieve desired colors.

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Have a Silly Nilly Day!

 

Update on Tuesday, October 15, 2013 at 09:34AM by Jennifer West Pickard | Silly Nilly Designs

The Halloween shop is open in the Studio. Lots of invitations, gift tags, candy toppers, and more available, oh and more fun Halloween Silly Nilly Days to come!

Silly Nilly Day #8—Decoupage craft day for Mother's Day!

Two weekends ago we hosted a Silly Nilly craft day. We call them "Mom's Time Out" because they get a few hours to themselves while we have the pleasure of crafting with their kiddos. I am always inspired by their excitement and the way they see art in a pure and simple way. The group ranged from ages 3-8. If you've ever done crafts with kids, you know that is a crazy range to try to control the glue from free flowing all over the place, but we did. They did a fantastic job as you can see from the following pictures. I love Silly Nilly Days!

We decoupaged frames. We were going to decoupage jewelry boxes as well, but we decided to paint them instead because we ran out of time. The frames were the star of the show. The boxes were something only a mother could love. They were a mess. In the end, the kids really loved learning how to decoupage and it was super easy. In my book, I consider that a success.

When they first arrived, I took pictures of each of our friends so we would have a photo of a clean kiddo to use in the frame.

HOW TO DECOUPAGE A WOODEN FRAME

1. We tore pieces of paper into different shapes.

2. We cut out butterflies, crabs, and fish (because those were the paper cutters that I had in the studio. By the way, when Micheal's has a 50% off coupon I always use it to purchase a Martha Stewart paper cutter. I am not a scrapbooker, but it always comes in handy with crafts for the kids and at 50% off, it is well worth it).

3. Layer by layer, the kids glued the pieces of paper with Mod Podge to the frames. Once everything was in place, we painted another layer of Mod Podge over the top. We used the gloss so it gave it a shiny finish.

4. We took a snack break while the glue dried and I cleaned up the craft area.

5. Once the glue was dry (it didn't take long) they came back and chose 3-D flowers and paper cutouts to glue to the top of the frame.

The best thing about the day was all the comments I heard from the kids. They were so concerned about doing a good job for their mom's. Some of the comments were, "I need to make this perfect for my mom because I love her so much," and "I really hope she likes the colors that I chose for this frame." They really love their mommy's!

You can always tell we had a good time when someone goes home with paint on thier nose, right? Thanks for letting us craft with your little friends. We loved our Silly Nilly Day!

Thank you for taking the time to stop by our blog. If you aren't already, we'd love to visit with you on our Facebook page and of course, you can always visit our ETSY shoppe for our latest designs.

Thank you for supporting all things handmade.

SILLY NILLY DAY IDEA LIST:

#1 Visit an orchard!

#2 Find a field of wildflowers!

#3 Attend a local festival!

#4 Crafty Playdate for Thanksgiving (Mom's Time Out)

#5 Rudolph-inspired Candy

#6 Create a paper snowflake wonderland

#7—A very special Silly Nilly Day and Winter Wonderland!

#8—Decoupage craft day for Mother's Day!

MORE SILLINESS...

#7—A very special Silly Nilly Day and Winter Wonderland!

Our little snow princess turned 3 this month!

Birthday's are very special to me. Not my own, but the birthday's of my children. I love to celebrate their big day. Each January and August brings a new themed celebration that takes over my brain. This year, Analise (6) picked the theme for Lexie's (3) birthday party. She was facinated with making paper snowflakes during the holiday season. This lead to the theme of a "3rd birthday Winter Wonderland" party for our little girl.

We are in Texas so the weather was a beautiful 60 degrees in the middle of January. Our neighborhood has a park in the center with a fantastic gazebo. I was able to let the kids play in the park, gave them bubbles to blow to create snow, roasted marshmallows, and we had a fantastic balloon man, Mr. Michael who does magic with balloons. (Really, every party should have Michael's Magical Balloons, he is amazing.) I also bought white donut holes because I was going to have a snowball race, but the kids had other plans. Every so often I would see little hands reaching on the table and run away with a "snowball." It was really cute.

Since it was after Christmas, I got an awesome deal on decorations. Snowflakes from Michael's for 11 centsplus a 20% off coupon, white lighted trees for $15 each (normally $60 each) from Garden Ridge, and Lexie and I made the snowmen. The cake and cupcakes had Royal Icing snowflakes that I made and attached to a wooden dowel. With white sugar sprinkles and white pearlized sprinkles the cakes looked like a winter wonderland. I was even lucky enough to find chicken nuggets in the shape of snowflakes. Crazy, huh? Some of the mom's thought I minced my own chicken and cut out the chicken nuggets. I laughed because I love big party themes, but I'm really not that high maintenance. Really!

And of course, a special "thank you" to Gami. She made the party favors. We found snowflake fleece that she made into scarves. I took some of the snowflakes and put a pin on the back and attached them to the scarves with a little note of thanks from Lexie. We had loads of fun with our friends.

Each night, before bed and after prayers, my girls ask me what they should dream about. We come up with wild adventures to send them into sweet slumber. The night of the party, as Lexie was falling asleep in my arms, she said, "Mommy, I'm going to dream about my beautiful snowman party." I guess that is all you can ask for, right?

I hope y'all have a silly nilly day and share your big birthday plans with us. We'd love to hear about it.

Many thanks to all our friends, y'all are the greatest!

*Visit our ETSY shoppe to see our ridiculously cute clothing for kids. Also, find us on facebook to learn first-hand what we are producing. Thank you!

SILLY NILLY DAY IDEA LIST:

#1 Visit an orchard!

#2 Find a field of wildflowers!

#3 Attend a local festival!

#4 Crafty Playdate for Thanksgiving (Mom's Time Out)

#5 Rudolph-inspired Candy

#6 Create a paper snowflake wonderland

#7—A very special Silly Nilly Day and Winter Wonderland!

#8—Decoupage craft day for Mother's Day!

MORE SILLINESS...

Silly Nilly Day #6—Create a paper snowflake wonderland!

Analise came home from school one day last week and said, "mom, let's make snowflakes!" I thought, sure, how hard can that be? Well, was I naive.

I, of course 'googled' snowflakes thinking I would get some basic templates and we would be on our way. The first site I came to was a video of a guy with a ruler and we were to find the right angle then the 60 degree angle...that is about all I got when I frantically closed the window. My search finally brought me to Martha Stewart. Still, panic struck me because if her crafts are anything like her cookbooks, I was in serious trouble. Surprisingly, I was able to follow along and we got some pretty cute snowflakes from the site. If you are interested just go to this site. Our flakes aren't as perfect as Martha's, but we did a pretty good job and I love every one of them.

We took all the snowflakes and taped them to the windows in their bedroom. Luckily, their room is in the front of the house, so you can actually see them from the street. The girls were so proud of them.

And if you were wondering how Lexie contributed to this project. Just see the picture below. She decided to wrestle with the reindeer by the tree. I'm not sure which one of them won the battle, but they both took a tumble. Happy Holidays! Good luck with your snowflakes.

Happy Holidays! Have a Silly Nilly Day!

Jennifer

*Visit our ETSY shoppe to see our ridiculously cute clothing for kids. Also, find us on facebook to learn first-hand what we are producing. Thank you!

SILLY NILLY DAY IDEA LIST:

#1 Visit an orchard!

#2 Find a field of wildflowers!

#3 Attend a local festival!

#4 Crafty Playdate for Thanksgiving (Mom's Time Out)

#5 Rudolph-inspired Candy

#6 Create a paper snowflake wonderland

#7—A very special Silly Nilly Day and Winter Wonderland!

#8—Decoupage craft day for Mother's Day!

MORE SILLINESS...

Silly Nilly Day #5—Rudolph-Inspired Candy

I try to have all my Christmas shopping completed by the second week of December. This gives me the opportunity to slow down and really enjoy the holiday season. This also means that I get to spend a lot of time with my kids (insert very large smile on my face right now.) I decided to open up our house, through our blog and show you what our holiday season is like when we aren't designing clothing. This is the general idea behind having a Silly Nilly day. Sometimes I forget to enjoy the small moments. I get wrapped up in deadlines, returning emails, volunteering at the school, dance classes, washing clothes...ugh, this is bringing me down just typing my daily chores. Anyway, we created "Silly Nilly Days" to remind me, and hopefully those of you reading this blog to always enjoy our small moments. Below are two easy projects we create every year inspired by our favorite reindeer.

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER CANDY CANES

One of our favorite things to make for Christmas is our Reindeer Candy Canes. Even Lexie (2) can help make these because they are super easy. Once they are made, we put them in our teacher gifts, use them for treats when our friends come over, and decorate packages. Oh, and they are just super cute to use as decoration for a side table next to a tree.

I told you they were super cute. They are also easy to make.

1. Wrap a brown or black pipe cleaner around the candy cane then crinkle the antlers.

2. Glue googly eyes onto the cane. One year we used different sizes of googly eyes and made goofy looking reindeer.

3. Glue red pom poms on for the nose. We didn't have the pom poms so we just used red glitter glue.

4. Tie a green or red bow around the neck of the cane and whallah, you are done.

I hope you make some this holiday season and find even more creative ways to use them.

The second project is also a family tradition. We make them throughout the holiday season. We have to keep making them because my husband can't keep his fingers out of the candy bag. These are some of his favorite little snacks (and he isn't a big snacker!)

RUDOLPH AND ELF KISSES

We made up the name of this little candy. We use red and green M&M's on hersey kisses so the name just kinda fits. This snack is a great combination if you like a litte salt and a little sweet in one delicious bite (well, I take more than one bite, but you get the idea.)

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Step 1: Spread pretzels on a cookie sheet. Only do one sheet at a time because you need to have time before the kisses harden to put the M&M's on the top. Smaller batches are easier to control.

Step 2: Place a Hersey Kiss on top of the pretzels.

Step 3: Place the Kisses in the oven for about 7-8 minutes. They need to be soft enough to put the M&M's on top, but not too soft that they are super messy. Also, if the oven is not to the correct temperature (too low) then the Hersey Kisses won't melt correctly and just crumble.

Step 4: As soon as the Kisses are glissening and soft they are ready to come out of the oven. We use red and green M&M's and press them into the kisses. Make sure you press firmly enough for the kiss to stick to the pretzel or they will come apart once they dry. Let them harden and then they are ready to eat.

OPTIONS: Each year we try a different combination. Sometimes we use a different flavor Hershey Kiss or put peanuts on top rather than M&M's. This year we tried Rolo candy rather than Kisses because we had some in the cabinet so we thought we would try them. I really don't think you can mess up this snack.

These snacks don't last long enough for us to hand out to our friends, but some years we put them in decorative bags and give them to the neighbors. We would love to hear about your favorite combination to make this great holiday snack.

Happy Holidays! Have a Silly Nilly Day!

Jennifer

*Visit our ETSY shoppe to see our ridiculously cute clothing for kids. Also, find us on facebook to learn firsthand what we are producing. Thank you!

SILLY NILLY DAY IDEA LIST:

#1 Visit an orchard!

#2 Find a field of wildflowers!

#3 Attend a local festival!

#4 Crafty Playdate for Thanksgiving (Mom's Time Out)

#5 Rudolph-inspired Candy

#6 Create a paper snowflake wonderland

#7—A very special Silly Nilly Day and Winter Wonderland!

#8—Decoupage craft day for Mother's Day!

MORE SILLINESS...