Adorable Snowmen - made from Dollar Store socks!

Well there have been many recipes and crafts on the back burner that I need to share with you as the holidays approach at top speed, but I thought I'd start with some of the cutest little snow people that we made as gifts for teachers and family members over the holidays last year.  They were so fun we made them this year as well. 

No-sew snowmen made out of dollar store socks!

The best part about this craft is, that it's great for adults and kids alike.  I had just as much fun making these (if not more) than the girls did.  The other awesome aspect to this craft, is that it only requires a few simple items from the dollar tree, a few other craft supplies, and no sewing!

Snowman made from socks, customize one for every style and taste.

Look how cute these little guys are!  I got this idea from pinterest a few months back, and not only were these the craft at my daughter's 12th birthday party, but many family members, teachers, and friends each received a custom snowman just for them.  Here are the items you will need:

Note: You can also use "lost" socks at your house that you can't find the pair for.

Materials:
White (long) men's socks (sold in packs of 2 at the Dollar tree)
Fluffy socks (stripes work best, and also no ankle-length or grips on the feet)
Scissors
Rubber bands
Rice (I bought a 20 lb bag of rice from Walmart)
Pearl stickers (I could only fine white, so we colored them black with sharpies)
Hot glue gun
Tall narrow cup (to pour the rice in the sock) and funnel

Optional:
Cotton balls or jingle bells
Buttons
Embellishments
9x13 pan to catch all the rice

Take out one men's sock. The part you are going to use is not the foot part, but the section that would go up the leg with the ribbing.  With sharp scissors, cut about 1 inch past the end of the ribbing, close to the start of the heel.  Place the toe part of the sock aside.

Each two pack of men's socks will make 2 snowmen.

Turn the sock inside out and gather the thickest end into a tight "flower" pinching together the ends and put a rubber band around the top several times to secure.

Turn the sock right side out again, with the rubber band end tucked inside.

The rubber band inside will now be the bottom of your snowman

Fill a tall cup with uncooked rice.  

We found that this tall water bottle was narrow and the perfect size to slide a sock over. A thin, tall travel coffee mug would work as well. We used a funnel to help the rice go into the right place.  Oh we also used a 9x13 pan under all the rice activity to help keep rice from flying all over the kitchen.

The 9x13 pan saved us a lot of sweeping up time later

Place the open end of the sock over the top of the cup and gently flip over.  Carefully let the rice start filling up the sock.  It will look like there is too much rice, but if you push the bottom of the sock down a few times as it is filling, it will stretch/widen out and more rice will fit.  

You don't want to overfill the sock, because rice will start to come out the stretched out holes.

At the very end, carefully remove the cup without letting the rice fly all over the place.  There should be about an inch of sock material at the end.  Leave enough to gather together.

Once the sock is full of rice, it is quite mold-able to the shape you want.

Push the sock down again until you can gather enough material at the top to cinch another rubber band in place. 

Your snowman project will look a little fat and flabby at this point.

At first the shape should look like a pear, with a wide bottom, going up to a narrow top.  Now you can shape the "head" of the snowman by squeezing in slightly above center to form two "balls".  

This will give your future snowman a "peanut" shape

Place a rubber band around the head (this will be hidden by the "scarf" later on), and the Mohawk at the top will be covered up by the hat.

Make sure your head is a good proportional size.  Readjust the rubber band if necessary

Now the fun part, to make the scarf and hat from the fluffy fuzzy socks.  Pick out one you like and you are going to make a few cuts.  

fluffy socks from the dollar tree work great for this project. (no ankle length or grips on the bottom)

  
Start at the tip of the toe and measure up 4-5 inches, before the heel and cut across.  This will be your little hat. 

Here's a little map of your cuts

You will get four pieces out of one sock.  The hat from the toe, the neck piece (part of the scarf) from the top of the sock, and then a scarf tie to make the scarf more realistic looking right below the neck section, and then there will be an extra piece you don't need made up of the heel area.

Take the toe part of your sock and flip over a bit of the bottom to form a brim (fuzzy socks have a lot of fluff, we pulled off a few fuzz balls as we went to make them look neater).

Now you have a cute little hat for your snowperson.

Find the cutest "face-looking" side of your head and pull the hat down over the top to see how it fits. Adjust the width of the brim if necessary.

This little guy is from the first year we made these.

Now for the scarf.  Take the end of the sock where the elastic is, and cut a strip at the top there about an inch wide.

The "neck" part is at the very top of the sock.

This will be the scarf that goes around the neck and hides the rubber band. Place your scarf over the head of your snowman.

The elastic at the end of the sock will help keep the neck part of the scarf in place

Cut another strip right up to where the heel starts (see map above)
This will be in a ring, but cut the ring open and make one long strip for the scarf. 

Making this a longer strip will help make the scarf on the snowman look more realistic.

Run this up and over the elastic neck ring to make it look like the snow person has tied their scarf up and the tassels are hanging down.

So hat, elastic neck scarf, and longer scarf is tucked up and under the next area.

Now you pretty much have a super cute snowman!  If the scarf tassels are too long, you can trim them up a bit until they rest near the bottom of the snowman.

Here's our guy from last year looking all dapper.

You can also choose to tie the loose long scarf piece to the neck scarf for a tied scarf look, or you can leave it flat and wide for a different look.

The snowman on the left has a tied knot for his scarf, the one on the right the material is just slipped through the neck one.

All we need are some eyes and a few embellishments. I found these pearl stickers in the craft section of Walmart.  

The only color they had was pale white, so we just used black sharpies to make them "coal" colored.  

Stick them on to your snowman's face. These are sort of a stick once and don't touch them again kind of sticker. You really can't move them around because they will lose their stick.

 Too big of an eye makes them look a little wonky, so test a size out before you stick.

We picked a few coordinating buttons and hot glued them to the snowman's body.

My daughters teacher told her she loves blue and purple, so that's the color scheme here.

This last part for the hat is optional. The hat does tend to stick straight up, depending on how long it is, and so to make it look more like a floppy Santa/Elf hat, I took a little blob of hot glue and touched the tip of the hat to the side of the hat and held it a few seconds.  

Snowgirl fashionistas.

To cover up the little glue spot, we took some puff balls and/or jingle bells and hot glued them to the top of the hat. 

Here's a shorter hat with the pom pom straight up, and here's a hat where we glued a little part of the hat over, for another cute look.

It really gave them a finishing touch. 

You can also use jingle bells, pom poms, anything you want.

My daughter and friends had a blast making these little guys a few years back as the craft for her sleep over birthday.  They loved picking their favorite colors and they all turned out really cute.

A fun party craft for kids that are a little older, otherwise you will have rice EVERYWHERE.

Also when the girls were making these for their teachers, they picked their teachers' favorite colors or sports team colors. I made a few for my mom in her favorite Seahawks colors and some for my Sis-in-law who's high school colors (she's a teacher) are purple and gold.  So fun.

Sports team colors for a customized gift... Here are Seahawks, and Sumner Spartan or WA Huskies school colors.

The teacher's this year just loved their personalized gifts.

The girls had fun designing these little guys to the tastes of the people they were making them for.  We even used them to decorate one side of our fireplace mantle, which had a snowman theme this year.

We had a blast making these little guys, and it's not too late to make a few for some last minutes gifts for friends and family. Not to mention, if your kids are home on winter break and need something to keep them busy, this little craft could be right up your alley.  Let me know if you make any of these and post pictures of how they turned out!

Have a great holiday season! 

How to Make Fluffy Slime

I could have also easily titled this blog post "How to make your 10-year-old super happy on her summer break".  I don't know if you have any small fry underfoot this summer, but my youngest has been asking me non stop to make "slime".  Ah, slime. It sounds so appetizing, no? Not just any slime though mind you, she wanted to make the most super dee-duper fluffiest slime in the known universe! If your kids watch any YouTube videos at all, they will have most likely come across at least one form of a "slime" recipe or another, if not millions of them.

Slime - Fluffy squishy fun for all!

It's pretty, it's colorful, it feels fun and funky -  and sometimes makes fart noises...what's not to love? Plus when you whip some up, it feels a bit like a science experiment. Luckily my 10-year old had done some "extensive" online  research before presenting me with the ultimate slime recipe (in her opinion) that was decidedly the fluffiest on the internet.  We found our recipe here on YouTube and thanks to Gillian for the great how to video.

Slime can be made with some things that you can find around your house, and then some things you might have to pick up at the store.  These are the things we used for our first time recipe: 

The ingredients for super fluffy slime

Ingredients:

Elmer's glue (1/2 cup)
Shaving cream (1/2 cup)
Corn starch (1 tablespoon)
Food Coloring (few drops)
Hand lotion (few squirts)
Hand soap (original called for foaming hand soap we didn't have -  two squirts)
Borax 
Water

*Also it's good to note we used all glass containers so we could sanitize them properly after (as opposed to plastic that might absorb the soap residues)   

First thing you want to do is get 1 cup of water in a glass measuring cup and add 1 teaspoon of Borax.  Stir with a metal spoon until dissolved and set aside.

Next you want to get 1/2 cup of glue.  I didn't want to use our measuring cups we cook with, so we measured out in this glass mini bowl what a 1/2 cup would be first, so we knew where to pour to make a 1/2 cup.

We started blogging on the 2nd batch of slime, hence the already used bowls

Next you want to add a 1/2 cup of shaving cream.

shaving cream expands all fluffy-like and this was our second batch where we were making a bit more

After that, add 1 tablespoon of cornstarch.

I was okay using our measuring spoons because cornstarch is normally in the food category

 Mix together those three ingredients until blended well

We used a metal spoon while mixing in the glass bowl

Now you want to add a few squirts of hand lotion. We were told on the YouTube video this would make the slime "stretchy"

Just two squirts of hand lotion

The next part of the recipe called for a few squirts of foaming hand soap, which we didn't have, so we just put in a couple squirts of regular hand soap, which made it smell very nice.

We had soft soap on hand

Mix together until smooth

RESIST the attempt to believe this is whipped cream.  Do not lick the spoon.  Do not lick the spoon!

Now you can add whatever food coloring you want.

The first time she did pink, the 2nd batch of slime she picked blue.

And blend until the color starts to come out.

Now here's the most "science-y" part of the experiment.  You want to slowly add the borax/water mixture 1 tablespoon at a time into the bowl.

And as soon as your start to stir, the things in the bowl start to come together a bit.

Then you add a little more borax water... and a ball starts to form

Add a little more and it starts pulling away from the bowl and onto itself. At this point you can pick it up and start working it a bit like bread dough

We added a little more of the borax liquid and she was stretching and forming it into a ball.

A few more drops of the liquid and it started to get really shiny and come together pretty good!

Wow an official ball of fluffy slime!!

Success!  One of the fun things to do with slime is to poke your fingers in it like you are making some focaccia bread and it makes this marvelous "sucking" sound when you pull your fingers out of it.

Blue fluffy focaccia slime.

We had made a pink batch before we started blogging, and that one got the finger treatment as well!

It also looks fun as a perfect rounded ball, it can take on many shapes!

Also, when you tear it apart, there are supposed to be many fluffy bubbles in the middle.

Light and fluffy!!

Ooo and the most fun thing about fluffy slime is the way it can stretch "a million miles" according to most 10-year-olds.

Stretchy, fluffy, just like taffy

I mean, come on now, look how happy and proud she is that she made her own fluffy slime!!
 

Then, she wanted to know what would happen if she mixed a little of the pink and blue together, would it make purple??

Adding two colors together, at first they stayed in stripes, eventually they blended.

She wanted a brighter purple, so we added some food coloring right to the small ball and she worked it in until the color got a bit darker

Pink, purple, and blue fluffy slime!

We were also told to store these in an air tight container or a Ziploc plastic bag where you squish all the air out of it and store it in the fridge to make it last longer.  

It's also a good idea to wash your hands before and after playing with the slime and definitely keep it off the ground or anywhere it could attract hair, dirt, or crumbs (see where my hate of all things play doh related in one of my first ever blog rants.. here) to keep it at it's fluffy, slimy best!  

All and all this was a fun little craft and she loved every second of it.  It has been two days since we created "the slime" and she is still playing with the stuff.  Hooray for easy fun summer activities that keep the girls busy and hold their attention.  Yay!