Register for the Christmas Ornament Exchange

It happened last night…I received an email if we were coordinating a 2011 Christmas Ornament Exchange. I thought about it last week and my week flew away from us, then I thought, you know what, let’s do it! We had so much fun last year exchanging Christmas ornaments. This year we will have short RSVP deadline…December 2.

The idea is that families make Christmas ornaments for other families and exchange them during the holiday season. Your family would be signing up as a family where you make the same number of ornaments that you send. So for example, if you have four people in your family, then you would make four ornaments total. These four ornaments though would be going to four different people, and in return, you will be receiving four ornaments back from four different people (receiving four packages total) with the idea that every ornament would be different. If you had one or even two people in your family unit, then you would receive one or two ornaments back.

Please refrain from any commercial look-a-likes.

Ornaments would need to be mailed on, or before, Friday, December 9, 2011 to make sure they arrive in time to your assigned family.

If you are interested in participating, please RSVP by midnight on December 2, 2011.

To sign up, please email michelle@himamma.com with the following information:

1) Your first and last name.

2) Your shipping/mailing address.

3) The number of ornaments that you will be exchanging.

4) Please share with me if you would be interested shipping internationally.

You will receive Christmas ornament swap partner addresses by email between on December 3-4, 2011.

If you know of anyone that might be interesting in participating in the Christmas ornament exchange please share with them the details.

AND if you have are not already following Hi Mamma, please do so, so that you will receive any additional updates about the exchange.

Butterflies Made Out of Coffee Filters

The Hi Mamma home is very much an art/craft household. Believe it or not, we converted one of our rooms into a studio (along with it also being a guest room for when we have family/friends in for a visit). Every week we are experimenting with different mediums so the girls can learn first hand. I want them to know what happens when you use chalk, watercolors (both as a watercolor pencil and in the tray), and the studio to be a place where they know that they can go sit at their desk/table, grab a set of markers, a blank sheet of paper to create, and most importantly use their imagination.

This week to decorate our studio we made coffee filter butterflies!

What you will need is the following:

• White round coffee filters
• Washable markers (you can also use watercolors)
• Fuzzy twist tie or a clothing pin
• Paint brush (to gently tap the water onto the coffee filter)
• Water
• Container to put underneath the water being tapped onto the coffee filter

To make coffee filter butterflies you will want to spread out your coffee filter so that it is flat on the table.

Select the color of markers (or watercolors) that you would like to use for your butterfly. Gently, one at a time make a design/color on the white coffee filter coloring it lightly with the markers so that it does not rip.

After coloring, tip your paint brush into water (make sure that you have a pan of some sort underneath the coffee filter, so that you catch the water and it does not ruin your tabletop, or get marker on your table top). Gently tap water onto the newly colored coffee filter. Once you do that, you will start seeing the marker spread/diffuse on the coffee filter. After you have applied all the water that you would like to add. Allow the coffee filter to dry. You may want to hang the coffee filter over a bowl or a cup so that it does not stick, and allows air to circulate around it. The coffee filter dries pretty quickly and the colors will be enhanced much more than when it is wet.

Onced dried, take the top and bottom of the coffee filter and bring the two center edges together so that it is “bunched” in the middle. This is forming the body of the butterfly. You can add a clothing pin to hold and serve as the body of the butterfly, or you can use a fuzzy craft twist tie as the body.