scraps and coffee grounds

Diy Christmas cards

?Diy Christmas cards ?Five more days! Santa will come soon and we have sent our Christmas cards: they are handmade and the girls could paint almost entirely by their selves. It’s a fun Christmas activity that you can add to your advent calendar or just to spend some quality family time with tour kids.

These past years we usually have been sending hand-print crafts but this year I wanted something different and easy to do, so that one was the perfect print for our cards: fairy lights painted with fingers.

For these we used brown paper sheets, acrylic paint, scissors and a black pen to draw the wire.

How to:

For these I just fold A4 sheets in a half and drew the black lines ( as wires). Then we chose the colors for our fairy lights and we used our fingers, trying to alternate different colors in order to create a pattern.

Then I fold again the sheets and cut them creating two cards. I wrote inside a handwritten note for friends and my oldest wrote a few notes for their grandparents.

It’s really simple but I love the result and the girls were so proud they made them, so I hope you like them too! It’s perfect for fine motor skills and they love painting so it’s a win for us!

And in case you need more inspo,these are some ideas of DIY cards made from hand prints. These are the ones we have been doing last years and sending to family:

Oh and today we’ll welcome another season so happy solstice to everyone! ??

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Pumpkin pie

Pumpkin pie recipe! Today I am going to share with you the easiest recipe to make a delicious pumpkin pie and guess what,sugar free!

I shared this tip before but I love it, I always freeze pumpkin puree after carving them on Halloween and then I can use it for different recipes, like this one.

This time I wanted to recreate a festive table,and tried to add something different with cutters. I have a cute collection of nativity cutters that I love and thought that it would use the image inside the pie with the characters. The pie is too small to fit them all but it’s still lovely for Christmas.

Ingredients

For that one you’ll need:

For the puff pastry : 2 cup flour,1 tbsp salt,250gr plant based butter frozen, 2/3 cup cold water. Grate the butter and add it to flour (I put the flour in the fridge 15min) slowly mixing. Pour the cold water into the dough. Mix. Wrap with a cloth and leave it in the fridge for 30min. Roll the dough,fold a rectangle three times and let it chill in the fridge again for 1hour.

For the filling:

1/3 pumpkin puree
3eggs
3/4 heavy whipping cream
Half banana
1tbsp cornstarch
1/4 milk
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt

1 pre-bake the puff pastry 15min 180°c and then add the filling,bake 30min 180°c. While the pie was in the oven I cut the characters and some little stars to decorate the pie.

Do you like it? The taste was great and the girls loves the nativity inside ?

I made more characters with the cutters that we eat as cookies too? they were delicious!

I saw all these pumpkins pie for Thanksgiving and thought that we could eat them during our Christmas holidays with the nativity cookies,so that styling was a test that we are definitely going to cook again! Hope you liked it!

??Find my DIY ideas and crafts classed by themes on my “about me” page:
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Poooli inkless printers

Have you heard about poooli inkless printers before? When I first saw poooli pocket printers I couldn’t believe it! They use thermal technology to print your tags and pictures without any ink! How cool is that!

Take notes, edit and print your favorite photos. You can also print websites, docs labes and more. Make you life more organized. Never forget anything!
https://www.poooliprint.com/

Ink and sustainability

Even though I print a lot of work for our homeschooling activities,I am aware that ink isn’t a really eco-friendly option. We try to print templates just one each and keep them in order to reuse them. There are also ways to make the printing journey greener, like recycling and buying recycled ink cartridges. But then I saw these pocket printers from poooli,these are thermal printers and use no ink!

I have been gifted the L1 model (L1 model ) and already love it,it’s perfect for our scrapbooking. For our Advent calendar we are making a family photo album,so each day we add some photos to the album and we can print tags and texts with poooli. You have different kind of papers like sticker paper,golden etc and they don’t contain Bisphenol A.

How does it work?

Once you have your poooli pocket printer,you will download their app and connect via Bluetooth with your phone or tablet. After that, you can print your photos,notes, lessons and even make lists or reminders to keep yourself organized. I love the scan option,you can easily convert a photo into a pdf .

There is also a social platform too in order to communicate with other users!

Can’t wait to use it again, I am looking forward to create Christmas present tags and it’s really helpful for our homeschooling activities!

Hope you like it!

Find my DIY ideas and crafts classed by themes on my “about me” page here .
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Elf on the shelf puppet

Elf on the shelf puppet: my new free printable for you!

December is almost here! That means that Christmas is around the corner too! That’s why today I am sharing here a new “elf on the shelf” printable!

So we have started to decorate (we like to start Christmas decorations the last week of November). I have our Advent Calendar ready (the one I shared on my last blog, with photos to make a family album).

And today I finished a new watercolor sketch! I just drew an Elf using the watercolor pencils again. Then I made a printable to create a puppet. It’s the first time I made one so I am happy I didn’t mess up!?

We don’t celebrate the Elf in the shelf here (Spain/France) but I like the idea of that tradition, even if I don’t think I will start it at home because I am sure I will forget every day. ? That’s why I thought that a printable puppet would be cute, girls love to play with puppets and we can use it as a decoration too.?

If you scroll you will find the printable and the video, and you just need to download it if you want to print your little elf at home.?

How does that Elf on the shelf printable work?

You just need to download the template and print it.

Then cut the different parts of the elf and use long fasteners to make it articulated.

I hid the “shoulders ” under the collar and add three more,one for the neck and two hips. You can glue the printed sheet to recycled cardboard or laminated it.

It’s also a beautiful and unique Christmas decoration, and I am thinking about different sized ones for more fun, or maybe different characters! What do you think about it? I will keep you updated!

You can find it also on my Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CWlv4w0o755/?utm_medium=copy_link

And click the link below to download it!

Elf in the shelf Descarga

Hope you like it!xx

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Find my DIY ideas and crafts classed by themes on my “about me” page
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Reindeer printable

Today I am going to share a reindeer printable! I am so happy I have started to draw again. I use to love drawings and stopped while studying my degree, then a few years ago my sister talked to me about these pencils, an easy way to start some watercolor practice.

I made some regular drawings for the girls crafts but never found a moment to try watercolors. And last month I finally bought the right paper and tried the pencils.

It’s actually not that hard,even if I need to improve my skills,and it’s really satisfying!

After a few tries,that I will be slowly sharing, I tried to recreate a watercolor reindeer, Rudolph style ? And gave it to my girls to play some #facethefoliage with red maple leaves.

That’s why I am sharing here the reindeer printable, so you can print it at home and maybe your kids will also love to glue some leaves to create the antlers!

Watercolor Reindeer printable — Watercolor sketch

That’s a similar activity than the one I shared a few months ago, that you can find here .

You just need to download the template (scroll down),print it and use some leaves to add the antlers. Some kids just like to draw the antlers by themselves. And you can even try watercolor pencils, coloring and then adding some water with a brush,they usually love it!

And remember that you can follow my Instagram for more inspo @scraps.and.coffee.grounds

I will be practicing more and soon I’ll use them as homeschooling cards, turning them into templates and more printables, I hope you like them!xx

Reindeer printable Descarga

Watercolor pencils

I have started to draw again!I use to love drawings and stopped studying my degree,then a few years ago my sister talked to me about these pencils,a easy way to start some watercolor practice. I made some regular drawings for the girls crafts but never found a moment to try watercolors,so last month I bought the right paper and tried the pencils.

It’s actually not that hard,even if I need to improve my skills,and it’s really satisfying!

After a few tries,that I will be slowly sharing,I tried to recreate a watercolor deer, Rudolph style ? and gave it to my girls to play some #facethefoliage with red maple leaves.

I will be practicing more and soon I’ll use them as homeschooling cards, turning them into templates,hope you like them!xx

DIY advent calendar!

Even if we just entered in November’s month,let’s admit that we need to start thinking about Christmas decorations and gift ideas,so today I am going to share with you this DIY advent calendar that I created last year!

Last year I started a new tradition: a DIY advent calendar with printed photos. Every day, we opened one envelope with a few photos that I printed.

That made a daily activity for the girls, creating that year’s family album with stickers and crafting. It was a last minute idea that I shared on Instagram and couldn’t share on the blog but this year I don’t want to be late! So here’s a photo of our last year’s wreath:

Easy DIY advent calendar wreath — DIY advent calendar wreath

Sustainable holidays!

There is a lot of wild mistletoe that you can pick in the woods, I added it to the wreath and use some envelopes that I decorated with paper news,number tags and rustic rope .

I also love old music sheets as Christmas props,so I also used them.

What I love is that I still have the envelopes and the wire hoop. I will pick more mistletoe and just reuse the rest!

It’s the best way to have your photos of the year printed and it makes a fun family activity (and a sugar free calendar idea?).

We always struggle to get our photos printed, but I love classic photo albums to enjoy with the girls. Kids love to see these memories printed! So that’s the perfect way to have a yearly album with the highlights of the year. We make some scrapbooking to decorate it and the result is so pretty! Remember that washi tape it’s greener than regular one: think about it! Use it also if you want to wrap your gifts the classic way! Other ideas to wrap your presents are with reusable bags or fabric!

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Hope you liked the idea!xx

Free printable: counting activity

It’s a new month so I want to share another free printable for you! We have been picking lots of acorns and pinecones and I thought that we could use them for a counting activity with a watercolor template that you can download here (scroll down).

I made a pine tree sketch with our watercolor pencils and I used number cards so the girls could add the same number of acorns or pinecones to the tree. We can work maths with additions and subtractions.

I give them the number cards and depending on your kid’s age you can use different activities, like ask them to put the same number of acorns that the number of the card.

For my 5yo I can work with additions and substractions: I use the same cards and that’s a great way to learn!

Watercolor tree printable for counting activity for kids — Watercolor tree template

What I like about these free printables is that we can reuse them many times, you can even laminate them and this way you don’t need to print them several times. Like we did with our face the foliage template, we used it this time with dry leaves for a fall-ish version ?

Face the foliage template for kids — Face the foliage autumn leaves version

I am learning to use these watercolor pencils but I am looking forward to share more drawings like this,so more free templates coming soon! Wishing you a great month!xx

Free autumn templates for kids activities and homeschooling — Face the foliage and counting activity

You can follow me on Instagram @scraps.and.coffee.grounds , I’d love to see you there!

Click on the link below to download your free printable:

pine tree Descarga

Hope you liked that free template: counting activity!xx

Find my DIY ideas and crafts classed by themes on my “about me” page
https://test.scrapsandcoffeegrounds.coma-propos/?preview=true&preview_id=1&preview_nonce=b6a95f434e&frame-nonce=d2ac28a990&amp=1
Follow for more on my Instagram https://instagram.com/scraps.and.coffee.grounds?utm_medium=copy_link
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November fruits

It’s a new month so I want to share another template for you! We have been picking lots of acorns and pinecones and I thought that we could use them for a counting activity.

I made a pine tree with our watercolor pencils and I use number cards so the girls could add the same number of acorns or pinecones to the tree. We can work maths with additions and subtractions.

Watercolor tree template for counting activity for kids — Watercolor tree template

What I like about these templates is that we can reuse them many times,you can even laminate them and this way you don’t need to print them several times. Like we did with our face the foliage template,we used it this time with dry leaves for a fall-ish version ?

Hope you’ll like this one! I am learning to use these watercolor pencils but I am looking forward to share more drawings like this! Wishing you a great month!xx

pine tree Descarga

Halloween costumes!

Remember last year’s photo that we made for Halloween? We recreated these retro family portraits,you know the ones a bit creepy, where everyone is so serious and it’s actually a little scary ?

This hey we tried to take a similar one, a vintage circus ? with different characters,the costumes are simple and the edit with PicsArt to add some details.

The thing is that I want to share easy costume ideas,that you can make with clothes from your closet,or just some makeup and that’s even possible for a family session!

The strongest man,the seer,and two little harlequins and that’s it! No need to buy new stuff or clutter your house, a slow Halloween is also possible! And so much fun!

Vintage circus family costumes for Halloween — Vintage circus family costumes

And here’s last year’s photo!

Retro photo family costumes for Halloween — Old card family costumes

Which one is your favorite? Happy Halloween!xx ?

Find my DIY ideas and crafts classed by themes on “my about” me page
https://test.scrapsandcoffeegrounds.coma-propos/?preview=true&preview_id=1&preview_nonce=b6a95f434e&frame-nonce=d2ac28a990&amp=1
Follow for more on my Instagram https://instagram.com/scraps.and.coffee.grounds?utm_medium=copy_link
And you can support my work https://ko-fi.com/scrapsandcoffeegrounds