Get your craft on: DIY birdseed ornament tutorial

For Valentine's Day teacher gifts, we're doing heart-shaped birdseed ornaments.  Popular for bird-themed wedding favors, too, this was an easy DIY project that the Gravy Kids enjoyed.

For the heart shapes, I used a donut baking tin I found at Target.  You can use cookie cutters, too, but shelling out the $9.99 was worth it over digging through my basement looking for the box of cookie cutters.  The payment of convenience.

Here's the recipe:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons corn syrup or honey
1 packet unflavored gelatin
4 cups birdseed
Cooking spray


1. In a large bowl, combine flour, water, corn syrup (or honey), and gelatin.  
2.Add birdseed and mix well.  


 **MODIFIED INSTRUCTIONS BELOW** 
3.  Scoop into greased molds and let dry for several hours before removing from mold.  
4.  Let ornaments dry overnight on wax paper.  


The result should be a distinctly hard ornament the next day.  Any squishiness means that the ornament is not completely dry and may mold if packaged up too soon.

Alternatively, you could use cookie cutters by putting wax paper on top of a cookie sheet and filling the greased cookie cutters with seeds.  Just be sure to insert pieces of straw to leave a hole to tie the string through after the ornament dries.  A mini-bundt pan would probably work well, too.

We wrapped the heart birdseed ornaments into a plastic bag, topped it off with a "love is for the birds" gift tag and voila!  Instant gift.

Free DIY printable: Valentine's Day gift tags

Can you believe it's going to be February this week?  I've already started in on my Valentine's Day teacher gifts which I'll share very shortly.


Until then, enjoy these FREE Good Gravy! printable Valentine's Day gift tags.  Click here to download.

Of course, I couldn't resist throwing in a lovey, but somewhat non-in-your-face Valentine's Day tag with "Your Are My Sunshine."  I love that phrase.

An obvious headline (in this house, at least)

If you're lucky, this news clipping may not apply to you.  However, it greatly applies in the Good Gravy household.  

The naughty list: dog christmas card

My friend Elise's dog, Myko, is quite the character.  So much so that he deserved his own dog Christmas card last month which I designed.  


All items represented in Myko's "file" are hilariously true (okay, well maybe one is a stretch, but we wouldn't put it past him).

Break-in or renovation? You decide.

I may or may not have been been responsible for this:

I admit to nothing.  Ignore the crumbs on my face.

Excuse me while I clog my arteries

It's no secret I love bacon and these online finds have me drooling:

{via SkilletStreetFood}

{via Fred Flare}

{via Torani}

{via ThinkGeek}

And, beer + bacon + maple donut = hello, my darlings:

{via Rouge}

Get your craft on: DIY crayons

I've read many articles about making your own crayons from broken ones using cookie molds, so I thought Wavey would find it a fun holiday project for kid-gifts. 

So here's the rub: We didn't have enough organically-derived broken crayons, so we broke a apart a box of new ones...and what an UNHOLY MESS it was to peel the wrappers off of them. 

Did you know generic crayons affix their wrappers with the same glue probably used to hold rocket ships together in space?  Yep, now you know, and I have the wax under my nails to prove it.

We melted the crayons in the oven at 275-degrees for about 15 minutes and let them cool completely before popping them out of the mold.  Success!

Gingerbread house FAIL

My sister is in town and we thought, "Let's buy one of those pre-fabbed gingerbread houses to decorate.  How difficult can that be?" 

I think you can guess where this is going...

It didn't help that Emily and I carry the gene of impatience as we didn't bother reading any instructions. 

Between the two of us, Emily and I carry college and post-graduate degrees...clearly none of which were in engineering.  Or good judgement. 

The walls wouldn't stick, the roof collapsed, and icing was EVERYWHERE.  The kids basically gave up on us, threw a few candy pieces our way and took off.

Even the gingerbread men look zombie-ish and disgusted by our work.  

Hello, holidays!

The over/under of Thanksgiving Day

Wavey threw me for a loop this year by actually eating Thanksgiving dinner.  Griffin, however?  Status quo.

World's greatest understatement

I'm rapidly realizing that I'm trending toward an obsession with cured meats these days, but when I ran across this in my local paper, I couldn't agree more with its sentiments:

Delicious bum

I am a child because I found this sign at a restaurant funny:

And yes, I ordered it, too.

Holiday cocktail party invitation

Can you believe we're pretty close to Christmas already?  I cannot.  But, my clients certainly are on the ball with plans for holiday cheer:

I designed this holiday cocktail party invitation using icicle blue, silver bell and cranberry inks on textured cardstock and matted it to a shimmering silver cardstock.  Very holiday glam.

(Personal information has been modified to protect privacy)

Christmas "cheese"

I've had some decent luck with several props I've been tyring out this year for kids' holiday photos, but I can't quite win with the frame...espec in the "ages 3 and under" group.  The evidence:

Popcorn cupcake wrappers

I love popcorn and I love cupcakes.  So this popcorn cupcake wrapper project I designed for a local bakery was a delicious fit. 

The bakery is going to fuse marshmallows and airbrush yellow frosting for the buttered popcorn effect for an upcoming movie-themed birthday party and will use the wrappers I designed above to tuck the "popcorn" cupcakes inside.  Clever! 

While the party for this bakery hasn't yet occurred, here's a photo I found via Project Nursery to show you the full effect:

Got an idea for a custom cupcake wrapper you'd be interested in having for an upcoming event?  Email me!  :)

Hello, cute microwave.

It is with great regret that I just recently purchased a regular, plain and functional microwave before coming across this Hello Kitty branded one:

It definitely wouldn't match my desire to make my home look more like grown-ups live here.  But then again, all hopes for that flew out of the window once the giant styrofoam doughboy joined the decor.

Family photo: FAIL

Taking photos of other people's children for holiday photo cards is easy for me.  Photos of my own kids?  Not so much:

Though, this sadly is quite the realistic snapshot of our day-to-day.