So we all love Pinterest, right? I mean, the brilliant, beautiful ideas floating around out there are just overwhelming!  I shared a bunch of fun stuff yesterday. But the problem, of course, is that you spend all your time pinning great ideas and never do any of them! I used to spend hours doing the same thing with the Stampin’ Up! catalog–drooling over the goodies and the beautiful projects instead of putting the book down and getting to work.

What’s that cute ecard? “Thank you Pinterest for making me feel crafty even though all I’ve done is sit in front of a computer for 3 hours.”

Well, over the holiday weekend, I decided to try some of the fun holiday projects I’d been pinning with the kids–our crew and my sister’s kiddos, since she was at work. We started with Candy Cane Hot Chocolate Stir Sticks from Liv Life.

Her’s looked like this…

Ours looked like this…

I actually think they turned out amazingly well! {grin}

This is definitely a kid-friendly project. Our crew on Friday was made up of a 4,5,6, and two 8 year-olds and they all did it by themselves with no issues at all. The supplies are simple and inexpensive and you could either use them at a party, package nicely and give as gifts, or use just for fun at home. Our kids thought it was so fun that they hang on the inside of your hot cocoa cup!

Here’s what we did, as illustrated by the Speedracer…

Supplies:

60-package of mini candy canes

1 package of large marshmallows

3-4 whole squares of Baker’s semi-sweet chocolate

I divided half the candy canes between the kids, and half of them we crushed up. We were pretty much able to contain the mess to one plate for each child, with their own candy dipping bowl.

My biggest concern was breaking the candy canes before we could finish the project, so I did hold some in reserve. But they were careful and no one broke any by mistake.

The kids simply pushed the candy canes into the center of the marshmallows (well, as close to center as they could manage), dipped them in the chocolate, and then dipped them in the crushed candy cane pieces.

I would absolutely recommend this fun and easy project for simple, handmade gifts for teachers, coaches, neighbors, etc. It’s something the kids can help with and feel good about and it’s quick. We made 40 of them in less than an hour, even with the kids doing all the work themselves.

A few quick tips:

• Next time I would use smaller, deeper bowls for the chocolate and candy pieces or roll them more than dip them to get that nice, higher coating up the sides like the original project had.
• Next time I would also use more chocolate.
• I stuck them in a freezer for an hour afterwards to harden them off faster with less mess. It worked out well.
• Breaking up the candy canes for pieces was the most difficult part. I wanted pieces, not dust, but they seemed either too big or too small. I think I would make sure I had more candy canes for breaking up next time.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget to let them eat the leftovers!

We also tried these wonderful looking banana split bites.

Except ours didn’t turn out like that. At all. As a matter of fact, they were so lopsided and drippy I just gave up. I would say that this would be a project for adults and older children. There’s just too much timing and organizing steps to make it work with a lot of hands in the kitchen.

But we did eat them–for breakfast!

Have you done and good (or bad!) holiday projects lately?