3 Family Craft Projects

Winter often brings families together for more shared time. Here are three activities to spend that time creatively.

1. Design personalized cards for greeting, birthdays and thank-you cards. (See the blog on Scraper Art and Colorful Coffee Filter Paper [link] to create some great paper for this project.)
2. Take a walk and bring home found treasures to make into a centerpiece/collage
3. Create aromatic Air Fresheners*

*Aromatic Air Fresheners

Materials:
Equal parts apple sauce and cinnamon
Cookie cutters
Ribbon or string

Step 1: Mix equal amounts of applesauce and cinnamon (for instance 1 cup of each) until you have a dough.

Step 2: Roll out on waxed paper and cut into shapes using cookie cutters. Poke a hole in the middle, near the top to hang a ribbon or string when the air freshener is dry.

Step 3: Dry. Air drying will take several days and you'll need to carefully turn shapes to dry both sides. As an alternative, place air fresheners on a cookie sheet in a warm (200 degrees) oven. Drying time will depend upon the amount of moisture in the dough.

2 Techniques to Jazz up Your Kid’s Art

Bring out the paint and bring on the kids! Here are two favorite projects with a new twist: Scraper Art and Colored Coffee filters. The finished art makes great paper for other craft projects and is worthy of any refrigerator!
Scraper Art
Scraper Art updates finger painting into modern art.
Materials:
Finger paints – bright colors and pastels work the best
Palette - any flat surface to hold the paint such as a plate or pie pan
Paint spreader - brayers, fingers or brushes
Paper - heavier paper works best for frame-able art or gift cards
Scrapers – credit cards, combs, cardboard shapes, popsicle sticks, the eraser end of a pencils, etc.
Newspaper

Step 1: Cover your work surface with newspaper.

Step2: Put some finger paint on your palette.

Step 3: Spread the paint in stripes on the paper.

Step 4: Run the scraper over the wet paint to create a design.

Step 5: Let your painting dry flat on the newspaper.


Colorful Coffee Filter Paper
This paper is very sturdy and good for delicate projects like snowflakes as it doesn’t fall apart. 

Materials
Coffee filters
Brightly colored water color markers or water color paint
Newspaper
Scissors

Step 1: Cover your work surface with newspaper.

Step 2: Decorate the filters with markers or paint.  Any shapes, any design, any amount.  

Step 3: Wet the snow flakes with water. You can spray, flick drops, or ring a wet wash cloth on the filter to create a new design.

Step 4: Let dry. Great news, coffee filters dry very quickly and will soon be ready to use in another project.

Family Memory Game

This variation on the traditional memory game fosters the retelling of family stories as well as helping build memory skills.
Materials:
Place several pieces of family memorabilia in box – fewer for younger children, more for older kids and adults.
How To Play:
Show the items in the box. Remove one or more items out of the box (without the players seeing you). Have the players guess what items are missing.
For older children and adults put items on large tray or cookie sheet. Cover. Remove cover for 20-30 seconds and then recover. On your mark, the participants write down as many items that they can remember from the tray before you yell, "STOP". The most correct answers wins.

4 Ideas to Seasonalize Game Night

Bring everyone together and put a new twist on old games to liven up these cold days.

1. Replace board game pieces with colored, wrapped candies
2. Play charades with seasonal song, story and movie titles.
3. Play games such as Scrabble, Apples to Apples, Boggle, BuyWord, etc. using only seasonal words
4. Create a Memory Game with family memorabilia

Dr Jen’s Repertoire of Cold and Flu Remedies

Hydrogen Peroxide. Pour 16 ounces of hydrogen peroxide into a humidifier and fill to capacity with water. Run the humidifier in the sick person’s room all night. This is a great disinfectant and helps prevent the virus from spreading to other members of the household.

Vitamin D*: increase to 50,000 units (if you weigh over 100 pounds) for 3 days in a row if you are already infected with the flu.

Vitamin C : increase to bowel tolerance. In other words, when you start to get diarrhea, decrease the amount and stay at that dose.

Herbal remedies: andrographis, Echinacea, licorice (good for coughs), ligusticum, artemisia, bupleurum root, and garlic.

Hot tea with honey and lemon

Warming sock therapy

Chicken soup (preferably homemade) with lots of garlic

* I hope you’ve already read my blog entry on Vitamin D. Vitamin D is superb for maintaining your immunity. Ideally, I recommend keeping your Vitamin D blood levels at 60-80ng/ml. A simple test is available from our office that will help you determine your current level.
Contact my office for more information on any of these topics.