Cookies and Milk for Santa: DIY Plate & Bottle

One of my favorite memories of Christmas from when I was little was decorating cookies to leave out for Santa. What kid wouldn't love cutting out and decorating (and most likely taste testing) cookies?! I of course wanted to continue the tradition with my own kids. Last year I was loving all of the festive plate ideas for Santa's cookies that would pop up on Pinterest, so I really wanted to make one for my kids. I took some ideas of what I saw from others, but also threw in my own touch.

Here is what you need to make your own Cookies for Santa plate and Milk for Santa bottle:

Plate-
1. Plate (Walmart has nice, white Corelle plates for a low price, you can use square or round)
2. Red, green, brown, and black paint
3. Black vinyl for words

Bottle-
1. Starbucks Frappucinno (found at most grocery stores and the best part of this project)
2. Red paint
3. Black vinyl for words

The bottle was the easiest to make so lets start there. First, you drink that delicious Frappuccino and wash the bottle. To get the label cleanly off, I soaked it in hot, soapy water. If you have a Cricut to cut vinyl, click HERE to get the Cricut file. You can totally paint the words on the bottle if you are creative like that, my handwriting looks like a 2 year old so I chose the vinyl route.

After applying the vinyl, I simply painted the lid with the red paint and let it dry.

The plate took a few days because I wanted to make sure the paint dried and didn't get smeared between all of the finger printing so we completed it . The first thing I did was help my kids put their hand prints on the center of the plate with brown paint. After those dried, I placed the vinyl words evenly across the top, again you can definitely free hand this if you don't have a cutting machine. The red dots between the words are my kid's thumb prints.

Next, I used their pointer fingers to make the reindeer eyes (black), their thumb prints for the nose (red), and a small tipped paint brush for the mouth. The red and green dots that surround the rest of the plate are their finger prints. Besides the words, the whole plate is made using their sweet little hands. Once the paint dries it is safe to use for cookies!

Now go make some cookies with your kiddos, and don't forget to leave some out for Santa on Christmas Eve!

XO, Michelle