Cinnamon and Sugar Pretzels

E(3) and I had fun baking together last weekend (O was busy listening to an audio book and organizing her room and wasn't interested in joining us). 

First, we made cinnamon and sugar pretzels.  E(3) LOVED unwrapping the butter, placing it in the bowl, and chopping it up (one of the 2 things on her Christmas wish list was butter...the girl LOVES butter!). 


After melting the butter in the microwave, she mixed in a teaspoon of cinnamon and a half cup of brown sugar.  She stirred in about 16 ounces of pretzels to coat them.
We baked the pretzels at 350 for 30 minutes.  I stirred them every 10 minutes. 


This simple and yummy recipe came from a fellow homeschooling mama!
After we made the cinnamon and sugar pretzels, we made Christmas rice crispy treats!  The girls always love making rice crispy treats, especially since I let them lick (gnaw on) the spoon when we're done!

A "Humongo" Sugar Cookie & A Gingerbread Cottage Playdate

The girls had fun mixing up sugar cookie dough and pressing it into this Christmas tree pan to make a "humongo" cookie for a gingerbread house decorating playdate last week!

They decorated it with sprinkles before we baked it.


The plan was for the kids to decorate the tree with icing (using the squeeze bottles from E's bday party) before eating it, but the icing would NOT come out of the bottles!  Eventually, we gave up on the squeeze bottles, and E(3) spread the icing using a butter knife.


The kiddos had fun building and decorating their gingerbread houses (even though the houses collapsed at least 3 times each before finally staying together!).

Christmas Tree and Gingerbread Boy Baked Pancakes

My mom made baked pancakes for the girls last week, and they were delicious.  She made a gingerbread boy and a Christmas tree, and the Christmas tree was the most popular (it had sprinkles!).


Each girl chose a cookie cutter and cut her own pancake pieces from the large pancake. 


SO much fun and delicious!

The Nutcracker

One of the girls' books of the day a couple of weeks ago was The Nutcracker.  The girls LOVE this book!


We started taking O(6) to see The Nutcracker ballet when she was 2, and she has danced in the ballet for the past 3 years (she was a mouse this year).  E(3) saw her first Nutcracker ballet at age 1, and she has been completely mesmerized every time she has seen it.  So, it's no surprise that they love the book!
For the go-along activity, they put together a paper Nutcracker (that I bought from Dollar General).  Coincidentally, my mom came to keep the girls on the day that they opened this book, and she had an AMAZING Nutcracker music box for them.


The girls LOVE this music box and have spent many hours staring at the dancers and then dancing to the music.  E(3) has started snuggling down under our tiny Christmas tree while hugging her Nutcracker doll...she loves to pretend to be Clara.  She also dances all around the room while holding and looking lovingly at her Nutcracker doll  She is so sweet.
E(3) gets pretty creative when she plays with her music box and playmobil figures!

Cutting Coffee Filter Snowflakes...Or Not!

The Christmas Alphabet was our book of the day one day last week, and both girls really like this book.


This page was the inspiration for our go-along activity which was folding and cutting coffee filters to make snowflakes.


I cut a snowflake to show the girls how to do it.  They oohed and ahhed and said it was beautiful.  Then they started working on their own coffee filter creations.
O(6) decided that she'd rather make a butterfly than a snowflake, so she got right to work painting her coffee filter.





E(3) colored her coffee filter with markers and then folded it in half and clipped a clothes pin to it.  It was a fan, and she was an Egyptian fan bearer.  Then E requested a peacock, and the girls worked on it for more than an hour.
Here is the peacock in progress.  LOTS of glue, duct tape, coffee filters, time, love, and persistence went into making this beautiful peacock!


After they finished the peacock, E requested a clamshell and described exactly how she wanted it made.  The 3 of us worked on it together, and she was very happy with it.  Unfortunately, I can't find it to take a picture.
Evidently, coffee filters make the perfect cozy bed for tiny toys!  Who knew that coffee filters could be so much fun???

Great Joy

We usually give the girls one or 2 new Christmas books each year to add to our collection, and this year they recieved Great Joy.  This is a sweet book that we have all enjoyed reading.


The go-along activity for this book was our felt board nativity scene.  E(3) LOVES nativity scences (she calls them "activity" scenes), so she was thrilled with this new "flat activity" scene :)


This nativity scene came from Activity Village.  It's printed on white cardstock. I glued a small piece of sandpaper to the back of each piece so that it would stick to the felt.     

Links to Amazon are affiliate links.  Thank you for supporting Chasing Cheerios. 

Personalized Paper Doll Ornaments

I try to make personalized ornaments for the girls each Christmas (haven't made any yet this year), and last year I made ornaments using their personalized Lily and Thistle paper dolls.  This was the simplest ornament ever...I just printed the paper doll along with a Christmas outfit, cut them out, dressed the doll (the clothes stick on with a sticky strip and are removeable), glued a ribbon to the back, and was done!  The girls and my niece love their ornaments!

E(3)


O(6)


M(8)


The girls had fun cutting out and playing with the free paper doll offered on the Lily and Thistle blog this week!