Glittery Letter Ornaments

We had a GREAT time making glittery letter ornaments! First, we sanded the edges of the letters (bought from Hobby Lobby in packs of 2 for a dollar).

Then she painted the letters with glue.

Then she went crazy with the glitter. I was distracted by a phone call during this activity, and we somehow ended up with glitter EVERYWHERE in our house...even in the toilets! Next time, I'll just let the phone ring :)

O made ornaments for herself, her baby sister, and one of her favorite people.

I'm glad she had fun making these ornaments because I think it's the last time we'll use glitter for a while...if Elliott has his way!

Handprint & Paper Plate Reindeer

When I saw this reindeer craft at my school on Wednesday, I knew that O would love making it, and I would love having it as a keepsake (since I love to make things with O and E's handprints).

To make the reindeer, O colored a paper plate with a crayon rock (our favorite crayons!). She went a little crazy with a glue stick and covered almost the whole plate before placing the eyes and nose on the plate. I traced her hands onto stiff brown felt and then cut them out. I hot glued her felt hands to the back of the plate, punched a hole in the top, and looped a ribbon through the hole.

O was excited and proud to hang the reindeer on our tree. He's a little big for our 4 ft tree, but we don't mind a bit! This activity went along perfectly with our advent book, Snappy Little Christmas. (Somehow, I keep getting lucky and our activities and books are fitting together nicely without any planning :)

Snowball Surprise Soap

O and I made Snowball Surprise Soap to go along with the book, Dream Snow, which was our advent book on Friday. To make Snowball Surprise Soap, you need a bar of white soap (we used Dove), a grater, a small toy (we used a plastic penguin), and a bowl of warm water.

First, we took turns grating the soap.

Then we wet our hands in the bowl of warm water, picked up handfuls of the grated soap, and pressed it onto the penguin.

As we pressed the soap onto the penguin, we rolled the ball in our hands to make a snowball shape.

This was a fun and easy activity, and this soap would make a great handmade gift for kids. I think we'll definitely add this to our list of handmade gifts to make for next Christmas!

(The idea for this activity came from a magazine...probably Family Fun, but possibly Parents.)

Painted Glass Ornaments

O and I had fun making painted glass ornaments again this year.

To make these ornaments you need clear glass ornaments with removable tops and craft paint. I removed the tops, and O squeezed the paint into the ornament. She twirled the ornament around to let the paint spread. After a few minutes, we added another color. We used lime green and hot pink paint in these ornaments since they are gifts for her dance teachers, and the dance studio's colors are pink and green. This was fun, easy, and quick, and the ornaments look great!

A Felt Gingerbread Boy Activity

Another repost...

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
For O's 10th day advent activity, we did this felt gingerbread boy activity. This activity is identical to the snowman and turkey felt activities, just with a gingerbread boy :)

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
I showed O how to dress the gingerbread boy to make him match the picture. However, she was not interested in copying the picture AT ALL. She wanted to dress him her own way, which was fine, of course :) (Just in case you happen to notice...O is wearing a leotard because she was a "baby balla-eena" and I was the "mama balla-eena." She really wants me to get a leotard!)

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
She asked for the snowman after we played with the gingerbread boy for a while. She insisted that he have legs!

Felt Gingerbread Cookie Activity

I've decided to repost a few posts from last Christmas. O is enjoying this cookie set again this year, and I'm hoping to make a few more felt Christmas cookies for her for Christmas (although I may not finish them until Christmas Eve!).

For O's 12th advent activity, we had a treasure hunt to find a special handmade gift :) The 1st note sent her to the ottoman where she found another note (Elliott read the notes to her). That note sent her to the sliding glass door by the stairs. She pulled the curtain back to find the note on the door. Then she headed to her seat at the table. There was a note stuck to the bottom of her seat which directed her to the pots and pans cabinet. When she opened the cabinet door, she found her special prize! O didn't really understand the treasure hunt at 1st, but once she understood what we were doing she LOVED it. I plan on having a couple of more treasure hunts for her to find handmade gifts for advent.

O's special prize is a felt gingerbread cookie making kit! I've seen sugar cookie kits similar to this on etsy and at various online shops, and I couldn't wait to make one for O. It was easy to make, but it did take a while. I did all of the sewing by hand, which I really enjoyed (I'm still a little intimidated by the sewing machine!).

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
Here are the freshly baked and decorated gingerbread girl and boy. I'd planned to embroider the details, but then I realized that it would be MUCH easier, faster, and would look more like icing if I painted the details with puff, fabric paint! O immediately took these cookies to her play kitchen :)

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
Guh-guh quickly made a coordinate gingerbread man drawstring bag for storing the gingerbread making kit before she left our house this morning. Thanks, Guh-guh!

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Gumdrop Tree

O was very excited about making our gumdrop tree last week! To make a gumdrop tree you need a bag of gumdrops, toothpicks (broken in half), and a styrofoam tree form. We used the styrofoam tree form that we used last year. One of the first things she asked was "can I taste the gumdrops like I did when I was 2?" I'll have to remind her that last year she thought the gumdrops were "ucky." (I'd forgotten that until I just read last year's post...I'm so glad I have our blogs to help us remember these simple moments). O was much more interested in "tasting" the gumdrops than decorating the tree. She's developed quite a sweet tooth. However, we don't allow her to have candy very often.

It was fun to have E sit with us and participate in this activity. In order to involve her, we decided to teach her the colors of the gumdrops (in English and Spanish) as we put the gumdrops on the tree. O thought it was great to show E the gumdrops while telling her the colors, and it was a good review for all of us to practice the colors in Spanish.

This was a fun and easy activity, and I'm looking forward to disassembling the gumdrop tree in a few weeks :)

Hot Chocolate

I think that hot chocolate and movie night has been O's favorite advent activity so far! She thoroughly enjoyed her hot chocolate that she drank while watching Charlie Brown's Christmas and Prep and Landing.

Advent Snowflake Activity

Edit to add: A couple of readers pointed out that borax may be a dangerous substance. I had no idea, and I'm so disappointed because this was such a fun and easy activity. Luckily, O didn't actually touch the borax. Although she did touch the snowflake after it was finished. I guess we won't be making silly putty anymore because I think that it has borax in it, too :( Here is the link to read more about this.

I really like the idea of linking O's daily advent book with her daily advent activity, and Snowflake Bentley was the perfect book with which to start this new tradition. After reading the book, O, Elliott, and I made a crystallized snowflake ornament.

First, I made the snowflake using a white pipe cleaner. Then Elliott took over while I nursed and rocked the baby. He helped O measure and pour 4 and a half tablespoons of borax into a glass bowl. He then boiled a cup and a half of water in the microwave and poured it in the glass bowl and stirred. O put blue food coloring in the mixture. Elliott put a jar lid at the bottom of the bowl and balanced the snowflake on top of the lid. (Use 3 tablespoons of borax for every cup of boiling water. Our container needed 1.5 cups of water to completely cover the snowflake, so we used 4.5 tablespoons of borax.)

We let it sit for 24 hours before removing the snowflake from the water. We were all very impressed with our beautiful snowflake ornament, and I think we'll make more of these to give as gifts.

This was a great activity that combined arts and crafts, science, and fun!

Advent Activities- Day 2

For today's advent activity O made a snowman puppet using a Martha Stewart craft kit (bought last year after Christmas for about a dollar). These craft kits don't leave a lot of room for creativity, but they are great for learning to follow directions, and O REALLY enjoys making the puppets. This puppet kit was a little nicer than the Halloween puppets...the bag is made of cloth and the paper is thick and fuzzy.

For each day of December O opens a "new" Christmas book (they aren't actually new, but we pack up the books on January 1 each year, so they seem new each Christmas). Since we are on vacation, the opening of the books won't really start until Saturday, but I did bring one book with us, Franklin's Christmas Gift.

This is a wonderful book to introduce the concept of donating gifts to needy children. This was a perfect book for us to read this week since O just chose gifts to donate to Toys for Tots. She really enjoyed choosing the gifts, and she understood completely that the toys weren't for her. However, I'm not sure that she completely understood what was going on since she said that she hoped that the little girl who received the gifts she bought would share with her :)

After reading the book, we talked about how O will choose several of her toys and books to donate to needy children. She's not at all excited about giving her own toys away, and she was very excited when she thought of the idea of giving the children money instead of her toys. She said "I have a lot of money in my piggy bank that I can give them!" We're going to talk about this a bit more because I would like for her to choose several of her own toys and books to donate to The Salvation Army.

"A Disaster of Beads"

For our 1st advent activity O and I made a winter beaded bracelet (using snowman beads and silver Christmas trees) and beaded necklaces (more on that later). We poured all of the beads onto the floor, and O said "we have a DISASTER of beads!" She had a great time making her bracelet and sorting the beads by color. I'm excited that she is enjoying beading so much, and I know it's something that we'll do more often now that she is older

Advent Calendar

I made this advent calendar shortly before Ema's was born, and I can't wait to use it! I used Martha Stewart wedding favor boxes and put Christmas scrapbook paper in each box. I cut the paper to fit the boxes and since it fit perfectly, I didn't have to use glue or tape. I put stickers with the numbers on the outside of each box. The idea for this advent calendar came from my bff, Emily. Thanks, EB! I hope this advent calendar will hold up better than last year's, and I can't wait to start this year's advent activities! I am planning to do many of the same activities that we did last year with a few new additions.

Edit to add: I forgot to say that I put magnets on the back so we can keep the advent calendar on the side of the refrigerator (it's on the refrigerator in the picture). I used sticky back magnet tape, and it didn't work very well (it wasn't strong enough), so I'm going to upgrade to stronger magnets that I bought from Hobby Lobby. The tins came from the wedding section at Walmart.

Making Peppermint Playdough & Chocolate Letters

We decided to make peppermint playdough and chocolate letters for Sunday night's advent activities. We had a great time making the playdough, and it turned out perfectly.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
We added glitter to make it festive :)

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
To make the chocolate letters, O and I put chocolate chips in the silicone alphabet ice trays. We chose letters of our family members' names, and we planned to share the letters with them.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
This project did not work as planned, and it was actually a disaster! I put the trays in the oven to melt the chocolate chips, but they never melted. Then they started burning! Our whole house was filled with smoke, and we had to turn on the fans and open the doors (and it was cold!). Oh, well. I should have followed Amy's instructions and melted the chocolate before pouring it in the trays :)

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing