Baking Cookies

We let O skip school on Tuesday, so that she could sleep late and have a good nap before she had to be at the auditorium for her Nutcracker performance.  We needed a quiet, calm activity, so baking cookies seemed like the perfect thing to do.

We took the easy way out and had frozen sugar cookie dough that we  thawed, rolled out (with a Kleen Kanteen since I can't find our rolling pin), and cut with cookie cutters.  E was excited to help us!




O loved pouring sprinkles on the cookies!



Our book of the day was Cookie Count by Robert Sabuda. 

Hot Chocolate and Chocolate Spoons

We did lots of Christmas activities on Saturday, and we all stayed in our pjs all day long.  I love pj days!  Our daily book was the Grinch.  After we read the book, we made chocolate spoons and hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows.  Then we watched the Grinch movie. 


To make the chocolate spoons, I melted semi-sweet chocolate pieces in the microwave.  We rolled the spoons in the melted chocolate until they were completely covered and then decorated them with sprinkles and marshmallows. We put the spoons in the freezer to harden before using them to stir our hot chocolate.  





Our hot chocolate was extra delicious since we stirred it with chocolate spoons!

After we finished our hot chocolate, we decorated our gingerbread house.  I always buy gingerbread house kits after Christmas when they are 50 to 75% off.  I pack them with our Christmas decorations, and when we decorate them, we have the perfect excuse to not eat that yucky candy and icing...it's too old!  We have lots of fun and no kiddos beg to eat candy :)




After we decorated our gingerbread house, we all took a nighttime pj ride to see the lights in our area.  Unfortunately, there was only one house with a lot of lights...we drove by it 4 times!  After the fourth time, O asked "why does daddy keep driving by the same house?" 

Felt Gingerbread Village

Setting up our felt gingerbread village was one of our advent activities last week.  O had fun at first, but she lost interest quickly.  I, however, had a great time.  I really love this little village!  It's so much fun to set up and decorate the houses.  I'm hoping that O will have fun with it later and that E will love it next year (this year she just wants to put the pieces of felt in her mouth, so it's set up out of her reach).






Here's a link to the directions for making this village.  Unfortunately, the pictures are missing...sorry about that. 

Velcro Ball

  The girls and I had a fantastic time playing with this velcro ball yesterday afternoon. 

To make this activity, I cut small pieces of sticky backed velcro (the sticky side) and put them all over the ball.  When I was making it, O was wearing a fuzzy hat that I knitted for her on a round loom.  I threw the ball at her head and it stuck...the look on her face was priceless!  After that I thought we probably shouldn't use the hand knit hats because the threads pull out with the velcro.  I thought the knit hats from the dollar section of Target would work well, but they really didn't.  I think the knit is just too flat.  However, we had a great time trying to get the ball to stick to O's head.  The novelty of having a ball thrown at your head and actually doing the throwing was very entertaining for both of them.




The gloves (from the dollar section of Target) worked well for catching the ball.




O's tutu worked best of all!




I saw this activity somewhere last winter...probably either in Family Fun magazine or on a blog.

What a Wonderful Night!

O did an amazing job as a cherub in The Nutcracker Ballet last night.  She glowed as she ran across the stage.  It was clear that she loved every minute of it, and she was not nervous at all! (I was much more nervous than she was!)

E also did an amazing job...she sat and was completely enthralled by the ballet for more than 2 hours.  AMAZING!  This child does not sit still.  She's a walker, runner, climber, pulling everything out of everything kind of kid, so I was very worried about how she would handle being so still and quiet for so long.  I talked to her several times during the day yesterday about how she was going to have to be very quiet while she watched the dancers.  She seemed to understand, and I guess she really did!  Hooray for our amazing girls!!!!

Tiny Angel Ornaments

O and I made tiny angel ornaments from Non Dairy Diary today as our advent activity.  I actually printed these angels last year, but didn't have time to make them.  They turned out so cute, and O loves them.








O cut out the circles, and I cut the head and wing cuts out with an x-acto knife.  We worked together to fold the angels.  This was a fun, simple activity that went along nicely with one of our Christmas books.

One Christmas Book A Day

A couple of years ago, we started the tradition of having O open one Christmas book a day.  Last year, I think I wrapped the books in tissue paper, and I wrapped them in newspaper the year before that.  Neither of those ideas was ideal as I really can't stand to wrap gifts in paper even if I can recycle it...I'm just not good at it, and they always look terrible. 

Every year, after Christmas, I buy lots of Christmas fabric on sale with the intention of making bags for the books.  This year it actually happened!

I cut the fabric into long rectangles.  My mom folded it, pinned it, and sewed each side.  She then cut the ends with pinking shears...done!  Hooray!  She finished all 25 bags and seemed to enjoy it!  THanks, Mom, you are the best! 

So, we've put aside the advent calender that I made last year (E has been slowly destroying it, and I am terrified that she is going to swallow a magnet), and we are now using the bags.  Each bag has one book and either a craft activity or a notecard with an activity written on it.  I've tried to tie the activity in with the book, but that hasn't always been possible. 

Wrapping the books in the fabric bags is so easy...I put a book in the bag and tie the end with a ribbon or fold the fabric over and tie a ribbon over it to hold it in place, so that it actually looks like wrapping paper. 





As the girls' open their book of the day, I take the bag downstairs so that I can use it to wrap gifts to put under the tree.  I'm hoping that we won't have a single piece of wrapping paper under our tree this year!  (although I'm just using these bags for the girls and Elliott, since we'll use them for our books next year, too).





O has really enjoyed searching through the packages to find the right number each day.  My plan is to choose the books for next year and go ahead and wrap them in the bags with an activity when I pack them away in January.  It will be great be organized next year!

Molly Monkey

I'm trying to share all of the handmade gifts we've made over the last few months just in case anyone still needs ideas for Christmas gifts.  Here's one that I meant to post months ago...
My mom and I made this sweet Molly Monkey for E's 1st birthday present.  The pattern and directions can be found at mmmcrafts.   This monkey was surprisingly easy and quick to put together for E's special gift.  Thanks to mmmcrafts for providing this free pattern!   

Nativity Felt Board Scene

There are lots of printable nativity scenes on the internet, but I think the one at Activity Village is the best!  The peoples faces are so sweet, and I love the colors.   We haven't used our felt board in a while, but I brought it out for this advent activity. 




I printed the nativity characters onto cardstock and glued a small piece of sandpaper to the back of each one.  I was pleasantly surprised by how well they stick to the felt board. 




Here's a close-up of a wiseman since BOTH of our girls are going to be wisemen at church next Sunday!



Take a minute to browse the Activity Village website...there is A LOT of good stuff there!

Christmas Playdough Gift Sets

These Christmas playdough gift sets have been in the works since last Christmas.  I started gathering my materials on the day after Christmas when I bought LOTS of Christmas cookie cutters (at least 50% off retail price). 

During the summer, I found the perfect 4 oz canning jars for storing the playdough.








I found the perfect rolling pins at Hobby Lobby a couple of weeks ago (I planned to make rolling pins from dowels that I  was going to cut and sand, but these were inexpensive, and they saved me a lot of trouble!). 





Yesterday, I bought Christmas sprinkles and emptied the sprinkles out for later use.  I filled the containers with red, green, and yellow yarn to use as icing and beads to use as sprinkles on the playdough cookies.  What fun!