O' Christmas Tree

We put up all of our Christmas decorations yesterday and decorated our Christmas tree. Today my husband put the Christmas lights on the outside of the house. SOmethng seemed to be missing from the middle of our kitchen table, until I came across this.

This was a lot of fun to make!! It took about an hour (not including the 20 minutes it took me to run to Michael's to get the styrofoam cones). :)

I took 3 different sizes of styrofoam cones and covered them in felt. I didn't even glue it because I was using pins to put the "ornaments" on. I used glittery pipe cleaners as garland and used pins to keep them on the tree at the beginning and end of the garland. Then we (my daughter and I) decorated one tree with pom poms, one with sequins and the other with buttons. Lastly, we used yellow foam and a toothpicks to put the star on the top of the tree. Then in my craziness, I covered a plate with batting and set the trees on it so it looked like snow TA DA!! Have I mentioned how much I LOVE LOVE LOVE this season???

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells...

I must say, not that it was really possible, but this craft put me more in the holiday spirit so far. We used pipe cleaners, pony beads and jingle bells to make these cute bracelets. Nothing sounded better to me than 7 kids running around with jingle bell bracelets on.

Snowflake Ornaments

I planned a few crafts for the kids on Thanksgiving and they did a great job! I had glued 3 craft sticks togetehr to look like a snowflake earlier this week and my husband drilled holes in the top of one of the sticks so that we could string it and hang it on the tree. We used, markers, buttons, sequins, and pom poms to decorate them. They all turned out really well and just like real snowflakes, not one looked the same. :)

Snowman Craft!

As flurries keep passing through today, we decided to make some snowmen out of craft sticks. We used acrylic paint, googley eyes and foam to decorate the face. The kids were very excited to paint and always enjoy wearing one of daddy's shirts so that they don't get paint on their clothes. They loved putting his face together too. They have had lots of practice with snowmen faces by using their felt board snowmen.

Beaded candy canes craft

Ever since we saw candy canes at Target, the kids have mentioned them several times since, so I decided we would make our own. It is a little too early for me to buy them, so tonight we worked on our patterns. I am actually amazed at how well my 2 year old did. We used pony beads and pipe cleaners. They look great and we can't wait to put them on the Christmas tree at the end of the week! I hope my husband reads this post and realizes that we WILL be putting the tree up this weekend. :) It is one of my favorite things to do with my kids.

Ladybug apples!

I saw these online at this great site. I thought they were super cute especially since my daughter loves all things ladybugs. In fact, that is my nickname for her. The chocolate chips are stuck on there with peanut butter. It should be no surprise that the chocolate chips were the first things to be eaten.

Buckeye Candy!

Go Bucks!!! Finally something buckeye I can root for. :)

I am not a huge Buckeye fan even though I have lived here most of my life. I AM a big Fan of Buckeye Candy though. :)

Everyone in my family loves anything peanut butter and chocolate. This may be why we still have a ton of Halloween candy left over that has been picked free of all things Reeses.

We made these today and they are VERY yummy. I have 2 bits of advice for you though if you choose to make this recipe.

1. Do not use reduced fat creamy peanut butter (that is what we used). It makes the peanut butter a little crumbly.

2. When you are following the recipe directions, put the peanut butter balls in the freezer like it says. Don't think to yourself, "These look fine and it should be easy to cover in chocolate without putting in the freezer." I didn't put mine in the freezer and I think they would have been a lot easier to cover in chocolate if they had been slightly frozen. :)

Cinnamon Dough Ornaments

We made some yummy smelling ornaments for our Christmas tree this morning. They were super easy to make as well. All you need is apple sauce, cinnamon, glue, cookie cutters and a straw. I got the directions from Kaboose Crafts. Check it out! The kids had a great time making them. I had to stress several times WE DON'T EAT THESE. :) I can't wait until they are all dry in a few days so I can string them on the red ribbon. They will be too cute.

Bean bag fun!!

I made some fun bean bags! I have a ton of fabric, so I just used what I had and grabbed a bag of beans (that was a big decision in the bean aisle). I cut the fabric into 5 1/5 X 8 1/2 inch rectangles and folded the rectangle wrong sides together and zipped 2 sides of it through the sewing machine, turned them right side out, then filled them up with 3/4 of a cup of dried navy beans and folded the open end inwards and sewed that side with the machine. THE KIDS LOVE THEM! My son wanted to take them to bed with him last night. It took me a little over an hour to make all 10 of them. Such fun!

Turkey Craft!

When I taught elementary school we used to do all kinds of cute crafts. I still have a lot of stuff from my elementary teaching days. This is just a picture of a turkey without the feather that the kids colored and then we glued the feathers on. Doesn't it make you hungry? :)

IT'S Snowing!!!

It had been snowing off and on all day today. It was a busy work day at home today for mommy and the kids were BEGGING to go play outside in it. So in an effort to bribe them to eat their dinner quickly, we said they could go outside once they were finished with dinner. I have never seen them eat so quickly. :)

So, yes, they went outside and played in the snow from 7-8:30 tonight and came inside and had hot chocolate. They had a blast. There is little accumulation out there, but it doesn't matter. The first snowfall of the season is always exciting.

Football Birthday Party!!

My son had his 5th birthday party on Saturday. He wanted to have a football party. Everyone wore their favorite football team colors or jerseys. We had a consession stand and served hotdogs, hamburgers, popcorn from a popcorn machine and soft pretzels. The main event was taken from one of the Home Depot monthly workshops. They made paper football goals and decorated them. It was a lot of fun. After lunch, we played score a goal with the football (think pin the tail on the donkey). The cake was one of my husbands famous creations. Fun was had by all!

Happy 5th Birthday, Peanut

My son turns 5 today. I don't know how that happened or where the time has gone. I asked him this morning if he would stay five forever and all he had to say was , "oh, mommy."

Every birthday morning, my kids wake up to balloons all over the floor in their bedroom. This is just the beginning of his special day. We are going to go play at the play place and then go get some cupcakes from our favorite cupcake bakery. He then has his special birthday dinner and can open one of his presents (the rest will be given at his party tomorrow). I'll post some pictures of the party then. We can't wait!

Color Collages

I have a definite surplus of catalogues coming to my house these days, so I decided to use them in one of our activities. My 2 year old loves working with her colors and my son loves cutting and pasting. So today I chose 2 colors, red and blue, and we looked through all of those catalogues and cut out things that were red and blue and glued them on the appropriate color paper. They did really well and were very excited to cut out pictures in a "book." I will now be hiding all of the scissors in the house so that none of our real books get cut up :)

WINTER FELT FRIENDS!

So now that it is getting colder it inspired me to cut out some new shapes for the kids' felt boards. The felt boards are cardboard with felt glued on to it. The felt shapes I made were to make our frosty snowman friends. They loved decorating their snowman and they were changing the colors of the hats and scarves. It was pretty cute!

Move over Swiss Miss....

Ok, so I spend far too much time on the computer especially since it is also part of my job. I found a really cool website that has a bunch of recipe favorites from people. It is called TasteSpotting. I love it probably because it has beautiful pictures and some easy recipes. I probably make something from this site about once a week.

Sadly, yesterday I found a little slice of heaven. I fell in love, but we were not meant to be together since I would weigh 900 pounds if I endulged in this sweet treat all the time. It was dreary and cold outside, both of the kids were taking their naps, and my husband was running errands. I was curled up on the couch catching up on my magazine and catalog reading (sad, I know) so I decided to give the recipe a try...HOT CHOCOLATE!! It is VERY close to the hot chocolate I had when I was in Florence, Italy. It is so incredibly rich and thick. I am almost sorry I know how to make it now. LOL

I thought I would share it, so that you could try it too. It is really delicious!!!

Camping!

Tonight the kids are both a little under the weather. They both have colds and were sad that it was just about dark and rainy outside when they got up from their naps. So, I decided they could camp out tonight in the playroom. They jury is still out as to whether or not they are sleeping there tonight, but they both put their blanket sleepers on, grabbed their blankets, pillows and favorite stuffed friends and I pitched the tent and lit the fire and they have been having a ball. There are even a few snakes to keep them company.

TURKEY TIME!!

I remember making these when I was little. We had a pine tree in our front yard and I used the pine cones for all kinds of play things. I used to rip the green ones off the tree because I couldn't wait for them to come off the tree. Anyways, this year I stole them from my neighbor's yard. :)

When I was little I used construction paper for the feathers, but this year, I had a ton of feathers in the craft boxes, so we used those. It was a lot easier to put the feathers in the back of the pine cones because they would just stick in there. We also put the finished turkey on a silk fall leaf that I had (don't ask, I have a ton crafty stuff....I think they were in the $1 bins at Target. I love that place)

They turned out so cute. They are going look really cute on the dining room table.

Beading bracelets

Today we made bracelets out of pipe cleaners and pony beads. They had a lot of fun and they wanted to make a ton of them. Can you guess what my son's favorite color is?? :)

Going out to eat...

We go out to eat about once a week or so and sadly it is after 30 minutes of the "I don't know, what do you want for dinner?" conversation, so by the time we actually get in the car, it is right in the middle of the busy dinner rush. My kids are over the 2 crayons and coloring page that some restaurants give, so I have my own stash. I keep a small diaper bag packed in the car with these things...


Office dot stickers...you can get these just about anywhere. My kids love to make caterpillars, snowmen, and as a family, we have been known to give our dinner order with one on our noses.

Play dough...you know the little size. They like to "make" their dinner out of it.

The last thing we LOVE are the sticker scenes you can get at Oriental Trading Company It comes with a scene and a sheet of stickers to put in the scene. This example is an ocean scene and then a sheet of stickers that help you decorate the scene.

These things make waiting for dinner a lot less hairy and we are all usually involved with the activities, so it is fun to interact and by the time the food comes, we aren't ready to pull our hair out. :)

What to do with all of that Halloween candy...

I don't know about your family, but we have a ton of candy in our house. Here are some cute ideas to put it all to good use.

Make sculptures with it like they did at flipflops and applesauce. She also suggested keeping some for gingerbread houses at Christmas time.

Cut up all of the candy bars and have a sundae party with it like they did at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman

Look at all of these ideas at scrumdilly-do

What ideas do you have??