For we need a little Christmas

Just wanted to do a quick recap of what we've been up to gearing up for the big day!

Snowman Pancakes: Homemade Ornaments:

Made Sparkly Peppermint Play-doh for our Primary class {and some for our kids of course}:

Big, big hit. Find the recipe here {thanks to my friend Hilary for this great idea!}

Colored a Nativity Set:

Dressed up in our Christmas clothes for church:

Sparkly red shoes courtesy of Grandma Frost and loved by my girls!

Decorated our gingerbread house supplemented with our leftover Halloween candy:


Finished product {please notice the rubber bands holding the house together since Addie stepped on the house box and broke up the pieces.}

LOTS of baking:

{Reindeer cupcakes made in lieu of sugar cookies. My kids asked to make cookies but let's be honest, no one ever EATS the cookies and they lose interest in the decorating part after about 2 cookies each}

13 dozen of my FAVORITE Andes Mint cookies to deliver to neighbors/friends:

Recipe from my friend Becky here {3rd recipe down}

I also made these Peanut Butter Cookie Candy Bars that won some cookie contest but we think they're overrated:

Recipe Here

We also went to the river walk of lights at the Botanical Gardens here, had a night out looking at Christmas lights, watched lots of Christmas specials/movies, read Christmas stories every night, etc.

I tried to upload the videos of our kids singing at the ward Christmas party (Carter sang a SOLO!) but after 5 hours gave up. I will post to Youtube and try to get a link up here soon!

Merriest of Christmases to our friends and family near and far!

Road Trip Kits

Since we have a rather long road trip coming up I decided to make road trip kits for the big kids. I've been wanting to do this for awhile and tackled it today. I'm so happy with how they turned out with minimal effort/money. If you wanted to, you could really go all out but I have some time/energy constraints right now.

Here's what I included:

Carter: Tic Tacs, box of animal crackers, gumballs, tic tac toe game, wooly willy magnet game (I so loved these as a kid), trivia cards, star wars coloring book, crayons, games.

Makenna: Tic Tacs, box of animal crackers, gumballs, tic tac toe game, hair do Hariet magnet game, note pad/pens, disney coloring book, crayons, games.

Along with their trinkets and treats, I made up some laminated road trip game cards. Here's a semi good closeup:

I printed up pictures of all the states' license plates and a road trip scavenger hunt. They can mark them off with a crayon and then we'll wipe them clean and start again.

All packaged up. I'm going to throw in a few dollars each for them to buy treats when we stop along the way, which I'm sure they'll love

This website has lots of fun printable road trip games and ideas: Moms Mini Van

I got the license plate pictures here: Fifty States License plates

Hopefully this will provide some distractions and fun and keep them from watching constant TV!

Kid friendly recipes

One of my favorite things to do with my kids is cook. I like to keep things simple and fun and have been meaning to blog about a few of our new favorites. So in an attempt to get out of my blogging slump, here you go!


Mall Pretzels (I *might* have had a slight addiction to these when I was pregnant with A. But at $4 a pop, I knew I could make them cheaper myself) Got the recipe here at allrecipes: Mall Pretzels Here's Carter rolling out the dough when we made them for FHE a few weeks ago. We topped ours with Cinnamon/sugar and garlic salt/parm cheese (my fave). They are way yummy!


Homemade Oreos: These are SO easy and delicious and a hit any time we make them.

Cookie:

1 pkg. chocolate cake mix (I use devil's food)

2 eggs

1/2 c. butter melted

Mix ingredients, roll into small balls. Bake at 350 for 9 minutes

Once cookies have cooled, frost cookies and stick two together (I use store bought frosting)

Edible Playdough: There's a ton of recipes out there for this one. I like this one because it uses ingredients that I have on hand.

1 c. peanut butter

1/2 c. honey

2 c. powdered sugar

This is pretty sweet but actually tastes good (don't worry, I tried it before the kids played with and germified it). You can store this indefinitely in your fridge in an airtight container. This was a big hit with my kiddos.

Individual Molten Lava Cakes: Who doesn't LOVE those Molten cakes? So yummy but expensive to buy a mix at the store. A few months ago we had an enrichment night on quick cooking. The lady who taught the class had awesome recipes and ideas. One of her ideas was these individual cakes. We've made these several times and it's an often requested treat from the kids. These are SO easy too (do you see a theme here?):

1/2 c. chocolate cake mix

1/3 c. water

mix together in bowl for one minute (you can use paper bowls for this too). Top batter with 2 T. hot fudge topping. Microwave 60-90 seconds. Serve warm with ice cream

Spider cupcakes: Here's one we did a couple weeks ago as a Halloween project. I got this idea from the amazing Bakerella (If you've never seen her blog, you must check it out - she does incredible work)

She has tons of ideas for holiday treats. The hardest part of these cupcakes was finding the skinny licorice for the legs!

Do your kids have a favorite recipe? Feel free to share in the comments!

Pretend Mail

A few weeks ago I came across the idea to make pretend mail for my kids. They are forever writing letters and putting things in envelopes so I knew they would love this. PLEASE don't look too closely at my craftsmanship, because it stinks. I worked on this while I was watching a little RNC last week. I'm still on the hunt for a pretend mailbox but haven't been able to find something I love yet.

Felt Envelopes front:

Envelopes back:

I just used a handy dandy blanket stitch to sew them together (Blanket Stitch tutorial)

Laminated cards:The cards can be drawn on and then wiped clean after they're done playing.

Hours of pretend play fun. And the best part of this project is that I didn't purchase a single thing! I just used leftovers from other craft projects for everything. I love that.

(If you're in the market to BUY a cute mailbox set, check out this adorable one I found: Felt Mailbox Set )