Christmas Eve Activity

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Here is a little Christmas Eve activity for the kiddos!

I got them here:

http://melonheadzillustrating.blogspot.com/2012/11/freebies-christmas.html

Scottish Shortbread Cookies & Sisterly Bonding

Lately my girls have been having a really hard time getting along. After their incident the other morning I have really been trying to get them to do things together. And of course that means I have to participate too or it just ends up in another fight. AND of course, since it's Christmas time, we HAVE to make treats! I found this recipe in a copy of LDS Living.  Shortbread cookies are the cookies that come in the tins at Christmas time.  They are an acquired taste, but I like them so we thought we'd give them a try in our kitchen and leave the preservative filled cookies in the tins at the store. :) The girls had fun helping me and I am glad to say that there was NO fighting!  Yea for Mom!... And the cookies turned out great! Definitely a thumbs up from us!
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1 cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp peppermint flavoring {optional}
Food coloring {optional}
2 cups flour
Sprinkles
.
Cream butter and powdered sugar together.
Add peppermint flavoring and food coloring and mix well.
Add flour and mix till well incorporated.
Add more flour as needed so dough is not sticky.
Sprinkle powdered sugar or flour on clean counter top and roll dough out.
Cut with cookie cutters and transfer to greased cookie sheet.
Decorate with sprinkles if desired.
Bake @ 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Christmas Light Tradition

Some of my days get so "busy" {whatever that means} that I forget to take time out for the kids. Everyday I think to myself, "oh, when this is done, things will settle down." It never does. Yesterday morning my daughter was looking for the keys to the car so she could get her coat out to take to school.  We searched everywhere and luckily, instead of her coat being in the car, it was in her room.  Later, Mr. {that's what we're calling my honey from now on} called and told me that the keys were in his pocket. Yesterday was Mr.'s work Christmas party and between trying to get me ready for that and the kids in my mother in laws car I'm not sure I even hugged my kids when they came in from school.  I did however give them all kisses when I dropped them off at my Mom's house while Mr. and I went to the party.
I don't know if anyone else gets feeling this way, but when ever I spend a few hours away from my kids, I miss them terribly, and can't wait to get back to them.  When I picked them up, I told them we were going to get Dad and go look at the Christmas lights through town.  This is one of our family's favorite traditions, and one of my favorite things about Christmas. The kids really look forward to it every year.  By the time we got home it was almost 10 o'clock.  Way to late for little ones to be awake, but the time spent together listening to them ooh and aaw over the lights makes it all worth it. I need to remember this, even when life it busy, I still have time to let my loved ones know I love and appreciate them.

Holiday Fun on a Budget

This Christmas we are DEFINITELY on a tighter budget than we've ever been. Every year the kids have come home from school with a cute ornament they've made, but last year they didn't, and I was really sad about it. I thought ALL teachers had the kids make ornaments.  Isn't that in the teacher law book or something? It should be if you ask me. Anyway, this year I decided I couldn't take any chances so we are going to be making these cute little ornaments this weekend to add to our tree as well as adding yummy smells to the air! I already have most of the ingredients and that is great, because it need to be as inexpensive as possible.

I found the recipe here:

http://www.simplynotable.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/cinnamonorn2.jpg

Or you can just follow this recipe:
1 cup of cinnamon
2 tablespoons of ground cloves
2 tablespoons of ground nutmeg
1 cup of applesauce
2 tablespoons of white glue

Mix ingredients until they come together to form a dough. Knead for a few minutes until you can form a dough ball. Sprinkle some cinnamon onto your surface to roll out the dough. You can use cookie cutters or freehand cutting would work as well. Cut holes for hanging with a straw.

To finish, you can lay your ornaments out on a rack to dry for a few days {turning at least once a day} or put them in a 200 degree oven for a few hours. After they are dry -decorate as you wish. {modge podge and glitter would be awesome!}

They didn't turn out perfect, but the kids had fun. :)

Christmas is Coming Fast!

This year we wanted to keep everything simple.  Our kids already have WAY to many toys. They actually have so many, we were able to go through them and donate quite a few things!  At first they weren't very happy with me but now that cleaning up has been simplified, they haven't complained once about missing those toys.  We decided to follow this cute little Santa letter and keep gifts to a minimum, and my husband told them no toys. It was really quite cute what they came up with. 

Here is a link if you would like to use this particular letter.
http://homebyheidi.blogspot.com/2011/12/last-minute-details.html

We also printed out one of these to count down the days till Christmas:

Found here:

http://craftywimama.blogspot.com/2012/11/santa-christmas-countdown.html

Hope you all have a fun time with this!  

We sure did!