Christmas

Time spent with family is time well spent.
I hope you had a very Merry Christmas.

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Holiday Dough FREE Printable

My niece and nephew are at that age.  Too old for toys, but still young enough for the magical parts of Christmas.  I know that anything we get them probably won't be what they want, but at their age, giving them money in a card for Christmas makes me feel like I may as well shout, "I don't believe in fairies!" (thud) as they open the card. 

Last year I gave them one dollar bills all taped together, lengthwise, to form one long strip, and folded the strip accordian style and placed it in a tissue box so that when they pulled the first dollar, the rest kept coming.  Sort of like when a magician pulls a scarf out of his pocket.

This year I needed another cute way to give them their gift of green, so naturally, I headed over to Pinterest. There, I came across an adorable little poem with a gingerbread man, but couldn't find where it originated, so I decided to make my own to print out.

And since it is the holiday season, I've added my printables here for you!  I made a boy version and a girl version, so just right click and save the image you'd like to your computer and print.

Gingerbread Boy

Gingerbread Girl

If you're using a standard sized sandwich bag (as pictured above), print at 5x7 size.

Fold in half and glue/tape to the top of the bag.

Super easy, super cute, and best of all - you'll be guilt free by avoiding the impersonal, "money in a card" gift!



Linked up at Mostly Homemade Mondays

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Run, Run, as Fast as You Can

We awoke to find our Elf on the Shelf reading our copy of the Gingerbread Boy, and took that as a sign that we should make some gingerbread men!  No secret grandma's recipe or anything for these though.  We just used a prepackaged mix, since we've been so busy baking other treats for our neighbors and friends. 

Happy Solstice to all...and to all a goodnight!

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Our trip on the Christmas Express

I saw the most adorable post at Confessions of a Homeschooler about taking your kids for a ride to look at Christmas lights using a Polar Express theme.  She called it the "MiniVan Express,"  but since we don't have a minivan, we used her "Christmas Express" template.  It was so cute!

I printed out the tickets and glued two together (front and back) so that it looked like a real ticket.  I made the boys up a little snack of brownies with Christmas sprinkles, and some - what we call - "bunny goldfish," which are those Annie's Organie Bunny crackers similar to Goldfish crackers.  I decorated the car with some strings of garland, and hid 2 bells in the car for when we got back home.  All while hubby was reading the boys "The Night Before Christmas." 

I placed the tickets on the doormat for them to find, then readied myself near the car with a "conductor's hat" (Little Guys police officer halloween costume) on, and a hole puncher in hand.

They boys got their tickets punched, then hopped into "The Christmas Express!"

We rode around our neighborhood and looked at the Christmas lights, singing Christmas songs along with the radio.  It was such fun!

We all took turns passing around the "Conductor's" hat. 

Then we traveled to a neighborhood where all the houses participated in decorating.  It was pretty great!

When we finally arrived back home, they each received a bell - just like The Polar Express.  It was a really fun night, and they've already requested that it be a tradition each year!

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C is for Christmas

This week we learned about the letter C, and alllll the sounds it makes.  Ready for my rant?  Great, because here it is:

IF there is going to be a letter C at all, it should only make the "ch" sound.  Then you wouldn't need to use an H with it anymore, just C, so that the H can be free to make it's own sound. "Circle" should begin with an S, and "cat" should begin with a K.  That would make teaching children the letter sounds soooooo much easier.  But.......that's not how it works, so.....

Little Guy is familiar with the letter C, since that's what his name begins with.  And our last name.  And his brother's name.  So, he came up with a pretty nice sized list of C words this week. 

I thought we would fill this week with some fun Christmas activities, since this is our last week of "school" until the new year. 

I found a cute printable wreath at Toddler Approved.  It is made of circles for you to place red and green m&m's on.  Great for fine motor skills!

You can see we did school time a little late this day, because Little Guy's daddy came home during this activity. 

We also made edible Christmas trees; which you can read about here.

Did a couple of Christmas puzzles I found in the dollar section at Target.

We did our letter C writing practice page from Confessions of a Home Schooler, which is also where I was inspired to make this cute little numerical order caterpillar.

We also LOVE these prewriting practice sheets from Over the Big Moon!!

We also made a crown!

The books we read this week:

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle
(Little Guy absolutely LOVES this book.  He can pretty much recite it.)


"Mater Saves Christmas" by Kiel Murray
(Little Guy is obsessed with Disney Pixar Cars, so he loves this book, but honestly, it's not very good.  It's more like it should have been a Christmas movie, but they summarized it an smashed allllll the happenings into the book.  Too much dialogue, just too much going on)


"How the Grinch Stole Christmas"  by Dr. Seuss
(How do you read this without choking up a little when the Grinch's heart grows??  I love it.)


"The 12 Days of Christmas" from Jan Brett's Christmas Treasury


"The Penguin Who Wanted to be Different"  by Maria O'Neill
(The idea of this book is great, but the actual story is terrible.  It makes me wonder how it even got published.  Little Guy (and I) were bored to death.)

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How NOT to make a festive Peppermint Wreath

This year I needed a new wreath for our front door; but have you been to Michael's and seen the price of wreaths?!  Ridiculous!  While browsing Pinterest, I came across the most adorable Peppermint Wreath, and thought, "I can totally make that!"  Thus, begins my story of how NOT to make a peppermint wreath.

Totally cute, right?!  I know!

Honestly, I'm not really sure what went wrong..... I've narrowed it down to:
1.  I bought the wrong coating to spray over it.  OR
2.  People who live in Florida are copletely out of luck when it comes to Christmas-y decor such as this since we live in a bazillion (actual number?  eh...) percent humidity all the time.

Here's how I made my ADORABLE wreath for under $15, and you can decide for yourself. 

Here's what you will NOT need:

4 $1 bags of peppermints
1 pool noodle
some duck tape
hot glue gun
hot glue sticks
12 yards of red ribbon
a bow
spray lacquer
a wreath hook


Let the adventure begin!!

I started my journey at Michael's.  Wrong decision.  The styrofoam wreaths were like $10, and ribbon (what ugly shades of semi-red that were left after all the crazy crafters who began on their Christmas wreaths back in October) was $6.99 a roll!  Yikes!  So, I quickly left there and headed to the Dollar Tree. 

Hey, the point of this wreath was cute on a budget, remember?  Ok, so, we're at the Dollar Tree and I purchase:  1 pool noodle, 3/Three/Tres bags of peppermints, and 2/Two/Dos spools of ribbon (3 yards each). 

As soon as I get home, I set to work slicing the ends of the pool noodle at an angle so I can form it into a circle and tape it with duck tape.

Hooray!  I was getting pretty excited at this point!  "I'm totally going to make the cutest wreath ever - out of a POOL NOODLE and nobody will know!" 
Ha...  Anyway, then I got to work wrapping the noodle with the red ribbon I bought.  I don't know if you know this, but 3 yards of ribbon is not very much ribbon.  I covered almost half of the noodle. 

Ugh...now I'm at a standstill.  It's too late to go back to the store, so I will just have to wait until tomorrow to get more ribbon. 

Ok, it's tomorrow.  When my hubby gets home from work, I leave to go back to the Dollar Tree, and since I have to pick up a couple of Christmas presents, I go to a different part of town with a different Dollar Tree.  Oh, yes.  You know what's coming. 
I get to the different Dollar Tree and they have 6 giant boxes of ribbon!!!  And NONE of them are the ribbon I bought the previous day at the previous Dollar Tree.  Luckily, the girl who works there helped me out and found me 1/ONE/UNO spool of the ribbon I bought the day before. 
I needed 2!!  I decided the ribbon was going to be under peppermints, and no one would be able to tell that it was different.  So my last spool ended up being red trimmed in glitter. 
Ugh.  Clue #1 that this wasn't going to go well. 

The next day, when I get back to covering the wreath with ribbon, things are going great.  I cover the whole wreath and start taking a bazillion (I know, I know) peppermints out of their wrappers and gluing them on. 

See the two different types of ribbon??

Anywho,  I'm gluing on my peppermints when, naturally, I run out.  I need one more bag!! 

I pack up the Little Guy and we head to the closest grocery store.  They have peppermints!  $1.28 for a bag.  Cool. 
Then I remember I never bought any coating to spray the wreath with when it's finished.  There is none, of course, at the grocery store.  So, Little Guy and I head to a Super Walmart, because they have paint, so surely they will have some shellac. 

*Let me add that I love Super Walmart - in the same way that I love being hit in the head with a hammer. 

When we get there, they do have a paint section, but the only kind of coating I can find is a lacquer.  After a call to my mom (yep, throwing you under the bus, mom) who says it will probably be fine, and $7, and a treat at the checkout (remember Little Guy came along); I'm on my way back home to finish this darn wreath.

Yay!  Yes, I know it's got a little conehead, but that part will be covered by the bow and set into the wreath holder.

Outside we go to spray.  The directions basically say spray, wait 30 minutes, spray again. 
So I did it 3 times, just to be sure.

When it's dry, I hot glue my bow on top and can't wait to hang it up!! 
Yay!!  My totally awesome peppermint wreath is done!  I did it, all for under $15 and it's way cuter that one of those fake garland wreaths you find in the store!!  Whoo-hoo!!!

When hubby comes home I ask if he liked my wreath. 
He didn't even see it. 
Of course not. 
I was working on it for days, and it's finally outside, and......he's a man. 
So I make him go out to look at it and he says, "It's covered in ants." 
I'm thinking, "yeah right." 
I thought he was just messing with me because he's a big teaser, but he definitely wasn't.

We took it down, sprayed the front door with bug spray, and added a generous amount of the lacquer all over the wreath again. 
There.
That should do it! 
Problem averted.

Until the next morning.....

So that's my lesson on how NOT to make a festive peppermint wreath.  I've decided we will have no wreath this year while we mourn the loss of my beloved creation.

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