Christmas Advent-How Did We Do?

 I have a tendency to make theses grand plans to do with the girls. but unfortunately things don't always get done.  I thought it would be fun to look back at our Christmas advent list and see what we actually did...

Dec 1 Make Christmas play dough with glitter
We made this here.

Dec 2 Christmas Mad Lib
Devon wrote a Mad Lib with the girls names in it.  It was pretty cute.



Dec 3 Write a letter to Santa and deliver it to Macy's
We did write letters to Santa, but I never delivered them to Macy's.  (Macy's donates a dollar to Make a Wish for every letter they receive.  I plan to just make a donation to Make a Wish since I never made it to Macy's)

Dec 4 Record family Christmas song
This year we recorded Bruce Springsteen's version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Day 5 Do a Christmas craft to decorate the house
One of the girls checked out a paper crafts book from the library, so they picked out a craft to try.

Dec 6 Make hot chocolate with all the fixings and play games. 
 We had a fun night of game playing and hot chocolate. 

Dec 7 Make cards to send to American Red Cross- Mail for Heroes
Each of the girls made a couple of cards and Devon and I made some too.

Dec 8 Make ornaments
We made crystal ornaments.

Dec 9 Make snowflakes to decorate/ make tortilla snowflakes to eat
These are so yummy!

Dec 10 Buy tree/ decorate for Christmas
We did this.

Dec 11 Go look at Christmas lights and listen to Deliah
We love us some Deliah!


Dec 12 Make Christmas cards/gifts to mail out 
We made salt dough ornaments, but were able to deliver them in person.


Dec 13 Go through toys/coats to donate to charity
We did go through the toys, but we never actually donated them.


Dec 14 Read Christmas books with a flashlights under the Christmas tree 
This was fun. 
 

Dec 15 Bake cookies to take to the clinic/hospital
We baked cookies for the kiddos at the clinic and we took some to the nurses on 6A.  We hadn't seen most of them in a year, so it was good to go back and visit.


Dec 16 Make online snowman http://www.castlearcana.com/christmas/snowman/index.html
 The girls did this one a few times.

Dec 17 Make bird feeders
We never did this one.  Maybe next year.


Dec 18 Watch Christmas movie with popcorn and candy
We watched a few Christmas movies this year.


Dec 19 Bake Christmas cookies
We waited and baked our Christmas cookies with Grammy.  Lexi, Logan, Leah and Faith joined us.


Dec 20 Picnic under the Christmas tree
We did this, it was fun!


Dec 21 Make snow globes
We did this craft in Texas with Uncle Trent and Katie.  They were fun to make but the water evaporated over time, so I wouldn't make them again.


Dec 22 Go to a drive through lights place
 We never made it to one of these this year.

Dec 23 Go to Brass Pro Shop and see Santa
I put this on the list because my parents were supposed to be in town and I knew my dad would enjoy it.  


Dec 24 Watch past Christmas/family videos with popcorn and hot chocolate
We didn't get to do this one.  Devon didn't have time to make us a DVD:-(

Overall, I was very pleased with the how many activities we actually completed:-)

Snowflakes!

Snowflakes were on the Advent Calendar today.  We made coffee filter snowflakes for the walls and tortilla snowflakes for our tummies!

 For the tortilla snowflakes you simply fold a tortilla, cut with kitchen scissors,

 brush with olive oil and bake.  We brushed some with cinnamon and sugar before baking and brushed some with powdered sugar after baking.

Yum!

Advent Day 6- Hot Chocolate and Game Night

The advent for tonight was hot chocolate with all the fixings and playing a game.  I printed out these Bingo cards for us to play.  The girls colored the pictures on their cards today.  

We made hot chocolate and had whipped cream, mini chocolate chips and M&Ms to top it.

Good times!

Crystal Ornaments

One of the activities on our Advent Calendar was to do a Christmas craft and decorate the house.  So, today we made crystal ornaments.  We followed this tutorial.  They were super easy!

Story Bell posing while mixing in her Borax.

 I did make one pretty big mistake.  I am only going to tell you about it, so you don't make the same mistake if you make these...

The directions called for a wide mouth glass jar.  We dug around in our glass recycling and found a couple of jars for each of the girls.  We then shaped our ornaments with the pipe cleaners.  The girls each made their initials and a snowflake. 

 The snowflakes were pretty wide, so we just bent them to get them to go into the jars whose mouths weren't very wide.  Well, once the crystals were formed on the pipe cleaners the pipe cleaners could not be bent...  So, we had beautiful crystal ornaments stuck in jars:-)  Luckily my husband didn't mind helping us out.  He had to break the jars to get our ornaments out!

This is where the picture of the finished crystals should be.  But, I forgot to take any.    I will try to add some at some point...

Advent Day 1 Peppermint Playdough

Today was day one of our advent.  We made peppermint playdough!  This was our first time to make it and we will definitely be doing it again.  It smells so good!

Story played photographer except for the few times I took the camera to get pictures of her.

 The girls took turn adding the ingredients.

 Then they took turns mixing on the stove while it cooked.

 

 

Lyric entertained herself when it wasn't her turn.

 

Story insisted on getting a shot of me too.

 

Story was insistent on tasting the playdough!  I knew nothing in it was toxic, so I told her to go ahead.

 She said it was okay, but a little spicy.

 We colored the playdough green, red and left some white.  We also put glitter in it.

I loved this playdough recipe!  It has the best texture and smells so good!

 We pulled out our Christmas cookie cutters.

 Here is the recipe we used: Peppermint Playdough.

Happy Monday!

We had a busy day today. The day started out with Lyric and I doing the breakfast dishes. I had Cadence strapped in her chair next to us and I look over and see this: The little Houdini decided she needed to climb out of the chair and attempt to get on the cabinet! The girls and I made advent calendars today. They have started asking when Santa is coming, so I decided we needed a way to count it down or I was going to go crazy! I found this one at Kaboose. Lyric isn't usually much on coloring, but she stuck with this.

Cadence did a little coloring, but she really enjoyed throwing the crayons in the floor. I helped her with the leaves a little:-)

Story Bell had fun making her Santa (yes, she was naked).

She even cut it out.

So proud!

Cadence found one of the girls ink pads for their stamps. She was very unhappy when I took it away.

This is what a Cadence tantrum looks like:She sticks her hinney in the air and lays her head on the floor while crying like it is the end of the world. A close up of the ink hands:We haven't had a muffin tin in a while, so we decided to have one today. For the big girls from left to right: fish sticks, ketchup, ketchup, fish sticks, corn, bread, bread, corn, peaches, chocolate pudding, chocolate pudding, peaches

For Cadence from left to right: fish sticks, bread, fish sticks, corn, peaches, corn. I am sure you noticed the stocking shaped bread. It is December, so you know I had to bust out the Christmas cookie cutters!