Book Review: Christmas

Mortimer's Christmas Manger by Karma Wilson

This is a book I discovered and fell in love with this year. It's a sweet story about a mouse who finds a new house and learns what Christmas is all about.

Auntie Claus by Elise Primivera

A little girl named Sophie sets out to discover what line of business her Auntie is in. Along her journey she finds out for herself that it is better to give than to recive.

Olive, the Other Reindeer by J.otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh

We love this book. It's cute and clever. Olive is a dog, but when she hears a familiar Christmas song on the radio she decides she must be a reindeer and heads off to the North Pole.

A Christmas Dress for Ellen by Tomas S. Monson

This is a lovely Christmas tale about sacrifice, service and love. It will warm your heart.

What are your favorite Christmas stories?

Art Gallery

You got a sneak peek at my "Art Gallery" earlier this week but I just have to show it off a little more. I looove it!



For months I had been stewing over a cute way that I could display my daughters art work in her play room. Nothing hit the spot. Finally I came up with this. I have no regrets. It was worth the wait and so easy to make too.

Here's how I did it:

I picked up a 8"x36" board at Hobby Lobby. With my 40% off coupon it was only a few dollars! I had some clothes pins lying around the house so I painted them black along with the board. I glued the clothes pins on with some strong glue and applied the vinyl lettering. That's it! See. So easy.

My daughter loves hanging up her art work to display. And she had plenty of it.

Nativity

This year I gave in and bought the Little People Nativity. It was worth every penny.

I can finally rest easy knowing my breakable nativities are safe now that my children have their own to play with. It has been the favorite toy all month long. It's pretty much all they play with.

Of course I wasn't willing to fork over the ridiculous $40-$50 they usually cost. With a little bit of searching I found one at a decent price. All month long Family Christian Stores have had them on sale for $30. If you do a search for "Family Christian Stores Coupon" you're sure to find a coupon for 25% off bringing your total to just over $20. Not bad.

A few simple Christmas crafts

Snowflakes

My daughter picked the colors--in case you were wondering. She loved making these. The best part is unfolding it when you're done to see what you've created.

Construction Paper Pictures

What's more fun than construction paper and glitter glue? We could have made these all day.

Bottle Cap Christmas Tree

My daughter colored in the bottle caps with marker and then glued them onto cardboard in the shape of a tree. The fun part is arranging the colors. A very simple project.

Stockings

Here's your classic laced stocking. My daughter recently discovered the hole punch and I thought we'd put all that punching to good use.

Happy Christmas Crafting!

Decorate the Tree . . . again and again

Here's a tree your kids can help decorate all they want. You don't have to worry about glass ornaments breaking or those sharp ornament hooks.


I cut everything out of felt so that the trees can be decorated over and over again. My daughter has had so much fun with these. I even went all out and bought glittery felt for the ornaments--although you can't tell in the picture.

Here's the pattern:

Have fun!

Displaying your little artist's work

I never know what to do with my kids art. It fills up my fridge way too fast--and it's always falling off. My laundry room is tiny so I thought I could brighten it up by displaying their art on the walls in there. It worked great for a little while but then, with the moisture and humidity, the tape lost it's stick and the pictures were always falling down. So I came up with another solution . . . so far it's working great!

Items needed:

thick ribbon
clothes pins
paint
hot glue

First I got some clothes pins and had my boys paint them.

I then figured out how long I wanted the ribbon to be and how far apart I wanted the clothespins spaced out. After hot gluing them I attached a ribbon at the top to act as hanger.

I think that if I had more wall space I would have glued the clothespins horizontally in order to be able to hang more pictures up. Just experiment around with what works best for you!

Go here for some more suggestions on displaying your child's artwork.

Give that turkey a hand (and a foot)

The boys and I had a fun time with this simple craft. All you need is some construction paper, a pencil, glue stick, scissors and some googly eyes. First we traced our feet onto brown paper and our hands onto colored paper. After cutting those out we glued the hand on the back as feathers and added a small beak, gobble (what is that thing called anyway?) and some eyes. So, so fun. So, so simple.

Turkey Hand Prints

My daughter picked up the book "Hands Down: Counting by Fives" by Michael Dahl from our library.

She loved all the fun pictures made from hand prints.

We decided to try our own.

I thought the easiest way to do this was to just have my daughter paint her own hand. She thought it was great. She did both her left and right hands and then added the beak, gobbler, eye, and feet once it was dry.

Oreo Turkeys

Hopefully you still have some Halloween candy left over. This fun little food craft will help you use up some of those candy corns that no one really likes to eat anyway.


To make:

Use an Oreo for the body and wedge candy corns in between the two cookie pieces for your feathers. For the face you can use a Whopper or Milk Dud. I used a small amount of frosting to help the Milk Dud stick to the Oreo and I also used the frosting for eyes and to stick the "beak" onto the turkey's face.

Eat. Enjoy.

Traditons

The holidays are a wonderful time to enjoy family traditions.

Today I'm sharing some holiday tradition ideas over at Bloom.

Check it out!

ROBOTS!!!

To make a robot you need...

*different sizes of square and rectangles cut out of felt:

*googly eyes:

*lots and lots of buttons and odds-n-ends:

Put the pieces together . . .

. . . and you have yourself a robot!

My oldest had such a fun time deciding what should go on his robot. There was a purpose for each button (on/off, a "crazy" button, etc).

And if your kids really like robots here are some other fun ideas:

Eye-C-U Robot

Toilet Paper Tube Robot

Can-Do Robots

AutumnTrees

Wow, I can't believe it's already November.

I love this time of year. The trees are beautiful. You really miss out on this kind of stuff when you grow up in Southern California. I can't get over the red. I love LOVE the red trees and bushes.

To celebrate the beautiful fall trees--we made our own. My daughter loves to paint and I'm always on the lookout for painting projects for us to do together. I came across this one in the Family Fun Magazine.

First draw the tree trunk on card stock with a marker.

Then cut out a cloud shape from another piece of card stock or thin cardboard and place over the top of the tree.

Pick the colors of paint you want to use and sponge paint the leaves onto your tree.

When you're done remove the cloud stencil and let dry.

Hang up your art for all to enjoy!

Tu-tu

My daughter is going to be a ballerina for Halloween.

I found the tutorial to make her tutu here. It's a very simple no-sew tutu that can be made in probably 30 minutes to an hour. All you need is some elastic and a few yards of tulle. They could make darling Christmas presents for your daughter, niece, grand-daughter. . .

Edible Jack-o-lanterns

Saturday was a full, busy day. After a family trip to the grocery store we still needed to eat dinner. When I mentioned the possibility of pancakes my oldest son immediately informed me that he wanted pumpkin pancakes. And I knew just what he wanted. And then while I was pouring and flipping he informed me that we needed to make faces on our pancakes--he was going to make a scary one. The boys had loads of fun making (and re-making) faces on their pumpkins--until we finally told them that they had to actually eat the pancakes . . . and not just the chocolate chips. It was a fun end to a wonderful Saturday.

In the past we've also made jack-o-lantern pizzas.

I even tried a variation of these "mummy dogs"--they were a big hit!

Do you have any fun "Halloween" food?

FYI--Halloween Events at Michael's

I recently discovered Michael's "The Knack." There are fun printables and project ideas. Michael's also sponsors free family crafts. Right now they have several Halloween events. Click here to check it out!