Gingerbread Houses and a Visit to the Doctor

Today the big kids got to go to Grandma's for a long anticipated chance to make gingerbread houses.  My 18 month old got to stay home and sleep off the effects of a shot to get rid of croup.  Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without someone needing a last minute trip to the pediatrician.  I'm just glad our trip was several days BEFORE Christmas!

Tips for Decorating Christmas Cookies with Young Kids

Nothing says holidays like decorating cookies, Christmas especially.  We decorate cookies for most holidays, usually with extended family, but this year it was just me and my older 2 kids and a friend and we had just as much fun.  That is one of the joys of cookie decorating, it is great for any size group.  Here are some tips I have learned over the years of decorating cookies with my students while I was teaching first grade and decorating cookies with my own family. 

1.  Know your limits!  Baking sugar cookies can be fairly difficult.  Don't try to start from scratch all in one day.  Make your cookies the day before you plan on decorating them.  If you are going to bake your own it is absolutely necessary that you chill the dough, it is best if it can chill overnight.  I am convinced this is the secret to getting the cookies to work and keeping yourself from tearing out your hair in frustration.  Realize, you can order unfrosted sugar cookies in almost any shape from nearly every grocery store bakery, all it takes is a simple phone call.  If you live in Utah, Macy's has them for super cheap.  That is all I have done for years.  This summer was the first time I was able to actually get a sugar cookie recipe to work.  My kids don't know the difference all they care about are the sprinkles.

2.  Make your life easy, buy the canned frosting.  I know the homemade usually tastes better, but honestly, by the time your toddler is done dumping sprinkles all over the thing and has licked his or her knife several times, taste is not really going to be a factor.  Simplify!  Buy several tubs of the Betty Crocker stuff and call it good.

3.  When you buy your frosting, always buy the "whipped" frosting for decorating with kids.  It is soooo... much easier to spread.  My personal favorite is the whipped cream cheese frosting.  Then when you get it home, divide it up into multiple bowls and use food coloring to dye it different colors. 

4.  When setting up an area to decorate, realize it will be messy, if you are worried put a dropcloth or old tablecloth under your table.  Sprinkles go everywhere and at least one kid will dump an entire bottle on their cookie.  

5.  Don't buy the peppermint sprinkles, they look cute but are nasty, same with the really cute mini candy pieces they make in holidays shapes.  Stick to tastier things, regular sprinkles and colored sugar, mini chocolate chips (my personal favorite), and m&m's.

6.  When you start, give each child a paper plate with a cookie on it.  Give them their own plastic knife, or if they are really little, use a popsicle stick and then put spoonfuls of frosting on their plate.  This helps prevent licked knives from going into the main bowl of frosting multiple times.

7.  Lower your expectations.  Most little kids will love decorating one, maybe two cookies, then they will either want to eat it or eat the m&m's and be done.  Be okay with that.  Get your camera out right when your child starts decorating and get a couple of good pictures and take a picture of the finished product.  Your child has had a great time and you have the pictures to prove it.  This is the reason I suggest taking the easy way when it comes to the cookies and frosting.  If you haven't spent hours and hours slaving over making the cookies and making the perfect frosting, then you are not going to be mad that only a few cookies got decorated.  If you like baking from scratch and have a recipe you like, then go for it, but realize kids are not really going to appreciate that part and be okay with that, recognize the from scratch part is for you, not for the kids.

Kids Christmas Craft

My four year old is obsessed with crafts.  All day long she begs for crafts to make and if I don't help her come up with things she takes matters into her own hands.  I am all for creativity and I love crafting myself, but when I am not looking the supplies are left everywhere and lets just say crayons, markers, and scissors don't go terrifically with an 18 month old.  Lately I have been going to Hobby Lobby and Michaels and looking for their cheap-o kids craft kits because they require little supervision and any leftover supplies can be tossed in the trash with no guilt.  These beaded candy cane ornaments have been one of the better kits I have found.  I got them at Hobby Lobby, but you don't need the kit at all. 

Supplies:
pipe cleaners
red and white plastic beads (ones that have a similar size hole as the width of the pipe cleaners)
wire cutters (scissors will work, but it dulls them and is harder work)

Instructions:  Fold the bottom of your pipe cleaner so that the beads can't fall off.  String beads onto pipe cleaner in a pattern alternating between red and white.  Fill to almost the top and then bend last little piece of pipe cleaner to hold the beads on and twist into a candy cane shape.  Add to the Christmas tree!

December Daily Album

I saw Ali Edwards "December Daily" scrapbook project last year and thought it was a great idea, but decided I was way too busy to attempt it.  I saw her posts again this year during the weeks before December began and it got me thinking.  I was worrying a lot about how my broken leg was affecting our holidays and was frustrated with the way it was holding us back from a lot of the activities we normal enjoy.  I was worried that my kids would feel cheated and that I would feel cheated.  Then I started thinking that maybe the craziness of my leg being broken was going to make this one of those Christmas' my kids would never forget, so I decided if that was the case I was going to make it full of as many happy memories as I could and since we were going to be required to take everything more slowly than usual because of my leg, then I was going to make the most of it.  I hurried and put together this simple album.  I bought Ali Edwards' downloadable overlays with each day on them and using paper and supplies that I already had in my stash did a little bit of decorating.  It is not at all fancy, my goal was to make this easy enough that I would actually follow through with it.  I bought a cute 1 inch binder at Target and have tried to make sure I take a picture of something we do for Christmas each day.  If I forget to take a picture, then I make sure I write enough to fill the whole page.  We haven't done big things, but as we are reaching the halfway point of the month of December I am realizing that we have more family traditions than I realized.  I love the fact that when this Christmas is over, my kids will be able to look at this album and actually remember what we did.  Next year we will be able to sit down at a family home evening before the month of December hits and look through our album from 2010 and talk about what things we want to make sure we do again in 2011 and then add any new things we think of.  I am so glad I took the time to do this, I think it will quickly become a family treasure!

Simplifying Christmas

This year out of necessity I have had to take a good hard look at how to simplify our Christmas.  I still can't drive, which means our activities are limited.  My doctor surpised me this last week and said my bones were healing well enough that this month I could start putting weight on my leg and gradually get rid of the crutches.  He left it up to me how quickly I wanted to try going without crutches.  Amazingly, I am able to go without the crutches already, which has made all the difference to our family.  I am able to use my hands which is a wonderful blessing.  Unfortunately, I am still slow because of the boot and moving around ups the pain some, so I still can't drive.  Anyway, as a result of my limitations, early in November we sat down with the kids and talked about what things were most important to them that we do this holiday season, so we could make sure we did those things.  We explained that some of our normal holiday activities might have to change a little.  For example, we have had a tradition of going to the zoo first thing in the morning on Thanksgiving.  This year the weather was horrible and there was tons of snow I just couldn't get around well enough to attempt it so we decided to put it off until next year, but we made sure that we stuck with our tradition the night before Thanksgiving to get new Christmas jammies and watch Elf together. 
We had cut back in a big way on our decorating.  As much as I love Christmas decorations, they are completely overwhelming to me this year.  Everything requires so much more effort, so we put out the most important things and I have had to learn to take a step back.  We had to break down and buy a new tree this year and when I sent my husband to buy it, the one he came home with had colored lights.  I have always hated colored lights.  I am an all white light person, but my husband didn't even look at the box to see what kind of lights were on the tree.  I wasn't about to send him hauling it back, plus it was a Black Friday sale.  Well, I have discovered my kids love the colored lights.  They are thrilled and as I think about it, that is so much more important.  The same sort of thing with the ornaments.  Normally, I spend the whole time we are decorating the tree trying to move the ornaments around so everything is even and looks best.  This time, I sat at the table and handed ornaments to kids  (making sure my 18 month old got the right ones) and let the kids do all the work.  Once again, they were thrilled.  I hope in the future I can remember this Christmas and try and worry less about the unimportant things.

The picture on this post is of some of those cheap-o chocolate advent calendars.  In an effort to try and make each day special in way that would work for me this year, I asked my mother-in-law to pick one of these up for each of my children.  They cost next to nothing, but they have been perfect for my little children.  Even my 18 month old can participate in this tradition.  I don't know why I haven't done these before.  I guess I have been too busy trying to come up with all kinds of grandiose Christmas activities to have time to think of something so simple.  These will definitely be a new family tradition.

At the moments when I find myself starting to freak out about all the things I can't do this year, I am consciously trying to focus on the things I can do.  I am trying to enjoy the slower pace, the quiet time I am spending sitting around in the living room with my babies.  The opportunity we have to really focus on our favorite tradition of reading different Christmas stories throughout the month of December.  I am grateful for the many visits from friends and family and joy that brings both me and my kids.  My 4 year old leaned over to me in church today and asked me who was coming to visit us today.  I said that no one was and she said, maybe someone will decide they really miss us and come to see us.  She said it so matter of factly that it was obvious that she feels like all the people dropping by are doing it because they care so much about her.  Isn't it amazing how even a 4 year old picks up on love!  I am so grateful for answered prayers and a knowledge of a Heavenly Father who loves me and my little family and the knowledge that his hand is in my daily life.

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Mortimer's Christmas Manger

I can't believe I haven't already posted about this book. Mortimer's Christmas Manger by Jane Chapman and Karma Wilson is a fantastic book! Mortimer is a little mouse that hates his hole. He thinks it is dirty and creepy. One day he finds the perfect little house, but it is filled with little people. He figures out they are not real, so every night he moves them out. Unfortunately, someone always puts them back. On Christmas Eve he overhears the people of the house telling a story about the people and the little house and he realizes that they are talking about Baby Jesus. Mortimer makes a decision and gets sweet results. I love this different take on a story including the nativity. I'm sure you will too! Plus the illustrations are great!

Christmas Mice

We added a new Christmas board book to our collection, by Richard Scary. It is called Christmas Mice. On the back of the book it says it was originally published in 1965 as The Santa Claus Book. I think it was one of the old, old Golden Books. It would be so fun to get my hands on some of those! However, the newly published version is a great second best. The story is simple, the pictures amazing, the perfect read aloud for a toddler! The story tells about two mice who are the first ones awake on Christmas. They go around the house exploring all of the wonderful presents Santa left and wonder if Santa forgot them. Do you think Santa would forget them?

Olive the Other Reindeer

We try to add a few new Christmas books to our collection each year and Olive the Other Reindeer, by by Vivian Walsh and J.otto Seibold, is one that we added this year. I had heard lots of great things about this book and it did not disappoint. The illustrations are really the magic of this book. They are simply amazing. Olive is actually a dog that gets a little mixed up with the song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Olive thinks that instead of "all of the other reindeer" the song says "Olive, the other reindeer". It is a fun story of how Olive helps the reindeer.

Wombat Divine, by Mem Fox

If you have never read any of Mem Fox's books, you need too! She has been a favorite author of mine for a long time. I ordered this particular book from one of my Scholastic book orders when I was teaching. I hadn't heard the story, but knew that I loved Mem Fox. It was too religious for me to use in my classroom, but I love the story and love reading it to my children each year. This year it has been so fun to read from my collection of Christmas books with my nearly 3 year old daughter, because it is the first year she is really starting to grasp the stories. This one was a real hit. We read it 3 times in a row before she went to bed tonight. It is the story of a little wombat that is excited to be able to be in the Nativity play for the first time. He volunteers for every part, but nothing is right for him, he is always too big or too sleepy, or too clumsy, until the very end when his friends discover the perfect part for wombat.

Who's Coming to Our House

Who's Coming to Our House, by Joseph Slate, is another great Christmas board book for really young children. It is the story of the animals in the barn preparing for the birth of baby Jesus. Little kids will love the animals and the rhyming text and parents get the chance to talk about the Christmas story after the read the book to their children. It is the perfect way to introduce the story of the birth of the Savior in a very simple, child-like way.

Favorite Christmas Board Book

Christmas in the Manger, by Nola Buck and Felicia Bond, is my favorite Christmas board book for really small children. The illustrations are wonderful and it has a great rhyming text that is cute, but not too cute. The story keeps the spirit of the real reason for Christmas, but is not preachy or too difficult for small children. It is the perfect Christmas book for a baby or small toddler!