Christmas is Coming!

 

My wee Christmas Crackers!

We are CHRISTMAS people...well, to be more accurate, I am a CHRISTMAS person and the rest of my wee family have no choice but to join me in the festive fun that envelopes our daily life at this time of year. I just love getting the Christmas decorations up, having festive tunes playing in the house, putting Christmas movies on, doing Christmas crafts with the kids and having a bit of festive baking 'therapy' in the kitchen.

I am very lucky that my family are quite obliging and happy to join me in the fun although, Ian put a ban on Christmas movies until 1st November...harsh! So in protest, Heather, Evan and I started listening to Santa Songs (as H calls them) in the car since mid October!!

I've been totally addicted to Pinterest for weeks now (I prefer to call it "research") in my quest to find Christmas family fun things to do with the wee ones. Now that Heather is 3 and a 1/2 I thought she would be quite excited by all the things I've found. Evan is only 15 months but I'm sure he'll enjoy it all too.

I've found some really lovely things to do this festive season - some people are so creative!
The cool things/ websites I have found to date include:

• Christmassy food and crafts @  www.meetthedubiens.blogspot.com
• Polar Express Night @ www.confessionsofahomeschooler.com
• Reindeer food bar @ www.kellehampton.com
• Christmas to do list @ www.frogprincepaperie.com
• Christmas action cards @ www.oopseydaisyblog.com
• Salt dough style decorations @ www.woodsidekitchen.blogspot.com
• Santa pancakes @ www.tasetofhome.com
• Button shaped cookies found on Pinterest

I'm sure there are loads more but I can't remember them right now.
We came up with a few bits and bobs on our own too.

We have also been to/ done a bunch of other Christmas/ Festive things in the last few weeks so here is a little bit about each.

Stenhousemuir Christmas lights switch on

 

At the start of December our little town/ village had its annual Christmas tree lights switch on. So we wrapped up warm (it was freeeeeezing) and headed out. The organisers had put on some entertainment and there was some light up toys etc for sale for the kids. The local church had a living Nativity too.

 

We were a little late getting to the town centre as Heather and Evan had both been sound asleep all afternoon (it had been a very busy morning as Heather had been at dancing class and then we had all been at my school for the annual Winter Fayre). The nativity was closed when we got there - apparently it had stayed open for an extra 2 hours - but we were lucky enough to say goodbye to the the donkeys, goats and sheep as they were packing up. 

 

  Wee Evan is just a set of eyes - he was wrapped up so cosy!

Me and my girl - she had her face painted at my School Winter Fayre
~ she is a pink pussy cat with a Rudolf nose.

 

Golf Club Christmas Party

For the last 3 years my Brother-in-law and I have been asked to run the Children's Christmas Party at the local Golf Club. I just LOVE doing it!!! Fun, singing, Christmas games and 34 happy wee faces - what's not to love? The children are aged between 4 and 7 but we managed to sneak Heather in this year. She didn't join in a lot of it but she said she had fun. Each year we have a candy cane hunt, play lots of of fun games and sing Christmas songs but this year we also had a Reindeer Food Bar where the kids had the chance to make their own reindeer dust. I got the idea from a website called www.kellehampton.com

 

We also had a special visit from a certain Mr Claus! Gordon and I have the kids singing Christmas songs as Santa makes his anticipated arrival. He arrives on a 2 person quad bike and travels up the fairway towards the clubhouse. Once one of the parents spots him coming the kids all jump up, run to the windows and go wild! I remember one year when I was little (I used to go to these parties too) Santa arrived on a big tractor and it was snowing...it was so magical! Heather wasn't very keen on Santa (ok, she was really scared) but eventually she calmed down enough to collect her parcel with Daddy. Just before Santa left, she went up and gave him the little bag of reindeer dust she had made - I could have cried, it was so beautiful.

Cardboard Christmas Tree

 

Ian came home a few weeks ago and said, "I bought some new glasses and a few Christmas decorations from Ikea at lunchtime". After parading back and forth with his purchases for around 40 minutes, it turns out that was the biggest understatement of the year!! It appeared he bought nearly all of Ikea's decorations!!!!!

 

One of his purchases, however, was a stroke of genius, it was a large 3D cardboard Christmas Tree for the kid's playroom! Their wee faces lit up when it appeared in the hall one evening. He had also bought some baubles, beads and candy canes to decorate it with. They LOVED it!!!
The cool thing is they can redecorate it as many times as they fancy. Hopefully it will last the holidays (it has been knocked over many, many times) and we can use it again next year.



Evan had fun playing with the baubles and chasing them around the hall

 

Heather had fun putting candy canes on the tree and swinging the beads around



 

 

 

 

 

Gifts for the neighbours

 

Since moving to our house a few years ago, we have given some home baked treats to our wonderful neighbours for Christmas. We've always tried to come up with something different each year.
 

I saw a picture a few weeks ago of a stack of cookies that looked like buttons threaded in a ribbon~ it was really pretty. So, this was our gift for this year. Ian and I made a huge batch of shortbread (we even got the Steel family recipe) and made them into buttons using a straw and 2 circle cutters. Once they were cooled I threaded them onto a ribbon and then put them into little bags.




before...

 

 ...after

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Apparently, they went down well. We certainly demolished all the rejects...!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Green Week

This was one of my favourite ones. I don't know why, but I seemed to come up with a few new ideas for this one.

I drew a big dinosaur and then painted H's feet with green paint. You can guess what happened next...
...a green dinosaur! She really enjoyed this activity. Little E did some foot prints too but I didn't get a pic of him because by that point I was also covered in paint

Before our Dinosaur became green

After...A green dinosaur



Making Green Bow ties for everyone

We made some green bow ties for all the family. They were made of green card and we used some ribbon to tie them in. As you can see, H went crazy with the felt pens, the glitter, the glue, the stickers, the pom-poms...

Green outfits

Pink Week

I have to say that she had no problem with the colour pink as this is her favourite one.

Pink clothes and pink food...we struggled with the food a bit because she wouldn't eat anything I put down!! FussyToddlers!!!

We collected stones from the garden, washed them and then painted them pink!

The 3 Little Pigs. I thought this story was vaguely pink...it has 3 pink pigs in it!!

So to continue our pink theme I printed out some images of the characters and the houses. I set H free with the paints, crepe paper and other bits and bobs I got H to paint them. We did a bit of a mixed media style with this one - although the picture doesn't show them all. We used spaghetti as straw on one of the houses, painted one pig pink, coloured one pink and glued pink tissue to the 3rd one.

After they were all dry, I cut them out and laminated them and stuck some lolly sticks to the back ~ voila: pink themed story puppets!

We did a wee puppet show behind some chairs - Ian and I told the story using our best acting skills...we weren't that good but I don't think the kids noticed thankfully.

Yellow week

I didn't do as many activities for yellow week because H was back at nursery. There was also a bit of a break between Red week and Yellow week  - this meant I could use some of the same activities from Red week. We did mostly 'craft-daft' stuff!

Colouring
I found a great website called www. abcteach.com. They have some great printables and other bits and bobs to download. I dowlloaded the little Yellow bookfor H to colour in. Unfortunately this activity didn't last long and she was quickly asking for more things to colour.

Glueing & StickingI punched out some circles and flowers from yellow paper and got H to glue and stick them onto a flower stem (that I drew on the paper) . H loves sticking and so got a bit carried away - you can barely see the stem!

Paper Suns
Paper plates are one of my favourite items to make things with. I have a huge pile of them in one of our many craft crates. In prepearation for our colour weeks I started to buy lots of multi coloured things...paper, card, tissue paper, pompoms etc. I got H to tear up the yellow tissue and scrunch them up a little bit - I have to admit she had more fun blowing the hundreds of little tissue paper all over the floor and laughing hysterically when I tried to catch them before they went everywhere...After lots of laughing and picking up tissue, H eventually stated sticking the tiddue to the paper plates. We hung them from our Play Room washing line at the window. They looked very pretty!


Icing cakes
One of my loves is baking and icing cakes and biscuits - I think it's safe to say that it has passed on to H. So one afternoon, H and her wee friend  B popped on their pinnys for some 'culinary-creativity'. With a new baby and a toddler in the house, there is NO time to bake (much to my disappointment) so, for this activity, I was forced to buy some ready-to-ice cupcakes.  I made up 2 bowls of yellow glace icing and put out lots of sprinkles then we left them to it. They both really enjoyed decorating their cakes and had loads of fun with the runny icing and the coloured sprinkles. However after they had decorated 2 cakes each their focus changed slightly; H started eating all the icing and her friend B was working his way through handfulls of sprinkles...it is safe to say they had loads of fun!


Hand Painting
H isn't keen on being dirty!! I think she might have OCD. In an attempt to get her used to being dirty/ different substances on her hands, I got her to do some hand painting in yellow paint. She was happy enough painting her hand and then did a couple of prints but then quickly started shouting "clean, clean!". I managed to get little E's hands painted (not an easy task when he is only 4 months old and a bit wriggly) so I got his wee hand prints done too. They look so tiny! We proudly displayed our crafts and yellow stuff on the wall of the playroom.

Paper Sunflowers
I cut little flower shapes out of card and got H and her cousin to make little sunflowers. They covered them in yellow tissue and then attached a lollipop stick to the back of them. The girls were so pleased with their wee flowers!