Christmas Baking 2019

When I was planning for our Christmas festivities back in the summer, I was a tad bit cautious in over planning in the baking department. I decided to plan for only a few baked goodies and candy making, then reevaluate as the season progressed with my pregnancy and how I felt. I ended up feeling extremely well and we ended up adding a whole lot more baking and candy making to our Christmas schedule.

The pictures on this post are not posted in order, but I thought it would make more sense just to post the pictures in similar groups. The above picture is some peanut butter kiss cookies we baked. Sadly these were not a huge hit with my people. The cookies were excellent, but no one liked the candy kisses. Most folks picked off the candy and just ate the cookie.

We kicked off our Christmas baking with cut-out sugar cookies that we iced and loaded down with sprinkles. Of course these are a family favorite and a must for my people at every holiday.

Everyone pitched in extra this holiday baking season since I was about to have a baby any day throughout all our baking madness, lol.

Next up we had traditional cookies. We first made three different kinds and then later in the month we baked three other types of cookies. 

The first three batches of cookies were mostly packaged into goodie bags and given to neighbors. 

Since we gave away most of the first three batches of cookies, we also made these Christmas M&M cookies, as well as the peanut butter kiss cookies pictured above, and the Christmas tree spritz cookies pictured below.

Spritz cookies aren't exactly a favorite for my family, but there's just something about them that says Christmas to me, so I had to make them. 

Red velvet white chocolate was among the first batch of cookies we made.

As well as chewy oatmeal.

 Last up in the cookie baking was peanut butter white chocolate cookies.

We also made an assortment of candy.

First we made peanut butter white chocolate Krispies.

Then we made chocolate covered peanut butter ritz crackers.

As you can see by Samuel's face the children had loads of fun making candy this year. This is one of our favorites that we call chocolate peanut clusters.

And no Christmas candy making session is complete without white chocolate covered pretzels. These are always the first to be gobbled up in our family. 

We tried a few new Christmas treats this year and one of them was Christmas crack or I've heard it called saltine cracker toffee. This was an interesting candy which my family did not like. We made three different versions, one with crushed pecans, one with chocolate M&M's, and one with sprinkles. I really, really liked the one with sprinkles, even if my family didn't.

These Rolo pretzel bites were also a new treat we made this year, which unfortunately, was not a favorite either. My children ended up picking the candies out of the pretzels because the pretzels became stale, even though they were stored in an airtight container. {{sigh}}

I wasn't going to make these chocolate covered peanut butter cheese-it bites, but my kiddos said they were a must. They blessed me by making every bit of them without any of my help.

Also a new addition to our Christmas candy making were these white chocolate haystacks. 

Due to the fact that our family is so large and we decorate so many gingerbread houses; we also make the gingerbread cookies to make the actual houses.

Since it takes so long for the houses to set up; the big kids, mom, and dad assemble the gingerbread houses the night before we plan to decorate them. 

Last but not least we also made a mega batch of Doodads. Even though Doodads aren't really under the realms of baking, it is something we make especially to enjoy during the Christmas holidays. The picture above was only half of what we actually made. 

Is baking a necessity to celebrate Christmas? Absolutely, not! But it is a treasured Christmas tradition for our family. I am so glad that even though I was extremely pregnant this Christmas, we were still able to make our favorite Christmas treats and even try a few new ones.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer 

DIY Wood Slice Photo Ornaments

Every year for Christmas we give our children an ornament. Some years the ornaments are store-bought and other years they are homemade. This year I made each of the children a homemade ornament using wood slices and a picture of each of them.

The supplies to make the ornaments include: these wood slice ornaments, a small photo of each of my children, a circle cut-out of Christmas paper to cover the wood ornaments, narrow red ribbon, and Modge Podge. 

To make the ornaments:

1. Cut out the photos to your desired size.
2. Cut out Christmas paper to desired size to cover most or all of the wooden ornament.
3. Cover the wood slice with Modge Podge using a sponge paint brush and place the Christmas paper over the wood slice, then do another coat of Modge Podge over the paper.
4. Place the photo on top of the Christmas Paper and paint another layer of Modge Podge.
5. Let dry.
6. Tie red ribbon around top of wood slice (I hot glued mine in place to prevent it from coming off the ornament).
7. Tie twine through the top of the wood slice ornament and trim excess to preferred length.
8. I also took a fine tip white paint marker and wrote 2019 underneath each photo.

Since Abigail was born so close to Christmas, I didn't have a chance to get a picture of her to make her a photo ornament. I decided to try to get a handprint of her sweet little hand on the wooden ornament, but as you can see it didn't turn out quite like it should have. I almost threw it away, but decided against it. It will be a precious memory and you can sort of make out her tiny hand.

These ornaments were super easy to make and took very few supplies. If you've read any of my previous posts, I'm sure you have gotten the vibe, that homemade items are extra special to me. I love to make and give them; even if they do take a little bit of extra time than just going to the store and buying them. I must admit as the years progress it's getting harder and harder to come up with new and creative ideas for making the kiddos homemade Christmas Ornaments. Which is why I typically start at the beginning of the year, planning for whether it will be a homemade or store-bought Christmas ornament year.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Homemade Christmas 2019

Today I'd like to share a couple homemade Christmas projects/gifts we made this year. 

I love Christmas and all it's festivities, but some times folks can take it too far, especially in the gift giving department. Yes, we exchange store-bought gifts within our family, but as great as those are, I think the homemade gifts are just as special, if not more. 

To be perfectly honest, I'd like to get back to the simple days when it was maybe one store-bought gift, a couple homemade gifts, plus a stocking. I suppose those days are long gone, and that's ok, because I believe we can still keep Christmas sweet and simple even in our current modern culture.

Some years we give more homemade gifts than others, but we always create some form of homemade gifts to give. Every year my husband requests a picture gift that he can put at his desk at work. And each year I try to make something creative and different. This year I thought I'd try making him a calendar.

First, I had the children paint watercolors onto card stock to create a 'tie-dyed' look.

Then I found a free 2020 calendar template online.

Next I printed the calendar onto the card stock that the children had painted.

Before I assembled the calendar I printed off pictures of each one of our children, one of my husband and me, a family picture, and one of all the children.

The next step was to find twelve bible verses to print on the reverse side of the calendar. I tried to choose verses that were relative to that month or season.

I glued the pictures onto the backside of the calendar papers next to the Bible verses.

I tried matching the children's pictures close to their birthday months.

Before Abigail was born, we only had two children with the same birthday month. So it was fairly easy to match the children's pictures to their birthday month.

Due to time constraints I wasn't able to get a picture of Abigail printed for this calendar. 

I decided to put mine and my husband's picture in February ~ for Valentine's Day. And I put our family picture for the month of October since that's when our anniversary is, and when we celebrate the beginning of our family.

I decided to laminate the pages once I had all the pages finished.

Finally, I hole punched the pages and connected them with three 1-inch rings.

Our last project we did for Christmas was actually completed on Christmas Eve. {{Yikes}} Nothing like a last minute project.

My parents were kind enough to send some money along with the children's gifts to buy "stocking stuffer" items. When I bought the children's Christmas goodies from grandma and grandpa, I didn't think to buy something to put the stuff into, hence the last minute goodie bags we made.  

My twelve year old was kind enough to help me cut out the pieces for these reindeer goodie bags. I had a variety of circle punches which I used to cut out most of the pieces. For the antlers, I just free handed a template onto card stock and we traced it 20 times, lol. 

Here's all the reindeer goodie bags filled and placed in front of the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. I thought they were so cute and looked like a heard of reindeer.

Now, homemade gifts can end up costing more than store-bought gifts if you aren't careful; but, thankfully, both of these projects were pretty cheap to make. The bags were completely made with leftover craft supplies, and the only 'extra' cost of the calendar was the price of having the pictures printed. Everything else we used to make the calendar, I already had readily available in our home. While it does take space to store crafting supplies, sometimes it can pay off, especially when you can inexpensively make heart-felt homemade gift for family and friends.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Christmas Funschooling

My previous post was more geared towards the little ones in the family, while today's post is more focused on activities the bigger kids would enjoy; but any of the projects can be used for any age group depending on interests and abilities. 

Most years, the two weeks leading up to Christmas, I like to plan a craft, a Christmas food project, and a minute-to-win-it game for each day. Since I was due with Abigail in the middle of December this year I knew I wouldn't be able to handle such a heavy-loaded schedule, so I scaled things back tremendously. Even with a very modified holiday schedule, we still didn't even get to do the ONE minute-to-win-it game I had planned. I'm learning, albeit ever so slowly, that it's okay not to do it all. While I can't get this Christmas back and the opportunity to do 'all the fun seasonal things'; I can more effectively plan for next year by evaluating and adjusting out schedule to fit in the most important activities and projects to our family. 

The above picture was an ornament we made with triangular cut pieces of burlap, a red craft ball, googlie eyes, mini clothes pins, and some twine. This was definitely a big kid project or one where the little folks would need heavy adult help due to the fact that we had to use a hot glue gun to get most of the pieces to stay on the burlap. 

This year's Christmas interactive notebook was a study of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas". We've actually done this study a couple of times before, but I think it's good to rotate my Christmas interactive notebooks throughout the years. This way the children get the lessons multiple times at different ages. 

We made salt dough ornaments. I let the children make the dough, roll out and cut the ornaments, then we cooked them in the oven. The next day the children painted the ornaments.

We typically end of making at least two dozen salt dough ornaments. I make sure the children put their names on the back of the ornaments they paint. This way when it comes time to pack up the ornaments I save save one that each child painted ~ this keeps the amount of keepsakes I have for the children to a minimum. 

As is our custom for every holiday, we made cut out sugar cookies. 

Icing the cookies is the best part. We double the recipe we use for making cut out sugar cookies, so each of the children get to ice at last four. This year mom and dad got in on the fun too and iced a few cookies.

The Christmas season is absolutely the best holiday for food crafitvities. One of our favorite Christmas food projects is to make ice cream cone Christmas trees. 

Another favorite Christmas food craftivity is to make gingerbread houses. even the little ones get serious about making their houses just so, lol.

I loved how creative the children were in designing their gingerbread houses. Everyone had their own unique creation.

I never made a gingerbread house as a child, so I find it great fun to watch my children make theirs. Because we make so many gingerbread houses, we actually make the gingerbread house pieces, which also adds to the element of Christmas fun.

The last project was to make a reindeer self portrait directed drawing. This drawing begins by the drawer tracing an oval around their hand for the head.

This is my absolute favorite directed drawing that we do, and we have been doing it for several years now. This year we had quite the crew who participated in the project. I've kept all our reindeer self portrait drawings from throughout the years ~ and I LOVE to see how all the children have improved on their drawing skills. 

I really enjoyed this Christmas season of funschooling. It was extremely low key (for our family). We read our Christmas storybooks, did our seasonal interactive notebook, did some projects, and created fun holiday edible crafts. Our schedule was just perfect to accommodate the most important fun schooling projects we wanted to do. I think I'll definitely be doing a variation of this schedule next year.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer 

Christmas Totschool

Hey Y'all!! I know It's been about a month since I've shared a post, but can we say Christmas and BABY!! Yes, we welcomed Abby Lou into this world on the 18th of December!! I will be sharing more about her birth in the coming weeks, but for now I'm going to get caught up on all my Christmas posts. 

I know Christmas is over, and what we did for our Christmas projects is a little obsolete, but maybe y'all can reference them for the 2020 Christmas season. Since I was VERY pregnant leading up to Christmas I decided to keep our Christmas tot school low key and super simple. I focused on getting all their projects done the first week of Christmas, except for their countdown to Christmas. 

I found the above Santa countdown calendar on Pinterest a really long time ago and I have a copy of it on my computer, I just print it off every year. It's a super easy countdown, glueing cotton balls onto the appropriate day/number. I don't usually keep up with it on the weekends, we just do three cotton balls on Monday. 

 We made torn paper bulb ornaments. I simply free handed an ornament shape onto card stock that I cut out. Then I cut out a rectangle on black construction paper for the top of the ornament. I had the children glue torn pieces of construction paper to the ornaments. Once the glue dried we whole punched the top and put a piece of twine on them so they could hang them on the tree. 

The children also made fruit loop Christmas trees. I cut out a tree on green construction paper then had the children glue fruit loop cereal to the trees. once the glue was dried we whole punched the trees and strung them with a piece of twine.

My children love to glue, paint, and color so those are the projects we try to do.

I know we've basically done this project multiple times now for different holidays, but it is still one of my little peoples favorite projects to do. There's something soothing about rolling a marble around in paint, lol. 

For this project I cut out a tree on card stock. We placed the trees in a shallow baking pan, put two large dollops of paint on the tree and then allowed the children to roll marbles through the paint by tilting the pan different directions.

 The children made paper plate wreathes. To make these wreathes I cut out the middle of a paper plate. Then I had the children glue torn pieces of green construction paper onto the wreathe as well as a red bow I cut out of red construction paper.

Thumbprint Christmas Light paintings was not one of my favorite tot school projects, and I doubt I do them again. I've since seen a variation of this project which I think is what we'll do next year. It was extremely messy and required a whole lot of adult/big kid help. 

Now, my little kids thought it was grand fun finger painting, I think it was mostly just mama who wasn't having any fun, lol. 

Of course no seasonal tot school is complete without a sensory box. This was not my planned sensory box for the Christmas season, but when I came across these cute hot chocolate wooden toys at Target, I just had to make a sensory box using them. This box had brown gift basket shreds, cotton balls, a toy whisk, and the wooden hot chocolate toys. As usually the sensory box was a huge hit and my children loved playing with it, even if it wasn't Christmas themed.

As you can see it was another holiday tot school with super easy projects and loads of fun for both mama and the kiddos (minus the finger painting, lol). I would have loved to have done a few more projects, but I'm learning sometimes less is more, and not over doing things is sometimes best for all parties involved. I did not over load the children and mama wasn't drowning in too many things to do. Because of our simple no-fuss tot school plan; we all looked forward to doing our daily craft, spending time together, and enjoying the Christmas season.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer