A crafty Christmas

I just love Christmas time!!! These past few days we kicked off Christmas week with some craft time. Tuesday, I hosted my annual Christmas craft playdate with two of dearest friends, Suzanne Tyler and Mandy Cauley, who are amazing school teachers in Lincoln Parish. I always try to steal some of their Christmas break time with a playdate with our kids since we don't have playdates during the school year. And another sweet friend of mine, Shanna, joined us last minute and Landon was glad to see his preschool buddy, Jonathan. These craft dates can get crazy so I try to keep the numbers down to keep the stress to a minimum.

This year, we did the Apple Snowman once again because it seems to be a big hit. Such an easy craft and good for young kids. All you need is: an apple, one large marshmellow, lots of little marshmellows (especially when they are eaten before they are placed on the apple), whole cloves, and toothpicks. I always have to remind the kids that the toothpicks are sharp which is a good learning tool. This year, Harper added a little flare on her snowman by making a crown for hers. And, of course, jake tyler had to put a hat on his. ;)

Suzanne was gracious enough to bring a craft for the kids to do as well. It was a lifesaver ornament that the kids made a circle with and then we placed in the oven to make the ring of lifesavers stick together. We had a hard time getting them to stick together so the kids just enjoyed eating them up instead! I think it was Landon's first experience with lifesavers and I think it is safe to say that he loved them! Now, we did have a scare with Mandy's youngest, Baylor Kate, when she started to choke on hers. She is not even two yet so I don't recommend this craft for the young ones! Fortunately she was ok, but it gave all the moms a big scare.

Landon with his snowman and a lifesaver in his mouth!

Sweet Harper cheesin it up for me

jake concentrating HARD!

Jonathan, Landry Grace, Harper, Baylor Kate, Kennedy, Jake, and Landon

Thank you ladies for taking time out of your short Christmas break to come over. I just enjoy seeing the both of you and hugging on your sweet kiddos!

Two years ago, Mandy Cauley, gave me the craft idea for our craft playdate to have our kids paint the Christmas wrapping paper to be use to wrap gifts. We tried painting our, then, 2 year old's feet with paint and let them walk all over the brown craft paper that we would use to wrap presents. As you can imagine, it didn't go over too well (what were we thinking??). Our kids might could do it now they are 4, but if you are anything like me, I tend to waste wrapping paper when wrapping gifts. So, then we came up with the idea to just wrap the presents and THEN have them put handprints on them. Sooo, this is the second year to do this and even though it was messy and a little crazy at times, we had a blast! Landon got good at doing his own hands and I was soooo glad that I drew a picture of a christmas on the brown craft paper that I taped to the table. This was so Kenedy could paint the tree while she waited her turn to do more prints. Now, she did end up with a lot of green on her belly and ALL IN HER HAIR!! I wish now I had a picture of that. But I had paint all over me and we needed to get cleaned up quickly. And now I wish I had taken picture of the finish products!! You can see some of them in the background. We did mostly handprints, but we also had some stamps and some sponge letters that spelled "HO" for HO HO HO.

Both kids went straight to the bath afterwards while i cleaned up before my inlaws came over for dinner and gifts. Thank goodness I had the taco soup in the crock pot and didn't have to worry about cooking! We cut it pretty close!