Christmas Prep - Kids Edition

Next week is Thanksgiving. Crazy. I will be stuffing my face all day then that evening will retreat into my apartment to decorate and allow Christmas to come to life!

Last week I did a post called Prepping for Christmas, where I showed off the Pins that I found that I wanted to do for my house which even led to me making these wonderful things! You can check out that post here.

 

 

Well this past weekend and earlier this week I went on and found a few crafts that I want to do with the kids to make this house festive. Their parents make it really festive with many Christmas Trees and decorations, but I know that a touch of hand prints and glued on cotton balls will make it that much more awesome.

 

So here are my top pins for Christmas Crafts for Kids.

 

These are super cute and look really easy and the kids can just make them in all different styles to be unique. Pin Here

 

These look so simple and allows the kids to use as much or little creativity as they want, which on any day could vary quite a bit. Pin Here

 

W made something like this in Preschool last year and when he brought it home I thought the girls were going to pass out from excitement. We do a large advent calendar upstairs with goodies and prizes but I think we will all make these this year as well. Pin Here

 

We have tons and tons of popsicle sticks, usually I come to work after a weekend and there are houses constructed out of them and glue and markers. So why not use them for these cute Christmas Trees. Pin Here

 

These as well. Pin Here

Add all these to the list as well. Pin Here

 

I just about died when I found this Pin, how adorable, the kids are going to giggle so much  making these I just know it! Pin Here

 

 

This last one is of another set of crafts to do, I haven't really gone through it yet but I really like what I see in the pictures so I am sure I can find a few that will work for us. Pin Here



 

I'm sure that will keep us busy for a bit, we did a few crafts last year but I wasn't really blogging at the time, I wish I was!

 

The kids are about to come bounding off the bus so I better go get ready.

 

It's Hump Day!!! Woot woot!

 

Jenny

 



Bread and Butter

It's Tell Us Tuesday with Much Ado About Something! Today I am showing how to make homemade butter with kids!




Two of my kiddos came home from school last week after doing Thanksgiving rotations. In both cases they were able to make Butter using little baby Jars and spread it on some crackers to enjoy. They both came home so excited and told me that "we must make some together!!!" So yesterday as I was getting up I packed up my Mason Jars and lids and then remembered my bread machine that sits in the laundry room and grabbed that as well.

When I got to the house S was home sick, which makes the 5th week with a kid home sick. I am sure she could have gone to school the way she was attempting to bounce around the house, but I told her she had to lay on the couch and rest so she could go for the rest of the week.

About 3 hours before the kids got home I prepared the bread in the bread machine. This appliance is probably still one of my favorites, so easy to use and it makes some amazing bread.

I also sat the Heavy Whipping cream in the mason jars to sit out at room temperature for a few hours. This helps to make the butter quicker and easier, which is just what is needed for those little hands shaking.

You start out by filling the mason jar about half way full.


Then start a shaking and keep shaking, it will get thicker and eventually coat the entire jar.

  The kids have fun with the shaking!  

  And of course they had to get a picture of me.    
It will seem like you can't shake anymore but just keep shaking you are not done yet. Eventually you will see it come off the sides cleans and you will hear a solid shaking around in some liquid. That would be the butter in the buttermilk.


Then pour it into a colander and you can save the buttermilk to bake with or just toss it.

  Then rinse it with some cold water to help it keep longer in the fridge.  
Then I put it in a bowl and start pressing it with a spoon to get all of the extra moisture out and eventually it will all ball together.


We added some salt to taste in a couple batches and then some cinnamon and sugar to a couple other batches. 


Then we transferred them to some containers and of course everyone had to have their own.







Can we talk about that school and couch laying hair?!?! Haha next time I am going to make sure to comb that out!

By that time the bread was done and cooling a bit on the cutting board.

  I used a serrated knife and cut some slices and put them on a plate and covered half with the regular butter and the other half with the cinnamon butter. They loved every bit of it and each had a second piece.  

It was really easy and the kids had a good bit of fun. We even have butter leftover sitting in the fridge ready to be used for breakfast and the butter sandwiches they eat for lunch. We go through a lot of butter every day.

Jenny

 

The Post

My kids are pretty funny, they often say or do things that have me rolling around laughing.

As I was getting ready to do this craft with my kids I told them I needed to go grab my phone so I could take pictures to put it on my blog post. I guess they didn't know already that I had a blog and so started asking questions and found it to be very interesting and cool that they got to help me out by doing crafts.

Later on in the evening we were outside playing and S came up to me and yelled "Jenny, take a picture of me to put on 'The Post'!!!" I started laughing as she now refers to my blog as The Post. Maybe I should reconsider a blog name change haha.

Anyways, I know that I have posted the last two times about Christmas so I need to give Thanksgiving some exposure. My kids get really offended over early Christmas, I am not sure how this got instilled in them because their mom and I both love Christmas. Every time we see things that are Christmas they go "What about Thanksgiving's feelings???" So empathetic, I know.

I decided to do a cute craft to put on the fridge and incorporated some hand prints since their mom loves them so much.

Supplies:

Paint
Google Eyes
Card Stock
Construction Paper
Glue
Marker

Start with a blank piece of card stock, I didn't have white so we used yellow.

Then take the kids hands and put 4-5 different colored handprints to make the feathers on the paper.

Then give the kids some markers and tell them to write Happy Thanksgiving or Be Thankful and their name.

Set those aside and let them begin the process of drying.

Then take some brown construction paper and have the kids cut out a circle big enough to cover the base of the hands. Have them glue some google eyes on there. I let the kids have free range to make sure it is as unique as them.

Then let them draw on a mouth and cut out a little red thing to use as the gobble gobble (don't quite know the real name for it but that's what we call it)

Then take the head and glue it on to the hand prints, if they are still wet with pain, that's totally ok.

There you go....so easy and it's super cute!

 

W said that his turkey was making a surprise face so he did too.

We hung them up on the fridge for all to see in honor of Thanksgiving.

The kids had a great time and the weather was so great afterwards we went out side and played around for a bit. It was later in the evening and so the sun was coming down and I was able to snap a fantastic picture of how it looked through the trees. I love this magical place.

Today is Thursday which means tomorrow is Friday, I can't wait!

Jenny