Things to Make - Santa's Beard Advent Calendar

(Can you tell which Santa T painted?)

When the girls still attended preschool every year they'd come home with some sort of Christmas countdown project - usually a paper chain that required us to tear off a link a day. And every year I'd fail to keep up with it. But last year at preschool P decorated a large Santa and came home with a plastic baggie full of cotton balls, all we had to do was tape one on every day until Xmas. And the whole family really enjoyed watching the big guy's beard slowly fill up. I think the calendar's success comes from the fact that you're always adding something rather than taking something away.

Anyways, this year I decided to have the kids create their own (somewhat generic) versions. I found free Santa coloring pages online and counted out 24 cotton balls into each of three bags. Just add Christmas paint and scotch tape, then the countdown begins. Easy peasy. (And thank you to Ms. Zito, for the FABULOUS idea).

Things to Make - A Gingerbread House

So, I didn't come up with this idea. Rather, F saw the gingerbread house kit at A.C. Moore and begged me to buy it. And, of course, I caved, as I often do when they choose crafty stuff over plastic crap. We bought this kit, though I swear it was under $10 in the store. I figured that assembling a pre-baked gingerbread house would be easy, but, in reality, "gluing" the walls together brought back awful memories of making popsicle-stick bridges in junior high (I failed that one, thus ending my short-lived physicist career). But I persevered and after a day of drying we had a little house on our hands. After that everything went smoothly - I stood back and let the girls decorate however they wanted (well, I did help with windows, at F's request). And they had a ball.

The naive part of this whole story is that I didn't actually understand that the girls only wanted the house because it resembled a gigantic cookie (I assumed they wanted to make something pretty). So it didn't take long (two days) before I caved and let them eat/attack/destroy it. We enjoyed our first round of demolition with family friends and hot chocolate after Zoolights. For the next few days the pillage continued. The girls decided that the true value of the house resided in the candy decorations as the gingerbread was sort of "yuck." Watching P use all tools available to pick one little gumdrop off the roof was truly a sight to behold. I felt so proud.

Things to Make - Christmas Tree Ornaments

Ugh, the great Christmas tree dilemma. My husband has always been one of those over-the-top lovers of the holidays, where I tended to view them somewhat more cynically (i.e. Xmas means giving people stuff they don't want and receiving stuff i don't want, despite the fact that every store and catalog seems to be full of stuff i do want). Then we had kids. And kids love Xmas and trees and lights and fat men in ugly red suits - the whole shebang. So last year we bought our first big family Xmas tree (which, consquently, was my first EVER non-artificial tree) and the girls fawned over it more than they would a puppy. I planned on purchasing another tree this year, but last week we visited my in-laws and T ATTACKED their tree. He found those shiny balls irresistible, no matter how we tried to distract him, we would turn our backs for a second and another one would be "out of the park." The sound of shattered glass became a constant. Ugh. So unfun. So what to do? Any suggestions? I suppose we could try toddler-proofing the tree, but honestly toddler-proofing the house is hard enough these days. I can't really imagine adding one more thing.

In the meantime, I'm trying to delay the tree decision through ornament making (i.e this is my attempt to show the kids that despite our complete lack of Xmas decorations, I really am a festive mom). Turns out you can buy tons of cheap, unpainted ornaments at AC Moore for under $1 (I'm sure all craft stores have them). Add in some cheap holiday paint (we bought paint similar to this, which wasn't the best of quality, but it served its purpose) and you have an art project on your hands. After the ornaments dried, the girls added soft foamy Xmas stickers for that extra wow. Now, we just need a tree. Ugh.