25 Days of Christmas: Day 11

Elf on the Shelf: Snowball Fight!
That's right. Our elf decided to have a snowball fight with Buzz Lightyear. And by snowball, I of course mean mini marshmallows!

Day 11: How the Grinch Stole Christmas night
We always try to have a Grinch night. It's always fun. We have fun Grinch themed food and snacks. We watch the movie. And we sing the Grinch song!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 10

Elf on the Shelf: Marshmallow Bubble Bath
Apparently, our little elf decided that he needed some relaxation time so he got himself a little bath together full of marshmallows.

Day 10: Paper Snowflakes
We made a bunch of paper snowflakes to decorate our wall with. Some of them came from a book and the other were ones that we found online or just made up ourselves.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 9

Elf on the Shelf: Riding the Train
Our elf was riding our little train around, holding a ticket for Owen to the Polar Express.

Day 9: Today, we got a special treat! My son got to see a man working on an ice sculpture of Mary holding baby Jesus. That was pretty cool!

While at my work, my son made a couple of crafts, including this one:

I also finished a couple of cards that we started yesterday. The finished product is pretty cute, if you ask me!

Polar Express
With the ticket that my son got from his elf this morning, Owen sat on the train (our couch). We watched the movie and drank hot cocoa. After the movie, Owen received his own bell. He loved it! We all loved it!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 8

Day 8: Bending candy canes
I had seen this on Pinterest and always wanted to try it. We baked the candy canes on the baking mats at 250 degrees for 10 minutes. That did not go as planned at all. They completely melted guys!

I didn't let that get me down though! At first, they were really hot so I thought I would let them cool down just a bit. Well, once they were cool enough to handle, they then completely cooled within about a minute so I only rolled 2 of them.

So they didn't turn out so bad. I think the ones I rolled are kind of neat and I learned that I really enjoy eating the flat candy canes! So things didn't go as planned, but we still had fun doing it!

Elf on the Shelf: Day 8 - Elf Kissing Booth

25 Days of Christmas: Day 7

Day 7: Make a Gingerbread House
Here's another classic! We do cheat quite a bit though and buy the box. It's a fun process though and my son just absolutely loves helping us decorate everything. Then, we pick out a place to put it and we display our gingerbread house as a decoration until after the Christmas season. No, we don't eat it.

Elf on the Shelf: Day 7 - Attack of the toys
Apparently, my son's other toys have gotten jealous of our elf because he's been getting so much attention so they stuck him to the wall! Those naughty toys.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 6

Day 6: Game Night
Ok, so this one doesn't really have anything to do with Christmas, but we really like to include this in our list of festivities every year. There are only a few games my son really knows how to play and they are Candy Land and Guess Who. We LOVE these games. However, my mom bought our son a minion card game that he fell in love with so our game for tonight was that. It was awesome!

Elf on the Shelf: Day 6 - Playing Guess Who with all the other toys
Remember how I said sometimes I like to theme the elf to our activity?

25 Days of Christmas: Day 5

Guess what! It's my birthday! So it's not a huge birthday or anything, only 26. And since I'm a mom, birthdays are less of a big deal. However, something that doesn't happen very often, only 3 times in my life in fact (2009, 1998, 1992), my birthday this year is on a Saturday! At first, I had though about asking my mom to watch Owen so that my husband and I could go do some fun things without him, but then I changed my mind and decided to make the whole day a family affair. Here's what we did.

Day 5:
We started the day at Home Depot to make Holiday Stacking Blocks at the Kids Workshop. We absolutely love going to the Home Depot Kids Workshops and the Lowe's Build and Grow Workshops. They are 100% free events that help teach basic building techniques. The Lowe's ones require advance registration, but the Home Depot ones do not.

Next came the annual Christmas parade!

After that, we went to the arts center where they had an activity for kids to stamp wrapping paper and gift tags to wrap their own presents.
Then we went to Uptown Normal where we watched Santa & Mrs. Claus travel through Uptown via horse & carriage escorted by a marching band. There was free hot chocolate, mini funnel cakes, and carriage rides plus a quick visit with Santa.

After dark, we went to the zoo where they had a special event. We were able to walk through the zoo after hours during the night with the zoo all lit up with candles. It was beautiful.

Overall, it was a really great day. Happy Birthday to me!

Elf on the Shelf: Day 5 - Sitting in the sleigh being pulled by a reindeer

25 Days of Christmas: Day 4

Day 4: Make clusters
This is my family's favorite homemade Christmas candy. We (or should I say, I) usually end up making a second (if not third) batch later in the month after this first batch is completely devoured. I looked back at all my previous posts and apparently, I have never posted the recipe for this candy. Well, here it is:

Ingredients:
1 lb white almond bark
1/2 c peanut butter
1 c dry roasted peanuts
1 c mini marshmallows
1 1/2 c Rice Krispies

Melt almond bark. (I do this in my double boiler, but I know some people prefer to just microwave it) Stir in peanut butter until completely incorporated. Then add remaining ingredients and fold together.
Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper or parchment paper. (I use my mini ice cream scoop for this)
Cool until hardened. Store in airtight container.

That's it. Super easy. And super delicious.

Elf on the Shelf: Day 4 - Sitting with a plate of MnM's.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 3

Day 3: Go to the mall to see Santa
Honestly, the only reason that I drag my son through this is to get a great picture. Every year, I have taken him during the week before school was out to avoid crowds. His preschool got out at 11:45am. Now that he's in kindergarten, he gets out at the same time (if not later) than everyone else. Anyway, this is how his picture turned out.

We didn't have a lot of time to do a bunch of Christmas-y stuff today because I had my last pottery class of the year from 6:30pm-9pm. Unless you count the Christmas gifts I will be able to give after everything is done in the kiln. I'll let you know how they turn out.


Elf on the Shelf: Day 3 - Sitting on Santa's lap

25 Days of Christmas: Day 2

Day 2: Letter to Santa
Today's activity is a classic. Every child needs to write a letter to Santa, right? How else would he know what to bring everyone? Last year, I came up with this brilliant idea to have my son cut out pictures from the toy magazine to tell Santa what he wants. I decided that since my son is just now learning to write, this would still be a good idea. Here is my son's letter:

So, I also did a little Christmas activity for myself. There was a Christmas Warehouse Sale at the Interstate Center in our town. It is a shopping experience that has all new products at 80%-90% off retail including Christmas items, Stocking Stuffers, Gift Wrap, Kid's Stuff, Kitchen Items, Fashion Jewelry, Cookbooks, and More! That was fun. Then, to round out my day of shopping, I also went to Kohl's to spend all my Kohl's cash that I had earned from black Friday shopping.
I also went to the zoo to pick up our pictures that we took on Saturday with the reindeer.
Elf on the Shelf: Day 2 - Circling Items in the Catalog
I sometimes like to theme our elf with an activity that we're doing that day so since today was letters to Santa day, I thought it would be fun to have our little elf looking for toys too.