25 Days of Christmas: Day 24

Elf on the Shelf: Merry Christmas!
Our little elf just loves Christmas so much, he wanted to be a part of it! So he made himself part of our Charlie Brown nativity set!

Day 24: Charlie Brown
Every Christmas Eve, my son opens a box that has a new pair of pajamas, a Charlie Brown Christmas DVD and book, hot cocoa and popcorn. So of course, we read the book, watch the movie, and eat popcorn and sip on hot cocoa all while wearing new PJs! It's a fun tradition.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 23

Elf on the Shelf: Hiding in the Wreath
My son loves finding our elf every day so to make it extra hard, he hid someplace that took my son quite a bit of time to find.

Day 23: Apple Cider and Coloring
We had a great time just watching Christmas movies, coloring some Christmas coloring pages, and sipping on some hot apple cider. These relaxing moments with my family are some of my favorites.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 22

Elf on the Shelf: Leaving Presents!
Well, it looks like our elf was just checking things out yesterday, but today, he actually left some presents! Books! But it looks like he got stuck before he could get down completely.

Day 22: Christmas Shrinky Dinks
So these are not quite Shrinky Dink brand, but if you look on Amazon, you will find some shrinking paper. I bought some of this special paper and my son and I made some. They turned out awesome! I drew the outline for my son and he colored it in.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 21

Elf on the Shelf: Leaving Presents?
That silly elf was found half in my son's stocking. I wonder what he was looking for.

Day 21: Holiday Shirts
We made some tye-dye t-shirts. I didn't want to use red and green because those can get muddy. So we just used blue and turquoise to make them winter-y. I like them!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 20

Elf on the Shelf: Took a Shower
That silly elf of ours took a shower in the hotel room.

Day 20: Christmas Lights
After we got home, we decided to drive around and look at the lights in ours and surrounding neighborhoods.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 19

Elf on the Shelf: Hanging in the closet
Since we were in a hotel, our elf had to get a little creative so he had a little fun hanging out in the closet.

Day 19: Christmas at Grandma's

25 Days of Christmas: Day 18

Elf on the Shelf: Ready to go to Grandma's!
Our elf was sitting there ready to go to Grandma's house for the weekend for our first Christmas with his bags all packed!

Day 18: Wrapping Presents
We spent a lot of the day wrapping presents and packing up the car. It's not the most glamorous Christmas activity, but it's one that most people do.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 17

Elf on the Shelf: Card
Our cute little elf made a card for our son! How sweet.



Day 17: Homemade cards
Now, we always send photo cards to our friends and relatives, but our son always makes homemade Christmas cards for his grandparents.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 16

Elf on the Shelf: Cookies
Well, we just made cookies yesterday so I thought it would be fun to have our elf holding some cookies, too. I made the 'pan' out of a small piece of cardboard and some tin foil.

Day 16: Decorate Sugar Cookies
So we made the cookies yesterday, but today was the super fun part! We got to decorate them! Yay! And now that they're all decorated, we can eat them, right?

25 Days of Christmas: Day 15

Elf on the Shelf: Family Photos
Our elf set up a studio in our living room and was taking family photos of the other toys!

Day 15: Sugar Cookies
We made sugar cookies today! I love homemade sugar cookies. They're so delicious! And my son was finally able to help this year.

25 Days of Christmas: Day 14

Elf on the Shelf: Going for a ride
Our silly little elf decided it would be fun to ride one of the reindeer!

Day 14: Snowman Pancakes
Tonight, we had breakfast for dinner. And not only that, but the pancakes were in the shape of snowmen! How fun!

25 Days of Christmas: Day 13

Elf on the Shelf: Crafts
That sneaky little elf of ours got all the craft supplies out!

Day 13: Christmas Craft
I love crafts! So we of course had to do a super fun one. Here it is:

25 Days of Christmas: Day 12

Elf on the Shelf: Elf in Jail
We made a jail out of legos and put our elf behind it and then put his mugshot next to it.

Day 12: Ice Skating
I am physically unable to ice skate, but my son and husband really enjoy it so I sit on the sidelines and let them enjoy it as much as they want!

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