Have I ever told you how afraid my son iswas of Santa? That is the first picture we have of the two of them together, it’s kinda self explanitory. I waited 4 years to get another picture and thanks to Macy’s, their inviting Santaland and a fantastic group of Seattle area bloggers it was worth the wait. 

When I got the invite from Jenny  to head downtown for some kid centered holiday cheer I couldn’t wait and I was praying he’d be ready. And he was!  My daughter, not so much. She was so upset she couldn’t even watch her brother sit on Santa’s lap. She screamed ” Bubba, no ho ho ho, no ho ho!” until I turned her to face the reindeer .

Chillin' with Comet

I gave my attention back to my son just in time to hear him tell Santa he wants a discountinued lego set for Christmas ( seriously ?! What’s wrong with the 300 easy to find ones ? Good thing he asked Santa for it  right?). Little missy  did sit with the whole group of mamas, but only because letting go of me was worse than getting close to Santa. I suspect we’ll get a pic of her on his lap come 2015.

Clockwise from bottom left – Me and little missy, Marie from Make and Takes,Tammy from Tammy’s Two Cents, Jenny from Jenny On The Spot , Kat from Mama’s Losin It, and Mandy from The Haps!  Lousie from Mom Start, and Lyndsey from The Stationery Place.

 As a blogger I have no staff room and  no after work happy hours so getting to hang out with some like minded local bloggers and their kids was a treat for me too.  Some of these women like Marie and Jenny have been friends of mine for a while but we often only see each other at blog conferences on the other side of the country. It took our kids and Santa to bring us together. The other mamas are bloggers I follow on Twitter and read their blogs ( I have read Kat and Mandy for ages!) but seeing them and their ridiculously cute offspring in person reminds me that mom bloggers really are fun, busy, awesome ( stylish!) moms. 

After hitting up a busy coffee shop with kids, strollers ,moms chatting non stop and many looks that could kill (especially when I started nursing my 18 month old, hipsters aren’t all pro extended nursing I guess) we hit the carousel.

She loved it.  I am still dizzy.

I hope you have a chance this holiday season to make new friends, see old ones, and get very dizzy while listening to your kids giggle in unison . Cause it’s rad.

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This year I have cut every corner there is to cut. My daughter has me chasing her , making sure she hasn’t swallowed any of my son’s Legos that may have escaped his room, I have much more grey hair this year… but a more full heart too.  This project isn’t ground breaking but using stamps and cookie cutters with the air dry clay was a great way of making this project attainable for both my kids. Air dry clay is not as easy to manipulate as say salt dough or play dough that little hands are used to so using tools like these help make it a fun successful activity.

1. Gather your materials. You will need some air dry clay ( although you could do it with salt dough or ready to bake clay too), cookie cutters, Christmas themed rubber stamps, a toothpick . Once dry you can paint with all sorts of paints, we used water color.
2. Start by just playing with the clay. Then cut out with cookie cutters. Both wanted a star .
3. Using stamps you can make designs on the clay. My daughter loved this and unlike when she uses stamps on playdough the clay was stiff enough that the impressions stayed.My son cut a second and started creating his own shapes … he still hasn’t painted it but if he never does that’s ok too, it doesn’t have to be painted.
4. Add holes for hanging using a toothpick.
5. Let dry for a few days.
6. Time to paint.I loved using the water color because it was a great opportunity to have a lesson about colors with all in front of my toddler without a huge effort.
7. She explored the paint… make sure it’s non toxic especially if you are doing this with a teething toddler like I did.
8. I was impressed how vivid the colors stayed on the clay.
9. Let dry and hang up.

Book

The Little Christmas Elf (Little Golden Book) by Nikki Shannon Smith is a sweet book not just about Christmas but also about perseverance, attention to detail and hard work. In this story the littlest elf is working hard but just sin’t fast enough to get her teddy bear finished in time to be in Santa’s sack for Christmas. Santa delivers the bad news but encourages the little elf to keep at it and they will use the toy next year. She still doesn’t give up doing her best work even knowing Santa is already off to children’s homes everywhere. Right after she is done Santa comes back, a new baby was born and he needs that teddy bear! I loved the message and my son did too. Very sweet book.

This was supposed to be a craft just for my daughter, but when my son and his friend saw what we were doing they jumped in too.  I was not planning on 3 kids doing it all at once so it was a little chaotic but the playroom and all the kids survived… remember to use washable paint .  The kids have all used bubble wrap to print on things before so switching it so they painted the bubble wrap was new and a big hit.

1. Gather your materials. You will need some bubble wrap, paint, painter’s tape, paint brushes , heavy paper ( paper grocery bags are perfect), a pencil and scissors.
2. Start by taping the bubble wrap to the work surface with the painter’s tape.
3. Next paint the bubble wrap with green. For my toddler I gave her a big brush for the green to encourage coverage. She was encouraged …
4. Next add the lights colors. Let kids decide which colors they want, this helps with color recognition too.
5. Ok this is when the boys busted in pretending to be Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader ( I know impossible right… not for two imaginative 5 year olds! ) and grabbed some brushes.
6. Keep painting the wrap.
7. Draw some trees on the paper and cut out.
8. Press the paper into the wrap and peel back carefully.
9. For my toddler I left the paper big so she could do as much as possible herself , the small tree would have probably gotten ripped. Leaving it big let her do it herself feeling the wrap under the paper and “bang banging” her hand to make the print.
10. Let dry and cut out the tree shape for the toddler. 
11. Hang up and show off the fun ( and wee bit of chaos…) remember washable paints!

This activity is perfect for busy days that you want to do a fun holiday themed activity but you don’t have much time. I used Play-Doh instead of making my own but here is a great gingerbread playdough recipe if you want to make your own. Also if you have kids sensitive to gluten try our awesome gluten free playdough recipe ( it’s my favorite).  It’s important for me to find ways of making one activity appropriate for both my kids and their vastly different developmental stages and I think we managed with this gingerbread people play.

1. Gather your materials. I used play-dough ( hard to beat under a buck for a pack when you are short on time!), colored popscicle sticks from our sponsor craftprojectideas.com , and cookie cutters for my toddler. We added some buttons, pieces of yard and bakers twine , scissors, beads and googly eyes for my preschooler.
2. For toddlers just have fun feeling, squishing, and introducing the cookie cutters. We talked about body parts and the color brown.
3. She attacked it with popscicle sticks and we talked about red and green.
4. And of course she just explored.
5. With my son I had it prepped for him to play while I read to my daughter nearby. I had an example because he likes having a guide and doesn’t seem to feel the need to follow, he is still creative. If your child is one that feels the need ot replicate the guide exactly I would simply give them oral instructions. Every kid is so different always adjust for your child.
6. He liked cutting them out more than decorating so we squished some of the already cut ones back together and cut a bunch.
7. Decorated a few with eyes.
8. He was rather proud of these baker twine candy canes too.
9. Projects like these are great because you can re do it if it was a hit or use the items for other play if it wasn’t.

Do you remember paint by numbers? I used to love doing them but mixing the numbers up ( yeah I was that kid) my son however is all about numbers and this was a fun way to make something festive but also let his interest in math be spotlighted. You could do this with shapes, or letters too.  I didn’t tell him that the final result was a Christmas tree so it was fun to have him “decode” the craft as we went.

1. Gather your materials. You will need some pom-poms in different colors, cups to sort them in,  construction paper, glue and a marker.
2. Start by sorting your pom-poms by color into different cups, write different numbers on each cup. I wrote 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 on mine since we’d just been chatting about counting by 10s.  To have your child help sort the pom poms just put on of each color in one cup to use as a guide.
3. Write out the numbers on the paper in a design. I did green outline, with random colors and green in the middle.
4. Start gluing the pom poms on using the code.
5. hmmmm what could it be?
6. All done! Let dry.

Great Christmas Book!

a creature was stirring by Clement C. Moore and  Carter Goodrich  was a recent find at the library. Around the holidays ( any holiday) my son and I attack the stacks like soldiers on a mission and look for the sticker on the binding indicating it’s a Christmas themed book. This was one of the few we found yesterday , and what a find! The book is an adaptation of the classic ‘Twas a NIght Before Christmas with a little boy interupting the poem with his own rhyming story.  It’s an adorable story about a little boy who simply can’t sleep , wants to be good but is oh so worried Santa will think he is naughty. I adore this book, it’s simple and fun and a great addition to the classic that so many of us have been read and will read to our kids this Christmas.