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Advent Day 8 – Make Christmas Crafts

Today was supposed to be a Professional Day for my daughter so I had planned for us to do a few Christmas crafts during the day. It turned out the whole family stayed home sick, so the activities were less organized and a bit more chaotic than I had envisioned.

We kicked the day off with a much more elaborate pixy/ elf scenario than the previous days. He was working on his own craft project – decorating the lights.

It definitely got the kids attention. There were lots of questions about how he got up in the light, what he was doing, and how he got up there himself? My son kept repeating “we have to solve the mystery!” I see why parents go to the effort of Elf on the Shelf. The kids loved it. It filled their heads with Christmas magic scenarios and started the day off with some joy.

I had three Christmas crafts planned for the day, but we only ended up having time to start two of them. We may get to the third one this weekend.

Craft 1: Salt Dough Ornaments

This was my first time making salt dough and it turned out okay, but was not quite as straight forward as anticipated. We are making handprint ornaments that we will paint to look like Santa faces. We made 6 so we could give some to family.

I used the typical salt dough recipe:

4 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 1/2 cups warm water

The instructions are straight forward.

  1. Mix dry ingredients
  2. Mix in water
  3. Stir and kneed dough into a ball
  4. Roll dough flat (used flour on the rolling pin, but have since read that putting parchment paper over the dough and rolling it may work better)
  5. Press hands into dough
  6. Cut around hands with butter knife
  7. Make a hole at the top of the ornament with a straw
  8. Place on baking sheet lined with parchment paper
  9. Bake at 200 degrees F for 2 hours

Possibly because it is dry where we live, the dough was difficult to kneed together and had cracks when I tried to roll it out, so I ended up adding another 1/2 cup of water. It still cracked when I rolled it out. I probably could have added more water, but it’s my first time doing this and didn’t want to stray too far from the recipe.

I baked them on 200 degrees F for 2 hours and the tops felt hard, but the bottoms were still dough-y. This is possibly because I made them a bit too thick, but it was difficult to make them thinner with the cracking. I decided to let them air dry for the rest of the drying process, so it may be a few more days until we can paint them.

Update

I ended up letting the ornaments sit on bakers racks for a few weeks until I was sure they were dry. My daughter and I finally got around to painting them on December 24th, just in time to give them as gifts to family members. They turned out very cute, I especially like how my daughter put eyelashes on her Santas.

santa salt dough ornaments

Craft 2: Acrylic Wrapping Paper Ornaments

Our second craft was making acrylic ornaments with images cut out from Christmas wrapping paper. This was a perfect craft difficulty level for my 5 year old daughter. We cut out images from wrapping paper we liked. She chose bright pictures and I chose some images from leftover Maileg wrapping paper I had. We painted each ornament with a layer of Mod Podge, placed the cut out on the ornament and then painted another layer of Mod Podge on top. Then I placed the ornaments aside to let them dry.

This is where I made a mistake.

Amateur Tip: Do not place the Mod Podge ornaments on box board! When I tried to pick them up, the backs had stuck to the box board and I had to scrape the box board off the back.

Other than my drying mistake, this was a nice and easy craft for my daughter and I. And they turned out pretty cute.

That’s as far as we got on craft day. I will post the finished results of the salt dough ornaments in a few days.

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Advent Day 6 – Watch The Polar Express

Day 6 will be to watch The Polar Express tonight. My kids are in the phase where they want to watch the same thing over and over and their movie of choice right now is The Grinch. My daughter was not thrilled that today’s activity is suggesting she expand her movie horizons. We will see if I can convince her to give it a try tonight.

In keeping with the Christmas train theme, the Pixy showed up riding a new train this morning. We already had a small collection of Christmas theme Little People that we got from the Little People Advent Calendar a few years ago (it’s a fantastic advent for young kids). We continue to bring the toys out every year at Christmas so I thought the train addition would be fun. My 3 year old son was more enamoured with it than my 5 year old daughter, but I think that’s okay. Some advent days are more exciting for my daughter than my son. It all evens out in the end.

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Advent Day 5 – Decorate the Windows

My husband received some adorable window gels for the kids from a co-worker last Christmas, but didn’t bring them home until well after Christmas. So, I put them away and brought them out this year for Day 5. Pixy was waiting at the window with the fun window gels when the kids came downstairs in the morning. The kids loved that the gels were personalized with their names and were entertained putting all the letters and figures up on the windows.

The Santa advent calendar has a pocket for Day 5, so I put two of the adorable Maileg reindeer in for an extra little gift. An easy Day 5.

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Advent Day 4 – Play Christmas Bake Shop

It’s the start of a new week and I have organized activities over the next few days that the kids can do in the mornings before school and evenings after school. Today, the surprise was to play “Christmas Bake Shop”.

When the kids came downstairs this morning, the pixy was set up and all ready to sell some delicious goods. The little gift in the advent calendar was a gingerbread man and a gingerbread woman. I would like to note that only a few of the treats in our bake shop are new to us this year: the Tara Treasures felt goodies in the dark brown basket (from Mymy and Me), the 1 gingerbread woman (from Sewing Seeds Play), and the 3 Christmas red, green and white chip cookies (from Sewing Seeds Play). Everything else we have from previous years and have been put away since last Christmas. I love play activities that have little collections I can add fun additions to each year.

The kids had a great time piling treats into baskets, carrying them around and selling them. It was an easy activity for a busy Monday morning.

As you can see, the pixy hasn’t done much so far. He mostly hangs out with items related to the day’s activity. I think that’s working okay for us right now. I’m hesitant to create any elaborate antics yet, for fear that I won’t be able to keep up the momentum.

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Advent Day 3 – Visit a Christmas Market

Both kids woke up sick again, and only one could rally enough to be excited about today’s activity – visit a Christmas market.

The little gift this morning was a Christmas theme crew neck for each kid (from Dear Aspen) as well as mini sweaters for their favourite stuffies. I ordered the mini sweaters for the mouse Ski Chalet originally, but when I saw how big they were, I decided it might be fun to give them to our favourite stuffy pals.

Despite some wintery weather, my daughter and I were able to get out and see four local Christmas markets! That’s my girl.

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Advent Day 2 – Santa Parade

Day 2 began at 4:30am this morning with fevers, so the day was less active than originally planned. The advent activity for the day is to watch our town’s small (very small) Santa Parade. The parade only has a few floats, but Santa and a firetruck make an appearance and the kids think it’s wonderful. We can hand-in our Santa letters during the parade, so the the kids got 2 blank template letters to Santa in their advent today. The pixy was writing his own letter to Santa this morning. The Santa advent for today also contained 2 blinking Rudolph noses from to wear during the parade.

To my delight, in her letter, my daughter declared she was only “mostly good” this year and would like a tie dye kit from Costco. My son was “very good” and would like a toy vacuum. I have no idea where he got that idea from. But, I definitely support him learning to vacuum.

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Advent Day 1 – Our Maileg Christmas Chalet

The first of December started off big with our Christmas Chalet play scene. We got our ski chalet dollhouse last December and the kids loved playing with it up until Christmas. They’ve been asking when it will make an appearance again this year. I bring it out on the first day of the month so we can get lots of play with it before Christmas. The house itself was a thrifted $25 Marketplace find that I fixed up with a bit of paint and “wallpaper” (wrapping paper). A few things are new, but many parts of the set up are toys we already had and have been rotated out of play for a while, so they will seem new to the kids. The whole scene is propped up on our Nugget couch pieces, with some white fabric and snow blankets on top.

Both my kids love the tiny details and, thank goodness, they are finally at ages (3.5 and 5.5) when I don’t have to worry about them putting things in their mouths. This year, I added a bunch of tiny extras for them to discover and to compliment their tiny play scenes.

Of course, it’s not a ski chalet without a ski hill. My 5.5 year old daughter loves to ski and my 3.5 year old son will be starting this year (fingers crossed). We all love toys that allow re-enacting things from our real life. The basket “ski lift” (from Kraul) was a Christmas gift for my daughter last year. The kids have loved using it to carry their mice and other treasures up the hill. And when they get to the top, what could be more fun than a little Santa and Mrs. Claus village? My daughter already made the Michaels Santa’s Workshop this year and I thought it would be a fun addition to the North Pole.

When the mouse family needs a change from skiing, they can put on their skates and try out the skating rink. The rink is a DIY my daughter and I made last year of cardboard, paint, glitter and cotton balls.

And the gift for today? The Mom and Dad Winter Mice from Maileg, complete with their own skis. I think the kids have had as much fun playing with it as I had creating it.

And just to prove how much kids enjoyed this little scene, here’s a proof-of-play photo.

The highlight for my daughter has been using tiny loose parts in jars to “cook” in the kitchen. I had not anticipated the jars being opened and dumped out, but I took a deep breath and reminded myself that the mess is worth their delight. Happy first day of advent.

Pixy Update

The pixy arrived sitting on top of the kids store-bought advent calendars. With all the excitement this morning, they didn’t seem to notice the pixy much. I’m going to continue to play it low-key. I think it will make it more exciting for the kids when they realize he moves around.

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How We’re Doing Advent This Year

I have a lot of fun with advent in December, which is probably why it’s a bit over the top. My husband smiles and shakes his head, but the kids love it and I do too. I don’t dare share my craziness with other mom’s I know, so I’m posting it here.

I like our advent to be a mixture of gifts and activities. I started this last year and although it’s more work to organize it before December 1st, I found that having the month planned out in advance helped me to relax and enjoy the Christmas festivities more. When will we make a gingerbread house? Are we going to look at Christmas Lights? When will we see Santa? I don’t need to worry about organizing, booking and making sure I don’t miss any of our Christmas traditions because it’s all planned. Of course, my kids also love a little gift, so this year I’ve included a few activity-related gifts with our advent and also got them pre-packaged advents with small gifts in them.

Our Santa Pixy Advent calendar is from Maileg
The Build a Bracelet Jewelry Advent Calendar is from Great Pretenders (purchased from the small shop Sewing Seeds Play) and the Thomas the Train Minis Calendar is from Amazon

I’m also planning to soft launch some pixy antics in our home this year. It will be our version of Elf on the Shelf – the pixy may get up to some mischief, but there will be no reporting back to Santa on behaviour and no rules about touching the pixy. I thought the “no touching” Elf on the Shelf rule would be nearly impossible to enforce with my kids. Maileg also released the adorable Long Legged Pixy this year, so i thought it would be a good chance to try out some pixy fun. We will see how it goes. I don’t want to commit to anything that becomes too stressful or burdensome so I’m giving it a test run this year. The pixy will just show up one the first day of advent and move around each day. Can I keep up with the pixy? Stay tuned…

Oops, I almost forgot. I have one more advent related activity for the kids. A book advent. We have been collecting Christmas books for a few years and we finally have enough to try the book advent. There are only 2 to 3 new ones I collected throughout the year. The rest we already had. I wrapped them all individually in brown paper and scrap packing paper I found around the house and put them all in a crate at the top of our stairs. There are no numbers on the books. I thought the kids could pick out one each night as they head upstairs for bath. My kids tend to get fixated on one book and read it over and over. I know this is developmental and completely normal, but sometimes mom and dad want to read a different book. I thought the book advent would be a great way to encourage the kids to read all our Christmas books this year. It’s also a great set-it and forget-it activity for me.

So that’s it, our advent fun for this year: an activity advent, two store bought advents, pixy antics and a book advent. We are all in for a festive December.