Even though Thanksgiving hasn't quite come, seems like Christmas is in the air. With all the lifestyle YouTubers posting their Christmas decorate with me videos over the past few weeks, maybe we should just embrace it?
We are on our 6th year of doing this Christmas countdown. It really has become a fun family tradition. Hopefully this year Michael will start reading the books on his own.
This will be the third year of us watching Christmas movies as a Christmas countdown. Over the years I have collected well over 24 Christmas movies and the collection is ever growing. That's what happens when you and your kid love Christmas! This will most definitely be a family tradition that my son will carry on with him.
Back when Michael was one, I was looking for different ornaments we could make as gifts for the family as keepsakes of when he was little. We decided that we wanted to do something with his hands (
Salt Dough Handprint Santa Ornament) and feet. So like any good mom, I went online to search for ideas.
Sugar cookies are one of my all time favorite cookies out there. This recipe was normally just made at Christmas, but can be made at anytime of the year. I will say that whenever I bite into a cookie made from this recipe, many memories of making these cookies in my mom's kitchen and eating them at my Grandma's house at Christmas come to my mind. So, since I have many memories from my childhood with these cookies, I have decided to start making them so my son will have those same memories as well.
Every year we try and make some type of Christmas ornament as gifts for the grandparents. A few years ago we made these adorable salt dough footprint Olaf ornaments.
I know I've seen a lot of people talk about the fact that the school picture packages always seem to have too many wallet sizes in them. I personally don't have that issue, there are still plenty of people in our family that carry around wallet size pictures, but I have come up with a solution to the problem that most families have. Use those extra wallet size pictures in a Christmas ornament. Here's how we did it.
A fun thing to do during your Cub Scout den meetings during the Christmas season is to have them make their own Christmas ornament. Not only is it a fun activity, it will be something that will help bring back the memories they had that year every single Christmas. I know that the ornaments I made during my Girl Scout years are some of my treasured Christmas ornaments.
Like the concept of Elf on the Shelf, but think the elf is a little creepy? I'm not the only one who thinks that, right? A few years ago we started
An Elf on the Self Alternative and have thoroughly enjoyed it.
"And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care." Ever wonder what those of us who don't have chimneys do with our Christmas stockings? I never really wondered that because we didn't have a mantel growing up. Here's how we hang our stockings in our house.
When I would sign up for certain items for Michael's parties at preschool, I wanted to be creative. Even though I'm a stay-at-home mom, I still don't want a project (especially something that will be eaten) to be too time consuming for me to make. So, when I signed up to bring popcorn for Michael's Christmas party a few years ago, I knew I wanted to do some type of snowmen theme.
This has truly become a lasting tradition for Christmas in our family. We've been doing this Christmas book countdown since Michael was one and each year he has enjoyed it even more. Hopefully this year he'll be able to start reading some of these books himself with the help of Jon or myself.
Since I'm the Christmas junky that I am, I actually have over twenty-four Christmas movies. So, last year I decided that we would add a new tradition to our ever growing list of Christmas traditions. Since our Christmas movie countdown was such a hit last year, we are doing it again.
If you're like me, you're always trying to come up with ideas for those stockings. Most of the time Michael's stocking is just field with different things - no theme to it. This year I have decided to theme the stocking with a cars theme. Here's some ideas that I've got in mind for his stocking.
Even though the books have been wrapped for about two weeks, I'm just now getting around to writing about this year's countdown the night before. This has become a really fun tradition for us and with Michael loving books even more, I see this lasting for several more years.
Over the past several years it seems that every where you turn, you see something about Elf on the Shelf. Let's be honest, those elves are creepy looking. Plus who wants to clean up after the shenanigans that some of the elves do to the house? Here's the alternative that we've been doing for the past two years.
I'm pretty excited about this. The last four years we've been doing a Christmas book countdown which is always fun. I decided last year, after I realized I had finally purchased just enough movies, that I could also do a Christmas movie countdown.
Last year Michael's school gave all the kids in his class this bag of "magic reindeer food" before they went on their Christmas break. This is such a great idea to get the kids excited for Santa coming to the house.
This Christmas I'm all about keeping the decorating as simple as possible. We've had this chandelier (I bought it for $35 through a Facebook yard sale group) for about two years now and have never decorated it. The chandelier we had before looked like it came from the 80's, but I tried to make it look nice at Christmas time - it never worked.
For the longest time our centerpiece at Christmas was a candle with a plastic ring of poinsettias on our kitchen table and chairs. Since then, we've received an antique dinning room set that just screamed something simple and elegant as a centerpiece.
