Christmas Fun & Games

I have several fun Christmas activities to share with you today.

I bet you've already got lots of the supplies for them in your craft closets.

I had a lot of fun coordinating Olive preK Christmas party earlier this week.  I planned a craft and then came up with some games that I thought the kids would love.  We ended up only having time for the craft and snacks so we've been playing the games at home this week.  They were tons of fun and really easy to pull together.

PLAYDOH CHRISTMAS TREE

I made 4 batches of green  playdoh and divided each batch into fourths.  Each kid got a baseball sized ball of green playdoh for their tree.  You could definitely buy playdoh instead of make it, but I was going for a cheaper option since I had to have enough playdoh for a classroom of kids.

I used my mom's playdoh recipe.  I have good childhood memories of her making playdoh for us and letting us pick the color she'd make.

1 cup water
1 cup flour
1/2 c salt
green food coloring
2 t cream of tartar
1 T vegetable oil

Put all the ingredients in a saucepan and heat up.  Stir until it's blended and then when it thickens up knead it together until smooth.  The dough will be hot so let it cool a bit before you start kneading.

These are the materials that each kid got:
The bags of decorations had sequins, pony beads, jewels, pipe cleaner & a plastic knife.
The brown bag was an oversized lunch bag that they could use to take home all of their supplies.

I had envisioned the kids making tall Christmas trees, but most of them wanted to design flat ones.  Both work great with the playdoh.

Another mom made these cute snowman popcorn cups for a snack

HELP RUDOLPH CATCH HIS NOSE
Give each kid a straw and a giant pom pom.
Let two kids race by blowing the pom pom nose down the table.

TRIM THE TREE
Grab a package of green streamer paper and take turns wrapping kids up like a Christmas tree.  You could add bows for decorations.

SANTA STACK
Build Santa a new hat out of red solo cups.  Try to get them as tall as possible and add a giant pom pom on top.  You could race, give a time limit or just build for fun.  My kids LOVE this one.  Knocking it down was just as much fun as building.

CHRISTMAS CRAFTS
Our local library hosted a fun Christmas craft night so I signed Olive up for it.  It was free and we had a great time trying out some new crafts.

Painted Tea Towel - use Christmas stickers to stick to the towel.  They had precut stickers from a cricut machine for us to pick from.  Add fabric paint around it making sure to coat all the edges.  Once you've done it, remove the sticker and let it dry.  Olive picked sparkly gold for her towel.

Christmas Wooden Spoon - Tape a line on the spoon so the kids know where to stop painting the handle.  Let them paint the handle on all sides with Christmas colors.  Some people taped off stripes.  Olive wanted to do her own design.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year!!

Brunching with Santa & His Reindeer

We had our annual Santa brunch at the country club on Sunday and it was our best one yet. 

The kids were excited and we all had a fun time.  It wasn't perfect... Olive ran away from Santa the first time through the line so we had to go back a second time.  She'd only go near him if I agreed to hold her hand.  No professional photographer this year so our pictures aren't as good.  But, we got to spend the morning with friends eating delicious brunchy food and getting excited for Christmas.

The live reindeer are always a big hit.  These were baby reindeer at 8 months old.

 Fletcher got a little close and ended up spooking the reindeer.  Their owner was reminding kids not to touch the reindeer or they'd lose some of their Christmas magic.

Santa & Fletcher trying to convince Olive to come over and talk.

Silly Santa has a tickly beard

The chef worked on a special Christmas surprise.  This giant gingerbread house was so cool!  It smelled amazing and the kids could go inside.  It was really impressive.

 Cookie decorating station.

Santa round 2.  Fletcher happily hung out on his lap and Olive was chatty.  She told Santa her Christmas wish list and what Fletcher wanted, too.

Santa Brunch 2016

Santa Brunch 2015

Have you taken your kids to see Santa yet??

JOY & LOVE Filled Family Pictures

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!!

Wishing you loves of JOY & LOVE this holiday season!!

I was SO happy with how our cards turned out this year.  I have ordered our cards from Sams for YEARS.  I plan my holidays around ordering during their Black Friday sale every year.  You can get 100 cards and envelopes for just $15!!  They're 6x8 on photo paper.  Mark your calendars for next year to take advantage of it.  PS If you're ordering 150+ it's cheapest to order 2 sets of 100 instead of 150.  If you order them in 100s you only pay $15 per set instead of $40 for 200.

I also wanted to share our 2017 family pictures with you today.  My sweet cousin Lacey has taken our pictures for years.  She puts up with our whole crew, looks at our inspiration photos for poses and we're so lucky to have her in the family.  We book her every other year and give my mom a gift card for the photo session for Mother's Day.  We all love to get updated pictures even if it's a lot of work to pull together.

Here are 4 tips we've learned over the years:

1. Pick 3 colors for pictures and then work in lots of neutrals - jeans, khakis, black pants, etc.  WE did black, pink and green this year.  Find an inspiration picture or outfit to base all of the outfits off of and share it with all the moms in the group since they're usually doing the shopping.

2. Scout out your location ahead of time and pick your favorite spots.  Set bar stools, benches, blankets out in advance so they're ready to go for the shoot.  Also scope out pinterest poses ahead of time and screen shot them on your phone.  We always do pictures at my parents house.

3. Make it quick!  The quicker you can get everyone in their spots the better.  As all of the kids are getting older it's easier.  We used to shoot for being done in 30 minutes, but now with the kids being older we say we get all the pictures done in an hour.

4. Try to pick a cooler time of year.  We've done pictures in August and they were HOT.  We love to do Fall pics so we're all pretty comfy while taking pictures.

We all agreed these were our easiest, best family pictures to date!

My parents

The original 5 :)

My parent's Christmas card:

All the grandkids with Mimi & Papaw

This line up of the 9 kids is so sweet!  I think we may just make them do this now for every family picture.

My brother and his family

My sister and her crew

These three girls are all about the same age.  Olive will join them in the 5 year old club in May.

How often do you do family pictures??
They're a lot of work, but always worth the effort.

PS If you're looking for the usual Tuesday Talk link up... it has been retired.  We had some people decide to bow out along some changes with the link up system rules so we are no longer hosting a big weekly link up.  We had a great Tuesday Talk run and loved linking up with you for the past few years.  Thank you!  Happy blogging!!

Cranberry Goodness

Happy Monday!  Hope you had a great weekend.  Lots of my friends in the South got snow over the weekend, but snow skipped the Midwest for now.  It was freezing so we tried to stay inside as much as possible while squeezing in lots of Christmas fun.

Cranberry isn't my favorite flavor... usually.  However, this time of year it just seems so festive!

I've always wanted to make cranberry dishes and cranberry garlands so I figured this year was time perfect time.  I've made several yummy dinners and dishes that all include cranberry.

1. Cranberry Vinaigrette
This is a seasonal vinaigrette from Aldi and it might be one of my very favorite vinaigrettes ever!!  It's under $2 a bottle and it's so good.  It's perfect on every kind of salad - veggies, berries, grilled chicken, etc.  I need to go and stock up on some before it all sells out.

2. Cranberry Candied Jalapeno Chicken Meatballs

RUN to your nearest Sams and buy some of these amazing meatballs!  They're on sale right now and they're so good.  We've already purchased a couple of packages of them.  They come in a two pack so you don't have to make them all at once if they're just for dinner.

I made them for us and then we took them to Kevin's Christmas party.  People raved about them and they were so good that we took home a clean plate.  Kevin didn't even get to eat one.

You just have to heat them up and I like to brown them a bit. I have served them two different ways and both were delicious.  They're really flavorful and NOT SPICY.  I don't like spicy things and these were perfect for me.

Option 1: Meatballs with Cranberry Rice
Brown meatballs in a skillet.

Serve with a rice medley of white rice, onions and cranberries.  I chopped fresh cranberries and yellow onion.  Sauteed them with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Then added in the cooked rice.  It was delicious.  I even added in some feta to mine.

Option 2: Meatballs with Cranberry Dipping Sauce
Heat and brown meatballs.
Serve with a delicious cranberry sauce.

1/2 can cranberry jelly
3 T berry jelly
minced red onion
minced yellow onion
1/2 c chopped fresh cranberries

Cook the veggies first and add in the jellies last.  Let them cook together until the sauce thickens up.
It was such a good dip.  I didn't coat the meatballs in it, but served it on the side.

3. Cranberry Wild Rice Salad
I took this to my Friendsgiving luncheon and several people asked me for the recipe.

1 box of wild grain rice cooked as directed
11/4 purple onion chopped
1/4 yellow onion chopped
1/2 c fresh cranberries chopped
olive oil
feta cheese
4 links of chicken sausage (I got mine from Aldi)

Cook rice.

Saute all veggies in olive oil until they are soft.  Add in cooked rice.
Slice and brown chicken sausage in another skillet.
Add sausage to dish.
Sprinkle feta on top.

Serve hot or cold.  Both were delicious.  And it's just as good leftover as it was fresh.

Do you cook with cranberries this time of year??

I'd love for you to leave me a link in the comments to your favorite cranberry recipe!