Winter Chickens

This is our first winter with our chickens. They are almost old enough to start laying, and the kiddos can’t wait. Chuck has built a sweet, cozy coop for our girls, but surprisingly they prefer to play outside in the cold.

Their run is covered so most of the snow stays out of the actual run, but the girls don’t seem to mind the snow at all.

Annika love looking after the girls, but Chippy is her favorite. I love this photo!

The girls love these natural roosts. The kids have to go out every night to put the hens to bed. They are always cuddled up on this roost braving the cold. We find it intriguing that they prefer to be outside over in the heated coop.

Chippy is part of our home. Yes that is her in front of a Christmas tree in our living room. Kaleb did not want her to miss out on the gingerbread decorating party. Ha! I guess if your dog or cat can join in on family fun, why not the kids chickens right?

Christmas Ornaments

I was inspired by Courtney’s blog, A diamond in the stuff to something fun with my Christmas ornaments this year. She has an amazing blog filled with so many fun crafty projects. My favorite is her window ornament holder. I love old window’s, repurposing them and giving them new life. I wish I had the perfect window for this project, but I will have to keep hunting. I went for the next best thing, something that I have an abundance of…picture frames. These frames have been painted so many different colors, but right now I am loving them white and lightly distressed. I love how the CHristmas

I just used hot glue and a jute string to hang the Christmas ornaments inside the frame. Once Christmas is over, I will easily be able to remove the glue and use the frames again for pictures.

I love how they turned out! My favorite part is that I was able to use supplies that I had on hand so the entire project was free.

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Christmas Garlands

As most of you know, my house is all decked out for Christmas. I’ve had a few questions about where I bought my garlands. Here is one quick and easy way to make your simple store bought greens that can be found anywhere (I’ve even seen them at the dollar store) and transform them into garlands with depth and texture.

Start by hanging the garland that you will be using as your base where you want it. I like my garlands to be lighted, so I wrap a string of lights in mine. Try your best to hide the ugly green wires, I use one the garland branches to wrap around the wire to secure everything. Notice the ugly cord that is hanging down, I’m still working on hiding that. I can’t say this enough…don’t forget to take the tags off your lights and cords(like the one that is hanging just above the cord).

Next find a garland that you love; one with a different texture from the base garland. These pretty garlands can be a bit expensive, but look for after Christmas sales or go to an outlet. I love that this one has pine cones, berries and a variegated green color.

Take the new garland apart but cutting the wire that holds everything together. Sounds scary, but I promise you it is not that bad! Once you have a pile of cut garland pieces the fun can begin.

Begin by wrapping the new garland pieces around the base garland and twist it together. Continue adding pieces until the entire garland is full. So pretty!

I love the new look. Simple, cheep and pretty!

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Gingerbread Birthday Party

Christmas Gingerbread Party

My sweet girl Breanna loves parties as much as I do. She started thinking of her birthday party months ago. After much deliberation on what type of party to have, she finally settled on a gingerbread theme. I love Christmas, and could not wait to begin planning and decorating. Bree’s party was the first part of November, so that means my house has been all decked out for Christmas since the day after Halloween. I know, it seems a bit early to be decorating for Christmas but really whats a few weeks right?

These were the birthday invitations we sent out, all the party information is other side. I used foam tape on the gingerbread man to create depth. Bree loved how they turned out.

Bree wanted her birthday cake to look like a gingerbread house. Seemed simple, but I probably should have used supports. The cake slowly started tilting. Whoops. No mishaps, just a slow leaning gingerbread cake. I made 2 9×13 cakes to create this house. The kids always request chocolate cake for their birthday. My Grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe is amazing! I love that it always seems to turn out perfectly and it is so moist and yummy. Thanks Grandma!

The Christmas trees were all covered in little paper gingerbread men and white snowflakes. Since I love using what I have on hand, when I found a large roll of brown craft paper in our basement I was super excited. I was the perfect color for gingerbread men and a bit heavier than regular paper. My sister-in-law is wonderful and spent the evening cutting out all the cute little gingerbread men on her Cricut! Thanks Laurie! I outlined them with white paint. I love how they turned out, plus as a bonus they will be the gift tags on all our Christmas presents this year!

I also used cookie cutters as ornaments. They looked cute and perfect for a gingerbread party.

This is our ever changing wall. It was a beautiful mural painted by Annika’s friends at her Art party and then used a projection wall for Kaleb’s Wii party. For Bree’s party I strung Christmas ornaments on fishing line and used thumbtacks to hang them. The Christmas ornaments look beautiful at night when the tree is on. So simple, yet they have a big impact.

I made 25 little ~~Gingerbread~~ graham cracker houses ahead of time so all the kids had to do was decorate them. They are so simple to make, but take a bit of time to put them together. I used a square of cardboard wrapped in tinfoil as the base. The table and buffets were also wrapped in brown craft paper with a painted edge.

The kids loved decorating their houses. Each of the kids were given a Ziploc baggie filled with icing. I snipped a small corner of the baggie so that it worked as a piping bag. The baggies were easy for little hands to use and mess free. A definite bonus when working with that many kiddos! Each of the kids were given a cup cake liner that they brought to the candy counter. Having all the candy in one area eliminated sticky little fingers reaching across gingerbread houses for more candy and accidentally tipping one over. The kids were welcome to fill their container as many times as they wanted.

Bree wanted to play pin the button on the gingerbread man. More craft paper and white paint and voila a cute gingerbread man. We also played a game of hide the gingerbread man. Bree decorated 3 small gingerbread men with glitter glue. The game was super simple. 3 kids each hid a gingerbread man in the house, once the gingerbread men were hidden the rest of the kids tried finding the gingerbread men. So simple and easy, but the kids LOVED it. I also told the kids that gingerbread men were frightened of loud noises and if the kids wanted to find the sneaky gingerbread men they needed to tiptoe and talk in quiet whispers. So funny to watch a house full of first grades sneak around looking for the gingerbread men.

The houses turned out so cute! I love all the effort the kiddos put into each one. Bree thought it would be cute to only use Christmas colored candies (dots were her one exception). I love how they turned out!

Along with the cute gingerbread houses the kiddos made, we sent each of the kiddos home with homework. At the party while we were waiting for all the guests to arrive the kids made pipe cleaner snowflakes and gingerbread men. They turned out really cute. As part of their take home bag, I made little packets with clear instructions on how to create borax crystals along with a container of borax. Our kiddos love to create these amazing crystals. Here are some examples of borax crystals that we created for St. Patrick’s Day and Easter. I love how the gingerbread men and the snowflakes look sparkling on the tree.

This was a great party and the perfect way to kick off the holiday season. Happy 7th birthday Breanna.

Pretend Elevator

Invite a little imaginary play with this simple idea

Now that the ground is covered in snow imaginative play has become a big part of our day. I love preschoolers imagination and their ability to transform everyday objects into something wonderful. Today we created a pretend elevator in the back hall mudroom. Each floor held a new adventure waiting to be discovered.

Pretend Elevator ~ imaginative play for kids

Kids love imaginative play. No need to make a big “set-up” just flow your kids lead. You might be surprised by the adventure they take you one.

Since the mudroom does not have a door, I used a tension rod and curtain from another room. The kids thought this was great since it is not a normal room to play in.

By coloring each number the preschoolers worked on both color and number recognition. I also love that it was super easy to set up and we used things that we already had. Fun and free, two of my favorite things!

What is your favorite imaginative play activity?

Yearly Archives: 2011