Gingerbread House Party

Earlier this month, Ethan hosted a Christmas party for his friends from daycare. 

We started off the party with hot chocolate and sugar cookies. Following our snack, we played Pin the Red Nose on Rudolph. 

The main event was decorating candy houses that I assembled the day before out of graham crackers. 

Each child received an apron that they could take home and got to work on their creations.

I wrapped each house up in a cellophane bag so the kids could take home their candy cottages. 

The party was a success and I was so thankful to my Mom and good friend/fellow mommy, Samantha, for helping with the house assembly. Their extra sets of hands came in very useful for piping on frosting and holding on candy to dry.

Sparkly Christmas Tree Craft

Earlier this year, my Grandma passed away and we were left with an entire house full of objects, collections and history to sort through.

One of the boxes was full of costume jewelry. The majority of the pieces were broken or missing pieces - such as a single earing. We were all surprised at how many broken pieces of jewelry or partial sets my Grandma held on to. I guess she never gave up hope that she would find the other half of the pair or the missing beads.

My aunts went through the jewelry and chose the items that they wished to keep. After everyone had picked through the jewelry, we were left with a small box of broken pins, earings with out a match, necklaces with the beads unstrung, etc. that were destined for the trash.

I hated to see the pretty baubles and beads tossed so I kept the broken and discarded pieces thinking that I would use them someday in craft projects.

Last week, I thought of a good Christmas project to use them and to keep them as a special keepsake of my Grandma.

I wrapped a foam cone with a wide, satin ribbon and then used straight pins to gently and securely attach the jewelry and beads to the cone tree.

I sorted through all the brightly colored jewelry and selected only those in gold or silver tones with pearl or rhinestone accents to keep the color scheme simple and slighly understated amoung all the sparkle.

Handmade Valentine's Day Cards

Ethan had his daycare Valentine's Day party yesterday and all the children brought Valentine's Day cards to exchange with each other.

I'm a big fan of handmade Valentine's Day cards for children. I know that eventually Ethan will be begging to bring those boxed cards with Spiderman on them but, until then, I want him to take part in making special cards for his friends.

This year, we cut out a bunch of hearts and Ethan decorated each of the hearts with glitter glue and crayons.

After the heart's decorations were dry, we made a hole near the bottom with a paper punch. Place a lollipop through the holes to form a flower. Secure the hearts in place by wrapping the stick of the lollipop with a green pipe cleaner to make the flower steam. We placed some bug stickers on the flower petals and then attached a cut out green leaf on the stem that had the Valentine's message written on it.

Happy Valentine's Day!