Santa Cookies

I wanted to share the Christmas cookie I bake each year without fail. It's a little work but worth it, because it's so cute! I got the idea from a Publix magazine a few years back.

In the magazine article they of course gave you a recipe to use, but basically it's a roll out sugar cookie recipe. I use my favorite. Let me know if you want my recipe.

I roll out the dough and cut out hearts. I have a box of heart cookie cutters from Valentine's Day that has several different sizes, so I cut out a few X-Large and then a bunch of normal size hearts.

Of course bake the hearts and then cool. Once they are completely cooled, then flip them over so that the pointy side is the top. This will become Santa's hat. Ice the top with a regular white icing, don't use whipped or anything else funny just regular white icing.

Sprinkle red sugar on them to make Santa's red hat. Then fill a piping bag with the rest of the white icing and use a star tip to make the trim on his hat, the ball on the tip of his hat, and his beard. Use a bit more as glue to secure the two chocolate chip eyes and one red m&m nose.



I'll have to do a posting on the piping process because it took me awhile to figure it out and it is really helpful with kid projects. So here is my army of Santa cookies.

I've had a lot of fun with these at cookie exchanges and school lunches! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Candy Cane Craft

In our effort to maximize Christ in Christmas, we did a Candy Cane craft and talked about how that Cane reminds us of a Shepherd's Crook. We read Luke 2 together. We talked about how the shepherds were in their field watching over their flock when an angel of the Lord appeared before them.

Here is our craft:
I got red and white pipe cleaners.

Each girl got one of each and then wrapped their choice of color around the other. Really easy, but Little Sister needed help. Big Sister had no problem.

After a little tweaking, we had our candy canes to put on our tree, packages, cookie plates, etc. We love those sugar free treats.



Paper Snowflakes

Ok, so we try and do a Christmas activity each day. Today we needed to make paper snowflakes. Here is my attempt...

1. Take a piece of construction paper.
2. Fold it in half, and then half again.
3. Cut some sort of jagged edge.
4. Open.

Big sister's remark, "That looks like a bowtie." Yep, it looked like a bowtie. We tried 4 times before I looked it up online. My trusty friend, Martha Stewart knows how to do it like a pro. Probably because she is a pro.

Here's her link that I used. Paper Snowflakes

Here are the ones we made after following directions.

Thanks Martha!

Thankful Chain Part 2

Here is our finished product!

After taking time most evenings, and some mornings, talking about what we were thankful for that day, we finally assembled our chain. It's interesting to see daily what God provides and it's especially interesting to see what to be thankful for through the eyes of my children.

Most commonly we saw the girls thankful for things they did that day, but the best is when they are thankful for their relationship with other people. I love watching them say they are thankful for their family. I love these daily reminders of thankfulness.

Big Sister working hard.

Little Sister working really hard.

Thanks for letting us show you our Thankful Strips turned into our Christmas Garland. We hang it in the girls' room to remind us of how thankful we throughout Christmas.

Thanksgiving Placemats

Here's a fun little thing to keep the kids in the thanksgiving spirit while you're getting the food on the table. I made my own Thanksgiving place mats to help keep them busy while I'm busy too.

I just took some of our spangles and tossed them about, so she could count them later. I also had her make the thumb print turkey. I have a few plastic templates so I just traced one out for her. I laminated the entire thing and that way she can use a dry erase marker to dress the girl.

To make my work last longer I did a separate page for Christmas.

I put a simple word list on one side and counting by 10's on the other. Because we live so far from our cousins I put a little snowman for each cousin with their name. I just used my scrapbook circle cutter to make them. Also, Big Sister can make word families with the endings just under her name.

I put the pages back to back and laminated them for all season long fun!