Thursday, December 23, 2010

Craft Time!

It's the week of Christmas and we're just now doing Christmas art projects. Here is a post dedicated to all of the projects we made this week. We had a ton of fun along the way!

The first is the Christmas Wreath. It's quite simple to make. You just take a green piece of construction paper and fold it into quarters. Do this twice. Trace your child's hand on each folded up piece of construction paper one time and then cut it out. This will give you 8 cut out handprints. Glue the palm of each handprint together in a circle shape making your wreath. Then take whatever you want to decorate it with. My two year old loves the little pom-poms you can buy at any craft store, so that's what we used, and in red and green .. Christmas colors! You can also use glitter, glitter glue, stickers, etc. Let your mind run wild! Here is a picture of Jacob's finished product!

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The next one we did was Rudolph. This is also easy and fun for children of all ages. Take two pieces of brown construction paper. On one trace the outline of your child's foot. This is the face of rudolph. You don't need the toes, just the shape of the foot. On the other piece of construction paper, fold it in half and trace your child's hand like you did for the wreath. Cut it out and you will have two handprints. These are the antlers. Glue the palm of the handprints to the wider portion of the foot and this is your reindeer. Glue googly eyes on the face of the reindeer and a red pom-pom on the narrow portion of the face for rudolph's nose. And there you go! Quick, easy and fun! Here is our finished product.
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The next two you will need white paint for. The first one is a handprint ornament that we make every year. Paint the palm of your child with white paint using a sponge brush. Place a blue ball ornament (plastic or glass, your choice) in the palm of your child's hand and curl the fingers up around the ball. Carefully remove the ornament and set aside to dry. Once it has dried, take a ballpoint pen and dip it in the white paint. Tap it around the fingers. This is snow falling. Then take a sharpie or paint pen and decorate each finger as a snowman. I put a top hat and scarf on each of mine. Here is the finished product of the one Jacob and I made this week.


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And the last is just something fun I thought up at the last minute. It's just a small blue felt bag, white paint and some felt snowflake stickers. I painted my son's hand with white paint using a spongebrush. I then pressed my son's hand down on the felt bag to make his handprint. It didn't turn out all that great, but we tried. After it dried, I took a blue sharpie and wrote his name and the date on it, so we'd always have it. Then I let him go to town decorating it with the felt stickers. He had a ball! Here is his finished handprint felt bag ... this is hanging on our tree this year and probably will be every year after!


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Monday, December 6, 2010

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas!

At my house! LOL I had our decorations up before Thanksgiving because of the family coming down, so I took a few pictures of everything. Take a look!


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Our tree!

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Our Nativity Scene!

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The Holidays are upon us!

The past few weeks have been a little nuts. We had family in from out of town the weekend before Thanksgiving. My sister and brother-in-law came down that weekend to visit, have a little early Thanksgiving feast with us and meet Henry for the first time. We had a really nice visit with them! Saturday night we went out for dinner at Outback and then on Sunday we had our early Thanksgiving dinner. I wish I had taken some pictures now, but at the time I just didn't even think to pick up my camera. On our menu was turkey, homemade stuffing (made by ME!), mashed potatos, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole (made by ME!) and homemade cranberry sauce (also, made by ME!).

Then on Thanksgiving day my mother-in-law, father-in-law, sister-in-law and nephew all came down from PA to visit for the holiday. Because we were limited on space, we went out to eat instead of cooking and staying in. My parents came with us and we all were off to Maggianos at Tysons Corner. Best.meal.ever! Seriously. If you ever have the chance to go to a Maggianos, DO IT! Here's a little picture of me with my little guys!



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On Black Friday, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, myself and Henry went out to brave the crowds and get a little Christmas shopping done. I managed to get all the clothes I needed to get for both boys and finished up one of Jacob's gifts at Toys R Us. It really wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. Gymboree was pretty sad (it was really well picked over), but other than that, we were able to find what we wanted and the lines to check out weren't very bad either. Friday evening we went out to dinner with my in-laws and then took my nephew and Jacob to see fire trucks at the fire house. They both LOVED it!

Saturday morning we took the boys to the Air and Space Museum. We didn't stay all that long, but they had a good time and got to see some airplaces (which Jacob is obsessed with). My in-laws left to go back to PA straight from the museum and we just went home to veg out the rest of the day. Here's a picture of Josh (my nephew) and Jacob from the Air and Space Museum.


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