Christmas 2019

The Christmas season was a whirlwind.  We started Christmas early with Cincinnati Zoo's Festival of Lights opening night. We put our tree up in mid-November and slowly decorated it slowly over the following month... so slowly that we actually never finished hanging up all our ornaments this year. Over the years, I've learned that starting things early allows us to enjoy all of our favorite things about this season without becoming too exhausted and cranky. Ben and I both work full time and with both the girls in school, we already have a lot of things going on even before adding in the crazy holiday activities.

One of my favorite things about the holiday season is the opportunity to DIY easy things and creating a handmade holiday in our home. A couple years ago, I purchased a bunch of clear plastic ornaments from Michaels and we decorate a couple each year to gift and hang on our tree. We start by painting them, followed by drawing designs with paint pen, and finish off with a clear coat. It is fun to watch the girls' styles evolve over the years. Cora used to end up finger painting her ornaments and now that is something Ida does. I also love making sculpey handprint Santas each year and I can't wait until my tree is full of them.

Every couple years, I like to add some handmade gifts to our list. When Cora was 3, she painted a nutcracker for my dad... so this year it was Ida's turn. She had so much fun having painting time with mommy and was so focused on covering every single spot of that nutcracker. I don't think I took any after pictures (oops), but here is the step-by-step of how I did this with Cora.

Ida's school has a Breakfast with Santa fundraiser every year. Cora had plans to see Frozen 2 with my Aunt and Uncle, so Ida and I had a little date. We ran into Cora's friends (that Ida loves) so we ended up spending the whole time with them getting face painted, crafting, and snacking. Ida surprisingly liked seeing Santa and ran straight up to give him a hug. It was nice to get extra time with just Ida and I know Cora loved getting spoiled hanging with our extended family.

Over the last couple years, we have made it a tradition to decorate gingerbread houses as a family. It is nice to get together, have a little project, and snack on candy. 

Every year, our extended family makes potato sausage together. Cora was really interested in the process this year and loved diving in to help during each stage.

Christmas Eve and Christmas were both full with lots of family time. Our extended family celebrates on Christmas Eve with church, dinner, and exchanging presents. The girls were wound up on all the together time and treats and loved running around with cousins. We didn't make it home until close to midnight. Cora ran in the house to set up cookies and milk for Santa and went to bed so fast so she wouldn't be awake when Santa arrived.

On Christmas Day, both girls slept in until around 9:30, so we had a lazy morning opening presents and hanging out. My parents stopped by for a bit and then we went over to visit my Aunt and Uncle. We spent the afternoon being lazy, making Indian food, watching tv, and napping. In the evening, my extended family got back together and enjoyed food and games and hanging out. 

I had the week between Christmas and New Years off of work. I had a to-do list of projects and outings I wanted to do, but we totally ignored the list and spent most of the week in our jammies hanging around the house. Cora insisted that we make a trip to the Cincinnati Art Museum, so we stopped by for a little bit one weekend morning. Overall it was a really great/relaxing holiday. We enjoyed all the extra time we got to spend as a family and activities we got to attend... but boy were we excited to get back into our regular routines.

It's The Holiday Season...

We've tried to squeeze in as many holiday-type things as we could without packing our schedule too much. I haven't been great about updating the blog or posting on my Instagram, so this is just a huge dump of all our holiday activities up til this point.

We started decorating a little early (mid-November) so we could spread the holiday out a bit and not be too exhausted. It took us a couple days to decorate the tree and we have enjoyed having it up in our house. In October, I got this 9 foot prelit tree for free from someone in our community through freebox (it's like freecycle or offerup, but specifically for our community). I hit the jackpot with this score and it was fun to see how excited the girls were for such a giant tree.

This was our first year doing Elf on the Shelf. We've had him for a couple years, but really just put him on the tree and didn't really play along. This year I've moved him around most days and even Ben has gotten in on the action. The girls usually forget about him until after school and then look for him... or they'll find him going about our morning routine and it is so cute to see their little faces when they find him. Cora named him Rudolph, but we usually just call him the elf on the shelf. The girls were lucky and got a couple presents from him, but other than that he only moves around... nothing mischievous.

We've been doing a lot of crafts. You can see a roundup of my favorite Christmas DIYs in this post. We made some more handprint Santas , made our own wrapping paper and worked on painting some plain plastic ornaments. I've been keeping all of our drawing stuff out in the kitchen and the girls will draw all day long. 

I've also been doing a lot more cooking and baking. I've been making soup, cookies, and lots of banana bread. My little sidekick loves to watch and help taste test by licking the beaters. Who can turn down that sweet face?!  (sidenote: these are made with no egg, so okay to eat)

My aunt has been doing a lot of embroidering (she gifted us this cute Santa hand towel) and she taught me and Cora how to embroider. I've been working on a little present for Ben and Cora has been working on this kids cat embroidery kit. It's fun to hang out with each other and work on our own projects and chat.

We had a family outing to the Cincinnati Zoo lights. We picked a random day where we didn't have much going out and headed down for a little trip. We just did a quick loop to check out all of the lights and we hope to make it back in the next week or so when we have more time to ride the train and look at everything. 

My favorite thing about the holiday season is all of the family together time... and our family has a lot of together time. My aunt and uncle took me and the girls to see The Grinch and Santa was there. Ida was not an fan.  We also did some gingerbread making at my parent's house and the girls loved it. Our gingerbread house didn't last long, but we had a whole lot of fun making it.

We're excited about all of our Christmas Eve/Christmas family activities coming up, but we've also loved spreading out all of the holiday related things so we can really enjoy each and every activity.

Christmas DIY Roundup

Leading up to the holidays, I love to spend any extra time crafting. Making ornaments is generally pretty easy and quick and there is so much inspiration out there. I've shared a bunch of Christmas DIY's in the past and wanted to do a quick round up of them in one space.

PAINTED ORNAMENTS - I shared these last week and it was the easiest DIY for all ages. They look so perfect on the tree and I can't wait to make more in the next couple weeks leading up to Christmas.

HANDPRINT SANTA - I kind of forgot about this one until we pulled out the ornaments, but it is definitely my favorite. We're going to try to make some more this year and we're excited about the endless possibilities of hat and skin colors that we can pick.

DIY GIFT WRAPPING - This is super easy and saves money! Last year, we used leftover paint from our Handprint Santas and Cora helped paint lines all over the paper. I have also used crayons/markers in different lines, triangles, diamonds, and plus signs. It is fun to make and I love adding a little DIY touch to presents.

PAINTED PICTURE MAT - This is an easy and fun DIY for younger kids and is a great gift idea for any holiday. Pro tip: dots all over the mat helps the kids cover the entire thing and keeps it from paint from getting too muddy.

YARN WRAPPED MONOGRAM - I get a lot of inspiration from Target's holiday section and this is one that I finally got around to making. I plan on making more of these this year so Ida and I can have our initials on the tree too.

PAINTED NUTCRACKER - This is by far my FAVORITE Christmas DIY! My dad collects nutcrackers and this was the perfect present for him... I'm basically always going to feel like I can never top this gift. It was fun to make and we love seeing it displayed every December.

DIY ULTRASOUND ORNAMENT - This one is pretty popular on my Pinterest. Five years ago, it was the only DIY Ultrasound Ornament pins and now they are a bajillion... so I'm basically an ornament trendsetter. This is still a favorite DIY and the only thing I would change is I would make more so that we could have one at our own house.

Creating With Kids : Painting Ornaments

During Thanksgiving break, Cora requested that we finally paint our christmas ornaments. I bought a bunch of plastic ornaments from Michaels right after Halloween and she has been asking to paint them every single day for the last couple of weeks. We laid out some cardboard, turned on the Christmas music and got to work.

For a while, Cora was trying to be pretty neat and use a paint brush... then she started finger painting. It was interesting to watch her process. Some times she would paint her hand then put them on the ornaments and other times she would put little dots all over the ornament before mixing it all up.

While Cora was painting a million ornaments, I had Ida paint these wooden IDA letters that I purchased before she was even born. I also have ones for Cora that she painted when she was around 2.5 years old and I can't wait to get these both hung up. Ida is always pretty timid at first before she goes wild with the paint.

Once Ida was finished painting her letters, she took a page from Cora's book and tried a little bit of ornament finger painting herself. She only wanted to paint for a couple minutes before she was over it.

Once the ornaments dried, we drew some designs on top of the paint with paint pen. Cora's designs were really versatile with faces, cats, and even an ornament full of letters/numbers she knows. She was really cute drawing and saying things like "so-and-so will really like this one" and "I can't wait to give this to so-and-so"etc. Once the drawing was done, I did a light clear coat and hung them up to dry.

Since most of these are for Christmas gifts, I'm not going to share a complete after yet (all the drawings are facing the other way), but I definitely call this a successful DIY. It was easy for both girlies and was perfect to split up into more than one DIY session. 

Check out my Tips for Creating with Kids.