Advent Countdown - Day 2

Today's book was 'Eloise Decorates for Christmas' By Kay Thompsen and others

We're big Eloise fans! Tonight our accompanying craft was to make snowman decorations of our own, with photos to give to friends!

 

Advent Countdown 2015- Day 1

Yup, It's official, I'm a fair weather blogger. Actually, since I seem to only be blogging our holiday fun, I guess that makes me a crap-weather blogger. But I digress.... This year we're doing our advent countdown a little differently. We're SO busy with dance, play practice, shows, homework, etc. that we just don't have time to do an activity everyday. So, this year "the elves" are bringing a new book everyday until Christmas, and some of those days (when we have more time), there are activities to go with the book. I'm really excited for some of them, particularly "N.H.Elf Hockey" to go with the book "Z for Zamboni."

Day One: 'Santa is Coming to Vermont' By Steve Smallman

I was delightfully surprised by this. I know they make these for each state, so I thought it would be totally generic, but it wasn't. There were some amazing illustrations of some of our favorite spots throughout the state!

Her activity was to write a Christmas list for Santa, which I assumed we would mail, but she thought it would be better to just have the elves bring it back to Santa when they came to drop off her new book the next morning. Good thinking kid!

Advent Day 23: Elfing the Barbie Dreamhouse

 

 

Ken is aiming to win the ugly sweater contest.

Advent Day 22: Handprint Nativity

Advent Day 21: Cookies with the Aunties!

Advent Day 20: Rudolph Hairdo & Party

You will need approximately 34534509586409864556 bobby pins for this. ;-)
I hot glued the googly eyes to regular-sized bobby pins, and the nose to a mini bobby pin (although who even knows where that came from!) I found it in the drawer in our bathroom, and had never seen them that size before. This took forever because she has more hair than a small country, but I think we're going to try it again for her school's 'Red and Green Day'.

Advent Days 18 & 19: Cand Cane Hunt and Colorful Snowmen

Candycane hunt! She had to find 5 in order to win a prize. She found 11!

Advent Day 17: Pin the Nose on Rudolph

Advent Day 16: Magic Message Painting

I was working on a big sewing project while she was painting, so I didn't get any pics of the final products. However, she said her favorite was the drawing of our enormous cat saying "meowy Christmas."

Advent Day 15: Snowman Night

Special glasses from Nana J. and Grampa D. that make Christmas lights look like snowmen arrived just in time for snowman pizza night!

 

Advent Day 14: Nutcracker Night

Since we had Viv's Nutracker performance today, the "elves" delivered her a ballerina ornament for the occasion. After the show we tried out the new build-your-own frozen yogurt place in town to celebrate, and we LOVED it! Between this place and the new Thai restaurant we're in food heaven lately!

Advent Day 13: Rudolph Movie Night With Daddy!

The Viv and Daddy movie night has been a tradition since the beginning, and so this year was no exception (and afforded me the opportunity to go watch a Tracy/Hepburn movie and wrap gifts  in the other room). Such cuties!
I used the FREE site Print With My Pic to make the tickets!

Advent Day 12: Snowflake Paintings

Advent Day 11: Wax "Stained Glass" Window Decorations

Advent Day 10: Family Reindeer Hands and Reindeer Cards

 

Advent Day 9: DIY Snowglobes!

We've had these strange little jars (I have no idea where they came from) for a few years, and thought they might be cute to use for making our snowglabes. I had originally intended to use mason jars, but the figurines we found were on the small side.

To  make these, all you have to do is:
- Hot glue waterproof figurines to the lid of a glass jar (make sure you can put the lid on the jar!)
- Add glitter and water
- After putting the lid on the jar, seal by hot-gluing around the edge of the lid

 

Advent Day 8: Elf Bowl!

Quite the victory dance in that bottom photo! This was one of the activities she told me she hoped the Elves would have her do again this year, so I was pretty excited when I found out my husband had kept the whole set!

 

Advent Day 7: "I like warm hugs..." (and pancakes)

I was so exhausted when I typed the elf note for this that I didn't even register the awkward word spacing. Whoops. Errr... I mean, wow, those elves sure can't type! But I digress... since I knew we would have a bit of extra time this morning, I planned a Frozen themed breakfast for Viv and Nana J. Viv already told me that my Sven was not fantastic. Noted, I will work on my pancake artistry ;-)

Advent Day 6: A visit to Santa and surprise visitor

Today we took our annual vissit to Santa, but the real fun was that Nana J planned a last minute trip to come see Viv's show tonight!

(Santa photo by www.randileephotography.com)

Advent Days 4 & 5: Manger and Reindeer Games II.

This week is pretty light on activities because of play practices and performances. Between all of that and work and school, we had to choose things that were simple. 

We do this one every year, and Viv really loves it. She actually tried to get us to do this one about a week ago. This year we also read the book "Santa and the Christ Child" which is wonderful, and i highly recommend it.

Reindeer Games II: Holiday Memory game. She loved the Olaf!