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!

Advent Day 3: Tree Day!

Advent Day 2: Snowman Slam! (Reindeer Games Part I.)

Today we played our first Reindeer Game of the year, "Snowman Slam"! This literally took 3 minutes to make and she played it for almost an hour after school!

Someone asked me where I made my photo layout from yesterday. I actually created it using a free design app called Canva. I created a template, so all I have to do is change the day number and drag in my (poorly taken, low quality iphone) photos. It takes about 2 minutes!

Advent Day 1: Christmas Peppermint Play Dough

Advent is here and we have so much planned! The schedule for Viv's Christmas play is a little more of a time committment than we anticipated, so several days this week will be fairly low-key in terms of activities.
Today we made peppermint-scented Christmas play dough (with glitter!). This only took about 10 minutes once we had all the ingredients together. Recipe and instructions below!

Ingredients (measurements are per color):

1. 1 Cup flour
2. 1/2 Cup salt
3. 1 Cup water
4. 2 Tablespoon vegetable oil
5. 1 Teaspoon cream of tarter

Mix ingredients together in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until it boils and becomes thick.  Cook an additional 30 seconds or until  the mixture pulls away from the pan.

Some prefer to kneed the food coloring in after it is removed from the stove, but I find that the color is more vibrant if added while the mixture is still in the warm liquid stage.