Chocolate Reindeer

Yesterday we made some yummy Christmas goodies. They are so easy and the boys loved it.

You need some marshmallows, chocolate, pretzels and we used silver balls for eyes and red icing for noses. We also used kebab sticks.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave and then dip the marshmallows in (this is very messy with little hands!)

Then you lay the chocolate coated marshmallow on some greaseproof paper and add the angles, eyes and noses, they wont stay in place until the chocolate has set.

Then you put in the fridge until set - easy peasy, then EAT!

Enjoy.......

First Half of Adventivity

Well it has been a bit busy over the last few weeks, so i thought I would do a combined post of some of the things we have been  up to!

It takes us all morning to go through the advent calendars and adventivities, but it is all good fun.

Here are a few highlights from the last 2 weeks:

Olly and I made some foamy mess that smelled like a cinnamon latte! It was basically shaving foam and flour with some coffee and cinnamon, Olly liked piping it into cupcake cases and he even made a espresso latte (yum!):

We had a lovely Family film night with the secret box! The boys were so exited when they saw it, inside was a new film (The smurfs 2), popcorn and new slippers and onsies for the whole family! We had a lovely night and haven't really come out of the onsies since...

One of the main activities obviously had to be putting the tree up! We also have a lot of paper snowflakes everywhere!

We made some snow globes which is very easy - just stick something to the lid of a jar (we used cookie cutters) and then had water and glitter to the jar before securing the lid:

These were fun - cinnamon salt dough ornaments (1 cup flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water plus some cinnamon). You can paint them, but we decided we liked the natural look!

This weekend we made stained glass cookies which turned out well, they were gingerbread:

Thomas has also tried his hand at floristry and made his first every table decoration: 

Other things that we have done have been great fun, but not always worth of being photographed!

Some of these things have included, pillow beds for watching Christmas films, Christmas stories by candle light, writing Christmas cards, and a Christmas light hunt in pyjamas - this ended abruptly as the boys wouldn't stop fighting in the back of the car!

We have also thoroughly enjoyed following the Truth in Tinsel advent calendar and the boys have had lots of fun learning more about the characters from the nativity story and making ornaments to go with each days Bible reading.

I hope you are all enjoying Advent....

Indoor Crazy Golf

We have started putting activities back when we select them from the bowl as they are outdoor ones and its too cold! This is not really the point of the activity bowl! However today we selected Indoor Crazy Golf.

We found some bricks and old bits of rubbish

We cut the middle out of paper plates, the middles were used as the starting marks and the out sides were used as the holes.

Then we built our course of 3 holes each with its own obstacle

Then the competition began!

Of course this was very competitive..

This was great fun and will definitely be something we will do again. It may have been a bit risky using a real golf ball and club in the living room, but nothing was broken!

Thank you for scrolling down!

Advent + Activities = Adventivity

Adventivity

Is it too early to talk about Christmas? I think not! I started Christmas planning in August!

This year I have decided to make the boys an Advent Calendar with activities - an Adventivity! This is not because they need an advent calendar - they already have 3 that we bring out each year, I know that a very kind Godmother had bought them some amazing ones AND they will be getting chocolate ones from family so that will mean we will have a minimum of 8 advent calendars but what other day is more in need of a countdown?

I have made it very simply, and got my idea from a mix of  a great blog One Dog Woof.  And something I have only just discovered the Truth in the Tinsel (had i found the latter sooner I could have saved myself A LOT of work!)

I have just used some small brown envelopes, butchers twine and mini pegs and I have stamped onto the envelops and used number stickers to make them look Christmassy
  

Advent is a great time to get the children interested in the true story of Christmas and that was something I was keen to include in my calendar so I am including the Scripture cards from One Dog Woof. And then I have created a list of 24 date specific activities which I will also include in each envelope.

To give you some ideas (although these are date specific to our family!) here is my list of activities (This is still slightly a work in progress and may change!):

Family games by the fire - Christmas music

Stories by candle light

make paper snowflakes and paper chains (decorate playroom)

go and have a hot chocolate and buy a new decoration

Have some homemade snow fun

You are invited to a family film night with secret box

Get the Christmas tree

Make Christmas bakes for church office

Read some Christmas stories snuggled in bed with candles

make Christmas play dough

Make Christmas tree decorations

Make snow globes

Watch a Christmas film together with a pillow bed

Have family fun on the wii

Make Christmas cookies to take to church

dress up in Pjs and drive round to see the lights

make some cloud dough

marshmallow dipped in chocolate reindeer's

Christmas craft from the book

Make Christmas Chocolates and reindeer food

Make Christmas video messages for family

Play with foam dough and make ornaments

Decorate Gingerbread men

Visit Father Christmas

 

I am also going to follow the Truth in Tinsel as best I can so we might be very busy! Hopefully this will mean lots of great activities to put on here!

I'd love to hear how everyone else is counting down to Christmas.

Thank you for still reading!

Leaf Animals

Playing in the leaves

We once went to Euro Disney (well we have been twice) in Autumn and we had a lovely time at the end we asked Thomas what is favourite bit was and he said "playing in the leaves"!! On the way to and from the park every day we passed through a patch of trees with all the leaves on the ground and we spend ages just playing in the leaves! I was surprised that this was his favourite thing, but it was great fun and just goes to show that it really is the small things!

I love the sound of leaves under foot and kicking them into the air. The boys had an inset day on Monday so when we took the dog for a walk we decided to collect leaves - its hard to get them to be choosey when collecting leaves - they just want to grab a handful, dirt and all!

When we got home the plan was to make some leaf pictures but we ended up having a really busy day and it wasn't until this morning that we had a chance. I would recommend using the leaves on the same day of collection though as they get very brittle.

As we no longer watch TV in the morning there is LOADS of time before school and this morning we got round to using the leaves, although they were a bit dry, I would recommend using them as soon as you have collected them!


All you need is leaves, paper, googly eyes and glue and a bit of imagination! 

The boys do love glueing and googly eyes make anything fun!

This is my cat/lion (really sorry that these are upside down I can't seem to change that!!)....

This is Olly's shark....

 
Thomas's 3D dragon.....

Thomas's stick man on a skate board....

Olly's man on a skateboard (not sure where the leaves or eyes came into this, it is also upside down!!!)...

As always thanks for reading - I actually found out that people other than my mum read this!!

Iced Biscuits

Easy Peasy Iced Biscuits

This really could not be easier and is a sure fire winner every time!

Take one packet of digestive biscuits (or any plain biscuit!) and all the sprinkles and icing you can get your hands on, we also made some icing (just water and icing sugar) in various colours, then away you go!

It gets pretty messy and the biscuits can get pretty tall with all the sprinkles!

Thomas was eating them as quick as he was making them!

Olly and I tried making flowers and spiders webs

We used cocktail sticks to draw in the icing.

This doubled up as pudding for tea (except for Thomas who ate about 6 whilst making them!)

Thank you as always for getting this far!

Indoor Hopscotch and Shadow Puppets

Indoor Hopscotch

When the boys pulled this activity out, they had no idea what hopscotch was, even though it is on the playground at school!

We found a space of carpet and with the help of masking tape, drew out some squares...

They then used a gogo (these are so useful for a multitude of activities!) to throw into the squares. They had so much fun hopping and jumping. It was even used as a target game.  This is still stuck to the floor in our spare room as they won't let me get rid of it and I have heard them playing it at 6:30am!

Shadow Puppets

Before we embarked on this activity we googled some ideas of easy shapes to do. We found that what everyone else deems as easy, is not always as easy as it looks! Undeterred we persisted!

We set up a torch and started the fun!

ooh I see a rabbit!

 

This is apparently a crocodile!

In the end they wanted to see what they looked like and of course their tongues had to be sticking out!!

These were very quick to do, but yet again were loved by the boys!

Thank you for reading!

DIY Angry Birds

I had honestly totally forgotten this was in the pot when the boys pulled it out!

They love the angry birds game on the iPad, but surely it has to be so much more fun in real life?

We built up a little (to start with!) tower and hid the piggies (or in our case GoGos!) in amongst the bricks...

The boys then used a power popper thing (I don't call it a gun!) to fire the bricks down...

This first tower proved far to easy - Olly actually managed to free all 6 gogos in 1 shot! So I took it to the next level....

This one took 25 shots!!!  Thomas did an amazing shot and shot a gogo right out of one of the round holes without even touching the bricks!

The boys played this for well over an hour - I am not sure if they liked it even more because I was allowing "guns" in the living room!!

They even played with it on their own the next day, this is definitely something we will come back to again and again.

Have fun constructing your own piggy hiding towers!