Grandma Charlotte and Auntie Judy have had plans for a gingerbread house decorating afternoon in the works for several weeks now. While Auntie Judy took charge of making the gingerbread pieces and assembling the house, Grandma Charlotte collected all kinds of {healthier} decorations so that Miss G could decorate and snack a little along the way too.
With all of the prep work already done, today, we popped over to Auntie Judy’s house {conveniently located just down the farm’s lane way} to let Miss G decorate her first ever gingerbread house.
After Auntie Judy whipped up a quick batch of frosting, Gracen got started with ‘painting’ the icing onto the house using a popsicle stick.
Her decorations included all kinds of dried fruit and nuts, as well as sesame sticks and breadsticks, and while not the most traditional of decorations, Grae didn’t mind one bit.
She completely covered the roof and two sides of the house, then decided that doors and windows were required on the front and back.
Afterwards, with the help of Papa, a fence was added to the backyard.
Tadaaa! The finished product.
♥
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Upcoming destinations on our Christmas 2012 adventure include Cochrane, Edmonton, and {the wee little town of} St. Paul. Fingers crossed the nearly 40 hours on the road will go easy on us…
Beautiful light displays.
Through the tunnel.
Chillin’ with Frosty.
Firefighter Grae.
The happiest little girl.
Magical.
“Mama, take Grae Grae’s picture!”
Warm milk to end a lovely {and chilly} night.
Not too long ago, Miss G ‘s 
This time, we started with an ‘O’ shaped cardboard base. Gracen glued her puzzle pieces (this time using just regular white glue) onto the cardboard doughnut, overlapping them as she went along.
When the ‘O’ was covered to her liking, we set it aside to dry for a while.
Later in the day, she came back and painted the puzzle piece wreath all green. She quickly discovered that dabbing the paint on gave much better coverage than brushing it on, so she went with that method.
When she was done painting, we let the wreath dry again.
Next came the really fun part – decorations! She chose magenta sequins as holly berries, but you could easily use buttons, mini pompoms, foam circles, or dot stickers too. Just add some dots of glue to the wreath and pop your decorations on.
The last step was adding a little ribbon bow I’d quickly made for her… Regular white glue worked just fine for this job too.
Story time with Mrs. Claus.
A visit to Santa.
Lovely horses in the post office.
Santa’s toy workshop.
Elf school in the barn.
Goofy Gracen and Papa.
For the last few days, Gracen’s been working on these sweet little nature wreaths at her 
It started out as a very simple painting station with a few cardboard o’s and some paint in different shades of green.
When the paint was dry, I added a few other things into the mix… Glue, mini pinecones, bits of evergreen tree, and dried out red berries from her 
Though this creative table set-up didn’t take off quite like the 
This morning, after walking past the wreath on our door, she asked if she could have some bows for her wreaths, so I brought out my glue gun, cut up some ribbon, and added a few to the table.
After adding her bow, she put on the finishing touches…
And voila! A beautiful little Christmas wreath made of things {mostly} found outdoors.
While we don’t have a Santa photo for Gracen’s very first Christmas (we were living in Kuwait and didn’t really have the opportunity there, so we planned on getting one taken in Paris while we were on vacation, but ended up spending 3 and a half days in the Frankfurt airport and never making it to France due to weather conditions…), here’s a comparison of Grae’s santa photos for this year and last. It’s amazing what a year does, isn’t it? In the first one she still looks like such a baby, and in the second, she’s clearly a little girl (*sob*). 
I love how the first one starts out very seriously, in the second you can see a cautious smile sneaking out, and in the third she looks like she’s having a good time. 
In the end, the photographer asked if she’d like to sit with both Mama and Santa, and she agreed {although she doesn’t look overly thrilled}. 
Today Gracen’s 
Gone are the crunchy leaves, dried out sunflowers, mini pumpkins, new apples, and shedding cattails…
And in are the bare branches, pinecones, evergreen limbs, and dried red berries.
If we’re striving for accuracy, the title ‘Christmas shelf’ would probably be more appropriate at this point, but we’re sticking with ‘nature shelf’ because soon enough all of the little Christmas extras (many of which were mine when I was little) Miss G carefully selected and added will be tucked away until next year and we’ll be back to having shelves filled with plain ol’ nature things.
And because we don’t have quite as many wintery things as we did autumn-y things, we decided to use the bottom shelves for seasonal books, which Gracen loves having on display.
Today, 
While puzzle pieces are the main material, a few other things are needed to make this pretty little ornament… Glue of some sort (craft glue or hot glue would probably work best), some white crafter’s acrylic and a paintbrush, a scrap of cardboard or card stock cut into a circle, a small piece of ribbon or string to hang the ornament from, and some glitter (completely optional, but not in Miss G’s opinion).
To get started, glued 3 puzzle pieces onto our cardboard circle, evenly spaced like this.
During the process, we quickly realized that pieces shaped similarly to this one were going to work the best, so we dug those out and put the others aside.
Next, we added 3 more puzzle pieces. We tried to place them on top of the original 3 as the instructions say to do, but when it didn’t work out very well for us, we slid the original 3 out closer to the edges, and added the next 3 onto the edges of the cardboard circle too. It worked out perfectly and was much easier for Gracen to do.
When our snowflake was completely dry about an hour later, Gracen gave it a good once over with white paint.
While the paint was still wet, she did the job I think she looks forward to most when crafting…. She sprinkled on a very generous amount of sparkles over the entire thing.
Later in the evening when her snowflake was dry, I hot glued a little loop of ribbon onto the back, and voila – a new handmade ornament to add to our tree.
Last night, I sliced my finger open {after my very favourite ever vintage mixing bowl fell from our infamous mountain of clean, drying dishes and shattered all over the floor *sob*}. As I shuffled through our catch-all closet to retrieve the first aid kit, I stumbled upon a giant bag of forgotten about epsom salt. And that’s how this random little sensory activity began. ☺
Having used regular salt {on trays} for drawing and letter printing practice in my classroom many times before, I knew that epsom salt would be just as fun. But to amp it up a little and make it more festive, we decided to turn out plain old epsom salt into the candy cane variety with a little peppermint extract and food colouring.
Of course my little helper did most of the work. 
Then we added a spoonful of peppermint extract. And because this was the white batch, zipped up the bag tightly…
And shook it up.
We repeated the process twice more, this time adding food colouring into the mix. The end result was a tray of minty fresh, candy cane-coloured epsom salt just begging for little hands to play with it.
I gathered up a few spoons and some silicon muffin cups, and Miss G retrieved some Christmas cookie cutters.
Then she got to playing.
First up was making “pucktakes” (cupcakes according to our silly little girl).
Of course pucktakes need candies and cherries on top, so off she went to collect some buttons.
This simple little sensory station kept her happily engaged while I made dinner and washed a big load of dishes, plus our whole kitchen smelled deliciously of peppermint.
And the fun didn’t stop there… When bath time rolled around, Miss G picked her very favourite epsom salt cupcake to take along with her.
To get started, I purchased 25 of these flat 5 by 7 paper bags (you don’t want the lunch-style ones that fold out at the bottom) from one of my favourites – 
Then, using one of the stamp sets I use for my 
Next, I selected an area of wall to hang my calendar. I went with this spot because it’s right along the ground and allows Gracen to reach her own bags each day, but you could really do any spot you wish. 
Next, I filled the bags, added a note inside each, sealed them shut with washi tape, and hung them on the lines with mini wooden clothespins.
Originally, I had really wanted craft paper bags, but I actually think the white ones turned out perfectly. They are just see-through enough to show the shape of the object(s) inside, which gets Miss G really curious.
This year, because Grae is nearly obsessed with adding to the tree each day, we decided to make her advent calendar all about ornaments. Some days her bag will be filled with a purchased or previously made ornament to add to the tree, and other days, she’ll have to create the ornament first. Either way, there will always be a handwritten note included that tells her why the ornament is special or what she can create using her materials.
♥