Weekly Goals: December 13-19

We decorated flat gingerbread houses this week. We cheated and bought a kit because that was just easier, but I do eventually want to construct a full on gingerbread house from scratch.  That will probably not happen for years though.  The kids kind of had fun, and kind of didn't quite have the skills to do what they wanted.  I think this will be a bit more fun in a few years.

Last Week's Goals:

• Mail Christmas cards!  I have them all sealed and stamped and ready to drop in the mailbox tomorrow.
• Continue working on homemade Christmas presents.  This went well this week, and I got a lot done.  More this coming week!
• Make a Christmas treat.  Done! You can find the recipe for White Chocolate Treat Mix here.

This Week's Goals:

• Make food treats to share.  I'll be making more White Chocolate Treat Mix, and some pretty normal Chex mix (minus the pretzels so it's gluten free).  I'll also be making some more Ritz cookies to share as well.  These are definitely not real food treats, but it's some of the stuff we enjoy (and others do too!) around the holidays.
• Finish making Christmas presents.  As I think I mentioned last week, I'll be sharing those projects in a few posts after the gifts are delivered.
• Take at least one afternoon rest time to relax and read a book and NOT work on something.

What We Do To Celebrate Advent and Christmas

I've seen several other bloggers posting their Advent traditions, and I thought I'd share mine as well.  Kind of.  We don't have a ton of traditions for Advent and Christmas yet.  We're still figuring out what we like and don't like, and what works for our family.

For Advent itself, we do a couple things.  We have an Advent wreath on our dining room table, which we light at dinner time.

And we also have this 12 day Advent calendar, which we use as our nightly devotions leading up to Christmas Day.  Each box has a little cutout inside with the person or thing of the day, and the devotions focus on that.  The boxes turn around to make a nativity scene.

The kids like to take turns with that.  Sometimes we have the chocolate calendars, and the past two years we had the Lego Advent calendars, but this year we didn't end up getting anything extra. We have an ornament that plays either a hymn or a part of the Christmas story for 25 days, but we didn't end up getting that out this year.  Once the kids put their ornaments on the tree, I thought it looked nice, so I didn't bother getting out the rest of the ornaments.

We also have church each Wednesday night, which is still difficult for Elizabeth, because she wants to either crawl around or go to bed, neither of which is an option.  Next year will be a different world, I can already tell.

I've been trying to limit the extra activities, because we end up being really busy in December anyways, but there are a few things we are going to try to make time for.

• Making paper chains to countdown to Christmas.
• Decorating the Christmas tree.
• Decorating flat gingerbread houses.
• Driving around to see the Christmas lights.
• Sending out Christmas cards. 
• Making a fun garland to hang over our school room doorway.
• Make a Lego nativity.
• Adding some fun Christmas worksheets and activities to our school day.  I've been saving things like nativity puppets and word searches and color by numbers for days when we want to still do something, but not necessarily anything too hard.

Will we get to all of these? Maybe.  Maybe not.  If not, there's always next year.  What do you do during the Advent and Christmas season?

White Chocolate Treat Mix

When we visited my parents over Thanksgiving, my mom gave me some extra almond bark that she wasn't going to use.  I knew I wanted to make some sort of treat, and one that the girls could actually eat (although we'll probably still make some more of these!).

So we came up with a popcorn Chex mix that is easy to make and really tasty.

Ingredients:

• about 10 cups popped popcorn
• about 3 cups Chex cereal
• about 1/2 cup M&Ms or candy of your choice
• about 1/2 package almond bark, melted

Directions:

Mix the first three ingredients in a large bowl.  Dump almond bark on top and stir to coat.  Pour onto a parchment lined cookie sheet (or two) and let cool/harden.  

You'll notice all the ingredients are approximate.  This is what I used for this batch.  You could add in other things to this mix too.

• pretzels
• peanut butter chips
• any kind of nuts
• chocolate chips
• small candies like rolos or mini reeses

You'd need more almond bark depending on what and how much you add.  The possibilities are pretty endless though!  What would you put in your treat mix?

Iron Craft Challenge #24: Lego Ninjago Ornaments

It's been awhile since my last Iron Craft post.  Crafting has kind of taken a backseat to life at this point.  But I did do a project this time around that fit with the theme.  Each year we like to add one ornament to each kid's collection, with the goal of them having their own collection of ornaments when they grow up and move out on their own.  My parents did that, and it's a tradition I love!

I also like the ornaments to reflect something the kids are interested in (like these Thomas the Tank Engine ornaments made from toy trains from a few years ago).  This year the boys are really into Ninjago (that's Lego ninjas, if you're not in the Lego stage of life).  And there are really not a lot of options to buy Ninjago ornaments, unless you just hang the minifigures on the tree and call it an ornament.  

So I decided to make them.  I found a pattern for keychains here.

I used the trick of using a gluestick to glue the paper pattern to the felt, which I think I learned from the Iron Craft-y ladies.  It peels right off, but it sticks while you're cutting.  Then I followed the directions to stitch the details on these guys.  I sewed a ribbon loop to the top and voila!

And then the boys hung them on the tree.  Hannah got a Rainbow Dash pony for her ornament, and I still have to find something for Elizabeth for this year.  Jesse bought a little Superman and Wonder Woman for us as well.  Ornaments for everyone!

Weekly Goals: December 6-12 and Clearing the Surface Clutter

We put up the Christmas tree this week, and these two goofs were really excited to hang their ornaments.  Christmas is pretty much the only holiday I decorate for (at least for now), so I enjoyed putting up a few things around the house as well.

Last Week's Goals:

• Put up the Christmas tree and other decorations. Done!
• Declutter a few specific surfaces that always bother me when I look at them: the shelf above the craft cupboard, the ledge in the upstairs hallway, and the top of the appliance island. Done (almost)!  See below...
• List the rest of the lots of baby clothes on ebay. Not done.

Here's the shelf above the craft cupboard before (I apologize for the lighting, but there's really no way to get a good photo staring at a window).

And after! I moved a few of the decorative items from the mantel over to this side to make room for Christmas decorations, and put most of the stuff that was up there away.  Because honestly? Most of the stuff up there did not belong.

Here's the pretty fireplace with the Christmas decorations all set to go.

That space was easy enough to take care of, because I knew I wanted to put up Christmas decorations.  The other two were a different story.  Here's the upstairs ledge before:

I love this ledge because it's an easy place to set things down, but I hate this ledge because it's an easy place to leave things for months.

It took me about ten minutes yesterday to put everything where it belonged or find a home for it.

And finally, appliance island, as I have named this cart.  The top always gathers extra stuff.  

There's no after for this one, because I didn't get to it yet.  But 2 out of 3 isn't bad!

This Week's Goals:

• Mail Christmas cards! This is one of my favorite things to do, and I love receiving updates and pictures from everyone else too.
• Continue working on homemade Christmas presents.  I will be doing a post (or two) after Christmas to show you all what I've been working on.  For now, I'll just have to be vague...
• Make a Christmas treat! My mom gave me a bunch of extra baking chocolate and almond bark, so I'm going to make some sort of popcorn/chex/white chocolate mix.  Hopefully it turns out well (and I'll certainly share if it does).

Broccoli Fried Rice

Happy 5 year blog-o-versary to me!  Quite a bit has changed in the last 5 years, and I hope you've enjoyed the ride so far!

We've already turned our favorite chicken fried rice into homemade takeout, so I wanted to try a veggie version.  I took the same recipe, but switched out chicken for broccoli.  It turned out pretty good, although the kids definitely preferred the chicken version.

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 2-3 carrots, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 eggs
• 4 cups cooked rice (I used about 1 1/3 cups dry brown rice)
• 5-6 Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1-2 cups frozen broccoli

Directions:

Heat olive oil over medium heat in large skillet.  Add carrots and onion, and saute until soft, about 5 minutes.  Add garlic and cook for 1 more minute.  Move veggies off to the side and scramble 2 eggs, stirring occasionally until cooked.  Mix into veggies and add remaining ingredients, stirring occasionally, until broccoli is cooked.

Quick Tip: Use Up The Last Of The Dish Soap

When the dish soap is just about gone, don't throw the bottle away!  Instead, the next time you do the dishes, run the water through the (nearly) empty dish soap bottle first, and throw the lid in the water too.  There's usually enough soap coating the inside of the bottle and lid to fill your sink with suds for one more load.  Plus, then your dish soap bottle is rinsed out and ready to be recycled!