Advent Activities

Since Christmas is just around the corner, I thought I'd share something we did last year that I am planning on doing again this year. Last year I saw a cute pin on Pinterest that had an activity advent calendar. I have a cute advent calendar that my parents got us on our first Christmas:

The doors open up to reveal 24 drawers. I usually put some small candies in the drawers. But last year I decided that the kids get plenty of treats, so instead I put in activities. I figured out our calendar of events for the month and then planned activities for each of the evenings.

Here is my list of activities (in no particular order):
Go for a drive to see the Christmas lights.
Bake Christmas cookies.
Read a new Christmas story.
Make an ornament or decoration.
Watch a special Christmas movie with treats.
Permission to stay up late.
Hot chocolate made especially for you.
Today we decorate the Christmas tree.
Christmas coloring book!
Make Christmas cards.
Decorate the windows in your room.
Invite a friend over today.
Go to the library to find some new Christmas stories.
Listen to fun Christmas music!
Bundle up. We're going to the Lights of Christmas!
Learn about holidays in another culture.
Pick out food to donate to the food bank.
Make a gingerbread house.
Go to a Christmas Party
 Make a craft with Mom
Have lunch at a restaurant with our family
Wear new Christmas jammies to bed
Decorate cookies
Read the story about the birth of Jesus

I printed them in red and green and cut them apart in strips. The kids enjoyed doing different activities each night, and didn't once complain that there wasn't candy in there anymore. You can have a pdf copy of my list by downloading it HERE.

Dress Refashion

A couple months ago I came across a pin on Pinterest that lead me to a blog about refashioning clothes. It was a 365 project. That's a lot of redoing clothes. Well, it was very inspirational. Most of the clothes were ugly thrift store finds that were turned into cute clothes. I love thrift stores and all the treasures you can find there. So, a few weeks ago when I was there I came across some dresses. They were too big for me, but I liked the patterned fabric. My oldest is always asking for skirts and things, so I decided to refashion the dresses into skirts for her.
I finally got around to doing one.

This dress was a size 17, had smocking on the back and a zipper down into the skirt part. Needless to say, it didn't fit me, but it was cute.
And here it is as a skirt. Since there was lots of fabric around, I just cut off the top, made a casing and added elastic. I kept the zipper, but with the elastic I didn't really need it, but it doesn't hurt to have it anyway.

My daughter likes longer skirts, but seeing it on her I think I might take up the hem too. So maybe I'm not quite done with it.

Halloween Food

 It's Halloween, and I made some festive foods thanks to Pinterest. Sorry I didn't remember to get a photo of this first one before I wrapped them up for travel to the school. They are just regular brownies, with some frosting decoration. My inspiration came from here.
For dinner we had some super easy to make Mummy Dogs.

And that wraps up my month of Pinterest challenge. Of course, I will still be doing more projects I've pinned, but probably not quite as often.

Girls Activity Days

In my church, I was recently put in as an assistant leader for our Activity Days for girls. Twice a month, the 8-11 year old girls get together and do an activity, and they have a 'Faith in God' booklet with a bunch of things for them to sign off during their 4 years in the program. Sometimes the activities are just for fun, sometimes they are crafts, sometimes they are more spiritual.
Of course, once I was asked to help out I immediately went to Pinterest for ideas. I started a new board for it. Now that I am actually involved with the planning of the activities I decided to organize the ideas from the pins. I have started a word document to keep track of them, with links back to the blogs/sites I found them. Hopefully this will help us correlate with the Faith in God program and give us inspiration for our own activities and crafts, without having to go through every blog every time.

Popcorn Hands

Getting ready for my church's Trunk-or-Treat! This year we decided to make Popcorn Hands (with candy corn fingernails) to give out. There are usually less than 50 kids/teens there, so why not make a more involved treat. My kids are excited about them, so I'm sure they'll be a big hit.

Hawaiian Beef Teriyaki

I took 2 days off from pinterest, to enjoy time with my kids. And since I did 5 pinned recipes on Thursday I'm just going to let it go that I did nothing the past 2 days. Anyway, back on to the challenge. For dinner tonight I made some yummy Hawaiian Beef Teriyaki. It was great. The kids all had seconds, even my I-don't-like-pineapple child. I think we will be adding this to the regular dinner rotation.

Bake Sale

It's bake sale time at my kids' school. So I turned to pinterest to get some yummy new recipes. They all turned out great. I made popcorn balls, both plain and with candy corn (the plain ones are gluten free). Pumpkin spice cookies, both with and without chocolate chips. Caramel apple cupcakes (it's an apple cupcake with a caramel cream cheese buttercream drizzled with caramel sauce). Chocolate Truffles, rolled in sprinkles, cocoa powder, coconut, and walnuts (not all at once of course). And last, chocolate mini loaves. 

Pancake Tutu

It took me a while, but I finally finished making a pancake tutu for my oldest. It took a while because I get tired of sewing all those ruffles after about 2 layers, and take a week break in between. My oldest has been doing ballet for about 5 years now, and really wanted a big flat pancake tutu. I looked into buying one, but nice ones are hundreds of dollars. So then I looked on pinterest. I found a simple tutorial on Cosplay Island, complete with diagrams. I sewed 7 layers of tulle onto wide bias tape (unfolded). It fits her perfectly. I have not yet decided whether I will add a bottom/panty to it, but right now it looks great on her regular leotards.

Organizing Food

I've been working the past month or two on cleaning and organizing my house. Yesterday I got a new fridge. What a perfect time to reorganize my food. My new fridge is larger than my old one, and I'm not sure where to put things yet. So, I turned to Pinterest.

Here is a great little article, with videos, all about organizing your refrigerator.
This one from I Heart Organizing has lots of great photos and tips.
Martha Stewart has tips for using the layout of your fridge to help you eat better.
And Organizing Made Fun suggests different baskets for organizing.

Hope you enjoy reading over these articles and getting your fridge clean and organized!

Freezer Paper Stencil

This is one of the first things I pinned. I even bought freezer paper months ago to do this. I finally did it. And it wasn't too hard. What was I waiting for? So here is a great tutorial for doing freezer paper stenciling on shirts (or a onesie in my case).

Dessert!

I've made several desserts I found on pinterest. Last month I had half a watermelon in my fridge and made some fresh watermelon sherbet. The recipe was from What About Watermelon?, and it was delicious. A very watermelon heavy flavor, which is a good thing. It was a hit with the kids.
Another favorite dessert-type recipe of my kids is Frozen Strawberry Lemonade Slushie. They ask for it at least once a week. I admit that I love it too.
A couple days ago I tried out 2 more desserts. A basic vanilla ice cream. I usually make homemade ice cream with an ice cream maker, but this recipe doesn't need one. Interesting. And it turned out great. And I made some pink punch. I has pink lemonade, raspberry sherbet, and sprite in it. The girls at the birthday party all raved about it.
So there are my pins for today.

Halloween Costumes

I worked on some sewing projects today. Got a Halloween costume done for my oldest, and half of one done for my youngest. I did get the ideas from pinterest.
For little red, I made a half circle (took the measurement and stuff from a circle skirt tutorial). And I added a hood, made from 2 rectangles sewn together on the top and one side. For the dress I took a vogue sewing pattern that I have used before, then made a few small changes. I widened the middle section and added the lacing, and changed the princess seams so they went to her shoulders instead of armpits. I think it turned out pretty well.

For my youngest, who will be a garden gnome (because he is tiny for his age anyway), I made a simple tunic. I used a long sleeve shirt that fits him and made a pattern, adding some length to make it more of a tunic. It is just a front and back piece, the sleeves are included, not in-set. Now I just have to make him a hat, and maybe a beard and he is all set. He didn't want the belt on, or his picture taken, so this is the best I have for now. Maybe he'll be in a better mood next time.

Cinnamon Vanilla Cake

My daughter's birthday party was a 'sugar and spice' theme. So I made her a cinnamon vanilla cake,  per her request. It was delicious and all the girls loved it. I made it pink and put a henna-style peacock on it, but the sparkly gold decorators gel spread a little more than I thought it would, so it didn't look as great as I'd meant it to. Nobody minded.

Gulab Jamun and Jalebi

Today's pin is more Indian sweets. This time I made Gulab Jamun and Jalebi. Gulab jamun is kind of like a donut, fried and then soaked in a sugar syrup. Jalebi is a deep-fried batter in spirals, then soaked in syrup. I got the recipes from Show Me The Curry and Manjula's Kitchen.

Chocolate Burfi

My husband is Indian, and I've learned to make a few foods over the years. One of my favorite sites for helping with that is Show Me The Curry. They have great, easy to follow recipes, and even videos. I found this recipe for chocolate burfi. My daughter wanted to take an Indian treat to school today to share with the class for her birthday. This is what she took. It was a big hit. I also made gulab jamun (it's like a Indian donut hole). Easy to make, delicious to eat.

Book Sling

My oldest is an avid reader, and also sleeps on the top bunk in her room. Right now she keeps a pile of books at the foot of her bed. So, I thought a great birthday present would be a place to keep her books close, and her bed clear. Enter: the book sling. I saw this a while ago on Penny Carnival. Then I forgot about it for a while. Then I saw it again on pinterest and pinned it so I'd remember. So glad I did. It came together perfectly and quickly. It only took one afternoon, which is saying a lot since my kids love to interrupt. An uniterrupted person might only have taken an hour to make this.

Barefoot Sandals

Pinterest Challenge project for today: barefoot sandals. I used the tutorial from eHow. This is a project that I am trying out for the birthday party of my oldest. It was a fairly easy project, but kind of time consuming. The stretchy jewelry cord I got was too thick to fit 2 strands through a bead. So, I pulled out some 4lb fishing line to see if I could make it work.

I have decided that maybe a plain anklet would work better for the party. I could still use the stretchy cord, and they wouldn't take as much time. In the meantime I'd like to apologize for the foot picture :)

Flower Headbands

I have a whole pinterest board dedicated to flower making tutorials. One of the first tuts I pinned on this board was from Little Birdie Secrets.  I didn't have organza laying around (as per the tutorial), but I did have some silky synthetic. They melted just fine. The purple and pink ones are just circles of different sizes, but the white one was flower shapes. They turned out pretty cute. I sewed in a few beads (leftover from a knitting project from a few years ago) and then sewed them on to headbands. I made them small enough to fit on a baby, for when I photograph my friends kids, but they are stretchy enough that my girls could also wear them. So cute!

Brown Sugar Chicken

I decided to try out a new recipe for today's Pinterest Challenge. A crock pot recipe. Some days we don't get home from doing our thing until after 6, and sometimes I have to leave at 6:30 for other meetings. So, the crock pot is a real life saver (especially for the baby sitter). I looked through my pinterest to find several great pins for crock pot recipes. I decided to start easy and make something I was sure my kids would like...brown sugar chicken. They love chicken and rice, so adding sugar can only make it better right? They agree. It was yummy. They were also impressed that it had soda in it (since we almost never buy soda). They got to help drink the rest of the can too, so double bonus for them!

5 Stranded Braid Headband

Day of pinterest challenge: 5 stranded braid headband. I found this tutorial on Make it and Love it. I don't have any old t-shirts at the moment, got rid of things a few weeks ago as I was cleaning, so I just used some scrap fabric I had laying around. I had never done a 5 stranded braid before, but it was super easy (my favorite kind of craft). My fabric also wasn't quite long enough to go all the way around my daughters head (and not stretchy either), so I sewed a small piece of elastic on to the ends. Works great, looks great. I definitely see more of these in my daughters futures.