Christmas Preparations

I've heard/read alot of neat ideas for the days leading up to Christmas. Most of them I'm going to keep "on file" to use when our kids are a bit older and understand the passing of time and days better. The "are we there yet?" phrase comes into my mind when I think of trying to explain that Christmas is 24 days away to a 3 1/2 y.o. and a 2 1/2 y.o. (most of the ideas I've heard about involve doing something every day starting on Dec 1st)

So, today is 7 days before Christmas, and we made a Christmas chain. Of course I forgot to take a picture of it...it's just a typical paper chain made out of alternating red and green strips of paper that I stapled together in a loop and then interchanged and interlocked. I put a yellow star at the top which represents Christmas Day. We will take one link off every day. As the chain gets shorter and closer to the star, we are getting closer to Christmas Day! I wrote a special activity on the back of each individual chain. Things like making Christmas cut-out cookies, building a gingerbread house, driving to see a neighborhood full of Christmas lights, watching a Christmas movie, etc, etc.
Today we made some more Christmas cut-out cookies. It went soooo smoothly too! I think I have found the "special ingredient" to having fun making cookies w/ toddlers...MAKE THE DOUGH AHEAD OF TIME!!!! I made the full recipe 1 or 2 days ago. I split the dough in half and wrapped each big dough ball in plastic wrap followed by aluminum foil. I put one dough ball in the fridge and one in the freezer. The cookies we made tonight were from the refrigerated dough. I pulled it out an hour before we were going to make cookies and it was soft and easy to work with by then.

By making the dough a day or so beforehand, my state of mind is much calmer when I begin the task of making and decorating cookies with preschool age children. I am able to have more fun since I haven't already been in the kitchen making the dough (and I don't have a sink full of dishes from making the dough either...provided I've done the dishes from the day or 2 before when I did make the dough! ha!)
And by only using half of the dough, we don't have too overwhelming a task in front of us of never-ending rolling and cookie cutting. It was "just right". We actually fit all the cookies onto 2 cookie sheets, so I didn't even have to deal w/ shuffling the cookies to the cooling rack only to roll and cut more cookies for the next pan, etc, etc.
Here's a picture of our completed product! My slightly-OCD-just-like-I-am 3 1/2 y.o. was my helper tonight (as Daddy took the 2 1/2 y.o. out to Target) as evidenced by the nice, neat sprinkles!



Testing out the Christmas Hats! (with the Fall Leaf project still up on the window)

Trying to get them to pose under the Christmas Tree

Good thing I didn't spend the time to coordinate their outfits b/c they were in quite the silly mood and Levi would not give up his blankie.