Christmas Traditions

I know it is a bit early for talking about Christmas, but I was asked by Paperless Post (I wasn't paid) to share some of the traditions we have for the holidays.  I love Christmas and have Christmas on my brain anyways, since I'm helping to plan a huge party for my husband's work (75 tables!).

With the recent moves, some of our traditions have changed, but most remain.  For example, while living in Idaho, I loved going into the forest soon after Thanksgiving to find our Christmas tree and then decorate it while listening to music and drinking hot cocoa.  Now that the forest has been replaced with onion fields and vineyards, we got an artificial tree, which Michael loves, because it is prelit.  So we now we do the same thing just with a different tree.  Though we don't use Santa (except dressing up Vanilla as Santa), we put up stockings and put in small fun surprises and treats for the girls.

Something else we try to do each year is to make cookies and chocolates.  Growing up, my Grandma did this every year and since she passed, I have been trying some of her recipes.  One of my favorites of hers are Peanut Butter Balls, which I have blogged about here.  Someday when I'm brave enough, I will try making her Almond Roca.  In addition to those, we usually make Oreo Truffles.  For the cookies, we often make gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies.  One year, we make some Perky Penquins and Candy Cane cookies that we a huge hit.

Another tradition we have been starting for the girls have been Advent Calenders.  In the past we have read different parts of the Nativity Story each day.  This year I got a Meri Meri one, that I think the girls will love, since they will be building the Nativity Scene and can play with the little pieces.  A plus for me is that we can reuse it.

Some years we send out Christmas cards.  The year that sticks out in my mind the most is one where our Christmas cards were also an announcment that we were going to have baby Eleanor!  Looking through Paperless Post, there are a ton of amazing options (including a bunch of free ones) and they will even email or mail them for you.  I could spend hours pouring over them trying to decide which one I want to use.  You should check out their Christmas Collection here.

What are some of your favorite traditions?

Grandma's Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

Every year my grandma would make a bunch of yummy treats.  Now that her health isn't what it was, she rarely makes them any more, so I asked her if I could copy her recipes.  One of my favorites are her peanut butter balls.  Since I made a batch this year, I thought I would share it with you.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 3/4 cups finely crushed graham crackers
• 1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 2 sticks melted butter
• 12 oz package of chocolate chips

Mix all ingredients, except chocolate, in a mixer.

Form into small balls and chill in a fridge for an hour.

Melt chocolate chips.  Dip balls and place on waxed paper.

Keep chilled until served.

I also made two different fudges (milk chocolate and butterscotch) using the recipe on the back of the Kraft Marshmallow creme jar and some oreo truffles using the recipe from here.  For the truffles, I also made some adding some broken candy canes inside and on top to keep track of which ones they were.

Merry Christmas!

2 Little Hooligans Casserole Carrier

Another one of my homemade gifts that I made are casserole carriers.  I made four.  I used the tutorial from 2 Little Hooligans and I did the same changes as suggested by Homemade by Jill.  They were pretty easy  and speedy to put together or at least they would have been fast if I wasn't making four at once.  Another change I made was that I only put Velcro on the flaps that would be on top so that it would have more flexibility for different sized dishes.  I jostled the carrier with a dish in it to make sure it would hold and it did.

I'm really glad I decided to use the cotton webbing.  I think it really helps to break up the pattern.

Now just two more gifts to sew.  I hope I can make it!

Gingercake's Play Mat/ Messenger Bag

This year for Christmas, I'm making most of the gifts.  One of the first ones I got done were for my two nephews.  I wanted a gift that would be fun and practical. I made them a fun car play mat that folds into a messenger bag.  I used the tutorial from Gingercake.

For the main fabric and what would be the roads, used some discarded jeans from my large jean supply.  I had a couple scraps I wanted to use for the "city blocks" from Monaluna's Taali collection.  

I also purchased two more prints to give it more variety and I didn't have enough of the other two.  I found a really cute collection at Hancock Fabrics with cats, dogs and various forms of transportation called M'Liss Pets.  I really wanted to get a couple yards of this one for the girls.

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I learned that I do not like fussy cutting.  It feels too wasteful for me and I can never decide the best place to cut.  Other than that, it was really fast and easy.   I forgot to take a picture of the first one I finished till the morning after I wrapped it, so oh well on that one.

I used some old jeans for the main fabric/streets and an old belt for the handles.  I also used regular snaps instead of magnetic snaps, because I didn't have any.

In the tutorial, she suggested hand sewing the side panels by hand, but my hand sewing is atrocious so I sewing it with my sewing machine with a bobbin of clear thread that would be on the play side.

I love how they turned out.  I hope my nephews get a lot of use out of them!

Super Simple Advent Calender

Now that our girls are a little older and are starting to understand and be more interested in this whole thing called Christmas, I decided to make an Advent calender for them.  I was inspired by yet another pin on Pinterest.  It caught my eye because it is based on a book we already have. 

The link took me here, where they had a reading plan already made up.  She mentioned that she was going to print off the list then cut it up to put into her advent calender, so that got me thinking.  We didn't already have an advent calender and I didn't want to spend much money or time this year making one.  So I took the list, copy and pasted it into labels in Publisher, printed,cut them out and folded them in half.  Then I took some ribbon and clothes pins and made a super simple advent calender.  In a moment of extra insanity, I decided to decorate the clothes pins with glitter, so now there is glitter everywhere thanks to the girls "helping" me.

I thought that since I put forth the effort to make the labels that I would share them with you.  You should be able to download it, if not let me know and I'll email it to you.  Feel free to use it any way you want.

Advent Calender

(By the way this is my 50th post!)