The Semiconservative Granola Girl

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Day Eight: Bake Christmas Cookies

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Today is day eight of the 25 Christmas Activities to do with Your Family. Today we are talking about baking Christmas cookies. In our house most of the year, we try to keep sweets out of the equation. Needless to say, as much as I like to bake, we don’t bake very much or very often. Christmas cookies are the one exception. It is a time when we bake cookies and we often bake a lot of them.

Day 8 Bake Christmas Cookies

Bake Christmas Cookies

This is a great time to bake cookies with your kids. There so many benefits to cooking with kids. It teaches them about math and measuring and volume and time, and of course, cooking and baking skills. And, it’s just fun.

Sunshine has a Christmas apron and she loves donning that apron and getting cooking. The Boy also loves to get involved.  This year we are getting new matching aprons for the Christmas cookie festivities.

making cookies

There are so many great recipes out there. We always make a cream cheese cut outs. This is an awesome sugar cookie recipe because it never gets dry. Daddy always bakes a bar cookie called fudge-revel bars.  There is a family no-bake recipe affectionately called t*rd balls.  And, we bake gluten-free peanut butter kiss cookies. We’ve been baking these since way before gluten-free with a thing. This recipe (which I got from a friend years ago) is just an awesome almost candy-like cookie. The bonus for today is the recipe for these super gluten-free Peanut butter-kiss cookies.

25 Days of Christmas Activities

So, bake Christmas cookies with your family this Christmas season.  This is a really great tradition to start with your family.  I hope that you will give it a try this December.

Day eight bake Christmas Cookies

Be sure to stop back tomorrow and for the next 17 days to find other great traditions to share with your family during the 25 Days of Christmas Activities.  And don’t forget to check out the first seven days too.

Don’t Miss a Day of 25 Days of Christmas Activities to Do with Your Family–Join our Email List today!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

Day Seven: Elf on the Shelf

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Today is the seventh day of 25 days of Christmas Activities to do with your family. Elf on the Shelf is a rather new tradition for many families. It serves so many purposes. It’s great to be able to have something the kids can look forward to every day. Her presence helps with behavior. And our children love our elf, Snowflake.

Elf on the Shelf

Day Seven Elf on the Shelf

Snowflake joined our family a few years ago. She arrived a little after Thanksgiving. Right around dinner time. There she was on the windowsill over the kitchen table along with the book that introduces the idea. Sunshine named her Snowflake and since then she has flown back and forth to Santa every night from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve.

The story explains that an elf has been assigned to keep watch and report back to Santa each night while the children sleep.  The next day, she will hide in a new place and the children of the house must find her.  Mornings at our house in December are always easier because we are up and at ’em in order to find Snowflake’s new spot.

Elf on the Shelf at Our House

Sunshine is so intrigued by Snowflake that she often thinks about her during other times of the year. She has created an apartment for her out of boxes, egg cartons and Playmobil toys. She leaves gifts and writes letters for her to deliver to Santa.

Our elf is well-behaved.  She never gets into the mischief that I hear about in other people’s homes.  It is easier to have an elf who just does her job–watching and reporting.  And there has been a time or two when Snowflake has been unable to travel.  Once, we had a blizzard and Santa told her it was too dangerous to travel.  Another time, she was so tired she feel asleep and didn’t wake up until she heard the sound of the children.  It was too late to move by the time she heard the children.  Santa forgave her for the little mishap.  December is a very busy month for an Elf on the Shelf, so clearly, Snowflake is worn out by the end.

If you prefer a more Nativity driven tradition, some homes are visited by a lamb from Bethlehem.

25 Days of Christmas Activities

So, invite an Elf on the Shelf to join your family this Christmas season.  This is a really great tradition to start with your family.  I hope that you will give it a try this December.

Be sure to stop back tomorrow and for the next 18 days to find other great traditions to share with your family during the 25 Days of Christmas Activities.  And don’t forget to check out the first six days too.

Don’t Miss a Day of 25 Days of Christmas Activities to Do with Your Family–Join our Email List today!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

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Day Six: See a Christmas Show

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Today is day six of the 25 Days Christmas Activities to Do with Your Family. One thing that we like to do with our family is see a special Christmas show. There so many opportunities at this time of year. In our area, there are several productions of the Nutcracker.  A Christmas Carol, at our local professional theater (Geva in Rochester, NY), runs from before Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.  And there plenty of other smaller theaters are also doing Christmas activities like breakfast with the Grinch and breakfast with Santa or the Jolly Old Elf.

See a Christmas Show

See a Special Christmas Show

Even high schools will take it advantage of the Christmas season theatrical and musical productions. A few years ago, my school did a production of White Christmas. While the story was something our little kids didn’t really “get,” they loved all of the singing and dancing.  I think The Boy was only just three and Sunshine was five.

This year, we are taking our family to see A Christmas Carol. It is the first time that we are going to see the show. We took advantage of buying tickets early and getting a great discount which made it very affordable for a family (less than $100 for our family of four).

A couple years ago Sunshine and I went to see the Nutcracker.  And last year, we went to breakfast with the Grinch which was followed the live action movie in the movie theater.

For each of these events, we get the kids dressed up in their Sunday go to church best.  It helps to establish all the appropriate protocols of going to see live theater. Live theater a great experience which doesn’t actually have to only take place at Christmas, but going to see a special show at Christmastime certainly adds to the idea that this is a special time of year.

25 Days of Christmas Activities

So, see a special show with your family this Christmas season.  This is a really great tradition to start with your family.  I hope that you will give it a try this December.

Be sure to stop back tomorrow and for the next 19 days to find other great traditions to share with your family during the 25 Days of Christmas Activities.  And don’t forget to check out the first five days too.

Don’t Miss a Day of 25 Days of Christmas Activities to Do with Your Family–Join our Email List today!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

Day Five: Make and Send Christmas Cards

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For Day Five of the 25 Days of Christmas Activities, I am talking about an activity which I do with my extended family.  We make and send Christmas Cards.  Each year on Veteran’s Day (because we don’t have school), Sunshine and I get together with my mom, my aunt and my cousin to make our own Christmas cards.  My mom and I have probably been making Christmas cards together for about fifteen years.  My aunt joined us 10 years ago or so.  Sunshine and my cousin have only recently  joined us.

make and send christmas cards

Make Cards

We make a day of it.  Around 9:00, we gather.  We have lunch.  I make dinner.  Actually, we get together about once a month and make cards.  But, the Veteran’s Day edition is marathon.  Each of us agonizing over our design or designs for the year.  I usually make about 40 cards in total.  Ten each of four designs.  They vary in fussiness.  Some are minimalist and simple.  Others are super complex and time consuming.  But regardless of the effort, the final result is always a beautiful homemade card to send to family and friends to remind them that we are thinking of them at the special time of year.

Send Cards

The sending of Christmas cards seems to be a dying tradition.  And yet, as someone who really appreciates tradition, I think that it is important to keep this one alive.  There are people in my lives that I only hear from once a year.   And I look forward to that Christmas card to see that they too are thinking about me.  Some years we include a letter.  Other years, just pictures of the kids.  And still others, we just send the card.  Regardless, it is a homemade card sent the old fashioned way, through the mail.

If you are not into the fussiness of making your own cards, consider making cards in the Project Life App.  Easy and beautiful.

25 Days of Christmas Activities

When we make and send Christmas cards, it really takes Christmas cards to the next level.  This is a really great tradition to start with your family.  I hope that you will give it a try this December.

Be sure to stop back tomorrow and for the next 20 days to find other great traditions to share with your family during the 25 Days of Christmas Activities.  And don’t forget to check out the first four days too.

Don’t Miss a Day of 25 Days of Christmas Activities to Do with Your Family–Join our Email List today!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

Day Four: Read Christmas Books

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Today is Day Four of our 25 Days of Christmas Activities to do with your family.  One of our favorite activities is to Read Christmas Books.  We have two bins of books that we set aside each year on January 1 which come out again the day after Thanksgiving.  Each year, both kids get a new Christmas Book for Christmas.  Some years, I agonize over the exact right book to get.  These books are from Mom and Dad and I inscribe them with the and “love Mommy, Daddy and sibling.”

Read Christmas Books

How it Started

Treasured Tales of Christmas

I have a Christmas Anthology from my aunt and uncle (oh, the stories are always about you, Aunt Vicki) which is inscribed Christmas 1980.  And honestly, until more recently, I don’t think we read much beyond the second story when I was a kid.  The first piece is “The Night Before Christmas.”  The Samuel Clement Moore poem without any frills.  But the second story.  That’s the one I remember.  It is the Christmas legend of the spider.

The spiders come out on Christmas Eve, after the family has gone to bed.  They are overjoyed by the beauty of the tree.  As they explore the beautiful tree, they leave their sticky, dull webs all over it.  Jesus comes into the home and discovers what has happened.  And because he knows that the family will be distraught if they come down on Christmas morning and find the tree this way, he changes the spider silk to tinsel.  According to legend, this is why we hang tinsel on our trees.

Treasured Tales inscription

I love that story.  That story has stuck in my brain for 37 years.  When I was pregnant with Sunshine, I read that story to her in the womb.  And because of that story and that book, I decided that I wanted to give a “heirloom quality” book to my children each year at Christmas.

Heirloom Quality

So, when I say heirloom quality, I’m thinking of a couple of things.  Each book needs to be hardcover and beautifully illustrated.  I also want them to be timeless stories.  Ones that they will cherish and love and want to read and pass on to their own children.  Sunshine will get her ninth book this year and The Boy will get his seventh.  And they love their books and we read them each year beginning the day after Thanksgiving or sometimes, if we can’t wait, on Thanksgiving night.

10 + 1 Christmas Books to Read

Read Christmas Books–10 We Love

(in no particular order)

One:  Who Will Guide My Sleigh Tonight (Jerry Pallotta)

Unfortunately, it looks like this books is out of print.  However, it is still available through Amazon.  It is probably the funniest Christmas book we have.  Santa debates the merits of all the animals who could potentially guide his sleigh.  It makes my kids laugh and laugh.  When Sunshine was in first grade, I read it to her class as a guest reader.  All of those kids laughed and laughed as well.  It is pretty silly when the giraffes get stuck in the telephone wires and the rhinos plow right through a house.  And snakes.  Did you know Santa doesn’t like snakes?

Two:  The Night Before Christmas, illustrated by Jan Brett

I am not sure if there is anyone who illustrates books more beautifully than Jan Brett.  The level of detail in her pictures are just astounding.  It is a joy to read this story that is so well known because the illustrations never cease to amaze me or my kids.  We find new things each time we read.

Three:  How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas (Jane Yolen)

The Boy is obsessed with dinosaurs.  Jane Yolen is one of my favorite authors for both kids and young adults.  It’s a perfect combination.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Mark Teague illustrates.  The dinosaurs in this book are funny and whimsical and do all the right things before Christmas to insure a visit from the big guy.

Four:  Olivia Helps with Christmas (Ian Falconer)

Who can resist a pig named Olivia who just wants to help get ready for Christmas?  She is so well intentioned and yet, things don’t seem to go her way.  This is the original Olivia.  The Ian Falconer Olivia.  Before TV changed her Olivia.  If you don’t think you like Olivia because of the TV series, check this one out.

Five:  Cobweb Christmas (Shirley Climo)

I mentioned above that I love the legend of the spiders.  The version that is in my treasured anthology of Christmas stories is almost entirely text.  In looking for an illustrated version for Sunshine, I found this one:  Cobweb Christmas.  It expands on the story to include a poor, childless woman who is aunt (Tunda in German) to all.  She loves all the animals and invites them in on Christmas Eve.  All, that is except the spiders.  She cleans well and shoos them all away.  They sneak back in and leave their dull grey webs around.  In this version, it is Santa who uses his powers to save Christmas by changing the silk to tinsel.

Six:  Mortimer’s Christmas Manger

Karma Wilson is another favorite in our house.  Perhaps one of the most well loved books in our house is Horseplay.  And, she brings us Christmas joy with a sweet mouse named Mortimer whose hole in the wall is chilly and dank.  He discovers a great little set up in the living room of the family’s house around Christmas time.  The only problem?  These statues are in the way.  Each night he moves them out and sleeps in the perfectly sized bed with straw.  Each day, the family returns the statues to their places.

It continues this way until he hears the father of the family reading the story of Jesus’s birth.  Then he realizes the significance of the bed he has been sleeping in.  He moves the statues back and moves into this cozy little gingerbread house just down the table.  It is so charming and it reminds us of the real reason for Christmas.

Seven:  How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Dr. Seuss)

Daddy’s favorite is definitely How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  It is the first one he will pick out the box to read when it is his turn to do the reading.  If you don’t have a copy, this is a must add to your collection.  Really, I don’t think I need to say more.

Eight:  Llama Llama Holiday Drama (Anna Dewdney)

This books is a great reminder to not let all the things we “need” to do get in the way of slowing down to enjoy time with your family (which is really what this series of 25 Days of Christmas Activities is all about).  Llama Llama is dragged around by Mama while shops, wraps, bakes, etc.  All Llama Llama wants is to spend time with his Mama.

Nine: Bear Stays Up for Christmas (Karma Wilson)

Did I mention that we love Karma Wilson in our house?  Did I mention Hogwash!?  Her Bear series of books is also delightful.  Bear Stays Up for Christmas is also a sweet book of friendship and family.  A story about sharing the joy of Christmas through food and thoughtful gifts.  Bear is hibernating, but his friends so want to share Christmas with him.  So they try to keep him up.  They decorate and share a meal.  In the end, Bear is the only one who stays up for Christmas.

Ten: Just Right For Christmas (Birdie Black & Rosalind Beardshaw)

This lovely book, Just Right for Christmas, is the story of how a red piece of cloth purchased by the king is actually made into gifts for the princess down to a little field mouse.  As each new person or animal sees the scraps left behind he or she figures out how to make a beautiful red gift for someone they love.  It highlights the joy of being able to demonstrate love through simple means.

Plus One:  The Christmas Fox (Amik McGrory)

I did the first half of the post from memory.  But then, I had to go to the bin to finalize the last couple.  And I couldn’t help but pull this extra.  The boy is obsessed with dinosaurs, yes, but he is also obsessed with foxes.  He has several stuffed foxes and a pretend one or two who pop in and out of our world, so when I saw The Chirstmas Fox last year, I knew that he needed that book to add to his collection.

The illustrations are beautiful and the fox is sweet and humble as other animals invite him to come to the barn on Christmas night.  It is almost a little drummer boy story.  The fox feels like he cannot go to the barn because he doesn’t have a gift to bring like hay or songs or starlight.  In the end, the donkey tells him just to come because “it is enough.”  And he enters the barn to see the baby in the manger.  Another one that I really enjoy because it reminds of us of the real reason for Christmas.

Notably Missing

You might be wondering why I didn’t include The Polar Express in my list of Christmas Books to Read with your kids.  But, that actually was a conscious choice.  I love the story.  The illustrations.  The idea of the boy believing.  I hate the last page when he suggests that most lose the ability to believe.  That story ruined the jolly fellow for my niece.  Around second grade she asked her mother why there would be so many Christmas stories about believing if it weren’t real.

We read it, but I always skip the last page.  Now that Sunshine is doing almost as much of our night time reading as the grown-ups are, I am going to have to be even more careful.

Read Christmas Books with Your Kids

I hope you will join us and read Christmas books with your kids.  Setting the Christmas books aside each year, allows them to become new again.  And, it’s like visiting with old friends.  I’ve heard of people who add to the tradition by wrapping the books and letting a child unwrap a new (old) book like an Advent Calendar.  But, I prefer to let our kids rummage through our two bins and pull their favorites in their own order.

Oh and I’m always looking for those heirloom quality books and stories, so it you have some suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.

And if you are looking for more great activities to do with your kids this Christmas season, check out all my posts in 25 Days of Christmas Activities to do with your family.

Don’t Miss a Day of 25 Days of Christmas Activities to Do with Your Family–Join our Email List today!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

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Day Three: Advent Calendars

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Today, we are on to Day Three of the 25 Days of Christmas Activities to do with your family.  When I was growing up, we always had Advent Calendars.  There are so many ways to include this tradition in your family’s Christmas plans.  I remember as an elementary student that we made Advent Calendar chains.  This is a really easy project to do with your kids.  Pre-cut strips of paper, and let them tape, staple or glue them together to make a chain.  Each day, they them tear one of the chains off.

Many, many years ago, my mother made a felt applique Christmas tree with 24 ornaments that hung on little gold beads.  And each year, she bought each of us paper Advent Calendars from a catalogue with little paper doors to open each day.

Advent Calendars

Our Advent Calendars

Advent Calendars have taken a twist in our house.  Each of the kids gets one with doors that open to reveal toys.  For a number of years, each have gotten a different Playmobil Calendar.  We love Playmobil in general.  (A corner of our living room is dedicated to Playmobil Village.) But the Advent Calendars are awesome.  Each day the kids get to open the doors to reveal toys connected to a theme/scene.  The first few years, Sunshine had holiday related calendars.  However, last year, we decided that there are only so many Playmobil Santas you can have, so Sunshine got a Fairy Themed Advent Calendar and The Boy got a Pirate Themed one.

    

This year, Sunshine has elected to get a Lego Advent Calendar.  She is very into Lego Friends right now.  The Boy has decided on the Hockey Themed Playmobil (although I was pushing for the Jewelry Heist one–I probably shouldn’t have given him a choice; he wouldn’t know the difference!)

If you have younger kids, Playmobil 1-2-3 now has an Advent Calendar for the under 5 crowd.  When The Boy was old enough to participate but too little for regular Playmobil, we got one from Schleich.

Counting Down to the Real Christmas

So that we don’t forget that Christmas is actually a religious holiday, we also have a Nativity Advent Calendar that I made.  It was a panel that I purchased at quilt shop a number of years ago.  Just like the Christmas tree that my mother made decades ago, the kids take turns hanging the angels, Mary and Joseph, shepherds, etc. on buttons to create the scene.  The only caveat, Jesus goes last–we don’t hang him until December 24.

25 Days of Christmas Activities

Be sure to check out the other 24 Days of Christmas Activities this month with 25 Days of Christmas Activities to do with Your Family.

Don’t Miss a Day of 25 Days of Christmas Activities to Do with Your Family–Join our Email List today!

PS. This post contains affiliate links. When you click the link and make a purchase through the link, we make a little money, this helps to keep The Semiconservative Granola Girl going. Thank you for your support.

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