Christmas Food "Hacks"

I hope that you all had and awesome Thanksgiving yesterday with your family and loved ones! I know we sure did at our house. I'm still cleaning up from it! :)

However, it's officially Christmas time!!! I adore this time of year! Everyone is always so cheerful and nice and the weather is wonderful (in my opinion) and then don't get me started on all the Christmas decorations that we get to put up and see!! I love it! Along with all those wonderful things comes a busy, busy few weeks as well... Especially for moms. We are constantly planning and prepping and cleaning and cooking and entertaining and wrapping and the list goes on. 

So, to make lives a smidgen easier this holiday season I've found some pretty creative hacks to share with you all! Some of these we've all seen before and some of them I've never even thought of doing! (And those that I haven't thought of before, were pretty spectacular in my opinion.)

Here you freeze chocolate into tree shapes and then add some icing to the backs and place them on a flat white cake to make it shine a little!

Fill empty condiments bottles with icing for decorating sugar cookies with the kids!

Dip cookie cutters in flour first to help the sugar cookies retain their shapes!

Look at this simple center piece! White candles and peppermints! Love it!

These are frozen dollops of coolwip/whipped cream to put in your mugs of hot cocoa! Such a great idea!

Three small candy canes glued together makes the perfect place card holders for your holiday tables!

Use the bottom of a crystal glass to make a unique design in your sugar cookies.

These were just a sampling of the hacks that I found on Buzzfeed! 

You can check out the rest of them over here: 38 Christmas Hacks

I hope that some of these come in handy throughout your busy holiday season this year and help you cut some corners!

-Stephanie

Snowflakes are falling

I ran across this tutorial for cutting out snowflakes the other day on Pinterest, which is perfect because I was just trying to show Joc how to cut out snowflakes from paper last week! I knew I wasn't doing something quite right with them and since I've found this one we've made a ton more that are really pretty!

These are another of those fun activities your kids could be doing while you're cooking this week for Thanksgiving and you could lay them out around the tables or on your buffet as cute hand made decorations for your guests to see!

The kids will love that, it'll bring them into the center of the attention for a short period of time during the day while their grandparents, aunts, uncles... comment on the snowflakes they made!

Here is the link for the print out of the tutorials:

Winter Is Coming!

 

This is a view of what the print out looks like... And who doesn't love Elsa and Olaf!

- Stephanie

Christmas is Coming....

So.... I promise y'all that I'm not one of those people that completely skips over Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving! It's one of my favorite holidays. I don't have my tree up already, I don't have a single decoration out yet for Christmas. I do have tons of pumpkins and pilgrims and scarecrows around, though! :)

All that being said, I'm sharing some fun looking Christmas themed activities for the kiddos to do in the coming days and weeks of no school for the holidays!

Here is the link for the activities: Christmas Time is Here You'll remembering doing some of these things from when you were a kid, too! But while you're slaving away in the kitchen preparing dishes for Thanksgiving in a few weeks the kids can entertain themselves while watching the Macy's parade that morning instead of complaining about being bored!

Here are a few of the crafts from this post:

Giant Popsicle snowflakes! 

These look really fun to make with your kids! I honestly can't wait to make these with Joc and hang them up around the house this season!

I made these when I was a kid! 

Super easy Christmas tree ornaments they can make (while you're cooking!) Just lay down some paper for them to work on and give them plenty of pretties to decorate with and then they can make tons of them! Not a bad idea for a handmade present for friends and family members from them either! :)

Cinnamon applesauce heart ornaments! 

I can NOT wait to make these! I bet they smell AMAZING while you're baking them!! These would make great gifts for some family members as well! I'm thinking of making them with Joc one day in mid December and then tying them onto gifts for people! 

Here is the direct link to make these heavenly things: Katy Elliott

There are so many more than just these to go and check out and do with your kids or have them do while you're working on other things!

Enjoy! :D

-Stephanie