Preparing for Christmas - Advent activities

I know it is a bit late ... but I still wanted to share a few projects I did with my daughter during advent. So here are a couple of photos ... This year we had an actitivity advent calendar so I had chosen an activity for each day. I am not posting pictures of all the activities we did ... but here are a few:


Well, this one was not really a project. The activity was "Having hot chocolate with whipped cream". So this was really easy for me ;-) and it was a huge hit! I would have never thought that such a tiny detail - whipped cream - would make such a big difference to a child. She has never had whipped cream on hot chocolate before ... and certainly loved it. Now she regularly keeps asking when she can have it again. ;-)

One of the activities was baking christmas cookies. We did not make as many as last year cause it's not that easy handling baking, a 4year old and a 2months old at the same time! :-) But these were quick and easy and we like them. I made the dough and my daughter spooned the jam into the holes.

Of course we also decorated cookies (gingerbread).

More cookies? No. This acitivity was making salt dough ornaments. I just realize now that I never took a picture of the finished result ...

But we used some of the salt dough ornaments as embellishments for wrapped packages.

And another baking activity: that day we made cookies for our dog. I used a recipe found on the blog At Home with the Farmer's Wife. I really recommend that recipe if you have a dog. The ingredients are easy to get. The dough is easy to handle. And our dog loved them. Next time I am going to make at least two batches.

More baking? No. I really wanted to make a gingerbread house this year ... but, well, in the end I let go of the idea of making my own and simply used a kit you can buy. It's not very pretty and original ... but my daughter really had fun decorating it and for this year that was the main objective! But I hope next year I will be able to bake one myself ...

We also made a window decoration using trasparency paper.

Another activity was making a mobile as a Christmas present for our baby boy. I gave my daughter craft foam and she drew hearts on it and cut them out.


I put them together to a mobile (also using craft foam flowers we had made earlier this year).

This was also an activity my daughter really enjoyed. We decorated candles with wax stripes. My daughter arranged them in a way so they look like stars. She made a whole bunch and gave them away for Christmas to her grandparents and aunts. We used silver and gold wax on red candles and they turned out really cute. Unfortunately in the photo they do not look as pretty as in reality. :-/

One day we made a sock snowman. My daughter also LOVED this. It was actually meant to be used as a decoration in her room but she plays with it. (The snowman is sleeping in the doll bed at the moment.)

We made more snow men. This was also lots of fun and really easy and quick. I got the idea from Coley's Corner. She has a whole tutorial over there and shows how to make them.

I changed them a bit and used crepe paper (hope this is the right term) instead of baby socks. Also I did not use buttons but black circles cut out of paper. And we added a "scarf" - to do so we simply used ribbon.

My daughter gave these to her kindergarten teachers as Christmas presents. She was really proud of them and actually drew the faces herself!