The Best Season of All 2013- 1st week of December

It's this time of year again!
This year we are continuing our tradition of activities-filled advent calendar.

This year even though I planned making something really stylish and unusual for a calendar, I ended up drawing a tree by popular request from kids. Under each ball there is an activity written for us to do. This year instead of mostly crafts I went for "special moments", this way none of us will be worn out by the end of the month.

Day 1: We made our traditional window display, coffee filters colored with metallic watercolors. This time we cut out gigantic snowflakes.

Day 2: We put some lights on the bush outside our window

Day 3: Baking cookies together!We made also out long time favorite chocolate cookies recipe here
Day 4: Lego Christmas trees:

Day 5: T-shirt decoration, I bought some white cotton t-shirts in Michael's (adult size too :D) and some fabric paint. We did our best painting some holiday pictures on them, kids had lots of fun and now wear these tees to bed and around the house.

Day 6: We attended Polar Express Story Time in local bookstore

Day 7: We made an attempt to create a snow jar. I was inspired by this pinhowever, kids didn't want to use any of their small animals and by the time they made up their minds it was too late to go hunt for new ones :) So D. just made a penguin out of playdough (weird color is due to the fact that all black dough was gone for some reason), a small fir was picked outside. Just add Epsom salt and here we have a snow jar (rather a candidate for "nailed it" meme I think) that kids pronounced "weird, but Christmassy"

Day 8: Snow!, so much snow outside! Kids are looking forward to rolling in it and cleaning the sidewalk. We are supposed to attend a concert today too, but I'm no sure about driving so far away, so we might not go after all 
We ended up going to see Denver Young Artists Orchestra and we had a marvelous time! Harry Potter suite was wonderful and put us in a holiday spirit.

We are reading books from Holiday List I made last year. So far kids watched "Chronicles of Narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" and Russian "Snow Queen" movie.

Happy Holiday Season to all!

the best season of all...achoo

Finally, a day off and of course I just HAD to get an awful cold. Or maybe a virus, since my mom and dad are also sick and kids got snuffles as well. We did however make our first tree ornament of the season (and so late into the season too :/ ).
We made egg-carton bells inspired by this craft today.

We read "Christmas in Pettson's house" (apprently in US Pettson and Findus are known as Festus and Mercury)  by Sven Nordqvist, great kind tale about an old man and his kitten, who got stuck at home for Christmas. It is our all time favorite, D. adores the whole series.

the best season of all ..."just keep swimming "(c)

Work, work, work, barely can find time to sleep. Hubby returns from his trip to Motherland tomorrow.Yay!

What we've been doing:
1. We made an ornament for our kitchen - craft sticks painted white, glued together and decorated with glitter = snowflake mobile :)

2. I finally got myself a present- oebelskiever pan. SO much fun and deliciousness, can't get enough of it.

                         
3. We finally saw "Tangled". Wow, what a great movie! Beautiful, cute, funny and smart. D. and I loved it.The music is great, we've been listening to the OST non-stop. Probably we'll see it again sometimes next week :)

In the meantime I'm trying to catch up on all the wonderful blogs that I'm reading, soooo behind on everything...

the best season of all continues

Whew, what a week...I have to work pretty much every day and trying to squeeze in some fun stuff turned out to be pretty challenging.
Anyway, we got some projects started, I managed to cook some yummy stuff and most importantly we got our tree today. So much joy for all of us- best childhood memories, the room is filled with smell of pine needles and magic of the season.

We baked Crescent Cake cookies. They turned out pretty good. The only thing I changed from the original recipe was that I took 50% of regular sugar and 50% of confectioner sugar instead of only confectioner. It added sweetness and flavor.

Wonderful and magic weekend for all friends and visitors!

The best season of all: day 2

A little crazy today, more work for me, more fun for kiddos :)
It was really warm today too, a decent snowfall is long overdue and I'm craving it.

Today we have winterized our window display (Valerie at Frugal Family Fun Blog had some great ideas), we made snowflakes and birdies out of coffee filters , and we made "lights"  using paints from Paint and peel window art kit.

I'm planning to see "Sun Valley Serenade" later tonight, great winter movie, not much of a plot but the music is great.