The best season of all 2012- second week of December

Our quiet holiday preparations continue. As I've written before, I have toned down on crafts this year and try and vary activities. So the second week of December we:

Day 9: We read "Buying mittens" by Nankichi Niimi, since it became a holiday tradition for us of sorts. Kids traced their hands and decorated mittens using wax crayons.
D.'s creation:

Day 10: Christmas lights gazing. We drove around looking at pretty lights.

Day 11: Kids unwrapped new books in the morning. For C. it was "The Beasties by Jenny Nimmo, plus a chapter book for D.

Day 12: We went and bought our holiday tree. This year due to our home library (uncontainable) growth there was no room for a big tree, so we just got a tiny tree to put on a table

Day 13: Family movie night - Harry Potter! We also did some cute paper flowers for our trees with friends:

Day 14: D. and I tried our hand in origami again, and yet again were not quite successful. My dream of having a paper crane mobile in the kitchen is still far from reach it seems. We did have fun though (mixed with frustration) and managed two not quite pretty paper tables. We decided to make it our goal next year to master origami.

We listened to some holiday music, here is our favorite song of the week: Mika Nakashima-Yuki no Hana (Snowflakes)

Our books this past week can be found here, some holiday reads included.

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- days 16 through 22

Wow, what a week, we were so incredibly busy every single day I could hardly catch my breath.

We had some great activities and I learned one important thing- I simply planned too much for us to do :)
Anyway, here's a little round-up of what we've been up to the past few days.

D. loves to sew so much he asked to try out embroidery, his first piece is very simple of course, but in holiday spirit:

Saturday we went roller-skating again and D. met Santa (for the first time too, since I'm not a fan of mall Santas :)) It was also a day of surprise treasure hunt arranged by Daddy. The reward is a small chest with coins :)

Sunday: Baby C. turned three! (she insists she's "twenty-seven" though) D. selected a present for her (little pony) and it proved to be her favorite.

Monday: Daddy left to visit his parents  overseas and we had a quiet day watching snow fall. D. also made a little picture book of his own.

Tuesday: Fun with friends in the afternoon.


Today: I took D. to the movies, we watched Hugo, which we both enjoyed very much. In the evening kids made a bear den and stayed there, talking, snacking and reading.


We read
The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rummer Godden, lovely, magical story about Christmas wishes and need for love.


Now we have a glorious snow fall outside of our window, there's nothing better than waking up with skylights entirely covered with white blanket- looking forward to the morning now :)

the best season of all days 12,13,14 and 15

Busy days, fun with friends, awesome field trip, some crafts, learning about nature...

We talked some more about nature and made a bird feeder. We are still waiting for little guests to arrive, it's really warm outside so they aren't so hungry I guess, even a squirrel haven't visited for a few days.

We read "Who's Been Here" by Fran Hodgkins- a lovely book about our animal neighbors




We have a tradition- 10 days before Christmas we have little elves coming to our house, if children are especially kind to each other, they get small gifts from elves. D. made a special sock for little C. so elves can put some gifts for her. He already tried his hand in needle felting the other day when we made ornaments for the tree, this time it was his big project, he enjoyed it very much.

We read "The Twelve Days of Christmas" illustrated by Jan Brett



Yesterday was the most fun field trip with our co-op to The Little Shop of Physics in Fort Collins. D. had a great time trying all the experiments. They are having  an open house event in the end of February.

Today D. and I went for another roller skating lesson at Skate City, D. looooves these lessons.

We made a little pine cone elf to guard our tree and bookshelves. It was a bit challenging because pine cones that we found have tiny spikes on them, but it's a fun project. Inspired by this craft.

We read  Tiger's Adventures by Nick Butterworth- another favorite for my kids, especially little C. who's very much into tigers these days :)





My mom was in charge of yummies these past few days, tomorrow it's back to the oven I go, kids are begging for more cookies :)


We watched
While You Were Sleeping 

  

the best season of all- day 10 and 11

We had a lovely, quiet week end.

Children are very happy about having the tree up. Little C. keeps exclaiming "The tree came to visit!" and she touches ornaments all the time.
Yesterday we made our first ornaments of the season. We took out  thick felt sheets and sewn up couple of birds. It was D.'s first big sewing experience as well as needle felting. He loved every minute of it. His bird was an owl and now it guards our tree. He did most of the work himself :)

I made a little dove, C. helped by messing with my thread and picking our sequins :)

Yesterday we read
Toot &Puddle I'll be home for Christmas by Holly Hobbie- another delightful little story about piglets




Today was another quiet day.


We read  The Wild Christmas Reindeer by Jan Brett.



I'm back to baking, made marble cookies using this recipe. 
The cookies are quite good, but too much work somehow mixing, and separating, and chilling the dough.

We watched Serendipity tonight, very nice:

the best season of all-day 5

After lazy week end we had an incredibly busy day today. We went to the Museum of Nature and Science (yay for free days!). What a great visit it was. We had fun at Space Odyssey exhibition and a free planetarium show. I was incredibly proud of my little boy, how he answered questions from the show guide, how carefully he planned and asked his own questions. He's so into space theme now, I love it! We watched a performance of an African drums band and strolled in "dinosaur land" for a while (C.'s love for dinosaurs and dragons is another delight for me, she love sword fights and dragon tales, she's such a brave little thing).
We got home pretty late and D. made couple of holiday cards. (Simple task, yay for pinterest inspired paint chips projects). It was made entirely by him without my help.

Our evening treat today was fried  apple rounds . It's basically apple rounds (skin peeled and cored) dipped in vanilla flavored pancake batter and fried in oil. We enjoyed it dusted with confectioner's sugar, with lots of whipped cream and hot tea.

We read a non-holiday book today, which my kids enjoyed very much :
Below by Nina Crews. It's a story of a boy and his favorite action figure, and their adventure together.





We also read some winter poems in Russian together.

Listening today : 
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - Ric Larsen and Lisa Cunningham

Now it's quiet in the house, I'm ready for my book and my tea. It's so cold outside, I love it!

the best season of all- day 4

Another quiet day, I ran some errands in the morning, D. did his schoolwork on his own and read his stories with grandma, so proud of him.

It's cold here, the snow stays (for now).

Narnia :)

Our activity today was cutting snowflakes. Now it's snowing on our fireplace :)

What I especially love December for is that I have a perfect excuse for baking every single day and not even feel guilty about having all these cookies in the house. We made our annual chocolate cookies.

We read Let it snow! by Holly Hobbie (we just adore Toot &Puddle series!), cute tale and awesome illustrations.

We listened to
French Christmas Songs: Chants de Noël - Hélène Baillargeon

Mom and I are going to watch   Meet Me In St. Louis  tonight.
Life is good.

the best season of all- day 2

Lovely, sunny day today. It still looks like winter outside, but all the nasty slippery ice from the road is gone. For me the best thing about winter evenings is the golden light of setting sun on top of white roofs. It's magic for me.

Our activity today was simple- decorating candles. We grabbed plain, unscented candles, mod podge, lots and lots of glitter and set to work. Kids had so much fun, and glitter is everywhere. D. picked up couple of pine cones and they also got some sparkly treatment.

The yummy treat for today : Crunchy cookies
Preheat oven to 385 F
2 cups of flour+pinch of salt -mix together, 125 g of softened butter +3/4 c of sugar +1 egg+1 tsp of vanilla -mix well. Add flour. Make a ball and let sit in a fridge for 45 min. Roll the dough, get cookie cutters out and bake for 15 min or until golden.

We read The Mitten by Jan Brett


Today's music :

Putumayo Celtic Christmas - Various Artists

The movie for me when kiddos are in bed  :
Sleepless In Seattle