New Year Eve countdown bags!!

I am so excited about this New Years Eve countdown! This will definitely be a new family tradition!!! 

 I saw this idea on 'pinterest' and I got so excited, my son is almost 3 and he will love doing this! I bought some party bags but you could use plain brown paper lunch bags. I found some cute printables (I will post the link below) I thought of a fun activity for each bag. Your child can open a bag every hour leading up to the new year! We will start ours at 5pm, so I made 8 bags. My son is so young that we will be celebrating east coast new years (we live in California, so it will be 9pm here) so the last 3 bags will be more for my hubby and I.  So here we go!!!

I got this ADORABLE printable HERE!   I printed out one sheet and cut them out...all you do is add the 'hands' to the clocks!

So here is what we are doing each hour!

5PM: Beads and streamers to decorate 

6PM: BIG Balloons (the kind you hit up and down)

  7PM: New Years Eve interview and Pop-its

I found this FUN printable HERE!!!
This sheet has a few questions that you can have your kids fill out each year. Some questions don't apply to my kids yet and they won't be able to fill it out by themselves yet but I am excited to keep these from each year and see and remember their different interest!

8PM: glow glasses and glow sticks 

I got these at Target in the party section

 9PM: Noise makers and kids celebrate new years (east coast time, it will be 9pm for us here in Cali)

10PM: (now that the kids had their 'early' new years, time for Mommy and Daddy, so this bag is a few of our favorite treats!

11PM: New Years Resolutions 

I did one for our relationship (really, who can't improve on that!?) and one personal one, I am a firm believer in writing things down, I think if you write it down it's more meaningful then just saying it.

12PM: New Years SMOOOOCH!!! 

I am SO excited!!! Happy New Year to you all!!!  I would LOVE to hear if you do this and what ideas you used for each hour!!!

Here is the link to:
New Years Eve Count Down Bags 2013!!

More Christmas Fun

Aside from doing our activities for our story and craft Christmas countdown  we have all so been doing a few other things.



I bought these at the dollar tree, they are magnetic 'holiday' pictures. Each picture has many pieces to it, so we used them as puzzles.

For more Giant magnet board fun click here

We also made a gingerbread house, last year I was much more ambitious and made everything from scratch this year having a 4 week old baby, I happily bought a 'kit' I put it together the night before so it would be nice and sturdy for my son to decorate the next day.

I was proud of his attention span, although I'm sure it helped that he got to eat candy as he decorated!

Today we made these fun sensory bags. you can find the original recipe here. I have made a lot of different sensory bags in the past but this recipe is by far the best texture!!

• 1 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 cups cold water

• Food coloring
• 2 gallon-size ziplock bags
• Duct tape

Instructions

1. Over medium heat, combine the cornstarch, sugar, and water in a saucepan, stirring continuously.
   
2. Once the mixture begins to thicken, (you will totally start to notice it thicken, slowly but surely) remove the pan from the heat and stir for another minute or so until it thickens to a pudding like consistency. Let it cool for 30 minutes.
   
   
   
   
3. Spoon the mixture into two bowls, stir a few drops of food coloring into each  then divide the colors between the ziplock bags. Seal the bags with duct tape and let your child mix and mash the colors (they'll keep for up to a week).
   

I made a Christmas bag by adding glitter and letting my son mix it in the bag

This is why you tape the bag closed ;)

12 days till' Christmas....story and craft advent countdown

12 days till' Christmas....story and craft advent countdown

My friend Amy gave me the idea to do a storybook countdown and because my little man loves to be artsy I though it would be fun to do a story and a craft. I found 12 'Christmas' or 'winter' type books and came up with cute crafts to go with each book.

We have NOT started our countdown yet so our crafts are not actually done but I wanted to post this to give others ideas in case they wanted to do something similar.


 so here we go!

12 days till x-mas:

Book: White Snow Bright Snow    Craft: Shaving cream art

Book: Clifford's First Christmas     Craft: stocking with scrap pieces of paper or fabric

Book: Merry Christmas, Big Hungry Bear      Craft: decorate tree with home made puffy paint: equal parts salt, flour and water and a few squirts of food coloring or tempera paint. Put in ziplock bag (close tight) and mix by squishing bag. cut tip of bag and squirt. 

Book: Clifford's Christmas     Craft: pull apart and glue cotton balls

Book: Penguin's Big Surprise    Craft: glue and color penguin

Book: There was an old lady who swallowed some snow!            Craft: Glue and color snowman

Book: There was an old lady who swallowed a bell     Craft: paint child's hands brown, make handprints at the top of the reindeer head as antlers, glue on googly eyes and a red pom pom ball at the bottom.....makes a super cute Rudolph!                                     (similar to the one shown here.....)

Book: The Penguin ho wanted to be different      Craft: Foot print penguin!! 

Book: A Charlie Brown Christmas      Craft: decorate ice skate, tin foil and string for laces. and of course watch the movie!!!

Book: The Snowy Day       Craft: Homemade snow dough:

Mix the 1 cup cornflour and 1/2 cup water together in a bowl.  Heat 2 cups salt and 2/3 cup of water in a saucepan.  As it begins to boil mix in the cornflour and water mix.  Continue to cook over a low heat, stirring continuously (for awhile.)  The mixture will eventually form a dough. It will be sticky at first, let cool and knead.  (optional:add glitter for a fun effect)

Book: Olivia helps with Christmas                                                                                                        Craft: decorate gingerbread man craft and Trader Joes Really BIG Gingerbread man kit!

Book: The Night Before Christmas         Craft: make cookies to put out for SANTA!!!

Happy Holiday's

Let me know if you are doing anything similar, I would love to hear your ideas too!!!!!!