Merry Christmas!

Dear friends and followers,
Wishing you a most wonderful holiday —full of love, laughter, and lots of good cheer. May you feel blessed now and all throughout the New Year.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

Free Christmas Printables!

FREE PRINTABLES

National Hard Candy Day and Gingerbread Houses with kids!

Today is National Hard Candy Day and Christmas is a great time to celebrate hard candies.  We thought we would combine this day with Gingerbread Houses.  We may attempt to make our own sugar candy to help decorate our houses.  We have posted a few non edible gingerbread house crafts below.  

Simple Hard Candy Recipe:

3 3/4 C. white sugar
1 1/2 C. light corn syrup
1 C. water
1 T. orange, or other flavored extract
1/2 t. food coloring (optional)
1/4 C. confectioners' sugar for dusting

In a medium saucepan, stir together the white sugar, corn syrup, and water. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil. Without stirring, heat to 300 to 310° F., or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms hard, brittle threads.

Remove from heat and stir in flavored extract and food coloring, if desired. Pour onto a greased cookie sheet, and dust the top with confectioners' sugar. Let cool, and break into pieces. Store in an airtight container.
 

Watch this video on how candy canes are made...wow - it looks like a lot of work!  (ribbon candy video is at bottom of this post)

Whether you are going to make a eatable or non Gingerbread House here are few non-editable houses to help you get inspired...

 

Faux Gingerbread House

Family Fun Magazine

Felt Gingerbread Houses

Family Fun Magazine

 

Paper Gingerbread Village

Family Fun Magazine

How Ribbon Candy is made:

Fun Christmas Activities for the kids!

Have fun with some of these fun Christmas activities we found around the web.

Click HERE to print out some Holiday Tong Twisters

Chritmas Gift Riddle Hunt - print out HERE

 CHRISTMAS SONG PICTURE GAME

To play this game, you can print the picture sheet right off this site by clicking HERE. Robins says to give people a sheet of blank paper and a pencil to write their answers on, then give them 5 minutes to figure out as many as possible. They can not talk to each other or copy. You can give prizes to the top two or three winners and a cd of Christmas songs to the person with the worst score.   Click HERE for the answers to this game

Wintertime Matching Game - click HERE to print

Paint by Number - Click HERE to print out

Christmas Jokes - Click HERE for to print them out

Click HERE and HERE and HERE for each one to print

Click HERE to print out Christmas Care's

Click HERE to print out Christmas Conversation's

Click HERE to print out Christmas Crack Up's

    

National Poinsettia Day

By an Act of Congress, December 12 was set aside as National Poinsettia Day. The date marks the death of Joel Roberts Poinsett, who is credited with introducing the native Mexican plant to the United States. The purpose of the day is to enjoy the beauty of this popular holiday plant.

December Birth Flower

Also known as the Christmas flower, the poinsettias origin is legendary. It is believed it began as nothing other than a child who could not afford a gift to offer to Christ on Christmas Eve picked some weeds from the side of a road. The child was told that a humble gift, if given in love, would be acceptable in God's eyes. The weeds turned into brilliant red blooms we now know as the poinsettia, and the congregation felt they had witnessed a Christmas miracle.

Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima) are popular potted plants, particularly during Christmas. Poinsettia was named after the first ambassador of US to Mexico, Dr. Joel Robert Poinsett who introduced the plant to United States in 1825. Poinsettias are also known by other names such as winter rose, lobster flower, Mexican flame leaf, Noche Buena, Christmas star and Christmas flower. Peru and Chile called the poinsettia the “Crown of the Andes”. The botanical name of poinsettia, Euphorbia pulcherrima, means “the most beautiful Euphorbia”. The plants are native to Central America and southern Mexico.

Santa List Day

Today is Santa's List Day. Have you been good all year? Santa knows.

Santa's Elves have been everywhere, checking up on children all over the world, to see who has been naughty, and who has been nice. Thanks to the hard work of his elves, Santa now has two lists. The short list contains the names of a few children who have been naughty. A much longer list is filled with the names of children who have been good all year long.

Happy Santa's List Day!!!!

Christmas Countdown!

Christmas Countdown

Have the kids keep checking when Christmas will arrive by having them visit http://www.xmasclock.com/

 Kids can email Santa and there is also a lot of cute Christmas things found here http://www.emailsanta.com/ and http://www.northpole.com/

Crafty Christmas Advents with kids!

Its time to make our annual Christmas Advent Calendar with the kids. We have gathered many advent calendar "know how's" to help inspire you to create your own family traditions.  Here is a quick history of the Christmas Advent Calendar and a poem from About.com -

December 1st 'til Christmas is the longest time of the year.
Seems as if old Santa never will appear.
How many more days 'til Christmas? It may be hard to count,
But this little gift of candy will tell you the exact amount.
Untie a piece of candy each day when Sandman casts his spell
And Christmas will be here by the time you ring the bell. 

Here is a sneak peak -

Click on the "Read More" to continue to all the inspiration