Happy Mother’s Day! I know I’m a day late, but I wanted to take a moment to celebrate all of the moms out there — and all of you who have a mom or know a mom  or love a mom.

I had a lovely day celebrating with my family yesterday. I got to sleep in a bit and then the kids gave me their beautiful home made cards. Zach also surprised me with a crazy unicorn t-shirt and a couple boxes of my favorite, hard-to-find English candy and then we spent the afternoon picking cherries at a nearby U-Pick farm. It was fantastic and I felt very grateful for my kids, my husband and the comfortable life we enjoy.

Even while I was enjoying my day, I kept thinking about moms who are not as fortunate as I am. Last weekend I was thrilled to host a table at the 2nd Annual Help a Mother Out Benefit Tea. As part of my responsibilities as a table host I invited people to the tea, decorated a table (more on that tomorrow) and helped the event run just a bit more smoothly. In return, I got to learn more about the valuable work Help a Mother Out performs every day. I’m already quite familiar with a lot of what they do distributing disposable and cloth diapers to parents who need a hand up, but I was really touched to hear so many first hand accounts from mothers who have benefited by receiving diapers from HAMO. Diapers can make a real difference in someone’s life, allowing them to enroll their children in day care so they can attend school or work to pull themselves out of a less than ideal situation.

This video telling three of those stories was played at the tea and I encourage you to take a few minutes to watch it:

If you are interested in supporting this organization, please consider making a donation. Even $10 can make a big difference in the life of a baby and his mama. You can learn more about HAMO’s Mother’s Day fundraising drive here: http://www.razoo.com/story/Moms2012

If you told me on Monday that my children would willingly eat fish cakes for dinner, I would have called you a liar. Liar, liar pants on fire! Then I would have sneered and questioned your ability to hang onto telephone wires.

But here we are on Thursday morning and I am here to tell you that Wyatt and Augie like fish cakes. My mind boggles.

My children don’t have a stunning history when it comes to eating fish. Wyatt has never been a big fan and while Augie loved fish as a toddler, he hasn’t been too into it lately. My husband has fond memories of eating fish sticks as a child though, so he has started buying a box now and then in hopes that the boys will share his passion. Lately they’ve been enjoying them and I think that’s what paved the way for them to eat the fish cakes we had for dinner the other night.  Zach and I really like fish and we’re trying to get in the habit of eating it more often so despite the children’s fishy reluctance I’ve been on the look-out for interesting fish recipes.

Last week I came across this Real Simple recipe for Dijon fish cakes on Pinterest and I thought it looked like a winner. I love crab cakes, but rarely buy it because of the cost, so I thought this might give us something similar for a lot less money. I followed the recipe very closely. I swapped out cod for the tilapia (it didn’t look nice at the store) and I used grainy mustard instead of the Dijon mustard. The cod was fine, but I was sorry about the mustard swap because we all thought these needed a little more of a kick. Otherwise they were great. Wyatt picked up his fork, immediately ate his fish cake, then asked for another. I was flabbergasted, but kept my surprise mostly in check. Augie was a little more reluctant, but after I fed him a few bites he finished one off on his own. (I don’t usually hand-feed my three year old, but sometimes it can help get the ball rolling.) Zach really liked the crust on the cakes, so we all decided we should have them again soon.

For side dishes I served broccoli (the peppers in the photo were what I ate with the leftovers) and Israeli couscous cooked in chicken stock. We have been eating a lot of this bigger, chewier couscous lately. We all like it better than the little kind and Augie is especially nutty for it.

How about you? Do your kids eat fish? How do they like it prepared? I’d love it if you linked up to any recipes in the comments!

Have I mentioned my Kiwi Crate subscription before? I think I may have once or twice. Kiwi Crate is a subscription-based service that sends a box of craft supplies and instructions for two children’s craft projects to your house every month. I initially joined when it was featured as a deal on Plum District for half-off for three months and I recently renewed my subscription at full-price.

My kids love it and I love it, too.

A lot of the reviews I’ve read have said that the service is great for non-crafty parents who want to do art projects with their kids — which I certainly think is true — but I consider myself to be pretty dang crafty and it works really well for me too. Yes, I could scour the internet for kids craft projects every month (or I could think up some projects myself). And yes, I could go to a couple stores and buy all the supplies for those projects (and I could hope not to forget anything). If I was careful I could probably pay less for the supplies than the $19.95 I spend on our Kiwi Crate. I do all those things sometimes, but it takes a fair amount of work and advanced planning.

The days I really need those carefully planned and prepared projects are the days my kids are bored and at each others’ throats and they are driving me absolutely bonkers. Do I have the time and patience to plan and execute a clever and engaging project on those days? No. No, I do not.

But now that we are getting the Kiwi Crate, I can pull out a box filled with all the supplies for a fun project or two and we can distract ourselves by getting our craft on! It’s fun for them, and it’s fun for their crafty mom, too.

The boxes are themed and come with clear, illustrated instructions. Each project is also rated on a “messiness” and “grownup involvement” scale which is a nice touch.  The kits we’ve received so far have focused on space, the ocean, pirates and wind. Though the projects lean toward the crafty side, there is a bit of a science tilt to them as well. They don’t realize it, but through Kiwi Crate projects my boys have learned about jet propulsion, object density, inertia and the scientific method all while honing their manual dexterity and spacial skills. Shhhhhh! They just think they’re having fun.

The boxes are designed for kids aged 3-7, which is the exact age spread of my boys. The activities can be simplified for three-year-old Augie when necessary, but seven-year-old Wyatt can run with them and focus on the areas that most interest him. Though the web site says the boxes are intended for one child, we have always had enough supplies for both kids to complete each project. The projects that don’t have two full sets of supplies lend themselves nicely to sharing. If I had more than two kids I would order the sibling add-on kit to avoid disappointment and squabbles.

I’ve been really pleased to see that the kids like to play with their completed projects too. One of the activities in the pirate kit was to decorate a treasure box, hide it and then draw a map to help a friend find it. My kids played hide and seek with that treasure box for an hour! They don’t do anything together for an hour! They have also happily fished for sharks and raced wind power cars side by side. Nice!

The quality of the supplies in the kits is very good. Each kit has sufficient materials to complete the projects but they throw in a lot of extras too. For example, when a project requires 4 sheets of paper we find 16 sheets in the box. This lets the boys choose the colors or designs they like best, gives them the freedom to experiment without fear of “messing up” and allows them to explore the materials outside of the scope of the project. Each box also has at least one higher ticket item that’s designed to last a while and can be used to create a great art supply box — scissors, tape, paints, pens, oil pastels or nice crayons. My kids love dipping into our pile of leftover materials (pictured below) and mixing them up with our other art supplies to come up with new creations.

So what’s not to like about Kiwi Crate? Nothing. I honestly tried to think of something I didn’t like about this product and I couldn’t come up with anything. I can just about always come up with something bad to say about products I review, but not this time. I really, really love our Kiwi Crates.

Do you want to try one now? After I decided to write this review, I spoke with the folks at Kiwi Crate and they have kindly donated a crate for me give away to one Wendolonia reader. Woo hoo! If you are ready to buy you can also click on any of the links to the Kiwi Crate site in this post and get $10 off your first month. (I will also get a $10 credit if you do this.)

How to enter:

To enter please do at least one of the following:

1. Visit the Kiwi Crate site, then leave a comment below answering the following two questions: (1) what kind of crate would you like to see Kiwi Crate create next? (2) why do you want to win a Kiwi Crate? (This is required for entry in the giveaway.)

2. Post about about Kiwi Crate on Twitter and include the hashtag #kiwicrate in the tweet. (extra entry)

3. Post about Kiwi Crate on your Facebook wall and tag Kiwi Crate in the post. (extra entry)

I’ll close comments Friday night (April 6, 2012) at 9:00 pm and select 1 random winner shortly thereafter. The winner will have 48 hours after I notify them via email to respond with their mailing address. If I don’t hear from you an alternate winner will be selected, so be sure to leave your email address and then check your email.

I hope YOU win!

P.S. Kiwi Crate is hosting a nice giveaway of their own this month: one winner will receive $500 to spend at Plum District, plus they’re giving away a crate every week. Sign up here.

Disclosure: I’m writing this review because my kids and I all love our Kiwi Crate subscription. I purchased our subscription and have not received any compensation to write this review. I have arranged this giveaway with the generous people at Kiwi Crate because I like their product and I think you will enjoy it too. Because I’m a Kiwi Crate affiliate, we will both receive a $10 credit towards our subscriptions if you purchase something via my link.

Early on in my career as a mom — I think Wyatt was around a year old — one of my co-workers recommended that I check out her friend’s blog, Rookie Moms. I started reading it regularly and was excited to learn from Heather and Whitney who I thought were the smartest, most daring and knowledgeable mothers in the whole world. It seemed like they knew how to do everything I was struggling with: balance work, family and relaxation, deal with sleep issues, go on fun outings. And they showered every day too!

Imagine my surprise when I figured out that not only were Whitney and Heather first-time moms like me, but that their kids were actually slightly younger than Wyatt! “How on earth do they know all that stuff?” I thought.  I’ve known both of them in real life for three years now, and I still think they’re super smart about this parenting stuff. And now they’ve written a book that proves that they know what they’re talking about. Yesterday, their second book Stuff Every Mom Should Know was released and I was thrilled to get my hands on a copy.

This little book is jammed with clever lists written in Heather and Whitney’s funny and conversational style. Things like:

• How to build a kick-ass blanket fort
• Comebacks for unsolicited parenting advice
• How to meet other moms
• Three foods your teen should be able to cook
• Ten last-minute Halloween costumes

My personal favorite at the moment is “How to make a long wait fun”. I will be trotting those ideas out (finger puppets! paper race-track!) the next time we are waiting in line at the post office or there’s a back-up in the kitchen at a restaurant.

If you want to benefit from Whitney and Heather’s wisdom too, head on over to Amazon or your local bookstore to pick up your own copy of Stuff Every Mom Should Know OR you can enter below to win one of three copies of the book.

How to Enter:

Leave a comment below telling me something you think every mom (or parent) should know. While you’re at it, you might want to take a minute to check out the Rookie Moms on Twitter, Facebook or their blog (but that’s not required to enter).

I’ll close comments Friday night (March 30, 2012) at 9:00 pm and select 3 random winners shortly thereafter. Winners will have 48 hours after I notify them via email to respond with their mailing address. If I don’t hear from you an alternate winner will be selected, so be sure to leave your email address and check your email.

I hope YOU win!

I don’t know about you, but dinner time can be extremely frustrating for me. Sometimes it seems like no matter what I cook, one or both of my kids complains bitterly about their meal. We have firm rules about the use of the word “yuck” at our dinner table (hint: not allowed), so my kids have learned to turn “I don’t care for this,” and “This is not my favorite food,” into a searing insult merely through the tone of their voices.

Can anyone relate?

Here’s the deal though: they’re actually pretty good eaters. I like a lot of variety in my dinners and my husband does too, so we try new recipes frequently often interspersing them with old favorites. Getting the kids to try — and then consume — these new dishes can be challenging but they will do it now and then. I’ve decided to begin an occasional series where I share the successful meals with you all. I call it: My Kids Ate It!

The first two recipes I’d like to share are from the current issue (April 2012) of Cooking Light magazine. I’m a long-time subscriber to Cooking Light and I always find several recipes to try in the magazine but this particular issue was a knock-out. After I’d finished reading it, Zach sat down to flip through it and he started laughing because about a third of the pages were dog-eared with recipes I wanted to try. Go get it, right now!

I started out by cooking this recipe for Chili-Cheese Mac. I just about always make a few changes to recipes when I cook and this one was no exception. In this case I made the recipe with a full pound of hamburger rather than the 3/4 pound the recipe called for because I had a one pound package of hamburger and I don’t believe in freezing 1/4 pound of hamburger. It would just get lost in my freezer and then I’d throw it out some time next year, so I decided to cook the extra meat rather than wasting it. I also subbed high fiber penne for the elbow macaroni because that’s what I had in the cupboard. Otherwise I left the recipe as is.

It took longer to cook than the 20 minutes the recipe indicated, but not much longer. I’m guessing maybe 30 minutes start to finish?

I thought it was pretty good, but maybe a tad on the gummy side. Next time I’d add a little more liquid to loosen up the sauce. It wasn’t as spicy as I’d like, but the heat was just right for the kids so I wouldn’t do anything to change that. My husband doused it with Tapatio hot sauce, but I left it as is. It took a bit of convincing to get Wyatt to try it but once he did he really loved it. Score! Augie was sick and didn’t want any dinner but he ate some at lunch the next day. That’s four thumbs up so I’ll make this again for sure!

I served it with raw carrots and sugar snap peas and another new dish: Creamy Ranch Dip. I decided to make this with the pasta dish because both recipes use a half a block of cream cheese and I knew if I used it all at once I wouldn’t have to deal with finding a use for any leftovers. I followed this recipe exactly, but when I finished I thought the consistency was too thick so I added a few more tablespoons of buttermilk. Much better! Everyone loooooved this and there were enough leftovers for lunches so this will be something I’ll make frequently. Too bad one of Wyatt’s school-mates referred to it as “bird poop dip“!

What have you made recently that your picky eaters liked? Link up your recipes in the comments so we all can be inspired!

The boys and I have inadvertently settled into a habit of crafting together after school about once per week. In the past, I’ve tried really hard to get the boys to do art projects with me as a regular thing but they were never all that interested. I sought out projects I thought they’d be interested in, but the harder I tried the more they resisted. Funny how that works.

The past few weeks have been different though and I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s changed. I think it’s partly because of the monthly boxes we’ve been getting from Kiwi Crate*. After having already completed six fun projects they get excited to see the green boxes come in the mail and they look forward to sitting down to work on them. (I should probably do a full review of the Kiwi Crate boxes soon.) I’m sure it also helps that Wyatt recently made a conscious decision to like art and drawing, while Augie just likes to make a mess.

Last Friday I was looking for a way to distract the boys from their constant bickering and I decided to try out a water color resist technique that’s been making the rounds on Pinterest. I was inspired to try this activity after seeing this post on Alisa Burke’s lovely blog. The technique is dead simple: draw with white crayon on white paper and then paint over it with watercolors to reveal your picture.

I started off by drawing a picture for each of the boys to get them started. Augie was so excited about me coloring on the paper with white crayon that he immediately grabbed one of his own and added to his drawing before I even got the paint out.  Once we started painting, we all had trouble getting our crayon drawings to reveal themselves, but Augie didn’t care about that at all.

He painted for the sake of painting for a bit and then spent the rest of our art time twisting glue sticks up and down and smashing them onto the paper.

Wyatt was less zen about the problems we were having with the resist technique and he quickly got frustrated by the process. After some experimentation we figured out that the crayon revealed itself better when the paint was thinner and watery while thick, saturated paint covered the crayon.

This was our best resist painting when we used the white crayon. If you look closely you might spot the shape of a sun there. I’m not sure what we did wrong. Maybe our paper was too thin or our crayon wasn’t thick enough? Thoughts?

When Wyatt’s frustration got to be too much, I decided to switch to a black crayon. I drew this grid with the idea that I’d fill each square randomly with a different color, but when Wyatt started helping me we quickly fell into this rainbow pattern. As we worked, I asked him if he knew about “rainbow order” and then that led to a discussion of the color spectrum which itself led to us talking about ROY G BIV. When he couldn’t guess what ROY G BIV stood for, I demonstrated by painting each letter on the appropriate color. Wyatt quickly took over the labeling of the rest of the page, but he thought the “I” and “V” for indigo and violet were bunk so he switched to a nice, sensible “P” for purple. He quickly decided that his letters were messier than he liked so I showed him that he could change the thickness of his letters by varying the amount of pressure he put on the brush.

Seriously — how many different lessons did we manage to jam into a painting that took 10 minutes to complete? I freaking love art!

OK — there’s one more thing I wanted to show you! See this toilet paper roll? I got the idea for this from a post on Stacy Julian’s blog. Wrap a couple rubber bands around a roll of toilet paper, then use it for dabbing the water off wet brushes and blotting the excess paint off of paintings. This was the first time we tried it but Stacy said that they’ve been using the same roll of toilet paper for a year. It worked wonderfully!

What sort of art and craft projects have you been enjoying with your kids? Or all by yourself?

* If you sign up for Kiwi Crate via my link we will each receive a $10 credit toward our monthly subscription fee.

We’ve been having a pretty great December so far. Somehow we’ve managed to pack a bunch of fun stuff in while also keeping it pretty low-key. I’m not sure how things are working out like that, but I’ll take it. A lot of the stuff we’ve been doing are activities from the advent calendar but it’s been spread out with just a little bit happening each day, which is nice.

I also bought a new Hipstapack (the Foodie SnapPak) for the Hipstamatic app on my phone and I finally took 5 minutes to get my Instagram account set up (my user name is wendolonia if you want to follow me). So now I’m in another grungy photo phase and have been taking tons of pictures with my phone instead of the good camera. Be forewarned.

So here are a few of the things we’ve been up to:

Snowman Pancakes! I saw this idea from A Little Loveliness on Pinterest a few weeks ago and couldn’t wait to make them for the kids. That jaunty bacon scarf! It kills me every time I look at it. So last Saturday I decided to surprise the kids with these pancakes. After I started making the pancakes, they turned into terrible little brats — bickering, hitting each other, screaming, getting into things they’re not supposed to touch, making enormous messes — and they did not deserve cute snowman pancakes, but I wanted to make them so I plowed ahead. When I served breakfast their response was underwhelming. One complained that his brother’s piece of bacon was bigger and whined because he doesn’t like chocolate chips. The other only ate his chocolate chips and bacon and threw his marshmallows on the floor. I found myself hissing, “Eat your snowman pancakes!” through clenched teeth.

Yay. Fun breakfast treat.

Our Christmas tree has been a much bigger success. We bought a too big tree from our local grocery store and had a bit of trouble getting it set up in the stand so it didn’t fall over. We also had to remove multiple pieces of furniture from our teeny, tiny living room to get it to fit.

But the kids were so excited about it and were super enthusiastic about decorating it. They even agreed to pose for a nice photo in front of the tree!

Last year Santa put these crazy glasses that make the lights look like cool shapesin our stockings and we have all been loving them. The boys and I spent over an hour trading glasses, doubling them up and running around the house looking at all our lights with them. I put the Santa pair over the lens of my camera and got a pretty good representation of what you see.

The fireworks pair was even more spectacular! We’ve decided we need to bring them along the next time we drive around looking at holiday light displays.

I’ve been drinking my tea out of our Santa mugs every morning, which just makes me happy.

Augie and I also spent an afternoon cutting snowflakes out of paper. He’s a talented three-year-old, don’t you think?

OK, OK — those are mine. Just curiously, would anyone be interested in a snowflake cutting tutorial? There are a lot out there already, so I’m not sure the world needs another.

On Monday, I took the boys to a favorite bakery after school for a surprise cookie and hot chocolate date. Augie was super cranky about the whole thing.

But Wyatt was into it and managed to turn Augie’s mood around. I love these occasional instances of fantastic-ness in their relationship. They’re relationship is a see-saw and it feels like it can go either way at any moment.

We made our favorite cream cheese spritz cookies. The boys helped at all stages which was great fun though the sprinkle stage got a little out of hand at one point. I’m still finding green sugar in various nooks and crannies of our kitchen days later.

And yesterday we took a little time to make some cards for our friends who moved away last summer. I just plopped some stickers, scissors and Christmas-themed paper on the table and let them go at it. The kids were unusually excited to craft and their cards were terrific and funny and creative.

And while they worked on their projects, I made this scrapbook page using the photos you see in this post!

What have you been doing this December?

I feel like I’ve been trying to get people to play games with me since I was a little kid. I really love board games. When I was growing up, I had the standards — Trouble, Candyland, Sorry, Battleship, Clue. I would have played any and all of these board games every day, but finding someone to play with me was not always easy. My brother would sometimes join me, but he was a bit older than me so he usually preferred to do something else. My parents were hard to pin down too. Though they would occasionally play a few rounds with me, they were busy and couldn’t always drop everything to play games. (Though there is an old family story about the epic afternoon our family spent hours and hours playing Hi Ho Cherry-O so that I could win one single game.) I loved to play board games with friends too, but even they couldn’t satiate my desire for board games.

My husband will humor me with a board game now and then, but he’s not really so into them so now that I have kids I’m starting in on them. Thankfully, they’re usually pretty happy to play with me. Finally!

Because my kids are still young we’re limited in what games we can play but we’re getting to the point where our options are opening up a little. Their four year age difference also complicated matters. What’s fun for three-year-old Augie is boring to the big kid. And when we play a game the seven-year-old likes he gets really frustrated when his little brother bends the rules. Both boys are also learning about cheating (bad!), good sportsmanship (good!) and talking smack without being too mean (really, isn’t that what makes games fun?). Still, we all like playing games together and it’s (mostly) fun for everyone.

The best games for us are interesting and silly and encourage bending the rules to fit the abilities of the people in our family. We particularly love LEGO Creationary for this because the game allows each player to work exactly where their building skills are. Augie mostly just messes around with the bricks and pays no attention to whether or not it’s his turn, while Wyatt builds clever little structures. And my husband and I go to town with our creations. Another game we love is Cat in the Hat I Can Do That! because there are many tasks that my husband and I can’t do but the kids can which really levels the playing field.

How are board games a bonding experience for your family? Reply for a chance to win one of five ultimate LEGO® Games prize packs!!

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One of the activities I put on our advent list this year was an idea that came from Family Fun magazine: create a snowscape with shaving cream. My kids had no idea what that meant when they pulled the little card out of the box but they were pretty excited once they figured it out.

I put out a cookie sheet for each kid, gave them each a selection of Imaginext guys, and made them take off their shirts. (That last one was a good move.) Then I sprayed a pretty good size layer of cheap shaving cream all over Augie’s tray. Once the kids saw what I was doing, they each wanted a turn with the can.

The idea with the toys was that they could make the guys ice skate, or sled or just generally play in the snow.

I’d even taken extra care to pull a Bat-snowmobile out of the toy box…

And penguins! But neither of the kids ended up using the shaving cream as snow.

It was interesting to watch them because I could tell they knew this was supposed to be fun, but they were also kind of baffled about what they should do.

And at first, they did not like getting the shaving cream on their hands. Wyatt probably got up to wash his hands three times in the first five minutes. Augie just wiped them on his tummy which he didn’t mind for some reason. I guess one’s feelings about shaving cream touching them aren’t always logical.

I gave them some rubber spatulas to play with and that’s what got the ball rolling. They swiped and wiped and squooshed the cream up into big mountains. They buried their toys and dug them out again.

And pretty soon they overcame their distaste for having shaving cream on their hands!

They were busy with this for about an hour or so but I’m not going to lie — clean-up was a total pain. Shaving cream sticks to everything and doesn’t easily rinse out of the tiny nooks and crannies on little toys. And despite the cookie sheets, quite a bit of the cream made it onto the table. There was a sizeable amount on tummies and jeans too. I let Augie wash the toys for a bit which he just thought of as a new variation on the game and Wyatt only complained a little about wiping the table off four times. So despite the hefty clean-up time we all thought this was a big, fun success!

Does your family play with shaving cream? Any tips to minimize the mess?

In the last few years, it’s become apparent that I’m a little bit crazy for advent calendars. So far this year, I have three lined up! I say “so far” because sometimes one of the kids’ grandmas or someone will send them an advent calendar too. I say: Bring ‘em on!

Advent calendars weren’t a fixture of my childhood, but they did make an occasional appearance. I always like the ones with chocolate, of course, but my favorite advent calendar of all time was a paper one from Germany with beautifully drawn pictures behind each door.

This year, like last year, I bought Wyatt LEGO advent calendar. We all thought last year’s was awesome so when I heard they were releasing a Star Wars version it was a given that one would be coming into our house. Augie is still a bit young for the LEGO calendars so I bought him an Imaginext advent calendar that’s a little more his speed. These toy-based calendars come out of the budget for the kids’ gifts and they’re one of my favorite things to give them because they get almost a full month of play and happiness from them.

My favorite advent calendar is our activity advent calendar. I tried this for the first time last year and it was great for a few reasons. First off, it helped us all focus on the fun of doing things rather than getting things. It also helped me pace myself a bit. I’m occasionally prone to going crazy and trying to jam a whole bunch of fun into a short period of time. By selecting just one Christmas-y activity per day, I kept myself from going overboard and getting burned out on holiday fun well before Christmas day.

Here is my list of activities for this year:

1. Assemble paper Christmas train.
2. Assemble paper Christmas village.
3. Bake Christmas cookies and decorate them.
4. Build Christmas sculptures with Legos.
5. Create a snowscape with shaving cream and action figures.
6. Cut snowflakes out of paper.
7. Decorate the Christmas tree.
8. Decorate the gingerbread house
9. Do some Christmas Mad Libs.
10. Donate to the school food drive.
11. Draw pictures of fun Christmas activities we’ve done.
12. Eat dinner by candlelight.
13. Go out to look at Christmas lights after dark.
14. Go outside with blankets to look at the stars.
15. Have a bubble bath
16. Have a family dance party
17. Have breakfast for dinner (I’ll make Snowman Pancakes. So freaking cute!)
18. Have hot chocolate with all the fixings
19. Make a card for a loved one and send it in the mail.
20. Make gifts for teachers.
21. Make ornaments for the tree (I’m thinking salt dough ornaments.)
22. Purchase a present for Toys for Tots.
23. Read a Christmas book together.
24. Recycle some toys to share with others.
25. Set up the Christmas tree.
26. Sing Christmas songs while dad plays the guitar.
27. Tell everyone in our family why you think they’re cool at dinner.
28. Watch a Christmas movie before bed.
29. Write a letter to Santa.
30. Write a list of 5 things you are thankful for this year.

A lot of these activities are things we do every year  and some are ideas I’ve collected online (sources: Kiddley, Kid’s Craft Weekly, Family Fun and Ali Edwards). I repeated a lot of the activities from the list I came up with last year, but I’ve added a few more and removed some of the ones that just didn’t work for us. I don’t really schedule the activities in advance and I’ve put more than 24 activities on the list so I have the flexibility to choose things that fit with our schedule from day to day. I also anticipate adding fun ideas and events in as I hear about them. For example, last year a local organization trucked snow into a parking lot and I quickly added playing there as our activity on the day I heard about it.

We use this little advent house thingy that I got on sale at Target a few years ago for our advent calendar. Last year, I just wrote the activities on little pieces of paper but since we’re repeating so many this year, I decided to make something I could print out year after year! And while I was at it, I decided to make it cute. And since I did all that work anyway, I thought I’d share them with you so you can download them and print them out for your advent calendars if you like.

Page 1:

Download Advent Activities Page 1

Page 2:

Download Advent Activities Page 2

(These were made with the Echo Park Holly Jolly Christmas Elements #1 pack purchased from JessicaSprague.com)

Just print these out (they look great on photo paper) and then cut the squares apart with scissors or a paper cutter. Not every activity will appeal to every family, of course, so I’ve included five blank spaces on each sheet so you can write in your own activities. I’ll be using these for impromptu activities myself.

Is your family going to have an advent calendar this year? Are you planning anything fun?