Sharing Saturday 15-1

Happy New Year!! Welcome to the first Sharing Saturday of 2015!! This New Year's Eve was the first time we really celebrated with Hazel. We counted down to 8 p.m. with her and let her have noise makers, jump on bubble wrap, wear hats and drink sparkling cider. She loved it!! Did you have a fun New Year's celebration? If you want ideas for celebrating with kids, make sure to check out last week's Sharing Saturday. There were some wonderful ideas shared. Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week and a very special thank you to all of you who come to see what others are up to. For this week's features I picked nine non-New Year's posts to share. I hope you will check them out!

Features

Christmas Crafts & Sewing: Elf on the Shelf, The Christmas Story, and Frozen

Well with Christmas fast approaching, I thought I would share a bunch of the things we have been up to lately. It is amazing how fast Christmas is coming. Between Hazel and I getting sick I feel like we have not gotten everything done that I hoped. Now we are hoping Hazel's fever stays away long enough for her not to be contagious (she has strep and possibly something else) so we can celebrate with extended family. With my time I have been doing some sewing and am working on a quilt to review a quilt book hopefully later this week since I'm hoping to have the quilt as part of Hazel's Christmas gift.

Elsa and Olaf Crafts

Being Advent, I thought I would share each post where our Mouse and the Miracle Mouse (Holy) has been up to. (He now has an elf friend named Elfie who often is hidden with him.)

Holy and Elfie Preparing the New Manger
that was built by a friend at church!

Today I thought I would share two simple Disney's Frozen inspired crafts. They both have some inspiration from The Dollar Tree. Last month we made autumn fairies with doilies we got at The Dollar Tree.  Well this week I found some doilies that had snowflakes on them. I thought they would be perfect to make an Elsa peg doll. I made her an Elsa and Anna doll awhile ago, but apparently I never shared them and I cannot find the pictures. I'll have to take more when I find where Hazel left them! Hazel liked this new one better though.

Christmas DVDs Review and Giveaway

Disclosure: NCircle Entertainment gave me a copy of the DVDs free of charge and is supplying the ones for the giveaway free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the DVD on NCircle Entertainment's site for your convenience. You can also find their DVDs at local retailers!

To help get us in the Christmas spirit, NCircle Entertainment sent us four Christmas DVDs to review and are supplying another set of four to one of my wonderful readers!! Hazel was really excited to see a few of her favorite shows represented. She insisted we start with the newly released Octonauts: The Very Vegimal Christmas.

Disney's Frozen -- Marshmallow Olaf and Party Activity Ideas

With Halloween fast approaching, I know the holiday season is not far behind and then it will be time for Hazel's birthday party. Her theme this year is Disney's Frozen, so we are going to do it for her real birthday (well a couple of weeks after so it is not during the holidays). I have seen all over the web the bags with the tag "Do you wanna build a snowman?" and the supplies for a marshmallow snowman. I decided to see how they would come out. I have to say our tries did not turn out well. So this is something we will not be doing for the party. Now for full disclosure, our large marshmallows were stale, but I do not think this is what caused the issues.

Olaf Mugs for Frozen Party

Hazel has decided her birthday party will be a Frozen theme this year. I saw in a few places making easy Olaf mugs and t-shirts. While pulling out some supplies for our mermaid play date, I found some white mugs I had bought for Hazel's Tea for 2 Birthday Party. We had left out paints for the older kids to decorate them. We only had one taker so I have six left over. Although painting and drawing are not my strong points, I thought I would give it a try. Olaf's face is rather easy. I pulled out my paint markers: black, white, brown, orange and blue.

I started with his mouth outline and then drew the spot for the teeth (which I later enlarged with the white marker). Then I drew the eyes and hairs and finally the carrot for a nose. 

Then on the back I wrote: "I like warm hugs."

The first one I did I thought the mouth was too big, but I actually liked that one better in the end. Our plan is to have a hot chocolate bar with the mugs and then have the kids take the mug home as the favor.

For more Frozen ideas check out:

• Frozen Fractals Lesson
• Frozen Fractals Lesson 2 & Olaf Craft
• Sharing Saturday with Frozen Features
• My Disney's Frozen Pinterst Board

Winter Crafts Round-Up

I had so many incomplete ideas for my post today. Since they were all incomplete, I considered just not posting, but then I remembered I wanted to do a winter round-up since so many of you have not been following since 2011 when we began. So here it is, our past winter activities, crafts and books and a movie. Enjoy!!

Trinity Snowman & January Happenings

Today I am going to share with you a wonderful way to teach the Trinity to children and what will be happening this month here at Crafty Moms Share. First our lesson. I found on Proverbial Homemaker, Art Day Trinity Snowman Project on Pinterest. Her post led me to Hope Is Where the Heart Is to get the printable, Trinity Snowman. The printable is available for free at that link.

It is a lovely description of how the bottom ball of a snowman is the Father--the rock foundation, the middle ball is the Son with open arms and the head is the Holy Spirit--our counselor and friend. I think I like this explanation better than the apple one we read about and did a craft with in the fall.

The obvious project to go with this printable is a snowman craft. We went out to dinner tonight, but I prepared ahead of time by cutting out the three circles and gathering some supplies for Hazel to make a snowman. It entertained her until the food came. For other snowman ideas check out the features at this week's Sharing Saturday, our past snowman crafts and activities and our Winter Pinterest Board.

This month's author for Virtual Book Club for Kids is Laura Numeroff. She is best known for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, but has a variety of books on all sorts of subjects. We will be sharing our chosen book and activity on January 13th.

Then on January 21st we will be "visiting" Peru with Around the World in 12 Dishes. We did a little exploration of Peru previously when we reviewed Daria's A Child's Life in the Andes. I am really excited to try the dish Daria suggested for us as well as a fun musical instrument craft I found. We will be posting our official dish on the 21st!! So join us then!!

I have been toying with the idea of running a Valentine swap again. Would you be interested in participating or having your child/ren participate? It would mean making some homemade Valentines and mailing them worldwide and then receiving some from all over the world. If you are interested, let me know. If there is interest I will put it together. 

That is what January brings! I hope you will join us for all the fun!

The Snowman and the Snowdog DVD Review & Giveaway

Disclosure: NCircle Entertainment gave me a copy of the DVD free of charge and is supplying the one for the giveaway free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation.

Today I have the pleasure of reviewing The Snowman and the Snowdog DVD. Thank you to NCircle Entertainment for giving me a copy to review. Now we have not read the book, The Snowman and the Snowdog, however we have read and love The Snowman by Raymond Briggs. The Snowman and the Snowdog is a sequel to The Snowman. Both books are wordless and so is the movie. We have watched The Snowman movie on YouTube. Both movies make the book come alive. They literally seem to be the pictures of the book moving. Raymond Briggs worked with the producers to make sure the movies were what he wanted from his books and you can tell. If you do not know the books, they are lovely stories of the magic of childhood and snow.

Snow Globe

Now Hazel has been asking for weeks about when it will snow again. For several weeks we had a white sheet down on the floor of our family room so she could pretend it had snowed. Needless to say she was very excited to watch this movie and we really enjoyed. She was also excited about the crafts we made to go with it. I found the crafts and printables at The Snowman Craft Activities.

The movie shows a young boy and his mother moving into a house with their dog. The dog dies around Halloween. Around Christmas time he discovers a loose floorboard in his room and discovers a box with the making for a snowman and a picture of the boy and snowman from the first story. It happens to be snowing, so he goes out side and makes a duplicate of the snowman. He runs inside to get a new tangerine since the old one is shriveled and sees his dog's leash. He makes a snowdog next to the snowman with socks for ears and spots and using the shriveled tangerine for his nose. Similar to the first story, the snowman comes to life at night and so does the snowdog. The boy discovers this and goes on a magical adventure with them flying in the sky. They find an airplane to fly around in as well and then go sledding with other snowmen. Then they come to a Christmas tree with Santa packing his sleigh. The boy helps Santa and he tells him his Christmas wish. Santa gives the boy a small gift. The sun is about to rise, so the boy and his snowfriends must get home. I am going to leave the end a surprise for you since it is such a happy ending.

The DVD does have a bonus feature. We looked at it briefly, but it was not going to hold Hazel's attention. It was about Raymond Briggs. 

The Snowman and the Snowdog Mobile

For crafts we made a snow globe. We decided to make a dry one with fake snow and glitter instead of the liquid. We also made a mobile using the printable at The Snowman website. We also made the garland. I printed out extra of the snowdogs from the snow globe and used them in the garland so it would not be just the snowman.  I hung the mobile from the garland and hung it in Hazel's room. She can pretend it snows every day in there now.

Garland

We also made some paper snowflakes using the patterns found at The Snowman website. We hung them from the garland as well.

Finally we made some marshmallow snowmen. Again the idea came from The Snowman website. After making the first one, Hazel decided to get creative. I pulled out toothpicks since we were having trouble keeping them together. We also used some mini chocolate chips on some. I had trouble getting black frosting at first and bought the chips in case I didn't find any.

Now it is your turn to try to win a copy of this loving DVD. You can follow the Rafflecopter for what to do and follow my Giveaway Rules. Or if you cannot wait, you can purchase it at Barnes and Noble or Amazon. (Note these are not affiliate links, but are here for your convenience.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Let It Snow! Winter Wonderland Tea Party

Ducky and Princess Teddy got seats of honor

So Hazel had her well doctor visit and I wanted to make the whole day special so she would have a positive memory instead of just getting shots. We started today having a Winter Wonderland Tea Party. First we had to do some crafts to decorate and then we had to get all the dolls and animals. Then Hazel had to feed them all and get dressed herself (in costume). Then we had some tea and read lots of snow themed stories. Below are the ones I let her choose from and we have read at least 12 of them in the past two days.

I promised at yesterday's Sharing Saturday (which is still open!), that I would feature some snow-themed crafts today. I knew we did this, so I knew it would be a perfect fit here. Plus we used some of the ideas for our crafts. Here are those features:

1) From Life with Moore Babies: Colored Snowballs and More Ice and Snow Fun
2) From Making Boys Men: Frost Writing (For those without snow around but cold weather!)
3) From Gift of Curiosity: Snowman Craft for Preschoolers (see ours below)
4) From ArtClubBlog: Paper Snowflakes Tutorial (see ours below)
5) From Little Wonders' Days: Glittered Peppermint Winter Play Dough

And here are a few from past Sharing Saturdays:

1) From Gift of Curiosity: Winter Printable Pack
2) From Organic Aspirations: Sensory Play with Snow Indoors
3) From Like Mama ~ Like Daughter: Winter Themed Week in Preschool

Also check out the features from past Sharing Saturdays here and here. Some of these would have been great snacks for our tea party!

3-D Snowflake

So we decorated for our big winter wonderland.  I made a simple 3-d snowflake using some foam snowflakes I bought. I was inspired by Paper Source and just cut a slit in each and fit them together. Then punched a hole in one and put a string through it to hang.

Paper Snowflakes = Placemats

We made some paper snowflakes using the tutorial from ArtClubBlog (see feature above). We decided to use them as placemats. I also tried to make some out of felt using the same tutorial but my scissors were not quite sharp enough to make it beautiful. I am going to make them into pillows.

Felt Snowflake

We made several snow angel chains. Hazel had a go at cutting some but cut their heads off, so she used her smiley face stickers for heads and then added smiley faces to all of them. For hers we used the template at First Palette. For the ones I did I drew my own template to make them look more like snow angels. Here is my template.

I folded one of her large pieces of construction paper in half the long way and then folded into eighths in accordion style and cut this out. This is how they came out pre-smiley face.

Source

I wish we had the book The Snow Angel by Glenn Beck, but the library did not have it in, so we will have to read it another time. We loved it last year.

Hazel also made a cotton ball snowman similar to the one shared by Gift of Curiosity (see feature above). We used a pipe cleaner for a carrot nose and stick arms.

Then we laid out some fake snow that I had bought last year for my friend's Winter Onderland party but it wasn't used. And I had bought a package of snowballs post Christmas for this and we pulled out the wool ones I needle felted for her last year.

Then she gathered all of her dolls and animals. After getting them all around, she needed to feed them all. Ducky and Princess Teddy got seats of honor on the table. (See top picture) And of course Hazel needed to dress-up. She wanted to do the tea party before she took her bath and got dressed, so we are still in our pajamas, but she added on her tutu, ballerina top, wings, and crown and was carrying her wand part of the time.

Finally we were ready for our party. We sat on the snow covered floor and read books while we drank tea and Hazel finished her raisin bread toast from breakfast. Then we had a snowball fight.

Gathering all the snowballs and making a snowball pyramid

Then she wanted to play with her white balloon, but since we only had one white balloon, she gave it to me and used a red one. 

Now it was time to take her bath and for us to get dressed so we could have a special lunch out before her appointment. We had such a fun day. We still have our winter wonderland set up, but will have to pick it up tonight or tomorrow since the cleaning people come Monday morning.

Snowy, Tea Party Kind of Day

Wednesdays are typically our day without many plans since it is the day between her two school days. I find it nice to have a day to play at home and spend time together. This morning was one of those days I was glad we did not have plans as it was snowing harder than they predicted. Our big plans for today was to have a tea party after breakfast and getting dressed. I made the tea during breakfast so it would be cool enough for Hazel by the time we got to the party.

Our next step was to get dressed and accessorized and then we had to dress all of our guests. Hazel wore her favorite pink dress and then piled on the jewelry. I told her she looked like she was from the 80's with all the bracelets (think Madonna or Cyndi Lauper). She basically put on every bracelet she could find and every ring. You cannot see it, but she did pick out a tiara which I am wearing in the picture above.

Then we poured the tea for our guests and got ours and our real snack (corn muffin top) ready. She loved this part. We even got a special guest who we gave a plastic cup to since she probably would have broken one of the porcelain ones.

I think she was a bit more interested in the pom poms and wands Hazel insisted we carry to the tea party. We had put them on the floor by the table and Fluffy was definitely keeping an eye on them. Of course her favorite part was that we would choose one of the dolls or Ducky to need more tea. Then after the corn muffin was gone she wanted me to cut up some apple. Needless to say it was a very fun morning.

After lunch we changed and put on our layers to go outside. Now the snow had turned to rain and it was wet and very heavy outside. However she really wanted to go play in it, so we did. After all, she has been wanting to make a big snowman for a couple of years now and we have not had a good snow for it. Well we did some shoveling and made a snowman and she made many snow angels. I think this might have been her biggest snowman yet. We used almost all of the snow that was on the driveway next to our garage. It made shoveling much easier after rolling it all into the snowman.

She also loved making footprints and dropping her shovel to make its footprint and handprints too in the snow. Afterward we came in for hot chocolate (well I had tea) and warmed up. By then the roads were clear so we went out to run some errands as well. We spent some time doing some crafts together, but I will share those another time. Have you done anything fun this week with your kids?