Crafting Towards Christmas...

I had a grand if not well executed plan for this December including an advent calendar and complementing activities/crafts for each day...I thought I could be one of those Mom's. ;-) Perhaps next year. This year I did a simple version. I found 25 winter/Christmas books (most I own but a few are from the library) and wrapped them and numbered them so that Luca has a book to open and read before bed each night.
Luca loves this. Each night she sits on the couch holding the wrapped book and says "I don't know what one this will be!" and "I don't know what color it is." and then as she sees the cover, "Oh! I really like this book." even though 90% of the time she's never seen it before. I also had a list of "activities" to do every day that went along with the books or were just fun (like baking cookies and sledding) but I will admit that only about half of them have happened. These are some of the half that did:

Snowmen at Night has been one of Luca's favorite books and as it was opened in the first week of December, we've read it a lot. She can almost recite the whole thing with me! It's a very cute story and it rhymes which makes it one of my favorites too.
To go along with this book we made marshmallow snowmen on black paper to be our "night". Many marshmallows were eaten during the course of this craft and may or may not have had glue on them. Our neighbor friend Noah was here that evening so he made one too!

Another snowman story that was a big hit with the little people in my house was this one:
On this day we tried our hand at "snow" playdough which is regular playdough without food coloring but with lots of glitter. We made hats out of pom-poms and scarves out of strings and a whole bunch of little snowmen.
Later that evening, Luca pulled out the "snow-dough" again and this time made a giant "monster snowman" who's name if I recall correctly, was John. And "little trees in a heart cookie".
Jennie and the Black Stockings is a book I've had since I was a little girl, it's always been one of my favorites. In this story Jennie and her brother Frank get into trouble while playing among cotton bales during the family's harvest and the consequences alter their Christmas celebrations. It's a sweet story that teaches how the Lord loves us and takes care of us. Although not terribly well written, the illustrations are great and there's something intangible because this is hands-down Luca's favorite Christmas book too.
On this day we made cotton ball "snow" for our front window.
And another snowman activity to end this post...
Caution: black frosting is messy.