Christmas Party

We had a lovely end of year Christmas party.  Naomi and her nannying children came over to celebrate with us and we had lots of fun playing musical statues, dancing and had lots of yummy party food.  The children all looked so cute dressed up in their party clothes.  Here are some photos of our end of year party.  A great end to 2011!

Chilly Paper Plate Snowmen

Another one of our craft activities this month were these fab chilly snowmen!  The children loved getting sticky with paint and PVA glue when we made them.

I started off by cutting out the inside of a paper plate, then stapled it to the top of a second whole paper plate, with a slight over lap.  Then with the left over bit of the first paper plate, I cut the outside part in half, then in half again to make the scarves.  Since my little people are all aged 2 and under, I assisted them in painting the scarves with stripes of different coloured paints.  We did the same for the snowman's hat.  This was made using a 3rd paper plate; the inside part cut in half. These were then left to dry.

While they were drying on the kitchen radiator the children got lovely and sticky using PVA glue to stick on some cotton wool balls to the snowman's body and some eyes, a mouth and buttons that I had cut out from black card for them.  They then glued on a carrot image that we found using clip art on the computer.

When they had dried, the hats and scarves were glued on and a glittery pom pom was added to the hats.

The children were over the moon with their completed snowmen and I've had a few photos from parents proudly displaying their child's at home!

Christmas Cranberry Spiced Muffins

Bake a batch of these Christmas muffins to get into the festive spirit!

Preparation Time

10 - 20 minutes

Cooking Time

20 minutes

Makes

12

• 140g dried cranberries 
• 300g  self raising flour
• 155g brown sugar
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 185ml buttermilk
• 125ml vegetable oil
• 1 egg, lightly whisked
• 1 tbsp brown sugar, extra

Method

1.    Preheat oven to 200°C. Line a muffin tin with paper cases.

2.    Place the cranberries in a heatproof bowl and cover with boiling water. Set aside for 10 minutes to soak. Drain well.

3.    Combine flour,* sugar, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and cranberries in a large bowl. Whisk buttermilk, oil and egg together in a jug. Add buttermilk mixture to flour mixture and stir until just combined (do not over mix). Spoon evenly among the lined pan. Sprinkle the extra sugar over the muffins.

4.    Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean when tested. Turn onto a wire rack. Serve warm.

*This recipe can also be made using 70g of pecans, however I used mixed fruit instead since I was baking with children (plus I don't like nuts!). Pecans are added with the flour.

Paper Mache Christmas Tree Decorations

I put in an order for lots of Christmas craft materials at Crafty Crocodiles last week and we made our first Christmas decoration today from some of the bits in the big box that arrived.

These little cardboard christmas trees are great for small children to decorate and because all of my little people are under 2, I did an assisted craft activity with them over 2 days.  First we painted the trees green.  Easy enough you might think?  Well yes I suppose it would be, however I had Amelia (my own daughter) around the table with us who, after 15 seconds, ended up looking like this while I was helping one of the other children with their painting... Lovely!

They didn't take long to finish, so I gave the children some paper and they did some paintings to take home too.

When the children returned today, the Christmas trees were dry and we continued to decorate them using some sparkly fuzzy balls and some foam stars (also from Crafty Crocodiles) and PVA glue.

The end result was these pretty trees ready for the children to hang on their Christmas trees at home.