Fun little Dot to Dot. Who doesn't love a snowman?
What you need is straws and some kind of string. We used shoelaces, it made this activity a little easier for smaller hands, because threading straws onto yarn is hard!! First I let Tyson cut the straws into pieces. Any size he wanted. He had fun because the straws would flip into the air and they were all over my kitchen.
Then you just string them onto your yarn or shoelace. You can do patterns or just random placement. When your done, just tie the ends off and you have a fun straw snake!
This is my favorite one that I have ever made. I actually found it on a church website, Sugardoodle. J.D. loved this one to. You could use any colorful candy, but you have them sort them, obviously, into color. There is also a place that older children can write the number of each group. Dry erease markers are another favorite have to have item in our house. The best part of this game is that I let the kids eat the M&M's afterwards. But this kid, Tyson, he's weird. Note that he is holding a bag of lemon drops in his left hand. He passed up the chocolate for lemon drops! Piper and I happily ate his M&M's.
This is also a fun one. You can practice addition with goldfish! This is a good one to take to church because we take goldfish every week. 
This is a great idea! I actually got this at a yard sale and have since done it with other books. Gradelevel workbooks are expensive. Why not reuse them? Tear pages out and put them into sheet protectors and use a dry erease marker for writing! This is another thing that goes over well at church.
Hopefully this gave you a few idea's that you can do at home! I love that all of mine are being well loved by many kids! Cute, cute show! Did anyone else see it a few weeks ago when it aired on ABC? Well worth watching agian. Give yourself a 22 minute break and let the kiddo's watch it and you go take a nap! Or if your me, I'm going to go wrap presents and hope they keep entertained and don't come looking for me!
I've got an obsessions with candy canes. I have a few cookies I make with them, but I stumbled across this and had to share! Go here for your candy cane fix!
Chocolate Dipped Oreo's
Homemade freezer jam and bags of Lehi Roller Mills bread mixes. These are bigger gifts for the Young Women's presidency and advisers. Love those ladies! We spend so much time together and they have all gotten to be my good friends! On the lids of the jam, it says "Hope your holiday's are "Jam" packed with Christmas Spirit!"
For everyone else, they get pasta! Any kind of pasta will do. You could even attach a can of spaghetti sauce to this and make it an even nicer gift.
In case you can't read the tag it says "Have a "pasta-tively" Merry Christmas!"
I picked this frame up at DI for $2.00. It was missing the backing, so it was just the glass and the frame. I sanded it down and painted it black. Then we used a glue, similiar to Gorilla Glue to glue the glass to the frame. I had this vinyl left over from last year, so I put it onto the glass, and then I hung it above all my nativities.
My friend, Andie, did this with her empty frame. She let her kids make a nativity scene on the glass and then modge podged over it. Super cute and something they will treasure forever, becasue they did it together!
Butterscotch Haystacks
Take left over mashed potatoes, (they have to be cold to make this work) and form into small patties. Coat the patties in flour, seasoned with salt & pepper. Coat both sides of the pattie. Throw them into a frying pan with a little bit of butter and brown on both sides!
Notice the 7-year-0ld scowling. He's a grump. My 5-year-old is just happy to be there. He smiles through the whole th ing.
Still Grumpy! I might change his name to Grumpy.
Smiling! Everything's forgotten.
Brotherly Love.
This is Mandee. I need to just apologize for my slacking in the blog area. I just have been taking time to get my priorities straight and I know that the blog will still be here when I get it all figured out. Brandy is so good to keep this blog afloat and I feel bad that I am not able to do as much as her but I have reached the point where I need to focus on other things. I have been overwhelmed with PTO, church callings, a new job (Tupperware consultant) that keeps me more busy than I thought -which is good, being a mom, a wife, a maid, a shrink.....and the list goes on. I have to remind myself that my family comes first and the blog is just a hobby for me. I promised myself that once a blog become a chore and not a hobby I would reevaluate.
I was going to do these on wood and use ribbon to tie them, but then I remember the tiles and thought why not? A little less work, no cutting! Mandee had some little tiles so I borrowed some and got to to work. They were a off-white color to start with, but I painted them black and then just modge-podged the picture to the tile. Then I went over it with a couple coats of modge podge. Easy!!
So you'll notice that I have 2 different things going on here. Some of my pictures did not want to print off small enough to go onto the tiles. FRUSTRATION AND TEARS! So I went looking for bigger tiles, but couldn't find what I needed. I was in the dollar store and I saw these cute little Christmas tin decorations and I grabbed some because they were about the right size. Painted them, and did the same thing. I just need to add some ribbon to the wire and they will be ready to go! I just printed these off at home and used paper to print them on . It bubbles. The picture of my friends is really bubbly. I will probably do that one over.(The next morning the air bubbles had worked out and it looks awesome! Patience is a virtue!) Last year when we did the pictures on picture paper, we didn't have that problem. You can use the pictures from lds.org, because they are copyright free, so it would be worth it to print them off at Costco. Believe me, the 13 cents will be worth it.
As an after thought, I believe I will make some gifts out of these, go check out this awesome word art that you could print off and use to make fun sayings. I like this one and this one. Oh, oh and this one! Lot's of options here. Oh, and this is one of my favorites, although who would put this on the wall?Funny stuff!!
Here are a few of the photo's I made up. Feel free to save them and use them, if you'd like.
These first ones are my very favorite that I have found. Found them at Crafty This and That. You can download both sets there.
These beauties come in 3 color schemes, courtesy of Paper Crave.
Love Living Locurto.
These darlings are available, via Delight.
Found these cuties, available in color or black and white at mushy.
These cute mittens come from Tricia-Rennea.
Courtesy of Paper Seed. 
This is a project from last year. Mandee did them and didn't they turn out darling? What a fun craft, I had to reshare this. If your interested in making it, please visit this post. I wanted to share it early enought that you would have time to make some!
Tres Chic Boutique carries a variety of items from jewelry, home decor, baby girl clothes, and chic neck ties for guys. This website totally makes me think of Mandee. She loves big chunky, funky jewelry!! This particular set is only $ 10.99. That's necklace and earrings, what a steal!!
Cammi over at Scribble it is amazing! I have a huge wishlist from this store! I have won 2 giveaways hosted by her in the last several months. I used my recent win, a gift certificate, to help me purchase the metal nativity set. And it is darling!!! She has really easy craft kits that you can put together and give as Christmas presents to your family and the great thing is, they are affordable!
Accessory Ave. has the cutest scripture totes, scripture & hymnal cover, darling purses and super cute hair accessories! And she is affordable! Loving her stuff! She even offers custom orders. Definitely a must see..jpg)