Creating Simple Holiday Traditions and GIVEAWAY

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All opinions are mine alone. #northpolefun

Hi friends!

I'm talking about Christmas today.

I KNOW!

It's coming whether you're ready or not, so we might as well pretend like we're ready, right? Right.

I love holiday traditions. There is something comforting about knowing that in all the chaos that can come with the holidays, there are some things that are the same every year. We didn't get to do a lot of our holiday traditions last year because we were still trying to find normal. I want to get back to them this year! Every year for all of my life we have had advent calendars. You know those German cardboard ones with the perforated doors and the molded chocolates? Yep, those. LOVE them. Every so often my mom would step up her game and we would do something fancy, but those cardboard ones were there every year without fail.

Those simple traditions are the ones that stick.

DIY gifts for Little Ones {that you still have time to finish!!}

Hi friends!

So...who isn't done with their Christmas shopping yet??

I know it's hard to believe, but I actually am! It's pretty much a miracle.

But, considering the fact that I have spent many a Christmas Eve finishing gifts, I wanted to give you all a list of things that you still have time to get finished. All of these can be put together after the kids go to bed, and still let you get to bed at a decent hour!

Toddler Boxes

What little one wouldn't love a whole new set of fun things to play with? Put together a bunch of Toddler Boxes and let them go to town!

Magnetic Play Sets
Dress Up Doll

I made Abbey a magnetic Dress Up doll for our road trip over the summer, and she loves it! This one is completely backed with magnetic sheets.

Fill-A-Dot Games

So, it turns out that large, flat sequins are the perfect size for Bingo Dauber sheets! Who knew!? A piece of magnet on the back and you have dots that can be used over and over again. Print off your favorite Bingo Dauber sheets (my favorites are from DLTK), laminate them if you like, and play away!

Play Scenes

I found this adorable nativity scene at Babalisme. This girl has some ca-uuuute printables, so go check it out!

Light Table

A light table is such a fun play toy, and can be used for so many activities! This one is so simple to make, and fits into anyone's budget. Don't forget to throw in some DIY Color Discs!

Olliblocks

You guys. I am in LOVE with Olliblocks from Caravan Shoppe! These simple play sets are easy to make, and offer endless combinations of fun! I made Abbey the Christmas set last night. It took about 2 hours, including waiting for the ModPodge to dry, and doing 2 coats. She loves them! Bonus: They fit in the boxes I use for Toddler Boxes! Win!

The fantastic people at Caravan Shoppe have given me a 20% off coupon to share with you!
Use the code longstory20 (all lowercase!) for the next week! Yay!

Alright...now get those gifts done!

Be blessed!

Heather

Deck the Halls!

What fun is Christmas decorating if you don't get the tiny children involved, huh? Last week I decided that a nice paper chain was a perfect project for Abbey. Lots of chances to help, and nothing too complicated. Sounds like a toddler craft dream!

We started out by decorating some paper:

A little marker...

A little glitter...

A little more glitter! Who doesn't love more glitter??

Then we took a nap-time break. Well, Abbey did anyway. I like projects like this that can be split up, because it gives me some good "first a nap, then ______" motivation. It also gave me a chance to do the next step of the project without Abbey losing interest.

While she was sleeping, I cut the paper into strips using my paper cutter (God bless that thing!)

Note #1: Construction paper divides evenly into 1 1/2 inch strips

Note #2: Elmers glue sticks (the purple ones) aren't very good at holding down glitter...just sayin.

After nap time, we started putting our chain together:

Glue...

Pinch...

Glue...pinch...glue...pinch...glue...pinch...

This is a great time to work on things like color recognition, and patterns.

So proud!

It looked a bit lonely at first...

But then Noni got out the Christmas decorations:

Much better! If you can believe it, this is only about a third of what will be going up there! 

Someday I'll have a collection like that...