Busy Creating: Cardboard Ornaments

Are you trying to get last minute stuff done and you need something to keep your kids busy?  Me too.

We're at my parent's and we don't have our car, so most of the time, we are at the house.  Looking for things besides video games and TV to keep the kids busy can be a challenge, especially when all of my craft stuff is not here.

Do you have lots of cardboard boxes from your online orders, scissors, glue, and hopefully pompoms (scraps of paper are a great substitute).

Ask your kids what shapes they want to decorate and cut them out (don't shoot yourself in the foot and offer to do a reindeer).  Let your kids color or paint them (however- use marker if you want to leave them unattended).

Put some glue in a recycled container and put the pompoms in a bowl.  They can dip the pompoms in the glue and attach them themselves with almost no mess.

Let the glue dry and hang them on the tree.

So now, if the baby crawls in and knocks down the tree, I won't have to be as worried about her breaking an ornament ;)

Busy Cooking: Homemade Hot Cocoa Powder

I have become a hot chocolate snob.  Living in Japan, we could get Swiss Miss, but that's just a watery excuse for hot chocolate I give to my kids because it's easy.  There were other chocolate mixes, but the milk and sugar content were different, so the tastes were different than what I wanted.

I discovered something bad, I loved Godiva hot chocolate.  In Japan, a small would run me over $5 a cup.  I started buy William Sonoma hot chocolate mix, which is quite delicious, but at $18 for a jar, it adds up.

This year, I've been searching online and on pinterest to find a perfect make ahead hot chocolate recipe.  There is a recipe on the side of Hersey's cocoa powder that is quite good, but I wanted something that I could make ahead and just have to measure into hot milk.  For the first time, Cook's Illustrated failed me.  I found their recipe for make ahead powder on Brown Eyed Baker, and was not impressed (granted I used subpar white chocolate).  Then, I found this awesome little gem of a recipe on Confection's of a Foodie Bride from Gourmet Magazine 2005 and it was the ONE!

This recipe makes about 70 servings!  I bought all the ingredients and then calculated out the cost per serving of the hot chocolate, since I was trying to save money and have great taste.  It ended up being about $0.30 per serving (and that was with a more expensive higher quality chocolate).  One batch of this would probably be enough to last all winter long, or, in my case, be sufficient to supply gifts to many of your family and friends.

Hot Chocolate Mix:

2 vanilla beans
4 cups sugar
24 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped (I used Ghiradelli chips)
9 oz. dark chocolate, chopped (I used Godiva, found it at the register at Michael's)
2 cups Dutch process cocoa powder (I used 1 cup Hersey's unsweetened cocoa, 1 cup Scharfen Berger)

1) Split vanilla beans and scrape seeds into the sugar.  Using your fingers, rub seeds into the sugar.  Place pods into the sugar, cover the bowl and let the sugar sit overnight or longer.
2) Using a food processor, with the metal blade, chop the dark and semisweet chocolates until finely ground- use 4-5 second pulses.
3) Remove pods from sugar, add in cocoa and ground chocolate, mix with a whisk until completely combined.
4) Warm 8 ounces (1 cup) milk, add in 2 -3 TBSP cocoa mix (depending on how sweet you want yours to be), mix, and enjoy!
5) Store for several months in an airtight container.

Something special my kids and I do is have hot chocolate parties.  We even have special kids sized mugs for those occasions.  I even let them add extra marshmallows and sometimes sprinkles to the top of their whipped cream.

I got the jars at Target.  You can even dress them up as gifts with scraps of fabric, what little boy wouldn't love to drink spider man hot cocoa?

Making Christmas Magical

Recently, I was asked if I could wish for anything (something concrete or something that was not short of a miracle), what would it be.  I thought and thought and really feel truly blessed to have everything I would wish for without feeling selfish.  So, I wished that every child would experience a magical Christmas.  And, I'm not talking magical in terms of getting every toy they asked for, I'm talking experiencing wondrous magical things that make their eyes sparkle and their mouths open wide with smiles.

This year, I took out the decorations, but I never put them up- I knew it would take me time, which is limited this year, and that time would be better spent with the kids, not decorating.  I decided to save my patience and free time for fun with the kids.  I don't want my holiday to be spent worrying that the kids are going to break something or move something out of place.  We may not have many decorations up, but we are still having lots of holiday fun. Over the next few days, I will go over some of the fun things we do to make the holidays special for our family.

One tradition our family has is the Elf on the Shelf.  Some nights I go to bed and wake up in a panic because I can't remember if I moved the elf or not.  One day, I found my son awake, staring at the elf because it hadn't moved.  I panicked and told him that the elf only moves after 6:30 AM, so he went back to his room and came out later, and the elf had moved- he was happy- phew.

Somehow, this year, I told my kids that all of the elves were coming over in the middle of the night for a dinner party.  They were soooo excited.  I had my husband help them set the table, with a paper table cloth and child tea set.

They drew some pictures for our elf, Stayler:

They left a sign in sheet:

We used the mortar and pestle to crush up candy canes because they use that instead of salt and pepper:

The elves TRASHED the house with toilet paper and moved around our decorations:

They flipped the chairs:

Tipped their cups:

Cut the kids' papers into snowflakes:

Drew faces on our Christmas cards:

Signed in on the sign in sheet:

Left a candy trail on their way out the door:

Our elf was so tired, look where we found him in the morning- it was such a rough night, he stayed there for two days (oops):

I only wish I had a picture of the kids' faces when they came downstairs.  The funniest thing is they were so fixated on the knocked over, misplaced chairs, they didn't really notice the toilet paper.

What have your elves been up to?

Busy Cooking: Gingerbread Donuts

All fall I intended to make donuts.  I had bookmarked apple cider and pumpkin spice donuts, just never got around to it.  This past weekend, as I was searching for a gingerbread muffin recipe, I happened upon a gingerbread donut recipe.  Not only did I bookmark it, but I made them the very next morning.

I have this cute little mini donut pan that I bought years ago from King Arthur Flour.  I've only used it two or three times.  It was feeling unloved and getting dusty.  I have to admit, I thought it was more of a pain than it was worth because getting the batter in the wells was messy and the donuts just didn't take the right shape.  Well, after reading a tip to use a pastry bag to pipe the batter in to fill the wells- I have a whole new love for this pan!  Be prepared to see a lot more donuts- baked, not fried!

Add a bit of glaze, some sprinkles, and this made one quick, yummy breakfast with a lot of smiling kids.

I found the recipe for the donuts on Handle the Heat blog and I used my own glaze.

Gingerbread Donuts:


Oven: 350

1 cup flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup applesauce
1 TBSP milk
2 TBSP butter, melted

Glaze:

1 TBSP butter
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp vanilla
4-6 tsp milk

1) Preheat oven.

2) In medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, salt, and brown sugar.

3) Stir in egg, applesauce, milk, and melted butter until combined.  Scrape sides of bowl, give one more mix. Put batter into a pastry bag fitted with large circle tip or use a ziploc bag and cut a hole in the bottom corner.

4) Lightly grease the donut pan. Squeeze the dough into circle shape around each well in the pan.  Dough should not be more than halfway up pan.  -If you don't have a donut pan, I'm sure these would make great muffins.

5) Bake 8-10 minutes until toothpick comes out clean.

6) Make the glaze while the donuts are baking, cream butter with confectioner's sugar, add in the cinnamon and vanilla.  Slowly add milk, try to mix and avoid lumps.  You want to add milk until you reach a consistency of thin pudding.

7) Dip each donut in the glaze, place on a plate and put sprinkles on top if you want.

This would be a fun breakfast to have out for the kids on Christmas morning.

Busy Sewing: Homemade Pillow Pets

Let me just start off by saying, "I LOVE THESE!!!"  I am turning our homemade Angry Super Bird costumes into pillows.  Are you looking for ideas for Christmas?  I am planning on making some Star Wars themed one for my kids for Christmas.

You can follow the tutorial here to make normal Angry Birds costumes.  If you are going to make the pillows, you do not need to use the muslin.  You can just do the felt.

You can make any character you want.  I found this link to a page with characters cartoonified in circles- which would make it easier for you to make a round pillow looking like your child's favorite character.

Start off with felt- approximately .5 to .75 yards, depending how big you want to make it. You need to cut two circles of your main felt.  To make a circle, fold the felt in half, then in half again.  On the corner between the two sides with folds, place a piece of yarn, then stretch it out along the edge of the felt.  While holding the yarn stretched out, draw an arch across the felt to the other side by moving the yarn like a pendulum and keeping the marker at the far end of the yarn.  Cut along this line, open it up and you will have a circle.  Cut out one more.  For this Super Mario pillow, I used a 13 inch piece of yarn, so the circle ends up being 26 inches wide.

Attach your felt pieces to the front of the face circle.  I opted to sew mine on with a wide stitch.  You can hot glue them too.

Sew the front to the back of the pillow- the design should be on the inside.  Leave a six to eight inch wide opening so you can invert the pillow and then stuff it.

Invert the pillow, so the right side is facing out:

Stuff the pillow- I used about 1.25 bags of fill for the pillow.  I could have used more, but I didn't want to make it too firm.  I got the fill for 2.99 a bag at Hobby Lobby.  After it's filled, carefully pin together the opening, rolling some of the felt into the opening, so you don't have a rough edge.  Sew this closed using a topstitch, you can do it by hand too.

Finished product:

Someone is taking after her mama and likes to take pics of things we make:

Perfect for little bodies to lay on:

I wonder if he's going to be freaked out if he wakes up in the middle of the night and sees this staring at him.

Our Christmas 2010

We put some last minute homemade ornaments on the tree.  As a kid, these were my favorite ornaments on our tree. I'm not sure what grade we were in, but my mom has a set for at least the four oldest kids.  I loved looking at mine every year, so I had my kids make their own snowman and gingerbread man (it's just painted cardboard):

Guess which ones are Hazel's:

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care:

The presents were placed under the tree, all organized by color coded wrapping paper (go Dave!):

Then, the kids woke up:

We opened some of our presents via webcam for our family to see.  The kids like showing their presents to the computer:

And some of our favorite gifts:
A stuffed Mario for Nathaniel:

A slinky for Addison:

A giant parking garage for Owen:

A doll with car seat for Hazel:

Her first nail polish too:

Flip boards to practice skating:

A new homemade fuzzy bathrobe:

For Dave, the hat on his head and the latest version of Kindle (that should make my dad happy):

And my favorite, a punching bag- something all mothers with young children should have to take out their frustrations on and stay in shape too :)

I hope your day was as fun as ours!

Christmas Eve in Japan

This is a quick post, but it's something that makes me chuckle.  Since it's our first Christmas here, one of my neighbors who has spent several Christmases here, gave me some tips.  If you don't like to bake, you can always find a lovely little Christmas cake- they do not really do cookies here, but they can make a cake look very pretty. If you need to go out last minute shopping, there's no rush, stores are not too crowded, and they don't close early.  Also, if you are done opening gifts on Christmas morning and you forgot batteries, you can always go out and get them because Christmas day is a normal day to Japanese people.  Most importantly, all Starbucks are open.

The one thing she warned me about though, was to beware of Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas Eve. It struck me as odd that KFC would be a crowded nightmare on Christmas Eve.  I asked my Japanese teacher why and she said they associate the American holiday with eating turkey, but since most of them have tiny ovens or no oven at all, they can't cook a turkey, so they eat chicken.  You know, for the first time ever, I found whole oven roasting chickens at our local grocery store, most were precooked, but there were a few that you could cook on your own.  Guess what I have in my freezer now?

Well, I proceeded to ask another Japanese friend about the KFC situation.  He pointed out that they have a clever ad campaign that makes Japanese people think they should have the custom of eating fried chicken on Christmas Eve.  Now, I wanted to witness the madness first hand, so in the early afternoon, we went to the food court of our grocery store.  Here's the KFC- yes, the colonel is dressed up like Santa:

Then, this was on the side:

Check out the massive amounts of these buckets.  I didn't know Japanese people would even want a bucket that big of chicken.

I wanted to go back at night to witness the long line and see people filling up the buckets but I couldn't bring myself to leave the house.

I was talking to my brother on the phone today and he was saying how they were getting together with some friends to get Chinese take out.  Then, it clicked, KFC is the Japanese equivalent of our Chinese food.  Dave swore Chinese food on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve was only my family's tradition, but I asked him why there was always a 2 hour wait.  So there you have it- they probably think we're strange for wanting Chinese on those days too.

On Christmas Eve, the stores selling the Christmas cakes get very busy too.  Check out Baskin Robbins selections for this year.

Here's the room full of the preorders- quite a bit for a country that recognizes the holiday but does not celebrate it.

Oh, and look at the sundae selections, too bad they didn't have stuff like this at the BR in the US:

This made me chuckle because I think for the most part, many of us would not even think of KFC as our go to place for a Christmas Eve meal.  We could not bring ourselves to follow the Japanese Christmas Eve tradition to fill up a bucket with chicken- instead, we stuck with a family tradition of making swedish meatballs.

However you and your family choose to celebrate Christmas Eve, I hope it's a good one!