Christmas Traditions: Advent Calendar

When I was a kid, one of my favorite Christmas traditions was waking up each morning and running to the kitchen with my brother where cardboard advent calendars waited for us to open them each morning. We would pry the perforated doors open to reveal thin little chocolate squares inside. Most of the time, the advent calendars were from the local grocery store so the chocolate tasted strangely sweet with a hint of cardboard, but we didn't care. Christmas was the only time of the year when my parents would let us start our day with chocolate without a second thought.

I wanted to carry on the tradition of the advent calendar with my children, but I wanted a calendar that I could put my own candy or little trinkets into, something that I could personalize myself (without the cardboard flavoring.) As I was shopping the after Christmas sales last year, I came upon this at Marshall's:

It was the cutest wooden advent calendar AND it was marked down to $20.00! I couldn't resist. I snapped it up, and then it waited patiently in my attic for a year until I finally dug it out on the 1st and filled it with Hershey's kisses.

Did you know that a Hershey's kiss candy cane has exactly 24 Hershey's kisses in it? Well, mine did anyway, which worked out perfectly for the 24 advent days.

Haley loved it. Once I showed her how to open up the little wooden door, she was thrilled to find the little colorful wrapped chocolates. And actually, she got got a little TOO excited because when I woke up the next day, I discovered that she had scooted a stool up to the counter and opened 4 of the doors on the bottom row to eat the chocolate (some with the wrappers partially on.) She would've eaten more too if my husband hadn't caught her in the act. Sneaky girl.

I can't blame her though, I may have snuck a couple myself...

Monster sandwiches

You can find the full details on the Little Monster 1st Birthday HERE

My absolute favorite part of the things I made for my son's Little Monster birthday party was the monster sandwiches.

I originally planned on making 3 different kind of monsters, but after I made this guy, I thought "how can they get any cuter than this?"

Here's what you need to make your own monster sandwiches:

• Bread
• Olives 
• Lunch meat
• Cheese slices
• Toothpicks
• A round cookie cutter or a glass and a knife

First, take a cookie cutter and cut the center out of your bread slices. Don't have a round cookie cutter on hand? No problem, do what I did and turn a glass turned upside down and use a knife to cut around the edges.

Next, put your choice of fillings inside (I went with ham and turkey lunch meat) and any other condiments you think your guests would like.

To make the teeth, simply cut jagged edges around half of a  slice of cheese and insert the cheese inside the sandwich on the bottom.

Make the eyes by snapping a toothpick in half, and inserting each half into an olive. Stick the olives in the top of your sandwich.

Ta-dah! Monster sandwich!

How fun would it be to make your child a whole monster-themed lunch for school one day?

If you had the time (and the endurance to cut out multiple monster cheese teeth), you could always make a whole pack of monster sandwiches for a crowd.

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Little Monster 1st Birthday: the outfit

You can see the full post on Connor's Little Monster 1st Birthday HERE.

I wanted to share some more details about Connor's Little Monster 1st Birthday party. The first thing I did when planning his party was to make him a birthday outfit. Since the party is centered around monsters, I wanted his outfit to feature a monster on it.

I used my Silhouette and sewable interfacing to cut out the "One-Eyed Monster" image from one of my husband's old button down shirts. I removed the eyelashes because I didn't want it to look too girly :) I also cut out the letters for his name from the same material, I then sewed around the edges of everything to attach.

For the pants, I used Dana's Knee Pad Pants tutorial. Unfortunately I used one of Connor's smaller pairs of pants to make the  pattern and I realized AFTER making the pants that I seriously underestimated his chunk. Because of that, I had to make a button closure at the top rather than making the waist a simple elastic waist.

I really like the closure, but Connor still had a hard time wearing the pants because even with the added stretch of the elastic loops, the pants were still too small.

I'm just glad they looked good for the photos. That's what really matters, right? ;)

Little Monster 1st birthday party

We're back from vacation, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We sure did, and we celebrated our little guy's 1st birthday too. It was a whole week full of parties and overeating. But we didn't mind that at all.

My boy turned one. ONE. I can't believe it's been a year already. He's just growing so fast (maybe a little TOO fast, he's already in 18 month clothing)! To celebrate, we threw him a Little Monster 1st birthday party, customized monster shirt and all. We had a great time!

The invitations were made using my new digital scrapbooking software by My Memories. I actually designed the monster myself using various shapes that were included in the software.

For the food and decorations, I kept it somewhat simple (if you don't count the time I took to design 25 monster sandwiches :) The plates, napkins, banner, table cloth, and pinata were all purchased from Target (I couldn't believe my luck when I went to the party aisle and saw that they had monster party supplies!) We also decorated with some streamers and balloons - again, I wanted easy stuff!



The food was my favorite part. We made "monster fruit dip" by combining a package of cream cheese and a container of marshmallow fluff and dying it green.

And my absolute FAVORITE part was the monster sandwiches (tutorial to come!) in turkey and ham, complete with olive eyes and cheese teeth.

Little monster cake pops with a foam board covered in tissue paper as a stand.

And of course, the cake. I found this cake on Pinterest and was determined to duplicate it. I'm going to man up and confess that I had to Photoshop this picture a bit to cover up the fact that the cake split in the back some after sticking the cake pops into it. It was kind of a bummer that it didn't turn out exactly like I wanted, but I told the perfectionist in me to chill out because it was still pretty dang cute I think. Major props to my mom for piping on all the frosting "fur"!

The cake was 3 layers, with each layer dyed a different color! Note to self: in the future, purchase professional food coloring and not just the little tubes from Wal-Mart. I didn't get the exact colors I wanted, but they were close enough.

 

Connor couldn't believe his luck at first when we set the cake in front of him. I think he was wondering if we mistakenly gave him his very own huge piece of cake to have all to himself. He got over the shock pretty quickly :)

We didn't do any party games because Connor is so little, but my awesome sister-in-law made these great monster masks out of foam which made for great photo props!

At present time, Connor wasn't too into the actual gift opening.

He was more interested in feeding me the wrapping paper.

But we had a great time catching up with friends and family and celebrating Connor, my favorite little monster boy.

Haley didn't even mind sharing all the attention. Just for a little while. She looked adorable in her monster shirt too.

I'll be sharing more of the details on the party soon!

Happy Birthday Connor!

Happy first birthday, Connor!

One year ago today, I was sitting in a hospital bed holding my little snuggly son and marveling at how small and helpless he was. Today, he's a ball of energy - and 3 times the size! Despite all the bed rest and worrying, my boy came out just perfect (and on his own time.)

I'm so proud to be your Mama.

Acorn Knot Hat

In case you missed my guest post over at Sugar Bee Crafts recently, here's what I shared!

When Mandy asked us to come up with something holiday or season-themed, I knew just wanted I wanted to do. When putting away my son's summer wardrobe, I realized that he didn't have any winter hats  - and he has a lot of noggin to keep warm - so I decided to make him one. I immediately thought about doing a knot hat because the knot on top looks kind of like the stem on an acorn. Add a leaf, and you have an acorn knot hat! And what's more adorable than a baby in an acorn knot hat? Exactly.
Here's what you need to make one too!


Supplies:

• Knit fabric for the hat
• Knit fabric for the cuff
• Small scrap of felt for the leaf
• Needle and embroidery floss
• Fabric glue
• Basic sewing supplies

Step 1: Create your pattern.

First, draw a basic knot hat pattern to fit your child's head (use a tape measure to help!) and add 1 inch on for seam allowance. Then, cut the bottom 2 inches off so you have two pattern pieces: the hat piece and the cuff.

Step 2: Cut out your pattern pieces.

Use your pattern to trace and cut out two hat pieces from your knit fabric.

For the cuff, fold your fabric in half and place your cuff template on the fold (I cut up an old onesie I had laying around to use for the cuff.) Trace and cut out your cuff piece. Repeat for a second cuff piece.

Each cuff should be 4 inches wide when they're open.

Step 3: Attach your hat and cuff pieces.

With one of your hat pieces facing right side up, fold one cuffs with the wrong sides together and pin the raw edge of your cuff to the raw edge of the hat (see below.) The folded part of the cuff should be facing up. Sew straight across the cuff using 1/4 inch seam allowance.

Flip the cuff down and press (as tempting as it may be, don't skip this step!).

Now, stitch straight across the top of the cuff to make sure it lays flat (I used a zig-zag stitch to make it more decorative.)

Step 4: Make your leaf.

Cut two leaves from some craft felt. Use a disappearing ink marker to draw the veins on one of the leaves.

Using a needle and some white floss, stitch across your drawn lines and knot your thread. Using some craft glue like Fabri-tac, glue the other leaf to the back of the one you just stitched and let dry.



Step 5: Finish your hat.

Place your two hat pieces right sides together and pin. Insert your felt leaf near the base of the knot and pin in place. Sew to join the two pieces. (You can finish the edges by zig-zagging or serging them, but since knit fabric doesn't fray, I didn't bother to.)

Turn your hat inside out and use a skewer to push out any corners. Tie a knot at the top to make your acorn stem, and there you have it!

I put the hat on my son to take some pictures and as it turns out...my son hates hats. Maybe I should change step one to read: First, make sure that your child likes to wear hats. Yes? OK, now move on to step 2.

Oh well, I still think it's super cute. I'll just have to convince him of that too.

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