Family Time – Page 8 – Learning With My Boys

Christmas Sugar Cookies

We made Christmas sugar cookies for a family activity tonight.

Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened
1 ½ cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

In a bowl cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat until smooth.
In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and baking soda. Add dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir till soft dough forms.
Refrigerate for 2 hours.
Roll the dough on a floured surface.
Use cookie cutters to cut out Christmas shapes.
Grease a pan and place the shapes of dough on the pan.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Bake cookies for 8 minutes or until lightly browned.

Buttercream Icing

Ingredients:

1 cup butter
1 cup Crisco
4 cups powdered sugar (2 lbs)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon milk (if thick)

Directions:

Cream together the butter and Crisco with a mixer.
Slowly add in 1 cup of powdered sugar at a time.
Add the vanilla, if it seems too thick you can add a bit of milk.

Graham Cracker Gingerbread Houses -11

Our family Thanksgiving tradition is making Gingerbread Houses. This year we used graham crackers, we also tried chocolate graham crackers. I made buttercream icing to add the candies.

Buttercream Icing

Ingredients:

1 cup butter
1 cup Crisco
4 cups powdered sugar (2 lbs)
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon milk (if thick)

Directions:

Cream together the butter and Crisco with a mixer.
Slowly add in 1 cup of powdered sugar at a time.
Add the vanilla, if it seems too thick you can add a bit of milk.

Here are some of our past Gingerbread Houses.

We had a Halloween Bonfire again this year. This time we set up a table outside with all the pumpkin carving tools and told people to bring their own pumpkins to carve. The boys actually helped us gut the pumpkins this year… in the past they have said it was too slimy for them. T really like looking at the candles in them. It was fun making jack-o-lanterns together!

We roasted hot dogs and smores too. This was the biggest bonfire that we have ever had, was a fun time!

I bought caramel apples this year instead of making them… they were much better! J just LOVES caramel apples!

Check out our fun Halloween Bonfire from last year!

Surprise Adoption Party

My in-laws finalized the adoption of their 2 girls this past week, so we had a surprise ice cream party for them!!!

I made a family tree poster with our fingerprints. Everyone in our family added their fingerprint as the leaves on the tree. We also had new family photos taken to include the girls. I made a banner that said “Welcome to our Family” too.

Ice cream sundaes! We had several different flavors of ice cream and tons of different topping choices of fruit and candies. We wanted to make this the most special thing to celebrate the girls!

I made “Our 2 Sweethearts” sign/ banner with my Cricut.

Welcome to the family… we love you!

Easter Hunt

We always have an egg hunt and Easter baskets for the kids, but this year we decided to have one for the adults too with huge prize baskets. Everyone pitched in a few dollars to pay for the prizes and it ended up being tons of fun. The boys enjoyed dying and hunting eggs and they loved their Easter baskets too.

My husband hid 3 dozen eggs for the adult egg hunt while I assembled the prize baskets. We had one for the guy with the most eggs and one for the gal with the most eggs. Some of the eggs were camo colored for more fun!

My father-in-law won the guys and my sister-in-law won the gals basket!

The kids also had a fun egg hunt as well!

Preschool Fun

We get to meet with cousins once a week to have some preschool fun.

Roll the dice and see what number you get!

Paper scraps frame!

Music Time!

Bowling to practice counting and writing our numbers.

Writing the alphabet!

The babies get to play too!

Snowman Fun!

Don’t forget to check out my Preschool Clown Colors post and Preschool Clown Shapes post as well.

Diego Birthday Party -5

J is 5 now and loves Diego. I tried my best to transform the living room into a jungle with twisted crepe paper vines, poster board and balloon trees, and stuffed jungle animals all around. I try to decorate while he is not around so that when he enters the room he has a big surprise, I just love seeing him when he enters the party room. I also set out his Diego books and toys for the kids to enjoy.

We had rainforest kabobs with fruit, yogurt, and coconut.

He just loved his Transformers that he got from his dad.

I made a 9×11 sheet cake and decorated it with his Diego toys. I frosted the cake with chocolate frosting then added some green vines to it. I tried to make trees with Pirouette Wafers and marshmallow on top. I covered the marshmallows with green frosting. I put blue frosting in the middle for a river and placed candy rocks along the river bank.

We had a treasure hunt too. I placed the clues on his animals, each clue had animal facts about the next animal. The hunt finally ended in a hidden door that I cut from the bottom of one the fake tree trunks that I had made out of poster board. The kids all loved this!

Happy Birthday to my animal lover!

Be sure to check out my other kids party themes: Farm Birthday Party , Blues Clues Party, Bob the Builder Party and Backyardigans Party.

Halloween Bonfire -10

We decided to have a bonfire for Halloween this year. First we went to a nearby pick-your-own pumpkin patch to choose two big pumpkins. We rode in a wagon pulled by a tractor to the pumpkin patch. After choosing our two pumpkins we placed them in the wagon with T and pulled them to the car so we could take them home and carve them.

My husband and I decided to try more difficult designs this year. We each choose our design and dug in, the carving defiantly took longer than our usual triangle eyes and toothy smile jack-o-lanterns. In the end we were very pleased with our work.

We roasted hot dogs for dinner, and had soda for drinks.

We roasted smores for dessert and had homemade caramel apples and candy corn too.

The kids loved it and we all had a great time!

Gingerbread House Tradition -09

My sister and I used to make gingerbread houses on Thanksgiving when we were younger, so I decided to start this tradition with my son.

We made gingerbread houses with his cousin on Thanksgiving Day! We used royal icing with a Mini Gingerbread House kit. Added all kinds of colorful Christmas candies and candy canes!