Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Balls

So when I said that I couldn't have chocolate in my last post, I lied just a bit.  I can have the Enjoy Life allergen free chocolate chips.  I just don't use them a lot for baking, more to keep on hand for a quick chocolate fix, as they're kind of spendy at around $5 a bag.  Found these amazing little Chocolate Pretzel Peanut Butter Balls on Pinterest and I figured I would splurge for a treat that we all could eat.  I substituted Glutino gluten free pretzels for regular pretzels so this was 3 year old safe too.  Not the cheapest treat between the chocolate chips and the Glutino pretzels but the end result was oh so worth it!

The trickiest part to these was rolling the peanut butter balls.  I did as the recipe says and chilled my fingers with cold water but that would only work for maybe one ball and then I'd have to re-chill.  As someone in the comments suggested, I then tried chilling the "dough" before rolling it.  I took advantage of the weather and just set the pan of them out on our front porch for about 45 minutes.  That helped, but it still was tricky.  I finally figured out that keeping my fingers wet after chilling them under the cold water was the trick to getting the balls to stick easily. (my husband would be giggling like a teenager reading this post.)

Aside from the little, minor problem of rolling the peanut butter balls, this was another easy recipe and these things are DELICIOUS!  So so so good!  The 3 year old LOVES them and I love that I've found another gluten free, safe Christmas treat for everyone to enjoy.  The biggest problem with these will be having them last until Christmas, even if it is only a couple of days away!

Even though he's already had a couple, when the 3 year old just saw me upload this picture he said, "Can I have one of those?"  A hit!  And now the 5 year old is alerting me that the 3 year old is "stealing the chocolates" so that's my cue. : )

Two Ingredient Peanut Butter Fudge

I'm always on the lookout for new Christmas goodies that everyone in the family can eat.  The 3 year old is gluten free and I have a ton of food sensitivities myself and can't have chocolate (I know, life is so unfair!) so sometimes it can be a challenge.  I'm also not a big baker and don't have the patience for recipes that involve a lot of steps or require a lot of time in the kitchen.  When I saw the Peanut Butter Fudge recipe, that only used two ingredients, I knew I had to try it!

One of my crazy OCD tendencies adorable little quirks is food safety.  I wanted to know where these should be stored and how long and the original blog pin didn't give me that info so I went searching for it (love you Google) and found another website with the same recipe that told me what I needed to know (up to a week in the fridge if you're anything like me and have to know) and in the comments of that recipe post, a few people suggested adding a cup of powdered sugar to give it more of a fudge consistency so that's what I did.

Um....yum.  Seriously, this was so good and rich and the closest thing to my beloved fudge I've had since not being able to eat chocolate.  It literally took me under 5 minutes to make, then just needed to chill.  Beyond easy peasy.  We will definitely be doing this one again! Oh, and the kids loved it too!

Ice Cream Snowmen

Tonight I made these cute ice cream snowmen  for a surprise dessert for the kids.

We didn't use the licorice since my gluten free baby can't have it and I didn't have any cherries for the hat but I made do.  As you're probably learning from some (okay, all) of my food posts, presentation isn't my strong suit.  In my defense, it's harder than you might think to get chocolate chips to stick in a marshmallow.  Hence, the smashed in, mauled appearance on the snowman's face.  Poor guy.  I don't really have any excuse for the not perfectly shaped ice cream scoop bodies.  I'll blame my scoop.  Be sure to check out the link to see how cute they really can be.  You know, if you're into that whole presentation thing.

The kids loved them though!  The 9 year old exclaimed, "Oh, they're so cute!", the 3 year old said, "Mama, look!  I eat my snowman!  He melted!" and the 5 year old thinks we should do them every year at Christmas time.  I'm sure this one will be a repeat.

Measurement Christmas Trees

Today we made Measurement Christmas Trees for a school/craft activity. The original idea was on a Kindergarten blog and entailed having the kids order the green strips from largest to smallest. That was a perfect activity for the 3 year old, with a little help from me. I'd put two strips out and ask him "Which one is bigger?", let him choose, and help him glue them on.

The smallest to largest part was way easy for the 5 and 9 year olds so I took it a step beyond and had them actually measure their strips and write how many inches each one was on said strip. This was great measuring practice for the 5 year old and we also talked a bit about fractions when a measurement would come up as 1/2 or 1/4. It was nice reinforcement for the 9 year old, who has been studying fractions, as well.

Once that was done, the kids got to paint snowflakes on using Q-tips. They all had a lot of fun "dot, dot, dotting" their projects.

This was a fun and educational project, perfect for preschool through kindergarten, and even beyond!

(The 9 year old asked me to specify that his tree is the one on the far right.) : )

Lace a Paper Plate Snowman

The craft I chose for today was to lace a paper plate snowman . I started out intending to do this one just as the directions stated but my hole punch had different plans. The spring on it was broken so I would have to pry it open after each and every punch and, well, after doing 4 plates, I just wasn't into doing 4 more so I modified the project.

We turned our lacing plates into frames for cotton ball snowmen. Each kid got a plate and some yarn and laced the edges. The two 3 year olds (our neighbor boy was over too) liked doing the lacing but needed help or they'd get mixed up. They did enjoy saying "Up....down....up....down...." while trying to keep with the pattern though.

(See his little tongue sticking out while he concentrates?? Too cute!!)

The 5 year old did better independently, but his ended up being laced around the edges which he deemed "better" so he kept them that way.

After the plates were all laced up, we added cotton ball snowmen. The 20 year old, who loves all things craft, decided to join in at this point and got super creative with pipe cleaner scarves, hats and trees and tooth pick arms. The toddlers enjoyed picking out what to add to their snowmen (my 3 year old insisted on a "Santa hat!") and the 5 and 9 year old really got into making their scene complete.

Not sure if we'll do this project again next year, but all in all, a fun way to spend some time this afternoon.

25 Days of Christmas Books

So this is actually an activity that we've been doing for a few days but it's been so fun that I wanted to post about it. The idea is to take 25 Christmas books that you already own and wrap them up as a kind of Christmas countdown. Your child unwraps one book every day and you read it together, all the way up to Christmas.

After collecting most of our Christmas or winter themed books, I put them in the order I wanted them opened and wrapped them up, writing the number of each on on the front. I started out with the winter themed ones first, moving into Christmas stories like The Grinch, Merry Christmas Stinky Face, etc., and had the last books be the more religious, Christ centered ones the closer we got to Christmas. Our last book, to be opened on Christmas Eve, will be The Christmas Story.

This has been a HUGE hit! My boys have had so much fun with it and ask every night to open their book. Being as I have 3 small children, and wasn't about to wrap 75 books, we just put the book in the middle of them, count to 3, and they all tear into it. They love having a present to open every night, even if it is something they already own, they love the surprise of what book it is, and they love reading it together under the lights of the tree.

I put all of our books in a Christmas basket but with a toddler in the house it's just not feasible to leave it out, they'd all be ripped into by the first day, so the basket is kept up high and brought down when it's time to open a book. Once a book is opened, it goes under the tree for us to read whenever we want. An added bonus to this, is that it's spared me from reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas 587 times already like I have in previous years. ; )

This afternoon I brought down the basket to take a picture for this post and my 3 year old, who I didn't even think was paying any attention to me, jumped up from his activity and excitedly ran over to the basket-proof of what a hit this is!

So far, we're loving this activity and I think it will become a yearly tradition in our home!