Upside Down Snowman

So....long time no post!  This seems to be my problem with keeping blogs.  I start off nice and strong and then stop keeping up with them.  While I may have stopped updating the blog, I have not stopped Pinteresting!  I have a lot of reviews of a lot of projects to catch up on.

Let's start with this upside down snowman I pinned earlier this past fall.  Little did I know when I pinned this, that we'd have very little snow to work with this winter.  In February, we finally had a snowfall with enough snow to make a snowman.  Barely.

He's not very big, and he has a bunch of grass in him, but we worked with what we had.  The 3 year old was quite confused with what I was doing, putting his face on the bottom, but he eventually caught on and thought it was fun.

We used some sorry dead ornamental grass pieces for his arms as the closest place to find sticks was through a field filled with weeds that are almost as tall as I am and, frankly, I didn't really care about his arms, or him having legs, enough to make the trek across the field.  But he still turned out kind of cute!  I want to try it again next winter with (hopefully) some more snow.

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.

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.