Christmas Traditions - The Idea Room

Letter To Santa

Another one of our family traditions is to let the kids write a letter to Santa. We usually just write it out on some plain lined school paper, but I thought it would be fun to come up with a more “official” looking Letter To Santa.

In our city, the post office has an “official” mailbox set aside for all the letters headed to Santa at the North Pole. When the kids drop the letter off they get a candy cane from the post master. Then a couple of weeks later, they get a letter delivered back to our house from one of Santa’s helpers.

The kids LOVE it! I have heard that if you don’t have a post office that does this, you can still put a letter in the mailbox and it will make it’s way to the North Pole!

My kids got theirs all filled out. Some had ONE very specific item they were wishing for…and a couple had a list that stretched out onto the back of the letter…OY! Santa has strict instructions to be pretty conservative at our house this year since we took a big family trip back in October.

But the kids can always dream! :)

Want to print out some Santa Letters for your family? Simply click on the image below for your free printable.
*As always please remember to send your friends and family back here to my site to get their own copies. These are not intended for resale or redistribution and should be for personal use only. If you have any question as to how you may use these, please feel free to drop me an email and ask.

December 3, 2012 · Filed under: Christmas, Christmas Traditions, Free Downloads Tagged with

Holiday Advent Calendar Activities

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Do you celebrate the Holidays with an Advent Calendar? Our advent calendar is one of my kids favorite traditions each year. So I thought it would be fun to share some of the our Holiday Advent Calendar Activities.

We choose not to have a candy advent calendar because the kids get so many sweets anyway during the holidays. So we put different Christmas activities for kids in ours. Now we all know how busy this time of year can be and sometimes adding one more thing to an already busy time can put us moms over the edge.

So I type up a big list of activities and put it in my office drawer. Then right before the kids get home (or before we open that days advent) I cut off the activity that we can feasibly do that day depending on our schedule. Some days the activity is as simple as drinking some hot cocoa. But if we have a more open schedule we can do an activity that is more involved. THIS has been HUGE in helping us be successful with this tradition.

Silhouette sent me their cute 2012 Advent Calendar. If you want to make one, you can get your own Silhouette Limited Advent Calendar here.

Here are some ideas of things you can include in your Holiday Advent Activity Calendar.

1. Decorate the Christmas tree.
2. Write letters to Santa.
3. Build a snowman.
4. Have a snowball fight.
5. Make Christmas cookies and surprise a neighbor or two with a plate.
6. Sing Christmas Carols together.
7. Write Christmas letters to relatives we will not see for Christmas.
8. Watch a Christmas movie.
9. Visit Santa at the Mall.
10. Take a drive to see the Christmas Lights.
11. Clean out old toys and donate to Goodwill.
12. Make a gift for kids teachers.
13. Make some Christmas Candy.
14. Play a game in front of the fire.
15. Watch The Grinch.
16. Learn more about Jesus.
17. Sleep under the Christmas Tree.
18. Do a secret service for someone in the family or a neighbor.
19. Make a gingerbread house.
20. Read an extra Christmas story.
21. Make some reindeer food for Christmas Eve (recipe here).
22. Read the Christmas story in Luke Chapter 2 and other scriptures.
23. Act out the nativity scene.
24. Listen to Christmas music.
25. Set out cookies and reindeer food for Santa and his reindeers.
26. Read the notes in our love socks (more to come on this later).
27. Watch a Christmas special on television.
28. Go sledding!

Do you do an activity advent? What are some activities that you include in yours?

December 2, 2012 · Filed under: Christmas, Christmas Traditions Tagged with activity advent, advent calendar, christmas activities for kids, christmas advent calendar, silhouette limited edition advent calendar

Candy cane swirl cake

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This is a story about a Candy Cane Swirl Cake that tasted better than it looked…

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{Don’t let the picture fool you…that is some creative photography…}

I don’t really share my craft/cooking fails with you guys and I don’t want you to think that I never have any…cause believe me…I do. Not everything turns out like I had imagined it in my head. Can anyone relate? I wanted to share this delicious cake we made over the Christmas holidays but it was just not pretty enough to make the cut. Even though it tasted really great.

{See? I told you!}

I originally saw the Candy Cane Swirl Cake at Betty Crocker. But instead of using a box cake, I decided to make my favorite white cake recipe from scratch.

White Cake Recipe

1 cup butter
2 cups white sugar
4 large eggs
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups milk

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour pans lightly. I used three 8 inch round pans.
Cream together butter & vanilla extract.
Add sugar slowly until all is added and it is mixed well.
Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
In a separate bowl sift flour, baking powder and salt together twice.
Now add flour mixture, alternating between the milk and flour. Mixing well after each again.

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1/2 teaspoon red food color (see Directions #1 below)

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract (see Directions #1 below)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pan). Generously grease and flour 12-cup fluted tube cake pan. Make cake batter as directed above. Pour about 2 cups batter into pan. In small bowl, pour about 3/4 cup batter; stir in food color and peppermint extract. Carefully pour pink batter over white batter in pan. Carefully pour remaining white batter over pink batter.

2. Bake cake at 350°F and cool completely.

3. In small bowl, mix white icing ingredients. If necessary, stir in additional milk, 1 teaspoon at a time, until smooth and spreadable. Spread over cake. Sprinkle crushed candy on top. Store loosely covered.

White Icing:

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon milk or water

1/2 teaspoon vanilla, if desired

I am not quite sure why my cake fell apart. Maybe the box cake would have been better to use in the bundt pan. But it sure did taste good. And there were several salvageable pieces of cake that I was able to serve up that looked halfway decent. Hehe. And with some creative photography I was almost able to make it look…well…somewhat presentable.

I have decided to share more of these creativity failures with you as part of trying to keep it real. What do you think? Are you looking forward to seeing some of my creative catastrophes??