More Magnets

You can just call me 'magnet lady' since that seems to be the theme of a lot of my posts lately.

Actually, if I have a choice of magnet names to be called, I think I'd prefer : the Magnetizer.

Here's what Miss T and I did yesterday to get us re-focused after a long and wonderful Christmas vacation.





While sitting indian style in our living room, I had T give me one word that corresponded with each letter of the alphabet. I drew a picture of each of those words, then passed her a magnet (with adhesive on the back) to peel and slap onto the back of each picture.

She took them one by one to the fridge and we counted all the letters together. (We ended up with 28 since I made two V's and two S's on accident....but who's counting... (besides us?))

After we counted,I told her to find the letter that sounds like _______. She'd then find the letter and transfer it to our front door (which is also made of metal). Then she'd tell me to find a certain letter. I would test her every once in a while by picking up the wrong letter just to see if she'd catch me. Sneaky, sneaky.

But here was the fun part. My daughter loves to dance like a delicate ballerina, so each time she'd take a letter from the fridge, I told her to dance it to the front door instead of walking. She did twirls and hops and Tandu's and plie's.
And she got a big kick out of watching me do the same.
Try it out and substitute the dancing for different commands- "Hop on one foot"- "Walk backwards," etc.
They'll eat it up.

It's called Making Do With Whatcha Got.

Who says you can't make turkey crafts after Thanksgiving?

Draw and cut out a body, and use some old scrapping paper for the tail feathers
Assemble it all on a separate piece of paper using tape or glue.

And this, folks, is the candy man. I don't know about you, but we came home from trick or treating with way more candy than we could ever eat....so we decided to put it to good use:


Here's Mom's Dream house.


Presenting T's candy land: a man, a house and even a tootsie roll train.


You can see we made a gigantic mess.


If you have even more candy to sneakily get rid of, make a reindeer, using hand prints for the antlers, and candy for it's clothes. Because we all know reindeer wear clothes.



Here's a funny looking tree we made. And HEREare the instructions for it.


And follow THESE instructions to make this awesome tree topper.


Around here, 'Christmas' means 'Time to make chocolate truffles!'

The recipe is so easy.
2/3 cup whipping cream
One 12 oz pkg of semi sweet choc. chips
and 2 tsp vanilla.

Bring cream to a boil in saucepan, then remove it from heat and add the choc. chips. Stir until melted, then add vanilla.
We pour our mixture into a pie pan and stick it in the freezer (unwrapped) until it gets nice and firm. Once it's set up, spoon some out and drop it onto a cookie sheet covered in wax paper. Put back into freezer for a couple of minutes and once stiff, form them into balls with your fingers. Roll them in crushed crackers or nuts, hot chocolate mix or sprinkles. Let them use their imaginations with the 'toppings'. Put them back into the freezer for a few minutes until firm again.


Too much fun, I tell ya what.