Let It Snow! Winter Wonderland Tea Party

Ducky and Princess Teddy got seats of honor

So Hazel had her well doctor visit and I wanted to make the whole day special so she would have a positive memory instead of just getting shots. We started today having a Winter Wonderland Tea Party. First we had to do some crafts to decorate and then we had to get all the dolls and animals. Then Hazel had to feed them all and get dressed herself (in costume). Then we had some tea and read lots of snow themed stories. Below are the ones I let her choose from and we have read at least 12 of them in the past two days.

I promised at yesterday's Sharing Saturday (which is still open!), that I would feature some snow-themed crafts today. I knew we did this, so I knew it would be a perfect fit here. Plus we used some of the ideas for our crafts. Here are those features:

1) From Life with Moore Babies: Colored Snowballs and More Ice and Snow Fun
2) From Making Boys Men: Frost Writing (For those without snow around but cold weather!)
3) From Gift of Curiosity: Snowman Craft for Preschoolers (see ours below)
4) From ArtClubBlog: Paper Snowflakes Tutorial (see ours below)
5) From Little Wonders' Days: Glittered Peppermint Winter Play Dough

And here are a few from past Sharing Saturdays:

1) From Gift of Curiosity: Winter Printable Pack
2) From Organic Aspirations: Sensory Play with Snow Indoors
3) From Like Mama ~ Like Daughter: Winter Themed Week in Preschool

Also check out the features from past Sharing Saturdays here and here. Some of these would have been great snacks for our tea party!

3-D Snowflake

So we decorated for our big winter wonderland.  I made a simple 3-d snowflake using some foam snowflakes I bought. I was inspired by Paper Source and just cut a slit in each and fit them together. Then punched a hole in one and put a string through it to hang.

Paper Snowflakes = Placemats

We made some paper snowflakes using the tutorial from ArtClubBlog (see feature above). We decided to use them as placemats. I also tried to make some out of felt using the same tutorial but my scissors were not quite sharp enough to make it beautiful. I am going to make them into pillows.

Felt Snowflake

We made several snow angel chains. Hazel had a go at cutting some but cut their heads off, so she used her smiley face stickers for heads and then added smiley faces to all of them. For hers we used the template at First Palette. For the ones I did I drew my own template to make them look more like snow angels. Here is my template.

I folded one of her large pieces of construction paper in half the long way and then folded into eighths in accordion style and cut this out. This is how they came out pre-smiley face.

Source

I wish we had the book The Snow Angel by Glenn Beck, but the library did not have it in, so we will have to read it another time. We loved it last year.

Hazel also made a cotton ball snowman similar to the one shared by Gift of Curiosity (see feature above). We used a pipe cleaner for a carrot nose and stick arms.

Then we laid out some fake snow that I had bought last year for my friend's Winter Onderland party but it wasn't used. And I had bought a package of snowballs post Christmas for this and we pulled out the wool ones I needle felted for her last year.

Then she gathered all of her dolls and animals. After getting them all around, she needed to feed them all. Ducky and Princess Teddy got seats of honor on the table. (See top picture) And of course Hazel needed to dress-up. She wanted to do the tea party before she took her bath and got dressed, so we are still in our pajamas, but she added on her tutu, ballerina top, wings, and crown and was carrying her wand part of the time.

Finally we were ready for our party. We sat on the snow covered floor and read books while we drank tea and Hazel finished her raisin bread toast from breakfast. Then we had a snowball fight.

Gathering all the snowballs and making a snowball pyramid

Then she wanted to play with her white balloon, but since we only had one white balloon, she gave it to me and used a red one. 

Now it was time to take her bath and for us to get dressed so we could have a special lunch out before her appointment. We had such a fun day. We still have our winter wonderland set up, but will have to pick it up tonight or tomorrow since the cleaning people come Monday morning.

Snowy, Tea Party Kind of Day

Wednesdays are typically our day without many plans since it is the day between her two school days. I find it nice to have a day to play at home and spend time together. This morning was one of those days I was glad we did not have plans as it was snowing harder than they predicted. Our big plans for today was to have a tea party after breakfast and getting dressed. I made the tea during breakfast so it would be cool enough for Hazel by the time we got to the party.

Our next step was to get dressed and accessorized and then we had to dress all of our guests. Hazel wore her favorite pink dress and then piled on the jewelry. I told her she looked like she was from the 80's with all the bracelets (think Madonna or Cyndi Lauper). She basically put on every bracelet she could find and every ring. You cannot see it, but she did pick out a tiara which I am wearing in the picture above.

Then we poured the tea for our guests and got ours and our real snack (corn muffin top) ready. She loved this part. We even got a special guest who we gave a plastic cup to since she probably would have broken one of the porcelain ones.

I think she was a bit more interested in the pom poms and wands Hazel insisted we carry to the tea party. We had put them on the floor by the table and Fluffy was definitely keeping an eye on them. Of course her favorite part was that we would choose one of the dolls or Ducky to need more tea. Then after the corn muffin was gone she wanted me to cut up some apple. Needless to say it was a very fun morning.

After lunch we changed and put on our layers to go outside. Now the snow had turned to rain and it was wet and very heavy outside. However she really wanted to go play in it, so we did. After all, she has been wanting to make a big snowman for a couple of years now and we have not had a good snow for it. Well we did some shoveling and made a snowman and she made many snow angels. I think this might have been her biggest snowman yet. We used almost all of the snow that was on the driveway next to our garage. It made shoveling much easier after rolling it all into the snowman.

She also loved making footprints and dropping her shovel to make its footprint and handprints too in the snow. Afterward we came in for hot chocolate (well I had tea) and warmed up. By then the roads were clear so we went out to run some errands as well. We spent some time doing some crafts together, but I will share those another time. Have you done anything fun this week with your kids?

Sewing Lesson--A Snowman Head

Sharing Saturday is still open! Please stop by to share your child-oriented crafts and activities and be inspired by the amazing ideas already shared!

So before Christmas Amy at One Artsy Mama shared some adorable felt tree ornaments her Little Crafter made by sewing. I had really wanted to do these with Hazel. I have the supplies sitting on my bookshelf, but we never got around to them this year. Then I saw these cute ornaments on Amazon. I thought that is what we could try to make with a sewing lesson. 

Today we had our sewing lesson. Now it was not her first, but it was the first time she stuck with it long enough and was successful. We sewed two white felt circles together.

With some help she made it most of the way around. We put a little stuffing and some lavender into them and closed them up. By this time she was sick of sewing so we decided to glue on the faces. I then sewed strings on them so she could hang them on her seasonal tree.

Not bad for a first successful lesson. We had a very busy morning crafting, so I will share some more of our crafts later in the week.

A Snowy Day

Lenten Share:
Just thought I would give you an update on our Easter egg grass. We were very excited to notice some grass growing this week.

Snowball Fight (Indoors) and weather related crafts

Well dear sweet Hazel has really been wanting to have a snowball fight and to make a snowman, but Father Winter has not been successful this year in letting it happen. (Though we may get some this weekend.) I decided to make her some indoor snowballs. This idea came to me when I made a needle felted wool ball to put in the dryer. Adding them to a load in the dryer decreases the amount of time needed in the dryer.  I used wool stuffing which happened to be white. Hazel saw them and called them snowballs. (I had made one for my mother since her dryer is horrible and takes forever to dry clothes.) She also told me she wanted one.

Since Hazel feel asleep on the way home from school, I had time to make these for her. When she woke up we had a snowball fight and we made a snowman. When Daddy came home, we repeated everything.

I also finished another owl this morning. I gave this one (and another one similar to the ones in this post) to Hazel's teacher for her classroom. Again I got the pattern at Natural Suburbia.

I made this one a snowy owl. The kids were fighting over them in school today.





Another craft we did this morning was one I saw on Pinterest, but the original came from Hands On: As We Grow. A fruity o's rainbow. I was thinking you could also do this with conversation hearts especially the Sweetheart ones since they have the nice blue ones.

I happened to have a box of Fruit Loops in the house because we strung them to make Hazel a necklace and bracelet last week. She enjoyed eating them while she glued them on.


We also finished up some valentines and this afternoon after her nap we got them mailed at the post office to my family. Since we add crafts, a picture frame with a picture, etc. we needed to go to the post office to see how much to put on them. Hopefully they will get there by Tuesday.

Anyway, that is how we spent our day. Tomorrow we are hoping to get outside for a bit since it is suppose to be close to 50 and Saturday we are suppose to get an arctic freeze and snow storm.

One final note, please go check out all the amazing Sharing Saturday entries this week. We have received a few in the past few days and I would love for you to see them. And of course come back to share with us again this weekend!!

Valentine Day Painting

Today we did a lot of painting. Last week we bought some t-shirts to do an idea I saw in Family Fun Magazine (a great magazine for craft ideas). Yesterday we picked up the fabric paint and sponge brushes and I pulled out the doilies that I bought at the Dollar Tree. We had fun doing this.

Today was...

Hazel's craft today

Today we had a rather busy day. Our morning was full of play and crafts. Oh, and we put together a slow cooker dinner for tonight. We made the heart crafts I featured yesterday. Then we went out to run errands. One stop was Target. We bought a lot of new clothes for Hazel from the clearance items including four pairs of shoes in her next size! Another stop was Joann Fabrics for a few supplies for a craft for tomorrow. Then we went to the library to return books and we picked out several new ones.

My Heart Craft

While running errands we realized it was a gorgeous day and we wanted to get outside to play. It was in the 50's today here and sunny. So we hurried our errands and then came home for a late lunch and  got outside. Then it was off to the hairdressers for hair cuts. We met Daddy there and he took Hazel home while Mommy got her hair cut. I always take Hazel in with me to get her bangs cut. She loves it!! She also likes to play hairdresser to Ducky when we get home. Then after a quick dinner I had to run a stewardship meeting at church. Now I'm tired, but wanted to share these crafts with you and some pictures of our outside play.

With the rain last night and the warmer temperatures, most of the snow melted. One of our first activities was moving the snow from the few snow piles left from the plow and our snowmen to the yard. Hazel did this with her shovel and then she wanted to use her hands. She touched it and said, "Cold!" So after a few tries she decided she needed some mittens.

Her Shovel

Her First Snowball

I suggested using the toy truck she brought out. She tried that for a bit, but it was small.

She ran into the garage and came out with her bigger truck to use.

She is always thinking!

Then she wanted to play basketball, catch, tag/gingerbread man and finally blow bubbles. She had a great time blowing bubbles.

She is finally getting how to blow things--bubbles, horns, etc.

Oh, she also had to bring out her chair to sit on for two seconds. Then it was time to bring out the sidewalk chalk. She tried to draw squares but they came out more like circles. We worked on straight lines a bit and then she wanted me to make her a hopscotch game.

Unfortunately, the time we had flew by and it was time to get to our appointment. Hopefully we will get another nice day outside again soon. Though I did have to promise her it would snow again. (I just added that it might not be this year.)

That was our day. How was yours?

Oh, and one more thing to share--check out this article on children and playing from  The Christian Science Monitor. It makes me so happy we are not pushing Hazel to learn to read, etc. and have made the choice to send her to a Waldorf school where they are not taught to read until they are 7.

Shared On:

Snow Day!

Yesterday it snowed. Hazel was so excited. She has been asking since October to build a snowman. Of course, just our luck we are healthy enough to go out and play and get enough snow and of course it is a dry snow, but we made due. Above is a picture of part of our back yard. You can see the tracks where I pulled her on her sled.

The night before I made the squirt bottles of colored water for her to paint in the snow. They only worked a bit. Guess I should have invested in better bottles. But she did have fun. She even tried mixing colors because she wanted orange.

Hazel also made her first snow angel. We have been reading lots of books about snow, so wanted to do everything she saw in the books--make tracks in the snow, snowball fight, make a fort, make a snowman, catch snowflakes and make snow angels.

Then she pulled out her shovel (her garden shovel) so she could help Daddy shovel. She was shoveling the grass, but we didn't stop her. She also tried some more painting and color mixing. And made her second snow angel in the front yard--good thing since Daddy shoveled away her first one.

Next Hazel pulled Mommy in the sled. I helped with my hands. We didn't get a picture since Daddy was off shoveling and clearing all the exits to our house to keep us safe. Then I pulled her around the back yard.

I love our back yard. You can see the creek in this picture that goes around the back and side of our back yard. I took the back yard shots this morning, but the snow is still covering everything.

Then Hazel wanted to walk and make tracks. This is another part of our back yard. Then we pulled out some black felt and a magnifying glass to catch snowflakes and check them out. This didn't last too long since our magnifier wasn't strong enough and we were catching too many with how fast it was falling. Sorry I didn't get a good picture of it. Then Hazel wanted to build a snowman. So Daddy shoveled away her snow angel and that part of the driveway and made a big pile for her. Then we pulled out the snowman decorating kit someone gave us for her second birthday and tah dah! We have a snowman--sort of.

Then of course she wanted to build another one. I went inside to look for more decorating supplies and when I came back they had moved everything over to the second one.

I added the gloves and then took a picture. Then we re-dressed the first one.

I asked Hazel to sit with her snowmen, but somehow she ended up laying down. Not sure what happened there. She also has been very concerned that her monkey hat (otherwise known as her George hat since she loves Curious George) is outside. She wanted to be sure it wouldn't blow away. The hat no longer fits her, but she loves it. Guess I better not pack it up for the charity drop off I need to do.

By this time, Steve and I were getting cold so we made Hazel come in for some hot chocolate and lunch. We had grilled cheese sandwiches and soup with our hot chocolate. The perfect lunch for after playing in the snow. Then amazingly she took a nap for us.

Oh, and I have to share these cute mugs I bought ages ago and always kept for a day like this. This is what we had our hot chocolate in. Aren't they adorable? I bought them when I was single (and I have a matching plate) and always thought they would be perfect for hot chocolate after playing in the snow.

On another note, please go check out our Sharing Saturday. I am having trouble keeping up with all the wonderful posts. There are over 130 last time I checked, and it is still open. So go over and get inspired and feel free to share your amazing ideas.