Teaching Our Children: How to Celebrate Special Days (Wrapping Gifts & Writing Cards)
Birthday balloons they picked out earlier this year - Karlie picked out the star one and Brina picked out the birthday celebration one. When a celebration is drawing near whether it is a Birthday or Holiday or Baby Shower or Wedding or just something fun the girls get excited. They LOVE wrapping gifts and writing cards. It is cute watching them pick out the perfect card, beautiful wrapping paper, special balloon, and diligently work on putting together their surprise. Sure they use a lot more tape, wrapping paper and the process can be messy but think about all the amazing opportunities you have to teach your child during it.
- The Joy of Giving to others
- How to wrap a gift with wrapping paper, in a gift bag, and adding the additional bling (ribbons, small gifts, etc…) to it
- Hand Eye Coordination Skills with the cutting, taping, and folding
- Creativity with wrapping and writing the card
- Thinking of others
- Measuring
- Shapes
- Sharing with someone else
- Sizes and how they fit into a bag or how much paper they will need
- And Many More
Karlie wrapping a gift I let them each pick out their own wrapping paper to use. It was a looked a little more like “Christmas” Holiday wrapping paper but that’s what they wanted and it was their gift to give away. As you can see she picked out a special “treat” gift as well! I am amazed at how much more efficient they have become even in the last year with wrapping. Yes, we still have the occasional – “Mom, I didn’t cut the wrapping paper big enough” but overall they are getting better at the process as a whole. (I’ve even had problems not cutting the paper big enough!)
Brina working on a card Many times the girls will write not only a note in a card to someone but also draw and color a picture for them. They really do put a lot of heart and thought into the cards and gifts. It is really neat to see how much they care for others and enjoy doing it. To them wrapping and card writing is almost as good (maybe better some days) than doing a craft. Thankful for their willingness to be a blessing to others both family and friends.
Recipe: Cinnamon Star Cookies
Recently, I spent a few hours on a Saturday doing a Christmas Baking Day with Ashley from Reflecting on the Simple Things in Life baking treats to give to family, friends, and neighbors. One of the recipes we made from Favorite Brand Name: Cooking for Kids, Kids’ Party Food was the Cinnamon Stars. We made Stars, Christmas Trees, Snowmen, Bells, and many more fun shapes with this delicious recipe. The recipe was easy to do and delicious! The girls helped with this one recipe by picking out the shapes and sprinkling the cinnamon and sugar mixture over the top of the cookie cutouts.Cinnamon Stars
- 2 Tablespoons Sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
- 3/4 cup Butter or Margarine, softened
- 2 Egg Yolks
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 1 package Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe French Vanilla Cake Mix
1. Preheat oven to 375° F. Combine sugar and cinnamon in small bowl. Set aside.
2. Combine butter, egg yolks and vanilla extract in large bowl. Blend in cake mix gradually. Roll dough to 1/8 inch thickness on lightly floured surface. Cut with 2 1/2 inch star cookie cutter. We used a variety of cookie cutters when we made our cookies.
3. Sprinkle cookies with cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake at 375° F for 6 to 8 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 1 minute on baking sheet. Remove to cooling rack. Cool completely. Store in airtight container. We put separated ours out into Christmas bags to distribute to family, friends, and neighbors.
This is a quick and easy recipe you can do with little ones helping. The recipe makes about 3 to 3 1/2 dozen Star cookies at 2 1/2 inches, however, our recipe made closer to 3 dozen since we used a variety of shapes. We had plenty to divide out and give as gifts. If you are looking for an inexpensive and easy recipe for the Holidays you may want to try this one.
Family Recipe: Sugar Cookies
Sugar Cookies are a great treat to make around the Holidays. They are versatile in that they can be made into a variety of shapes and decorated a lot of different ways as well as they are the base for many of other wonderful cookies. The kids enjoy them and always love helping decorating the sugar cookies with frosting, sprinkles, and more around this time of year. Sometimes I will make up several batches of Sugar Cookies then freeze the dough so I can pull them out when I need it which helps speed up the process for several other recipes our family enjoys eating and sharing with others.Sugar Cookies
- 1/3 cup Butter or Margarine
- 1/3 cup Shortening
- 3/4 cup Sugar
- 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
- 1 Egg
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla
- 2 cups All Purpose Flour
1. Beat butter and shortening on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add sugar, baking powder, and a dash of salt. Beat till combined, scraping the bowl so everything is well blended. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually add the flour into the mixture.
2. Cover and chill dough for 1 to 3 hours to make it easier to handle when making cookies or cutouts.
3. Lay down wax paper and lightly flour. Roll the dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Use a variety of cookie cutters to make the shapes you want. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet. Note: if you will not be frosting but want sprinkles on the cookies do it once the cookies are cut out and ready to be baked. A lot of times I will do it once they are on the cookie sheet because it catches some of the extra sprinkles. Bake at 375° for 7 to 9 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are firm and light brown. Cool on rack and decorate.
Many times I just do steps 1 and 2 so I can use the Sugar Cookie batter base to make a variety of different cookies. Whether you do sprinkles, frosted, swirls, cups, or whatever enjoy the quick and easy recipe that allows you to share many delicious treats with your family and friends.
The Exploding Spice Cabinet
It had become apparent over the last few weeks that our spice cabinet was overflowing with goods. We try to keep a stocked spice cabinet (buy ones we use when they go on sale) and haven’t had any problems until recently. When my husband went to get the garlic salt out of the cabinet and a whole mess of stuff came tumbling down I decided it was time for organizing.
Our regular spices have always been in alphabetical order on the first shelf. (It really does help when you are trying to find a spice for a special recipe, my husband loves it that way too). That shelf was in pretty good shape. The second shelf holds baking items, sprinkles and bigger containers. This shelf was a little crazy and appeared to where most of the items were falling from lately. The third or top shelf was where we stored the spices we buy in bulk or extra spices when they go on sale. I pulled everything out and found what was causing all the commotion.
The problem was that since having kids we have purchased more “sprinkles”! When I pulled all the sprinkles out of the cupboard it was amazing how much extra room we had for everything else. We had Princess Sprinkles, Cars Sprinkles, some for Halloween, Fall, Colored Sprinkles, Holiday Sprinkles, Balls, Shapes, and more sprinkles. We had different 19 containers of just SPRINKLES (and none of them the same so we couldn’t just consolidate)! The girls love to help me cook and a lot of their cookies or goodies they make have sprinkles on top so while they are necessary it had gotten out of control.
The Solution was to go through the sprinkles, find out which ones were almost gone and put them in smaller container or set them aside to use soon. After re-organizing the sprinkles I even had a little empty shelf space left in the cupboard.
Sprinkles make everything taste better! Have you ever tried them on pancakes and waffles? We love our girls and sprinkles!
