VDV Elf on the Shelf

Everyone...meet Francis. He entered our lives last year as our little Elf on the Shelf to remind Bug (Bear was too little at this time) that Santa is always watching and Francis would report back to Santa every night on his behaviour. We started this earlier than December 1st, as Bug was only 3 at the time, and I figured a little more time would help him grasp the concept. I had so much fun putting finding Francis in precarious situations and loads of mischief. Here's the list of adventures our little Elf had last holiday season.

1. Francis having a bath.

2. Francis performing CPR.

3. Francis taking flight.

4. Francis playing angry birds.

5. Francis scaling the fireplace.

6. Francis being a couch potato.

7. Francis being an artist.

8. Francis doing yoga.

9. Francis hanging out.

10.  Francis being held hostage.

11. Francis having a snowball fight.

12. Francis having a late night snack.

13. Francis window cleaning.

14. Francis feeding the cats.

15. Francis sewing.

16. Francis working out.

17. Francis sledding.

18. Francis planking.

19. Francis building a crazy fort.

20. Francis playing hide 'n seek.

21. Francis going for a swing.

22. Francis having a midnight read.

23. Francis tangled in lights.

24. Francis stuck between windows with a letter from Santa.

25. Francis taking pictures.

26. Francis having some office fun.

27. Francis saying hi to the boys.

28. Francis stuck in a glass.

29. Francis starting a race.

30. Francis under the weather.

31. Francis dancing.

32. Francis jumping on the bed.

33. Francis putting out a fire.

34. Francis peeking around the corner.

35. Francis hanging by some monkeys.

36. Francis playing hockey.

37. Francis spelling his name.

38. Francis off-roading.

39. Francis TP-ing.

40. Francis crocheting.

41. Francis planting next year's Christmas tree.

So there you have it. 41 Elf on the Shelf ideas. The VDV Four loved this last year. Really looking forward for Francis to come again this year!

Teaching Right vs Left with Homemade Wrapping Paper

Last week, once Bug was no longer feeling under the weather, I brought out one of my learning ideas that was hidden as a fun Christmas craft. I love the holidays, so I'm using November as our prep for Christmas. My husband won't let me decorate until December 1st, so doing holiday crafts will appease my holiday spirit.

Since I had kids, I really enjoy incorporating them into our gift giving. It's not so much because it is cheaper (even though it is), but I truly want to create the joy in my boys in creating something for loved ones. Giving something more from their heart than from our wallets. And I know that the grandparents loved the extra little childlike touch. Last year, for wrapping paper, I got Bug to colour white craft paper with markers. This year, I thought it would be fun to add a little bit of learning into it.

I had two unused wooden blocks, but I know you can get paper templates on the internet that would make this that much cheaper. On one of the blocks, I wrote Red on 3 sides, and Green on the other 3 sides. On the other block, I wrote Left on 3 sides, and Right on the remaining. Then I took two pieces of blank paper, and got Bug to write Red and Green on one, and Left and Right on the other. For the red and green paper, we put a corresponding painted brush stroke under each colour name. On the other piece of paper, I traced his left hand under the word Left and obviously his right hand under the word Right. This gave Bug a little bit more practice with his writing, and I wanted to start introducing him to word recognition. This was also a means to help him become more comfortable with correctly determining right vs. left.

Just to keep the blocks paint free, I would roll them and I would compare each one to the corresponding sheet of paper. I would get Bug to recognize what word was displayed on the upward facing side of the block for each. This would be Bug's direction on what hand and what colour to stamp on our $1 roll of craft paper from Dollarama. I didn't wash his hands between the rolls as I thought it would add to the dimension of the hand prints when some of them came out marbled with red and green.

Bug had a lot of fun with this. This will obviously take some time to get enough wrapping paper done (which is why I started this in the beginning of November), so I intend to bring this back many times. Once Bug was tired of the word recognition part, we just finished our strip of wrapping paper by letting him have free run with what hand and colour to use. This is the final product...I love it!

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Halloween Party

I'm a bit behind on my blogging, but the VDV four have recently suffered from the dreaded Rotavirus. And it happened the day after our Halloween Party I organized for the boys and their friends. Thankful it didn't ruin our fun, but it has definitely taken it's toll. So this is a blog post about our Halloween Party.

I started out with the plan of October to have some fun-filled craft days where Bug got to make some items that would be on display for our party. We made bats out of egg cartons (cut them so that there are three egg holders attached - you get 4 bats from a package for a dozen eggs). Bug proceeded to paint them black, and I helped him put googly eyes and construction paper ears on our flying friends with a hot glue gun. I took fishing line to hang them from our dining room fan. Another craft we did was making a spider picture with his hand prints. I quickly drew a web on some white paper, and then painted Bug's hands (minus the thumbs) with black paint. I overlapped the hand prints so his palms were the body and his 8 fingers were the legs. Then I got him to choose out as many googly eyes as he'd like and we glued them in place. Our third craft was hand print painting, but done a bit differently. I made him make a fist, then painted the exposed part of his fingers orange. Then he placed the painted portion on some black paper, making little pumpkins. Super cute!

I had yet to decorate our house for Halloween in the past years, but because of our Halloween party this year, I decided to have some fun. I bought a package of spider webs and decked out many picture frames around our house. Bug loved finding these webs with the little black spiders. I made some pumpkin lanterns by blowing up water balloons, and using cut up pieces of orange tissue paper and mod podge. I believe I put 5 layers of tissue paper, and once the orange was complete, I mod podge little faces cut out from black tissue paper. I put battery operated tea lights in them to give them a pumpkin glow! And you can't have a Halloween mantle without a Halloween banner.

I used black electrical tape and made webs on the window. I blew up a balloon and used black streamers for the legs of a spider on the web. I cut out a spiral ghost from bristle board, hanging it from the ceiling with fishing line and made a weighted sock to attach to the bottom to stretch out the spiral. Instead of a piñata, I blew up a bunch of balloons with goodies inside, and let the kids each pop one. Bug has a bowling set, so we brought that out, with white fabric draped over each pin to have ghost bowling. I made a "Pin the Grin on the Pumpkin" poster, and a monster toss. 

I wrapped juice boxes in gauze, to make Mummy Drinks and I made toothpick witch feet to stick into our Sand-Witches. Some of the serving plates were made into spiders by gluing card stock legs and googly eyes. I got some rubber gloves and filled them with popcorn and chocolate for a silly hand snack bag. Big lollipops were decorated with black pipe cleaners and googly eyes to make spider pops. And I bought a bunch of necklace glowsticks from Dollarama (10 for $2) for each kid, as "a little light for their Halloween night".

I loved doing this for the kids. It was a busy, hectic party with a bunch of youngsters running around. But they were so cute in their Halloween costumes. Bug had a blast and for about a week after the party, he asked about having another one each day. These are my little goobers all decked out in their Halloween gear.

Aren't they adorable?!

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