Baby It's Cold Outside

Yes, I'm already listening to Christmas music folks.
My friend Tania asked about fun things to do with kids when you can't get out, and with all the Christmas music and crafting going on around here, naturally lots of these are Christmasy. Some days I feel like I'm just scraping by as a mama, but on my best days, I find that making an event out of pretty much any activity makes parenting lots more fun. Owen loves to help with things when I make them into activities. Cooking dinner or a treat, cleaning (spraying vinegar-water on stuff), and watering the plants are all activities if I remember to let them be more than just a list of things that I need to get done.

Here's some things we've done or hope to do:
1. paint brown paper bags (for gift bags)




2. paint rolls of brown paper or newsprint end rolls for wrapping paper
3. paint wooden cut-outs for ornaments and gifts (We did stars and snowflakes - about 25 cents each at Michaels)

• A few notes about painting - potato stamps (or turnips in our case - gotta use what ya got), sponge stamps, and stencils are all easy to make at home almost for free. Paint brushes, fingers, and toes are fun too! I try to limit the number of paint colors I put out when I am doing a project that will become a gift. With snowflakes and stars, I just put out white, silver, gold, blue, and yellow. We have also painted big wooden initials and picture frames as gifts.
  

4. make sugar plums

• We did this just this week. After Owen asked what sugar plums were, we looked them up. They sounded a lot like the faux Lara bars we've been making, so we just chose our ingredients from our pantry and made them up. This falls into the make an event out if whatever you're doing. This all came from reading "A Visit From St. Nicholas."
  

Dried cranberries, dates, almonds, nutmeg, and cinnamon (about 2 parts fruit to 1 part nuts) . . .
. . . chopped in a food processor and mixed together (because I have a little bitty one and had to do it in parts). . .
. . . and formed into balls like meatballs (oh so fun to stick your hands into!). . .
I must confess that I skipped over coating them in sugar. They were sugar plums all the same!

5. do an advent calendar or two

• There are a gazillion different ways to do these. One of the simplest I've seen is a stack of 24 envelopes each with something special (an activity or verse) in each one. I really love to plan an activity for each day so that celebrating Christmas and doing all those things I want to do doesn't become overwhelming. See the first link for a sampling of our kind of activities. I have also taken the liberty of changing those activities around to suit our needs. If we have a busy day coming up, I make sure to change the slip of paper in that pocket to a simple one like "sing Owen's favorite Christmas carol."
  

6. face painting

• because: What kid doesn't like to paint his face?

7. play in the bathtub

• Oh, yes, this is a bona fide activity in our house. Run that tub full of warm water and bubbles, and let 'em play. It's almost like playing in the kiddie pool in the summer.
  

8. DIY snowglobes
9. roast chesnuts
10. Silhouettes

• These are easy to do if you takes a picture of your child in front of a window, print it out, and glue the paper to the back of a pieces of construction paper. We have used these as gifts.

What are some indoor things you like to do with your kids?