Saint Mary's Winter Wonderland Family Craft Day

Every once in a while the school will send out an email that has information for family friendly activities that are happening in our community. We learned that the students at Saint Mary's College, sister college to Notre Dame, was hosting a Winter Wonderland Family Craft Day that was free to the community to come out to attend. We were a little up in the air on if we wanted to go. It didn't have much information on the flyer and I wasn't sure it was going to be worth our time. Since we didn't have anything else going on Saturday, we decided to give it a shot. I am so happy we did, too! I was impressed that the school went above and beyond my expectations on the crafting event, especially for a free event to boot!

There were about 10 craft stations set up, each one with a different craft for the kids to construct. The girls got to paint a holiday themed ornament:

Make a painted hand print reindeer:

Whip up some Reindeer Food:

Paint and Glitterize some wooden popsicle stick snowflakes:

Create some rice-filled sock snowmen:

And construct some reindeer antler hats!

There were a few other booths also, where they made some candy canes out of beads, paper chain countdown to Christmas, and face painting, though the snowmen was their favorite. When we were finished, we were able to stop in another room for cookie decorating and hot cocoa:

And a visit with Santa! Allison wore her Santa beard she made in the craft room:

They even took a family photo and printed it off for us to take home:

They do this event every year, though this was the first we have heard of it. We are already looking forward to attending again, and will definitely be going back next year!

Have you done any holiday crafts with your family this year? Which craft listed do you like the best?

Holidays Downtown!

I love to go downtown this time of year! If your city is anything like mine, then you know how very festive it is as Christmastime. Ours has something special planned every weekend leading up to Christmas, so our weekends are pretty full in December.

Friday night we went out to get photos with Santa. Unfortunately, the line was way too long, but we did find The Grinch.

We hopped a ride on Santa's Trolly.

 

Admired some gingerbread houses that were on display for contest voting.

Decorated and ate some Christmas cookies.

And since we missed Santa on Friday night, we decided to wake up early and have breakfast with him on Saturday morning. This Santa is by far the BEST Santa I have ever come across. This is our 4th year doing breakfast with him. If you tell him what you want, he always knows exactly what you are talking about. My girls said American Girl stuff. He then proceeded to tell me the best route to the American Girl store in Chicago and talked about eating lunch with the dolls there. Then he easily had the same conversation about wrestling figures with the next kid. If there ever was a modern day Santa, I've found him.

Does your town do anything special for the holidays? If so, what have you done so far this year?