(This page contains affiliate links. At no cost to you, I gain a small commission if you buy items through my links. Find my disclaimer page here).
Crafts – Lily had such a great time making foam ornaments – coloring, putting stickers on, and gluing gems and pompoms onto them. I like shopping at Michael’s a week or two after Christmas for 90% off Christmas crafts, pack it up with my Christmas bins, and have it ready for next year (also a great time to stock up on Christmas wrapping paper or decor).
Felt Christmas tree – if you want to make your own click here – it’s super easy! (but I bought mine off amazon here)
Advent Calendar – I bought a reusable wooden one with little drawers that’s so cute, but I didn’t have the energy for it this year so Lily played with it and I bought a Thomas the Train one, and a My Little Pony one. (Last year we did this Disney toy one.)
Christmas stories – I’m so excited that this year, Lily has the attention span for stories and books so we read and found some new favorites! This is a great chance to combine an advent calendar with Christmas stories as well; there are some advent calendars with small storybooks for each day here.
Decorating the house – Lily loved putting up a paper garland and hanging ornaments on our tree (I thought I wanted a real tree this year, but my fake tree branches can bend around my heavy glass ornaments so they don’t fall, so I think we’re sticking with a fake one for a little while longer).
Making and/or decorating Christmas cookies – she enjoys mixing, cutting out cookies with cookie cutters, and sticking sprinkles all over them (we do sprinkles before they’re cooked, and skip the frosting). You can also buy decorating kits that come with cookies, frosting, and sprinkles all ready to go. We get ours from a local bakery we learned about in a local facebook group.
Decorating a gingerbread house. We buy the kits with ready-made gingerbread from the grocery store (it even comes with frosting and candies). This year my sister also found paper “gingerbread” houses that the kids could glue pompoms to and sticker or color, which they really enjoyed.
Watching Christmas movies – we love the old classics, especially the old clay stop-motion ones, the animated Frosty the Snowman, and. Mickey’s Christmas Carol (Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas and Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas are really fun too).
