4th and 5th Days of Christmas

I've never kept track of what we did each day for our 25 days of Christmas celebration quite as well as I am this year. There are no guarantees that everything will get posted in a timely manner, but I'm not doing too terribly so far. Here is what kept us busy the past two days.

On Day 4 we intended to go to a festival in Canal Winchester. Unfortunately, it became apparent early in the day for many reasons that this wasn't going to happen, so I pulled out one of our craft ideas. I recently discovered in a Five in a Row December supplement that pomander balls were a traditional, Victorian Christmas ornament. What's a pomander ball? An orange with cloves stuck into it and ribbons tied around it so that it can hang. It smells heavenly!!! Here's the pic I took today (this ended up being a 2 day project):

Now here are my tips. If you decide to do this, it's pretty simple, but it is time consuming. Lukas worked on it for half an hour and decided to put it aside until the next day(and he never came back to it). Ava worked a little longer than that and came back to it a couple times. Eric was working on Lukas' but gave it up all together, and I was determined to finish Ava's. It smelled incredible, and I love the historical tradition of it. So here's what I suggest. Use clementines. Use a nail to poke a few holes at a time, and fill them with whole cloves(you will need a lot of cloves. We used the store brand from our grocery's spice aisle). When your clementine is covered, glue the ribbon onto it and use the nail to attach a loop to the top of the orange. I secured the nail and ribbon with a little bit of hot glue as well. This seriously smells incredible. It's a great project to keep little hands busy, and they can come and go when they have time if they don't want to get it all done at once. Plus, they look pretty when they're done!

Day 5 was today. We try to keep Sundays pretty simple around here. We often have movie nights. Today was no exception. We watched The Santa Clause. My kids had been asking to watch it, and we had fun watching it with them. As an added bonus, we also watched Rudolph, my favorite Christmas cartoon. It's unusual for us to watch that much t.v. in one day, but we split it up by watching one in the afternoon and one over dinner. It was a very relaxing afternoon and evening!

What memory making activities are you doing this month? I'd love to hear your ideas, and maybe I'll even get around to using them!