It's beginning to look and feel an awful lot like a Arizona Christmas.
Who knew you would crave some snow and cold weather but, I almost feel like I need a little bit of it to get into the Christmas Spirit.
BUT
I am not ready to trade our 70 degree play days for grey, bitter, snowy days. So I will just visit the snow for a minute and then Hurry back to defrost.
I love EVERYTHING about the Holidays so of course we have to try to squeeze in ALL the possible activities plus it's super fun to be a young family and get to start all of these fun family traditions. (if you have some good ones share share share!)
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| We have a screamer:) ( I can't really blame her he was kinda scary....so nice though;)) I have a feeling this will be a favorite picture for years to come:) |
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| Mesa Temple lights! if you haven't been here or Salt Lake Temple lights you can't call it Christmas! |
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| Daddy showing Baby J the nativity and teaching her about Baby Jesus. |
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| Crummy lighting but perfect evening |
Another thing I always look forward to is making Christmas treats!
Every year I looked forward to making treats for Joshua's teammates, so I was excited to be able to carry on the tradition even though he is graduated and make treats for his co-workers! We combined two of our favorites:
Santa Sled and Coal treats so that it looked like Santa himself was delivering the coal.
so if you forgot to make treats for neighbors or friends I will give details on how we did it plus where we got the inspiration (pinterest obviously:))
Santa's Sleigh
What you need for 1
-Hershey's miniatures (atleast 6 or you can do way more!)
-2 candy canes
-regular size kit cat or reese's candy bar in wrapper
-hot glue gun
-decorative ribbon or bows
Pretty easy and quick once you have all the materials get fancy with it!!!
(tip: you can switch out the candy for other types we just like using the hersheys miniatures because they are wrapped in a foil not a plastic so the hot glue doesn't melt it and ruin the treat.)
THE FAMOUS COAL
EVERYONE loves these and they are addicting!
(luckily for all of our recipients the oreos aren't gluten free so I HAD to avoid them)
What you need for 1 batch (ours made around 60 pieces of coal):
5-6 cups of Rice Crispie cereal
6 cups of mini marshmallows
3 Tbs of butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
Black Food coloring
1/2 pack of Oreo's crushed
plastic wrap or bags
brown paper sacks
sharpie marker
First melt the butter on low/medium heat. Once melted reduce the heat to low and add the 6 cups of marshmellows. (Patience is key here) the longer slower melt of marshmellows makes a better texture! Once almost fully melted stir in vanilla and food coloring. once fully incorporated and you have a nice blackish/purplish color add 5 cups of rice crispies and your crushed oreos. (we personally liked hand crushed so we still have larger chunks of oreo and not just oreo dust. We also love alot of oreos in it but you could do as little as one cup based on your preference). Now is where we may add the last cup of crispies if it seems to 'wet'.
We then let it cool in a slightly greased pan for about 5-10 min. and then roll into coal!
Package your coal into plastic wraps or bags and then we put it into brown paper sacks to keep with the 'look and feel' of giving coal. You can use our wording on the bag or come up with your own.
Ours reads:
After Checking The List
-the-
(insert family name here)
are getting
COAL
Merry Christmas
Love/(insert your name here)
(p.s. we checked twice:))
MERRY CHRISTMAS WE HOPE YOU ENJOY!!!
inspirations for these treats came from here and there is a ton of blogs with the coal but I will give credit where I saw it first here!
