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Christmas

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October through January 1st marks my very favorite season. What season you, ask? It certainly doesn’t fit in the normal four seasons of Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. Nope… it’s Party Season! To me, this is truly the most wonderful time of the year as it gives me ample opportunities to enjoy the company of my friends and family. Also, I do love me some party food. When decorating my house a couple of years ago I really wanted to touch on this wonderful season with a cheap and easy holiday decor item— a printable poster! This “Wonderful Time of The Year” Poster printable is super sleek with it’s black and white color scheme. It’ll pop amoung nearly anyone’s holiday decorations.

This is the third day of my 12 Days of Christmas DIYs for 2018. Each day for the next twelve days I share DIY projects, recipes, entertainment, and more, that you can incorporate in your holiday season. Most will be super simple!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year Poster | A Well Crafted Party

To create this super simple DIY you only need to download the free printable Holiday Poster File, save to your computer, and then bring to your favorite Staples store. Order this print as an Engineering Print. Frame your poster with a poster frame or post with tacks!

I love snowmen. They are just entirely too cute! They also make a great theme for a kid-friendly party. While you may not be hosting a kid’s class party this winter, you might still find some easy DIY items to incorporate into your holiday festivities where kids may be present. Some of my favorite bits of inspiration include the cheesy snowmen and melted snow water bottles!

This post is the second in my 12 Days of Christmas DIYs. Each day for the next twelve days I share DIY projects, recipes, entertainment, and more, that you can incorporate in your holiday season. Most will be super simple!

Snowman Party Snack Ideas | A Well Crafted Party

Snowman Class Party Ideas – Food

When hosting this holiday party I had some pretty strict food rules that I had to abide by for the safety of the students and (guessing here) liability reasons. I’m sure that many classrooms across America are having similar rules so hopefully, these ideas are helpful. We were not allowed to do much in the form of sweets and everything had to be store-bought and prepared. We were able to prepare a few things there in the classroom, but we didn’t have more than 15 minutes for set up nor a full kitchen to work with!

Our Snowman Class Party Menu:

The snack table held water bottles labeled as melted snow, cheese sticks dressed up as snowmen, and mini bags of carrot sticks labeled as snowmen noses. We also did a fun snowman activity that had the kids creating a snack of bananas, pretzel sticks, strawberries, candy-coated chocolates, and marshmallows. The kids would make their snowmen-snacks and then finish all of the other activities and got to eat them and the rest of the snack items at the end of the party.

Snowman Party Snack Ideas | A Well Crafted Party Snowman Party Snack Ideas | A Well Crafted Party

Snowman class party activities

This party was created for a kindergarten classroom. Though, many of the activities would really translate well into different ages. We co-opted the tables of the classroom to create different stations. Each station was manned by a volunteer parent and the kids moved from one station to another about every eight to ten minutes. I’ll share as much as I can with each of the activities to hopefully inspire some ideas of your own. If you’d like to recreate what I did, use the free printables linked below!

Snowman Party Activity | A Well Crafted Party

Snowman Party Snack Activity: This one is hopefully pretty self-explanatory. Each snowman is created with three slices of banana, four pretzel rods, 1 half strawberry, 1 orange candy-coated chocolate, and 1 mini marshmallow. You skewer the bananas with 1 pretzel rod. You skewer the strawberry to the banana with another. Finally, you add in two rods for the arms. Most of the kids skipped two of the pretzel rods and just organized them on the plate to give the general effect.

Snowman Party Activity | A Well Crafted Party

Snowman giftbag activity: I didn’t use a printable to create these, but rather I created them by simply cutting the items out of construction paper. Perhaps someday I’ll make a coordinating printable, but for now, only the activity sign is in the free printable package below. Each snowman bag was created with a white paper gift bag, black tissue paper, 6 “coals” cut out of construction paper, 1 strip of black construction paper (to make hat brim), 1 orange carrot cut out of construction paper, and two brown “twigs” cut out of construction paper. I pre-cut everything and had it ready at the table with lots of glue sticks. The kids then glued the items onto their bags. I stuffed with black tissue paper to finish off the hat! We then added in the picture frames from another activity so that they could give the gift to someone that they loved!

Snowman Party Activity | A Well Crafted Party

Snowman picture frame activity: My trusty Instax camera and I go everywhere these days. My son LOVES getting his photo taken so we decided it would be fun to use the Instax camera in a photobooth and then create picture frames to give as a gift. I created a photobooth using paper and painting snow on it. The kids then took a photo in front of it. I had props such as a cap and scarf for the kids to wear if they wanted. While each kid got their photo taken the other kids in the group colored on their picture frame. Then, using double-sided tape, I attached their photo to the frame.

Snowman Party Activity | A Well Crafted Party

Snowman Word Jumble Activity: I like it when school parties have a lot of fun mixed in with a bit of learning. I created this word jumble game to help infuse some learning into the mix. It was a tad too advanced for some of the kindergarteners, but the parent volunteer was able to help them through. It might be perfect for a first or second grade classroom! The kids would roll the dice and then try to create sentences from the words that they received in their jumble.

Snowman party free printables

Get your free printable by clicking on the image below and saving the PDF to your computer. Follow the instructions on the instruction page to print each item. The snowman party printables include banners, party circles, signs, word jumble cubes, word jumble worksheet, and coloring picture frame. All are free for personal use.

Free Snowman Party Printables | A Well Crafted Party

Spice up the holidays with this simple cocktail recipe that features sweet, sour, and spicy notes of cranberry, lime, and smoked jalapenos! One of my favorite restaurant cocktails of all time features a pepper vodka mixed with citrus, so when I received a bottle of the recently released Chipotle Vodka by Cascade Street Distillery I knew I wanted to create a sweet and spicy holiday cocktail recipe.

Spicy Cranberry Cocktail | A Well Crafted Party

This is the first in my 2018 series of 12 Days of Christmas DIY. You know with today being Saturday Spirits I had to share a DIY holiday cocktail to kick off my 12 Days of Christmas DIYs. And, yes, recipes count as DIY because you are completely doing it yourself rather than picking it up off a shelf. This post is in partnership with Cascade Street Distillery. I received complimentary product. Recipe and opinions are my own. 

Spicy Cranberry Cocktail | A Well Crafted Party

The Spicy Christmas Cocktail featuring Chipotle Vodka

This recipe creates 1 cocktail. Serve in a sugared rimmed martini glass with sugared cranberries.

Ingredients:

  • 1 oz Cranberry Syrup (see recipe below)
  • 1 oz Cranberry Juice
  • 1 oz lime juice
  • 1.5 oz chipotle vodka

Directions:

  1. Pour the cranberry syrup, lime juice, cranberry juice, and chipotle vodka over ice into a shaker.
  2. Shake well! Shake until the shaker gets frosty. This will chill the drink effectively as well as impart some water into the mix.
  3. Strain into a sugar-rimmed martini glass and garnish with sugared cranberries.

Cranberry Syrup

Cranberries tend to be quite tart. So, when creating a drink with the tart flavors of cranberry and lime we really need to impart some good sweetness to the mix. Creating a cranberry syrup will add the right amount of sweetness to the cocktail to help balance the more tart and spicy notes.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup fresh cranberries
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup cranberry juice

Directions:

  1. Bring ingredients to a boil over medium heat in a heavy saucepan. Stir frequently so that the sugar doesn’t burn.
  2. Turn down the temp and let simmer until cranberries soften and burst.
  3. Strain the mixture using a fine mesh sieve reserving the liquid and discarding the cranberries.
  4. Chill – Can be stored in a sealed container in the fridge for 2 weeks.

Your spice-loving friends will love this holiday cocktail.