Stuff Your Stocking with Environmentally Friendly Gifts & a Giveaway

This post is brought to you by Uncommon Goods. All opinions are my own.

Christmas is only a few weeks away and there seems to be a mad rush for those perfect, unique, last-minute gifts for everyone on your list.   I was recently contacted by Uncommon Goods to select an early Christmas present for the boys and I was immediately taken by their company policy and their products.  Uncommon Goods is a privately-owned business that features unique designs and and handcrafted gifts created in harmony with the environment without harm to people or animals.  They strive to support artists and designers with half of their products being handmade, and one-third containing recycled or upcycled materials.  Not only that, but Uncommon Goods donates $1 for every item purchased to the charity of your choice as part of their Better to Give program.  They offer products for everyone on your list including this DIY Pick Puncher found here for the music lover in your life or this Kinetic Sand found here, perfect for the young child in your life.

Coffee Dough Ornaments

Yesterday, I shared two different recipes for coffee dough that we made recently. The spiced coffee dough made my whole kitchen smell like a barista's dream! After playing with our coffee doughs, we used some of it to make some adorable homemade Christmas ornaments.

The kids rolled out their coffee dough and selected which cookie cutters they wanted to use from our assortment of cookie cutters.  We have a giant cookie cutter set .  These are great because they have cookie cutters for all of the major holidays, plus letter and number cookie cutters.  All of the kids wanted to make an ornament with their initial and then they chose from snowmen, stars, Christmas trees, bells, stockings, and Gingerbread men.

Once the ornaments were cut out, we put them on a greased cookie sheet and used a toothpick to create a hole.  Don't forget to do this or you won't be able to thread the ribbon through them once their finished drying.

You can leave the ornaments to air dry for about 48 hours, but we're much too impatient for that method so we baked ours in a 300 degree oven for about 30 minutes.  They may not feel hard when you remove them from the oven, but they will harden as they cool.

Then, we added some festive ribbon to hang them and you're all set.  We have painted these in the past, but I chose to leave them this year so the kids could see the neat texture of the coffee grains in their ornaments.  They had a beautiful stone finish to them.  You can use the toothpick to mark each child's initials and the year into the back of the ornament before baking or just write on them with a sharpie once they finish drying.

You may also like our recipe for salt dough ornaments.

If you're looking for other Christmas crafts and activities, please check out the Christmas section of our Kids Crafts page!  You can also find ideas on our Christmas with Kids Pinterest Board and by following us on our Facebook Page. 

 

Spiced Coffee Dough Recipes

Lately, we've been diving into some sensory play by making our own play doughs and spending more time with sensory bins. The other day, my husband brought home my first gingerbread latte of the season and I just knew that we had to try to make some dough with this wonderful scent.   We ended up making two types of coffee dough - one was lighter in color and the other had more of a mocha tint to it.

Hands-On Holiday Sensory Activities from the Weekly Kids Co-Op

Last week was a bit hectic with the Thanksgiving Holiday so this week we're jumping right into some sensational sensory activities for the Christmas season that were shared on last week's co-op. These are sure to keep little hands occupied while you wrap presents or stuff envelopes for those Christmas cards!

Textured and Scented Gingerbread People Sensory Painting - House of Burke
Snowman Activity Tray - Happy Hooligans (add cinnamon sticks and bells to make this a multi-sensory tactile experience)
Sensory Snow - Frogs, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails
Candy Cane Scented Play Dough - Where Imagination Grows
Sticky Scented Rice Christmas Tree - Crayon Box Chronicles
Hot Cocoa Cloud Dough - Sow Sprout Play
Dollar Store Christmas Sensory Bin - The Good Long Road
Shredded Paper Sensory Bin - Gift of Curiosity
Christmas Sensory Bin and Sticky Tree - How Wee Learn
Christmas Peppermint Sensory Bin - Stir the Wonder

If you're looking for other Christmas crafts and activities, please check out the Christmas section of our Kids Crafts page!  You can also find ideas on our Christmas with Kids Pinterest Board and by following us on our Facebook Page. 

Now, it's your turn.  Do you have a post related to kids' activities or parenting?  We'd love to have you link up below and share your great ideas!  You may even find them featured on any of the Kid's Co-op Blogs.

Free Printable Snowman Countdown to Christmas

First, I want to apologize that this is coming a few days late. Honestly, I had completely forgotten that I wanted to make this with the kids, and then when I remembered, I realized that I was going to have to create something to make it easy for everyone else to make one too.  We first came across the idea for the Countdown to Santa Snowman at Kirklands and my son fell in love with it.  Being the frugal crafty mom that I am, I figured we could probably make a kid-friendly version ourselves and promptly forgot about it...until last weekend when my son asked me if we were going to make them!

Printable Christmas Counting Play Dough Mats

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Lately, my little guys have been obsessed with play dough. We had a great time exploring with our pumpkin play dough and recently enjoyed all sorts of fun activities with some homemade coffee dough (which I'll be sharing soon!). Since, my toddler and my preschooler have been asking for play dough so much, I decided it was time to try my hand at creating some more play dough mats. In the past we've made simple homemade play dough mats to work on shapes and letters, but I wanted to make something a little more festive for the kids so I got to work on PowerPoint.

Wine Cork Turkey Craft

A few months ago, my dear Government teacher from high school sent me a large package of wine corks so we could make wine cork sailboats with the kids.  I've been holding on to the leftovers with a few fun projects in mind for the holidays and just couldn't resist making turkeys with them.  These would be great for place cards or attaching to gifts or napkin rings.  My kids enjoyed making them as turkey pets!

For our Turkeys we used:
wine corks
toothpick
red and orange construction paper
googly eyes
multicolored feathers
tacky glue
paintbrushes
brown acrylic paint - courtesy of CraftProjectIdeas.com