Nine in the Crafternoon

Hello friends! I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying some winter solstice based celebrations. And further I hope when you read this (most likely in the new year) you are having a happy start to 2025! Happy New Year! The kids and I did a bunch of New Year’s Eve themed crafts today a la Pinterest. I wanted to do the typical New Year’s Eve count down at 12pm (aka Noon Year’s Eve) but for yet another year I couldn’t get my act together in time. Instead we decided to prep everything for post dinner celebrations. We called it “crafternoon” and got down to business after lunch doing some gluing, painting, cutting, taping and stickering. Then the kids decided they wanted fondue for New Year’s Eve dinner so we whipped up some of that. Side note, fondue is incredibly fast to make! Like, you can make it on a week-night fast! I’m going to have to log that away for later. I’ll post the recipes I used below.

Sigh, while Halloween is my favorite holiday, the winter celebrations are a very close second! The New Year always triggers an end to those joyful celebrations. My siblings all went home yesterday which always makes me sad! Will is extra sad, I’m sure, because that also signals the end of more eager board gamers living with him. I am just not as eager, I fear. I’m more of a do all the crafts type person. Luckily Will is out having some game night fun tonight with friends to continue his streak.

Speaking of do-all-the-crafts I think this is the first time in several years that I haven’t made anything for the kids for Christmas. It made me feel like a total failure! I had so many ideas and I accomplished none of them. On the bright side I did use the furoshiki wraps that I finished after last Christmas for all the Christmas presents and I had WAY MORE than I even needed including using them to wrap presents from others that had been shipped to us! We saved SO MUCH PAPER! What a great feeling. We hope we didn’t counteracted it with all the deliveries to our house. I can’t even fathom how bad that is. I’ll have to make an effort to buy more things local next year, though it really is very difficult to find things in stores these days. Especially when the only brick and mortar toy store is 45 minutes away from us. Target has a great toy section but it doesn’t cover all the things the kids asked for this year for Christmas. Though really no toy store would.

Patricia and Julius really don’t like to write Santa letters. Last year and this year we asked over and over again to have them write Santa a letter. They refused, on the reasoning that they asked Santa what they wanted in person. We went to see Santa at the beginning of December and they each asked for one thing. Patricia asked for “100 dolls in boxes” (we did have a chat about greed but it bounced right off her) and Julius asked for “a cheesecake”. Huh. Patricia ended up getting one American Girl Welly Wishers doll (and accessories) from Santa and shortly after opening it cut off half its hair. I had a near heart attack when I found the clump of hair in the bathroom. It should be noted that she did not choose to do this to the offbrand 14.5 inch doll that Mama and Dada got at Target for 1/4 the price, she targeted the Welly Wisher. Sometimes I wish I could bottle her curiosity for cause and effect.

Julius found a note under the tree on Christmas morning telling him to check the fridge. It appeared some jolly elf had left a brown pastry box in the fridge that had a sticker from “Mrs. C” on it. It had a block of cheese inside… that it seemed was actually a cake. A cheesecake to be exact. Mrs. Claus must be a bit of a prankster sending him a cheese-cheesecake. I bet she had fun making that. Julius said it was awesome, but not quite as good as the jelly cake.

New Year’s Afternoon Soiree with Kiddos*

*can I count this as a party? I don’t know but I’m going to, I don’t get out much anymore.

Lots of Crafts

We made:

Disco Balls from paper plates and aluminum foil (I’ll be honest we didn’t follow the tutorial just looked at the main picture)

Pom Pom Launchers (same deal as above)

Parchment Paper Kazoo (yay science)

New Years Eve Noisemakers (I’d just gotten a bunch of bells from Michaels on Xmas Clearance. This is what I was doing yesterday instead of writing this blog post).

Recycled Party Poppers (instructions below)

Food

We made a half recipe of this awesome cheese fondue. The only difference I made was to omit the Worcestershire sauce (it’s not vegetarian), added 2 Tbsp of corn starch with a tablespoon of water and I brought it back up to medium to come to a simmer while stirring with a rubber spatula the entire time. It almost instantly became the right consistency when it started to simmer and I didn’t have to wait 5-8 minutes. Will even liked this recipe because it was made with cheddar. Will is not a fan of the swiss cheese varieties, even though Julius and I think they are great. For dippers we served with cubed homemade sourdough (obviously), raw carrots, broccoli, pepper and celery, apples and cherry tomatoes. I didn’t bother serving with a salad because the kids ate more than their share of veggies this way with no prompting.

For dessert we happened to have all the ingredients for chocolate fondue on hand including marshmallows, strawberries and some unfrosted sugar cookies I had made for xmas that I chopped up for dipping. I used this recipe (again halved) and melted the chocolate on low and it was perfect.

At 7:30pm we did a count down and watched a recording of a past NYE ball drop. The kids played their kazoos and shook their noisemakers when we got to 0. Then the kids said they wanted to do their own ball drop with the disco balls we made. So they counted down to 10 and dropped them off the balcony. And finally they launched pom poms at me (then cleaned them up) before they headed up to bed.

Recycled Party Poppers

What you’ll need (for each):

1 toilet paper tube
1 toilet paper wrapper (or tissue paper)
Additional scraps of tissue paper or TP wrappers
string or ribbon to tie the ends
Tape
Paper for jokes
a fun little trinket (ours were some little boba tea lip glosses)

1. Cut your TP roll in half. (Honestly having done this several times now I’m not sure they ever break along the center line, so this step is probably unnecessary.)

2. With the scrap TP roll wrapper/tissue paper cut up little 1/2″x1/2″ size squares of confetti.

3. Cut a roughly 1′ x 8″ rectangle of TP roll wrapper/tissue paper then place your cut TP tube in the center on one of the longer ends.

4. Tape on each side of the tube.

5. Slowly roll up the tube in the wrapper until it overlaps. Then again tape each side of the tube.

6. Pinch one end closed and tie ribbon or string around it.

7. Fill with confetti and a joke (the kids wanted to write their own jokes). Then have the kids close their eyes while you put a little prize inside and add more confetti on top.