Celebrations – Page 6

Planning for a Princess Garden Party

May 11, 2015May 11, 2015 chantelledoll

When it comes to Disney Princesses, it can be hard to pick a favorite – especially when you’re two!

Since going to Disneyland in February, my 2 year old daughter’s fondness for all things princess has turned into a full fledged obsession. I won’t lie, it totally makes my heart swell and I can’ help but oblige her obsession when I see how happy it makes my little girl. Our Disneyland trip was amazing all on it’s own, but to see it through her little eyes and experience her excitement truly made it magical for my husband and I.

When it came to picking a theme for her upcoming third birthday, it was pretty obvious. But, there are many directions one could go when it comes to princesses. Last year I did a Snow White themed party and my husband suggested I just stick with one princess again this year to keep our options open for future parties. While it is a very wise suggestion, when it came to nailing down Keira’s favorite Disney princess it wasn’t a clear cut answer.

I finally came across these paper plates at the Dollar store and decided I would use them as the inspiration for my party planning. I decided to work with Cinderella, Rapunzel and Belle as my princesses, throwing in Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) for good measure!

I didn’t want the party completely over-run by the princess theme so I am incorporating a lot of flowers and garden aspects in to create a more of a Garden Party theme.

I am hoping to host the party in the backyard and am keeping my fingers crossed for good weather. At this time last year our yard was nothing but bare dirt, and my husband has worked incredibly hard to create a space we can enjoy. His latest project was building the kids play structure and I am hoping it helps to keep the kids entertained at the party! It has been up less then a month and you can see by the worn grass under the swings and slides it has already been well used by our kids and their neighborhood friends.

I still have a lot of DIY details to tackle, but I am too excited about the way my princess inspired flowerpots are turning out to not share a sneak peek of a couple of them:

I have a couple more weeks to finish up all my crafts and have everything ready to transform our backyard into a garden party worthy of my favorite little princess! I am excited with the way everything is turning out and can’t wait to share all the party details with you after the big day.

Have you ever planned a princess party? Please comment with your favorite party detail or ideas!

Celebrations, Parties

Party Favorites: Aladdin Drink Dispenser

April 23, 2015April 23, 2015 chantelledoll

One of my favorite party purchases last year has to be these Aladdin brand mason jar style drink dispensers from Walmart. I bought them on a whim last year before my daughters birthday party and will admit that I was a bit skeptical of quality for the $10 price tag. I even kept the receipt on hand just in case I experienced leaking spout issues like I have had with other inexpensive drink dispensers I have purchased in the past.

After a full summer of use, I am happy to report my two are still holding up well. I love the smaller size of these jars which makes it easy to offer a few different drink options at smaller gatherings, and they fit nicely in my fridge to keep iced tea or lemonade on hand during the hot summer months. With the addition of some fresh citrus slices or cut fruit, they also make a beautiful addition to any party table.

If you are planning to host any barbeques, parties or gatherings this summer I highly recommend these dispensers. They are in this weeks Walmart flyer and I am tempted to go buy a third to have on hand as a back-up. I look forward to using ours this summer to keep the kids hydrated while playing outside and maybe to try a yummy sangria recipe or two for myself!

Celebrations

Hippity Hoppity Easter’s on its Way!

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015 chantelledoll

For me, one of the best parts of being a parent is getting to make holidays special for your children. I usually don’t put much effort into the smaller holidays like Valentines or St.Patrick’s Day, but when it comes to the big stuff like Halloween, Christmas and Easter I like to try and go all out.

Growing up, Easter was always a pretty significant holiday and I have fond memories of yearly Easter egg hunts with my siblings. We would wake up to a basket filled with some small treats and usually a new outfit, then there would be small foil eggs and chocolate bunnies hidden throughout the house. The smaller eggs would be free for the taking, but we knew when it came to the bigger stuff there would be one for each of us. Sometimes my mom would even write our names right on the items in Sharpie marker. It was pretty chaotic with three siblings and I know my dad found great pleasure in finding the perfect hiding spot and then sitting back to watch as we tore the house apart in search of that last chocolate bunny.

Egg hunting with my sisters. That’s me on the right.

My mom never bought the plastic Easter eggs and now that I have, I think I understand why. They really don’t hold that much and it seems like you have to work backwards to try and find items to fit the eggs. There are a lot of great suggestions for fillers online, but I am mainly sticking to candy in ours to avoid more of the random trinkets that seem to accumulate in all corners of my house. I do still love the idea and uniformity of the plastic eggs for the hunt, though, so I was happy to find some large sized plastic eggs at Dollar Tree that I will be able to fill with a couple smaller toys each I know the kids will love.

The eggs are pretty obvious, but I have been struggling with how to help the kids know what else they are searching for on their Easter hunt. My first thought was to maybe attach a picture of a bunny to the items in their hiding spots, but I wasn’t loving this idea. I then thought back to our Disneyland Treasure Hunt and how much fun my son loved having the printed map to guide him, so I decided I would create a graphic based list to use for their Easter hunts.

Each kid will get the list, in a card, with their basket Easter morning. The visual reference will help let them know exactly what they are looking for and which color eggs are theirs. I am also hoping it will help my preschooler a bit with number recognition and counting as he makes his way through his list.

I am most excited for the wrapped gifts on their lists. For my Lego obsessed little boy, I was happy to find this cute bunny set when we were in Legoland, California. I swear they weren’t even in the gift shop the first day when we looked and then I just happened to take one last quick peek through the gift shop before we left the park on the second day and found it. I couldn’t resist picking one up to tuck away for Easter.

And because I am all about keeping things as fair and even as possible between my kids, I was excited to come across this pink bunny filled Duplo set at Toys R Us for little sister.

Their second wrapped item will be an Easter themed book I have picked out for each of them.

They are also being spoiled with Lindt chocolate this year thanks to a half price voucher I was able to get through wagjag.com. Hopefully they will be willing to share with mom and dad.

And it isn’t Easter without a Kinder Surprise! I opted for the slightly bigger ones and am excited to see what kind of surprise they have inside.

Finally, I can’t forget to mention the matching pajamas going in their Easter baskets! It is hard to resist matching pyjamas and it has become a bit of a yearly tradition now for me.

I snapped up two pairs when we were at the Gymboree outlet in Palm Desert. They will be going in the Easter buckets alongside fun new cups, a few chocolates and my daughters favorite – Jelly Belly’s.

Celebrations, Parties

Drops of Love Baby Shower

March 10, 2015 chantelledoll

When my good friend asked me to help with her daughter’s baby shower it was an easy yes. I knew she would be undergoing back surgery just a few weeks before the shower so it was a good way for me to lend a hand during her recovery period. She also gave me plenty of months notice which always makes it that much easier to agree to.

It was nice to be able to help out a friend by doing something I love, and lucky for me she trusted me enough to pass full creative control over. I had attended the gender reveal party so I knew the baby was going to be a girl and spent a lot of time perusing pinterest to try and come up with the perfect girly theme. I had seen these chevron printed tablecloths at Target that I loved, so I decided to pick a couple of them up to use for the food table. The baby is due in April so my mind went to April Showers which helped me settle on a rainbow theme using the color scheme from the tablecloths.

My main decoration was a large rainbow and clouds I crafted to hang on the wall. The clouds were simply cut from white foamcore and I created the rainbow by winding colored streamers around tubes of foam plumbing insulation. I was able to find the foamcore at the dollar store and the insulation tubes were reused from the Olympic Rings I had crafted for my sons birthday party last year, making it a very inexpensive party decoration.

Guests were greeted into the hall with a simple sign I designed to match my rainbow decoration. Inside, they were invited to make their mark on a fingerprint guestbook and help create a lasting reminder of the day for the sweet momma-to-be. I have always loved the idea of a fingerprint guestbook and I thought fingerprints lent well to becoming little raindrops under my rainbow and cloud graphic.

Alongside the guestbook were cards where everyone could write their wishes for baby, and then place them into an adorable pink mailbox I found on clearance after Valentine’s day.

The guest of honor’s best friend also set up a Guess Mommy’s Tummy game where guests cut a piece of yarn to the size they thought would fit around the mommy’s waist. Her sweet 4 year old niece ended up being the closest and the consensus was that it was a direct result of how much time she spends hugging the little cousin growing in auntie’s tummy. 🙂

I found some cute watering cans at the Dollar Store and filled them with a fake rose arrangement to use on the food table. The baby’s name will include “Rose” so it seemed fitting. I also did some quick subway art with the phrase “Love makes good things grow”.

The heart and raindrop shaped sugar cookies were baked and decorated by myself. They were a bit time consuming, but I was really happy with the way they looked piled on the small platters throughout the table.

The cupcakes were ordered through Walmart and finished off with cloud shaped toppers I baked out of meringue. They fit perfectly with the theme and I was pleasantly surprised just how darn tasty those Walmart cupcakes were! I normally bake my own, but I might have to keep them in mind for my next party.

The fruit was displayed as a rainbow and served with clouds of white chocolate creamcheese dip from heart shaped bowls I bought at Dollar Tree. I tried to keep to my color scheme and used strawberries, blueberries, red grapes, watermelon balls and fresh pineapple.

One other fun detail I “borrowed” from Pinterest were these tiny umbrella’s from half a round of Babybel cheese and a plastic bendy straw. I had the straws trimmed down ahead of time so it was easy to cut the cheese in half and assemble them right before the party.

I always find shower games tricky so I decided to reuse one of the ideas from my sister’s Elephant themed baby shower. Everyone there seemed to enjoy the baby version of Price is Right, so I decided to revamp my artwork and use it again at this shower.

The printables were designed with the color scheme in mind and I think the best part of the game was watching the momma-to-be try to match the price tags to the right products. She did fairly well, only mixing up a couple of the prices.

It turned out to be a lovely afternoon and I loved the way all my details came together to give a bright pop of color and remind us that Spring and other good things are on the way!

Momma-to-be was beyond spoiled by all her close family and friends and should now be more then ready to welcome that sweet baby girl into the world in the upcoming weeks. I can’t wait to meet her!

Celebrations, Parties

A Super Mario 5th Birthday

February 25, 2015February 3, 2017 chantelledoll

My little guy’s love of all things Mario has not faded in the past few months, so when it came time to start planning his 5th birthday he was very confident in what he wanted for his party theme. I grew up playing Mario on original NES and knew it was something I could have a lot of fun with so I was more then happy to go along with his request.

The invite was a simple 5″X7″ single sided card that incorporated a picture of the birthday boy in his Mario costume and the bright graphics seen in the Super Mario video games.

The party ended up being just 4 days after we returned from our Disneyland trip so I had to be organized and do a lot of the decorating and DIY projects before we left.

To try and keep costs down after the trip, we ended up hosting his party in our home this year. I still wanted it to be special so I used it as my motivation to complete some of the half finished projects in the basement and create a fun space for the kids to play during the party.

One big project was the painting of the racetrack on the cement floor. Our house is plenty big enough that we don’t need to finish the basement as another living area, but I did want to make it a fun spot for the kids. I still have touch-ups to complete, but the painted floor makes the basement feel so much more inviting and finished.

The kids each got a Plasma Car for Christmas and they just happened to be red and green so I decided to add on the red Mario “M” and a green “L” for Luigi so the kids could have Kart races during the party. These work great on the cement floor and I will admit to even have taken one for a spin around the newly painted track.

The basement walls were also a blank canvas so I also decided to paint two of them with blue and green and then cut some bush shapes and printed Mario themed figures out of paper to stick overtop. The final additions were large white clouds cut from sheets of foam core and the Mario item boxes I constructed to hang on the wall. It turned out better then I pictured and I love that our basement now looks like something straight out of a video game!

The brick and item boxes on the wall read out “Camden is 5”. These were built from foamcore and contained a fun activity and surprise for the party. I made each box as a separate box with tissue paper access for our guests to punch through and their loot bag items to spill out of.

The loot bag items included K’nex Mario figure mystery bags, Mario themed fruit snacks, chocolate coins, bubble gum tape, finger lasers and some other small Mario candies I found in the Valentine’s section at Dollar Tree. I also gave each guest a card game set as they were leaving.

To collect all the items that spilled out of their punch box, the kids each received one of these mushroom bags I made by gluing a paper mushroom top and eyes to a small paper bag.

For the food table, I used a pre-printed tablecloth and partyware ordered from Birthday Express. The centerpiece block was created from foamcore and I made piranha plants by inserting cut-out paper images into flower pots I picked up at Ikea.

The party started at 1pm so I wanted some light snacks, rather then a full meal. I decided on pizza rolls, pigs in a blanket and other simple kid-friendly finger foods.

One of my favorite food details was the idea I came up with to turn the Babybel cheese into Mario hats.

The firepower veggie platter was easy to put together and a fun way to get some veggies into the kids. Mine included yellow bell pepper, baby carrots, grape tomatoes, celery, broccoli and cucumber. Having now planned quite a few kids parties, I have learned that the cucumber always is the first to go and I make sure to include it in any kind of veggie platter I might be making for kids.

The piranha plant fruit skewers were simple to make and went over well with the kids. I filled my flower pot with honey dew melon balls to stick the skewers into and threaded the grapes and strawberries onto wooden coffee stir sticks so there were no sharp points for the kids to hurt themselves with.

For sweet treats, I had originally intended to make star shaped sugar cookies, but the Rice Krispie treats were easier and still turned out pretty cute once I piped on melted chocolate eyes.

I have become obsessed with meringue cookies and included them on the food table for my last few parties. They are easy to whip up with just a few ingredients and can be piped into a variety of shapes like the clouds I made here.

Chocolate Cadbury Mini Eggs labelled as Yoshi Eggs and gummy bananas with a Donkey Kong label also made for some quick and easy Nintendo themed treats on the table.

For your own printable copy of my food labels, click here: mariopartyfoodlabels_dolledupdesign

And, of course there was birthday cake! For the cake, I decided to use my giant cupcake pan and try to make a mushroom. I was intending to make the top red, but the birthday boy requested his favorite color green and I didn’t see any good reason to convince him otherwise. To make the white spots on the mushroom top, I simply took my rolling pin to some large marshmallows. It is not perfect, but I was pretty happy with the end result.

One final fun detail were the Hawaiian Punch drink bottles I transformed into Mario, Luigi and Princess Peach with paper labels. They were a hit sipped up through moustache and crown drinking straws. To see more pictures and print your own free bottle labels, please visit my Mario Party Drinks guest post over on Moms and Munchkins.

This was a fun party to plan and I love how excited my boy got over seeing all the small details. I am afraid I am creating a bit of a party monster, though, because as we were food shopping for the party he began picking out items and telling me how I could transform them to fit the theme. “Just add a Luigi hat and me and my friends can have these yogurt drinks at my party!” I absolutely love his enthusiasm and it definitely makes all the planning, painting, crafting and baking worthwhile.

Happy Birthday Camden!

Big Hands, Crafts, Parties

Easy Mario Mushroom Favors

January 6, 2015January 6, 2015 chantelledoll

Are you planning a Mario themed party? These adorable treat filled mushroom favors are enough to excite any Nintendo-loving fan.

Check out the full DIY Mario Mushroom Favors tutorial as my guest post over at Moms and Munchkins today.

Celebrations, Parties

Rudolph Holiday Party

January 5, 2015November 15, 2015 chantelledoll

I am so excited to share my all the details from my Rudolph party with you today! I love bringing my ideas to life and seeing a party vision come together.

For this party, I had hoped to do something in the weeks leading up to Christmas but found it incredibly hard to plan something with all the other parties and obligations people have at this time of year. As Christmas day approached, I still really wanted to execute some of the ideas I had come up with in my Rudolph Treats inspiration post and decided to put some snacks and treats together to enjoy with my family on Christmas Day. My niece had also just turned one just a few days before Christmas, so I thought it was the perfect excuse to subject my family members to my party planning craziness.

For Christmas day, I had already planned to put out some light snacks to munch on in the afternoon and tide everyone over until it was time for turkey dinner. Putting a Rudolph spin on everything wasn’t that much extra effort and the little details really helped add to the excitement of the day.

The turkey pinwheels were made the day before and simply had to be sliced and arranged on the plate. Using green tortilla’s and finishing the stack off with a star cut from a yellow bell pepper made for a cute little Christmas tree next to my stuffed abominable toy.

Then, with the help of some pre-made tart shells, my Bumble-Berry Tarts were another clever tribute to everyone’s favorite abominable monster.

We also enjoyed a variety of sliced cheese, meat and Christmas shaped crackers to snack on. The Santa belts around the Babybel cheese were a little over the top, but they were a huge hit with the kids.

My maraschino cherry “dirt covered red noses” and reindeer hooves went over well, but one of the most popular items was the cranberry baked brie. You can’t go wrong with melted, gooey cheese and the touch of cranberry and pecans gave it that festive touch.

My fruit and vegetable platters got a holiday spin by arranging them into a Christmas tree and a wreath. The tree shaped pan for the fruit was a foil cake pan I came across at the Dollar Store and filled with red and green fruits.

These meringue hats were my second attempt at meringue cookies and they are surprisingly easy thanks to the help of my KitchenAid stand mixer to effortlessly whip the egg whites. My first batch were labelled as dwarf hats for my Snow White Picnic Party and these ones were layered in red and blue as an ode to Hermey the elf’s iconic hat.

I had planned to bake and decorate a cake, but ended up cutting it out for the sake of my own sanity. Between everything shown here, and an entire turkey dinner to cook Christmas day, it just ended up being too much.

Since we were celebrating my niece’s birthday I still wanted some type of cake, which luckily cake in the form of the Rudolph themed cupcake decorating kit I had tucked away after getting it on clearance after last Christmas.

My punch ended up a lot less white/clear then I was hoping, but it still worked as Sam the Snowman. My original plan was to use a plain round glass vase, but I found this great glass cookie jar that couldn’t have been more perfect to add the mustached face to – the lid even works as his hat!

I also was happy with the way my tissue paper wrapped glass vase turned out looking like a Santa sack to hold Yukon Cornelius’ silver and gold wrapped chocolates.

And, if all this wasn’t enough of my favorite red-nosed Reindeer for one day, I also had the joy of unwrapping a Build-A-Bear Rudolph from my son and a stuffed Clarice from my daughter on Christmas morning. My son was so excited to give the gift to me and I love that my husband took the effort to go to the mall with the kids and have them each build a reindeer for me. |He let them pick out the clothing and I think they really show each of the kids personalities. I look forward to having these guys out on all our Christmases to come.

I hoped you have enjoyed looking! This food table was a lot of fun to plan and hopefully I have given you some easy ideas for your party planning next holiday season.

And, to host your own Rudolph the Red Nosed themed Christmas or Holiday party, I have made things easy by providing all the free printables. Just click on the link below to take you to the goodies!

Gift Ideas

A Basket of Christmas Cheer

December 27, 2014December 27, 2014 chantelledoll

I know it is past Christmas at this point, but I still wanted to share the cute Christmas themed gift baskets I came up with as gifts for my sister and her husband and for my husband’s brother and his wife. They are always wonderful about getting birthday and Christmas gifts for our children, so I wanted to make sure we had a little something for them to enjoy at Christmas.

My idea originated with these cute Christmas themed lidded mason jar drinking mugs I found at Dollarama. I decided to add on the round shaped bottles of Coca-Cola you can find around Christmas time and then selected a couple small bottles of their favorite alcohol to enjoy with it – whiskey for the men and Bailey’s Irish cream for the ladies!

From there, I decided to add a few treats and snacks to enjoy with their holiday drinks. I looked up popular Christmas song lyrics that made mention of food and used these to select and label my basket contents. Inside I included “Some Corn for Popping”, gingerbread flavored Marchmallow Peeps labelled “It’s A Marshmallow World in the Winter” and a few adorable Kinder Happy Hippo’s that read “I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas”.

I was also excited to find cans of nuts and snacks I found at our grocery store with fun Christmas themed labels such as the chocolate macaroon “Reindeer Droppings” show in the basket below.

The labels looked great printed and attached to the different items in the basket. I just wish I would have made an additional one that read “Making SPIRITS Bright” for the bottles of alcohol.

To finish the baskets off, I arranged everything neatly in plastic Dollar Store baskets, wrapped them up in cellophane and added my large “A Basket of Christmas Cheer” label.

Do you like this idea? It is never too early to start planning for next Christmas! This would be a great contribution to a gift exchange or for the hard to buy for.

Gift Ideas

Infinity Scarf Teacher’s Gift

December 18, 2014 chantelledoll

My little guy is in preschool this year so we have entered the world of teacher gifts.

It seems like gift giving has become a lot more complicated nowadays. People seem to have a lot more dietary restrictions and allergies which makes it hard to give food gifts. Mugs and ornaments make for a nice teacher gift, but you know they already have an overabundance of those items and I hate to add clutter to their lives just for the sake of giving a gift. Pinterest has some great ideas, but it can get confusing with all the lists of what and what NOT to gift. It is hard not to second guess your purchases on the quest for the perfect gift or to just give up by this stage in the Christmas shopping game and resort to boxed chocolates.

Either way, I did want to give Camden’s teachers a small Christmas gift and I didn’t want it to be boxed chocolates. I know his main teacher does not drink tea or coffee of any sort so the standard coffee shop gift card was out and I really didn’t want to give a food item of any sort. So, I came across these soft infinity scarves and decided to go with a neutral color for each of the teachers.

Wrapped up with a cute personalized tag that reads “I’m so lucky to get to HANG AROUND with you!”, I hope they will like them. I have been wearing a lot of scarves lately and really love the ease of the infinity scarf. The teachers spend time out in the cold with the kids so hopefully they can use them then.

And, after reading one of those dreaded lists that suggested teachers like receiving books as a gift, I also decided to add on a storybook version of The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck. I know each teacher has their own children so hopefully the book can be enjoyed at home or in the classroom. It is a great Christmas story with a sweet message and lucky for me I was able to grab them for just $3 each at the Dollar Store!

I packaged my items up in a cute Santa box for the main teacher and an Elf themed box for the assistant teacher. I am hoping the gifts are well received and I haven’t broken any of the rules of what not to gift to teachers.

Celebrations, Everyday Life, Two Legged Fun

12 Kids Holiday Book Favorites

December 6, 2014December 8, 2014 chantelledoll

We have begun our 2nd annual Christmas Book Countdown to Christmas and I wanted to share some of my favourites for those looking to build your own Christmas book collection.

When I decided to do the book countdown last year I had very few Christmas books. I bought a handful at Costco, picked a few special ones at the bookstore and then rounded things out with Christmas books I picked up at the Dollar Store. I will keep adding a couple each year as the kids outgrow the baby board books and I come across new books I know they might enjoy.

For our countdown, my children will open one new book a night and then we will usually pick from the other previously unwrapped Christmas books as their second bedtime story. Most of those on my list got re-read several times last Holiday season and I look forward to reading them all again over the next few weeks.

1. ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore and Illustrated by Jon Goodell

This is such a holiday classic that I think it should be a staple in any Christmas book collection. I absolutely love this version because it has fun holographic images throughout the book for the kids. It is beautifully illustrated and Clement Moore’s classic rhymes flow easily off the tongue.

2. How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Suess

Another holiday classic, Dr. Suess’ Grinch has been delighting children for decades. We have both the animated and live action movie versions, but there is something to be said for cuddling up and reading the book together.

3. Santa is Coming to Edmonton written by Steve Smallman & illustrated by Robert Dunn and Juan Calle

I wrote a post specifically about how much I liked this book when I purchased it last year. I love that they have several different city specific versions with illustrations of recognizable landmarks in each city so the kids can relate to it.

4. Dear Santa Claus written by Alan Durant & illustrated by Vanessa Cabban

I lucked out when I found this neat little book at the Dollar Store. It shows the correspondence between a young girl and Santa through envelopes filled with little letters on each page. I love that this book is so interactive and kids love discovering what is in the envelopes on each page.

5. Llama Llama Holiday Drama by Anna Dewdney

We have just recently discovered the Llama Llama series and it is easy to see why it is so popular with kids. In this holiday version, poor Llama Llama is overwhelmed with the holiday season and the anticipation of waiting for Christmas to finally arrive. It is a cute story and a good reminder to us parents to slow down and try to actually enjoy things with our kids amongst all the shopping, baking, wrapping and activities.

6. Berenstain Bears Trim the Tree by Jan & Mike Berenstain

I grew up with Berenstein Bears so I was happy to add this to our collection. There are a few different Christmas themed Berenstein Bear tales available, but I liked this one for its interactivity. My littlest still loves lift the flap books but she is starting to outgrow some of her baby board books. This book allows her to still lift flaps, but has a story that is geared towards an older audience and will allow us to enjoy the book for many Christmases to come.

7. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

For those who know me, it should come as no surprise that this made my list. The movie is my favorite at this time of year and the book about the recognizable misfits is equally charming.

8. Pete the Cat Saves Christmas by James Dean & Eric Litwin

Another fun series for kids, Pete the Cat is sure to delight in this cute holiday tale. Learn how Pete the Cat helps Santa save Christmas and sing along to the free downloadable song version of the book.

9. How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas? by Jane Yolen & Mark Teague

This fun little tale is new to our collection this year and I chose it specifically for my 4 year old son. It is a fun read and the illustrations are quite comical. It is a good reminder of proper behaviour at this time of year without the kids even knowing what they are learning about.

10. If You Take A Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff & illustrated by Felicia Bond

The “If You Give A…” book series is another popular bedtime read in our house. This book begins with Mouse wanting to string up his movie popcorn for the Christmas tree and takes him through various Christmas activities before winding him full circle back at the movies.

11. Merry Christmas Little Critter! By Mercer Mayer

I loved Little Critter when I was younger and I love them even more as a mom because they are short and easy to read when dealing with requests of “Just one more book, please?”. I introduced my son to Critter this past year so I know he’ll be happy to unwrap one of his favorites character for our nightly Christmas story. Like Berenstain Bears, there are several Christmas themed Critter books available and any one of them would be a good addition to your Christmas book collection. In this one we get to see how the Critter family prepares for and spends Christmas day.

12. Finding Christmas written by Robert Munsch & illustrated by Michael Martchenko

I don’t think you can ever go wrong with Robert Munsch. His quirky humour and the accompanying illustrations captivate the kids in this fun little tale about a girl trying to find where her parents have hidden her Christmas presents.

BONUS HOLIDAY READING

This book is not wrapped up as part of our countdown, but over the past month we have really enjoyed making our way through all the stories in the Disney Christmas Storybook Collection. We got our copy at Costco, but I have seen it in Chapters, Walmart and even our local grocery store. My Frozen obsessed little one was excited it had Anna and Elsa in it, and I love that it helped introduce my kids to many different Disney and Pixar characters in preparation for our Disneyland trip in February. Each story is also quite touching with a special message about being with your loved ones and the true meaning of the holiday season.

With 18 different stories in this one book it easily covers the majority of bedtimes in December!

I hope you have enjoyed seeing what is in our book collection. I am always looking to add new books, so please comment if you have a good suggestion!