Beautiful Paper Snowflakes Tutorial

Last night I made these fancy snowflakes with my cute young women at our church youth group night.  We had so much fun singing along to Mariah Carey's "All I Want For Christmas" and crafting away.  I sure love these girls!

 

I put this picture on Instagram and had some requests to show how we did it.

They are SUPER easy--and fun to make and I think you all should know how to do it SO I had my boys help me take some pictures last night for a little tutorial:)  I hope this makes sense!

 

First you need 6 pieces of square paper, scissors, gluestick and a ruler (or anything with a straight edge really).  Fold each one separately corner to corner and then again to look like this:

 

Next draw lines starting on the open side, not the folded side.  They are about 3/4 inches wide and don't draw all the way to the end (stop about 3/4 inch to the end)  Like this:

obviously you won't want writing on your pretty snowflake--I was just doing that to show you:)

Next cut along your lines:

 

When you unfold the paper it will look like this:

 

Now take the two smallest triangles in the center and glue their tips together like this:

 

You may have to hold it for 30 seconds or so but then FLIP it over.  So you are working on the backside now.  Take the tips of the next triangle and glue those together like this:

 

Now continue flipping over and connecting tips, alternating front and back until all the triangles are glued:

 

 Until it looks like this:

 

Now repeat that process for the other 5.  Then glue them all together by one end like this:

 

 

This was so fun to do and they look so cool!

It may be just a little too big for the Christmas tree--but I bet smaller ones would look awesome!

Maybe with read paper or cardstock?  glitter?  The possibilities are endless.

I don't have girls, but I am thinking this would be pretty fun for a Frozen party as a craft or just to decorate!

 

My boys and I have plans to make more!  We have no snow here so we are going to make our own!

I will tell you that plain paper is a little floppy--which is fine if you are taping it to a window

I think we will make some our of cardstock to hang! 

Let it Snow!!

 

 

 

Christmas Highlights

I did such a bad job posting in December that I am going to do a HUGE post now of some of my favorite little moments and highlights...

 

Our Elf Skittles came back much to the boys delight!

He did lots of funny stuff including putting mustaches on all the boys!

Each of my boys picked there favorite Christmas treat and we made it together.  First up caramels with Connor!

This is a very hit or miss recipe for me, but this year they turned out perfectly!  I think I will make more for Valentine gifts.  YUM!  I used this recipe found here.

Next up was pretzel melts with Rolos, Hugs and M&Ms with my 3 little boys.  We even made a gluten free variety with some homemade caramel.

TJ  is the king of white chocolate pretzels and does them every year.  They are the best!

 

One afternoon while I made dinner the boys played Monopoly.  Such a happy sight for me!

 

This was such a fun night---We were having a very special guest coming but the boys had no idea--Cannon was reading and I could hardly contain my excitement:) 

Santa and his Elf came!  They were so cute!  This is the second year they have found our house.  They even know our elf on the shelf's name.  The little boys loved it!

One of our favorite traditions since we moved here to Tennessee where we have no family, is to invite the missionaries assigned to our ward to enjoy Christmas Eve with us. 

They bring such a special spirit into our home. This year we were blessed to have Sisters and Elders!

We had our traditional Chicken ala King dinner, sang carols together, listened to the accounts in the scriptures of Christ's birth and were privileged to hear these four bear testimony of the Savior.

It was a very special night!

Lots of treats were shared too, of course!

It was a very special night for sure!

 

This is the only night of the whole year that my boys can't wait to get to bed!

As sson as the missionaries left we let the boys unwrap their new Christmas PJ pants and they were off to dream of sugar plums:)  All sleeping together in Connor's room!

 

And pretty soon it was evident that Santa had made his stop at our house:)

 

 

 Christmas breakfast!

 

After all the gifts were unwrapped we all relaxed....one of my favorite moments was reading new books together with Cannon!

 

The 4 oldest boys got tickets to the Music City Bowl Game in Nashville in their Christmas stockings--they were so excited!

It was in the Titans stadium (outdoors) and it was frigid!!

 

 Cannon and I were VERY happy to stay home.  We went out to dinner at Panda Express and watched  Miracle on 34th Street (the movie he gave me for Christmas...love it!)

Brrr...

 New Years Eve!  These boys of mine didn't want to miss any of the big games, so they hauled our kitchen table into the family room, right in front of the TV for game playing!

 

 

Only 4 of us made it until midnight for the toast...

Cheers! 

 Here is to a great New Year!! Happy 2014!! 

  One last mug of cocoa in the glow of the tree before we took it down until next year!

It was a great month and I hated to see it end!

xoxoxo

Grandma is in the House

**Just catching up before I start 2013:)

I got a couple of early Christmas gifts this year....my silly "baby boy" and my Mother in law is here.  I am very lucky to have the best Mother in law ever, seriously:) I am so happy she came for Christmas.

She likes to check the boys height against her and compare it to the pictures from last time (she keeps pictures on her phone for years:)    

 I still can't believe my big tall husband has such a cute tiny Momma.

Next time I will have those two stand back to back--what a difference that would be!

TJ is finally taller than Grandma!

Coleman is working on it:)

 It was so fun to have these two here for Christmas!!  

We love you Grandma and Deloy--thanks for coming to see us!

On of my favorite parts of her visit...while the boys watched football on Christmas afternoon , we snuck out for a little girl time, just the two of us.  We went to see Les Miserables.  It was so fun!

Have you seen it?  What did you think?

We both agreed that the music and acting was FANTASTIC--beautiful, emotional --simply amazing!

BUT we thought that they could have left some of the raunchy stuff out.  I know that is part of the story and the reality of the misery of that time, but they just took it too far in my opinion.

Sad, but true:(

I really don't think my boys would like the musical too much, but I did order this movie (which I love--and is super cheap here)

 Now I am trying to decide which soundtrack I should get--I have been humming the songs ever since:)

What Les Miserables soundtrack is your favorite??

Special family Home Evening Guest

 The week before Christmas we were having our usual 'Family Home Evening' like we do every Monday night.  This time TJ was in charge...he was teaching us about Shepherds and serving others.

 Everyone was listening ...well most of the time!

 Sometimes it is a bit of a challenge to have a serious conversation with these guys, but we try!

We were just finishing up when we heard a knock at the door.  The boys all jumped up to see who it was and to everyone's shock and amazement it was...

 Mr and Mrs Claus!

 He just happened to be in the neighborhood and our trusty Elf on the Shelf, Skittles told him that the boys were being extra good so he decided to stop by for a little visit.

 What a sweet treat!  We felt very lucky!

 Coleman took this opportunity to let Santa know that his beloved Ipod touch was no longer working.  He wanted to let Santa take it with him and maybe have the elves fix for him.  This boy is very precocious, I tell you!

These guys were happy!

Thank you so much Mr and Mrs Claus--we sure do love you around here!