Faves for the holidays

Hot Chocolate Maker (for the hot chocolate lovers)

hot chocolate maker

This hot chocolate maker is hands down one of our family’s favorite things during the holiday season. Our family LOVES hot chocolate so having a hot chocolate maker has been a favorite at this house, we naturally have 2 of these because remember there are 10 of us that live at this house so one just wouldn’t make the cut but for a smaller family you can get by with one just fine. It makes 4 cups of hot chocolate at a time and you can re-fill it and make more super easy. All you do is add water and hot chocolate mix (any brand or variety works great) and turn it on to heat froth, you’ll have yummy hot chocolate in a couple minutes. We love ours it’s such a fun thing to have around and it’s been a fun part of our holiday memories. I also love that there is no boiling water or warming in the microwave it makes making hot chocolate super easy. It’s perfect for those days when the kids are playing out in the snow, you know they are gonna all run in at the same time and say we want some hot chocolate, the hot chocolate can be made a head of time and just sit in the maker while it waits for the kids, just one more reason to love it. These babies aren’t easy to find so I was so happy when I was able to find the exact ones we have on Amazon, for a good price, when you click on the link it says available from these sellers and if you click on “these sellers” it gives you a prime option of $37.38 or you can pick a different seller option. If your lucky you can find them at Shopko (which is a place I rarely shop but for some reason around the holiday season they will sometimes carry a hot chocolate maker) so you can look there too. Drink some for me, will ya?

Holiday Banner (festive easy way to decorate)

SONY DSC

I love holiday banners, they are such a fun, easy, inexpensive way to decorate, I found this banner last year at Target and I love it, even if it was the only thing we put up in our house it would feel festive so I thought I’d share an easy way to be festive without taking a lot of time putting up decorations or spending a lot of money. A banner can go anywhere, on a wall. over a fire place, hanging from a Bannister, etc. so here’s a way to add a little Halloween or fall cheer simply, and if your kids are like mine they love to be festive so you’ll be the coolest mom when pull out one of these cute festive banners. Check Target they always have cute stuff like this, I haven’t looked this year but they may have something like the one you see here. I also looked on Amazon and found a bunch of inexpensive cute ones that got good reviews, here, here, here, herehere, here, and, here. Not all of these say Happy Halloween, some of them are just fall colors or have a fall theme so you could keep them up through Thanksgiving.

Miss Fiona’s Stupendous Pumpkin Pies (Our favorite Halloween book and tradition)

SONY DSC

This is one of our FAVORITE books and it is a part of a very fun Halloween tradition. My sister in law Jenny told us about this book years ago and we bought it and have loved it ever since (Thank you Jen!). Every year when we get out our Halloween decorations this is one of the first things my kids look for when digging through the decoration boxes, they love it. The story is as you can guess about a Witch named Miss Fiona, she is quite the lady and it is a sweet story with a cute moral that looks are not always a good judge of character. I don’t want to give away all the fun to the story so I’ll stop there, but you’ll love it. Each October we like to get this book out, read it and and make Pie, not all my kids are a fan of straight pumpkin pie so sometimes we do 1 pumpkin and then another flavor. This year we made a pumpkin cheesecake (which everyone loved) and a Huckleberry cheesecake, if you aren’t into making pies you can just buy one (we’ve done that too:). I love fun traditions that my kids look forward too and that bring us closer together as a family. Here’s a link to where you can get the book and I am sure they sell it at book stores as well. This link is for the soft cover, the hard cover on amazon was expensive but the soft cover was a great deal. It’s been quite a few years since we bought it, if you want the hard cover you can check bookstores around you or maybe buy it used on amazon.

*This is a great Family Home Evening activity for the month of October if you do Family Home Evening at your house.

SONY DSC