Welcome to December! It’s time once again to share a Lego Advent Calendar with you! 🙂 I hope you’ll join me each day as we open a door and find a surprise inside. There are a few different kinds of Lego Advent calendars…we’ll be doing the Friends version. Let’s get started! Here’s what the front of the box looks like…
And the back of the box…
There is an extra flap on the box which you can open and it makes the box into a cute background for all the treasures you will find inside the box.
Ok, so we open one door each day from December 1st through December 24th. Today is the first so we start with the door that has a number 1 on it.
Opening the door…
Pull out the plastic bag and open it. Let’s take a second here and make a note that if the pieces in the plastic bag don’t match up with the picture on the door, you probably need to take the inner box out and turn it around and put it back into the outer box. This happened to me last year and it took me a while to figure out what was wrong. Haha! Hopefully your advent calendar was put together correctly and the picture you see on the door will help you put the little set together each day.
Here is today’s set! The figure can wear her hair or the blue helmet for when she’s playing in the snow! (And yes, she is missing one hand, but that’s how she’s made.)
So this is the first set to start off the advent calendar! 🙂
Greetings once again! I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving weekend! 🙂
Do you find it hard to make edible gingerbread houses, but you think gingerbread houses are just so cute? (Am I the only one?! I can’t tell you how many gingerbread houses have ended in failure at our house!) How would you like to make a simple gingerbread house out of foam pieces that’s easy enough for the kids to make mostly on their own? While it’s not edible, it’s very cute and totally mess free! 😉 I found this adorable kit at our Target store for $3.00.
The foam sheets are already cut and some designs have been printed on the foam shapes.
The pre-printed shapes punch out very easily.
There are some instructions provided in the box, but our 10 year-old granddaughter didn’t even look at them. 😉 It goes together quite nicely. First she did the house part…
…and then added the roof pieces.
The Disney characters have stands so they will stay upright on their own. Stickers are included and you can decorate your gingerbread house as much or as little as you like.
Do you enjoy baking Christmas Cookies at your house? Do you have a special time that you bake them or a special kind you make? This year we’ve made 4 kinds of cookies…so far! (There might be more in the works!) Here’s a peek into our Christmas cookies escapades…
We started out making butter cookies, which were always one of my favorites as a kid. These are a cutout type of cookie.
Everything was going along just fine. The trays were filling up with cookies ready to be decorated before baking.
I started to roll out some more dough when…crack! Oh nooo!
My rolling pin was pretty old. I believe it belonged to my grandmother, so it’s rather sad that it broke. I think I will save it and turn it into the craft of some sort, but now how to roll out the rest of the cookie dough?? This calls for a trip to the store! There were only two rolling pins left in the store, but one was all I needed! And its a big one!
So we were back in business! Once the rest of the cookies were cutout and sprinkles were added, then on to the baking! Mmmm! It smelled so good in here!
Don’t they look delicious? 🙂 Don’t look too closely…some of them might be a little too brown.
I mixed up a second batch of cookie dough and put it in the fridge to chill. Then made the 3rd batch…ohhh…hmmm…I think I forgot the vanilla in the 2nd batch…oops! Back to the “drawing board”! Next I made some Molasses Crinkles cookies. (You can’t tell from this picture but some of them got too brown too. My oven and I are at war with each other!)
Next came the Russian Teacakes. Oh, man, do we love these! I turned my oven down, put the cookies on a higher rack and left them in for less time. Smart, right? Some still got too brown. But rolled in lots of powdered sugar you really can’t tell and they still taste great. 😉
Then it was time to go back to the ones I had to make over because of the forgotten vanilla. This was a new way to do cookies for me, using terra cotta cookie stamps.
The recipe said to bake the cookies and then stamp them right away when you take them out of the oven. I wanted to add some colored sugar on the cookies and wondered if I should add the sugar before or after baking and stamping? So I tried one tray with the sprinkled on sugar before baking and one tray without. I found out that it doesn’t work to have sugar on the cookies before stamping. So forget that idea. The right way is to bake, stamp and then sprinkle. 😉 So here are the Snowflake Cookies.
That’s all the cookies I’ve made so far. I’m thinking about some peanut butter ones…or maybe Peanut Butter and Jam bars. The moral of the story is that if your cookie baking doesn’t go perfectly, don’t sweat it! I had things go wrong and we have some cookies that only my husband and I will be eating, but mostly the cookies turned out tasty! 😉 I’d love to hear about your cookie baking traditions at your house and what kinds you like to make. Happy Eating! 🙂
We have reached the final day of our Lego Friends advent calendar! The time sure seemed to go by so quickly!
Let’s look behind the last door!
Here are the pieces. I bet you can figure this one out by yourself!
It’s an adorable snowman! I think I would like to keep him out where I can see him all winter!
For now I’ll put him in our Christmas scene. 🙂
Well, that wraps up our Lego Friends advent calendar! There are quite a few extras pieces included with this set. Now to see what else we can use them for, right? 😉
Thanks for following along with me! I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have! 🙂 And now it’s Christmas Eve! 🙂
Sorry to be slow posting this today! It’s been a very crazy weather day for us. Winter storm Elliot has not been too friendly. Hope you are all doing ok and staying warm! But let’s move on with day #23 of our Lego Friends advent calendar.
Inside the door is…
This set is easy to figure out by just looking at the pieces. 🙂
Yep, it’s a girl! Sorry, I don’t know her name. Can anyone help me out with that?
She’s ready to help Santa prepare his sleigh for tomorrow night!
We have 1 more day left in our Lego Friends advent calendar. Be sure to stop by tomorrow and see what we find! 🙂
So now that we’ve solved the mystery of why the pictures inside the doors don’t match the Lego sets for each day, (see my previous post) we shall look at what is hiding behind door #21!
Are you ready?
Today’s set doesn’t need to be put together, but oh, it’s a cute one!
Yep, it’s a reindeer! 🙂 (Did you say “Awww!” You can bet I did!) And look, he can be hooked up to Santa’s sleigh! That’s so fun!
Be sure to check back tomorrow! Only 3 more days for our Lego Friends advent calendar!
Hello and welcome to Day #20 of our Lego Friends Advent Calendar!
What do you spy with your little eye behind today’s door?
Let’s take a closer look at those pieces.
If you look back at the inside of door #4, you can see how to make this set.
I put this set together, but I don’t know what it is. Can anyone help me out with that? I’m wondering if it is a game where you spin the wheel? The round part at the top does spin around.
I’ve put it in the Christmas scene by the other game.
Thanks for checking in today! See you tomorrow! 🙂
The Kids Niche 