The Glories of Grandchildren

What a fun weekend we've had!  The excitement began on Friday, when our sweet daughter-in-law gave birth to a little girl -- our newest grandchild!  Emily Madden (both family names) arrived a couple of weeks early, but she was a lovely surprise!  Mother and baby are doing well, and they all went home this morning.  So far, we've only seen photos, but my husband and I are going to see Emily (and her parents) in a few days.  Here's Emily with her dad -- our son.  She's a tiny one -- 5 lbs. 12 oz.

 Also on Friday, our daughter and her family arrived for the weekend.  My nine year old granddaughter had e-mailed me a cute idea for cookies that she'd found on the internet, so we put that activity on our list.  We also like to make crafts, so I was prepared to make some ornaments.  In addition, I'd seen a cute snack mix that looked like fun on Pinterest.  (Where did we get ideas before the internet??)

We started on the ornaments bright and early Saturday morning, as they required multiple steps involving painting and Mod Podging.  We finished them up Sunday morning, and I think they turned out pretty cute.  The initials are for my grandchildren, their friends, and teachers.

In between stints working on the ornaments, we mixed up some cookie dough and made melting snowmen cookies with some of it and Christmas cut-out cookies with the rest.  I failed to get a photo of the melting snowmen, but you can see a cute version here.  We simplified them a bit, using food-safe markers to add details to the snowmen's faces.

Early Sunday morning, we started working on the Santa hat snack mix.  I found the idea here and pinned it right after Christmas last year.   

After dipping the Bugle chips in red candy melts, they dipped the base end in sprinkles. . .

then added mini marshmallows to the tip of the hat.

The finished hats were added to a mix of mini pretzels, peanuts, and Rice Chex drizzled with white chocolate. 

Last but not least, we frosted the cookies we'd baked the day before.

My kitchen is wall-to-wall sticky, from the icing and the Mod Podge, but my heart is full!  We won't see these grandchildren again until Christmas Eve, so we had to pack a lot into a weekend.