Fancy Restaurant - Christmas Edition

(SO FANCY!)

Sometimes we do babysitting swaps with some family in town, and one night a couple of years ago I found myself preparing to be in charge of 5 kids under the age of 6 and realized my husband wasn’t going to be home until late. So, I came up with the “Bylund Fancy Restaurant” to help us pass the time. My kids made signs to hang up on our front door and hallway, decorated the table, dressed up, and when their cousins arrived, we seated them at our fancy restaurant table and handed out menus and a family tradition was born. Now the kids love to play fancy restaurant on nights when Daddy’s not going to be home or we just have a lot of leftovers to get rid of.

Last year, I invented the Fancy Restaurant - christmas edition on a night when the parents were going out christmas shopping. We did one again last night with just our family, and thought I’d share in case you wanted to do one too.

Fancy Restaurant works best when you have leftovers or things in the freezer that can be warmed quickly. I just tried to make up names for things I had on hand. Here is the menu I used this year, with the translation in parentheses.

Appetizer:
cold toes (dried blueberries)
dried reindeer noses (craisins)

Drinks
reindeer Jet Juice (anything bubbly. We had ginger ale. I told the kids this is what makes the reindeer fly, but flying is not allowed in the restaurant.)
melted snow

Sides (choose 2)
Snowman noses (carrots)
Christmas lights (corn)
Holly and Ivy (salad)
bouncy balls (mandarin oranges)

Main Dish
Santa’s Whiskers (spaghetti, with “snow” or “dandruff” parmesan cheese)
toy dinosaurs (dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets)
Frisbees (eggo waffles)
drumsticks (corn dogs)

desert
toy drums (little containers of pudding)
snowballs (marshmallows)
ornaments (m&ms or jelly beans or skittles or whatever)
Santa’s belly (red jello)

On the menu last year I had reindeer noses (grape tomatoes) as a menu option but I didn’t have any this year. Another option is to only offer the one main dish and just let the children pick the other things.

I tried to not tell my children what everything was and have them order based on name alone, but they just wouldn’t do it. Maybe your kids are more adventurous.

One of the most important parts of the fancy restaurant (according to my children) is the fancy restaurant waiter voice. My accent for fancy restaurant is an odd mix of italian, german, swedish, and spanish, with some nonsense thrown in. It makes the kids laugh hysterically, but will probably never be heard by anyone else.

After I seated the children at the table, passed out menus, and took orders, they colored some christmas sheets I had printed out from the crayola website. I think last year I had them watch a christmas movie with their cousins while I got their plates ready. Then they ate, and if they ate well they could order desert.

Another thing you could do to make it more like a restaurant is add prices and hand out money for them to pay their bill, but I was lazy and didn’t feel like it. Maybe next time.

I would love to hear your ideas for food names if you have any that I could use next year.

Clown School Birthday Party

My son just turned 6 and he asked for a clown party.  He is a rather silly boy so I guess it fits.

As the guests arrived, they colored in clown pictures I printed off the internet.  Then when we all had gathered, I welcomed them to clown school and they chose their clown names.  I put a bunch of silly names in a jar and let them each choose out 3.  They could choose 1 of the three to be their clown name or they could combine 2 if they liked.

What does that say?  Razzle Giggles?

Once we had our clown names, it was time to learn how to put on our clown faces.  To do this we played "put the red nose on the clown"; not real exciting, but good for this age group.  Then we had to learn how to walk in our big clown shoes.  We got a couple of pair of my husbands shoes and put the kids in two groups.  I had them also balance a bean bag on their heads to slow them down so there wouldn't be any running and tripping.  As they raced, the other kids would cheer on their team, using clown names of course.  (note to self: next time hand out name tags with new clown names to help avoid confusion)

Next came the "how to make people laugh" part of clown school.  For this we practiced slipping on a banana peel.  I taped some yellow streamers together at the tip to make our banana peel and put it on the floor.  Each child took a couple of turns walking up to it, pretending not to see it, and slipping hilariously on it.  Some of the kids really got into this; others not so much, but everyone laughed a lot.  We videotaped them all, thinking that we could watch them at the end of the party if we needed to fill up time, because what child doesn't love to watch himself on tv?  We didn't end up having time, but I made a video of some of them.



We then ate cake and ice cream.  I used a round pan and half a wilton ball pan to make the clown head.  To make the face decorations I used airheads.  I love using airheads to decorate cakes.  The colors are really bright and they're easy to shape.  You just pop them in the microwave for 5 or 6 seconds and then put them in between wax paper to roll them out flat with a rolling pin, and cut as desired.  Plus I didn't have to mix lots of different color frostings or use decorating bags.  The red nose is a warmed airhead rolled into a ball.  To make the hat, I cut a cake donut in half, secured it on the head with straws and wrapped airheads over it (mmmmm. . . . gross).  For hair, I used gummy worms secured with half a toothpick.  I thought it would be fun to use cotton candy for hair, but I couldn't find any.  I used melted chocolate chips to draw on the eyes and smile.  I had twisted 2 colorful twizzlers together and secured them to the head with toothpicks to make the ruffle at the bottom.

After cake and presents, I had the kids sit and watch the "Best clown in town" Backyardigans show (I love the backyardigans)  while I made clown balloon hats for them.  I bought a Klutz balloon twisting book on amazon.  The kids loved them.  This lasted until the parents came to pick up children.

My son handed out the party bags, which contained a variety of things essential for every clown and purchased from oriental trading company, mostly.  The party bags consisted of a red clown nose (of course), kazoos, laffy taffy, graduation pen, graduation bracelet, bubbles, silly face, and smiley stamps.

All in all, I think everyone had fun, especially my birthday boy.

Service Christmas Tree Windows

One Sunday my husband was talking to the kids about service.  I was in the other room trying to calm down our three year old who was throwing a major tantrum.   When I reentered the family room, I overheard my husband telling the kids that mommy could make a christmas tree and put it on the wall and cut out circles for ornaments and when they did service for someone they could write what they did on the ornament and put it on the tree and wouldn't that be great.  And I thought "oh really?"  I thought it was a good idea, but knew I wouldn't get around to cutting out lots of things, so instead we simplified, and now we have a beautiful service christmas tree window.  Again I used the crayola window crayons that I love so much, just like when we did our thanksgiving windows.  I drew the outline of the tree, and whenever one of our children does a service for someone they get to draw on an ornament or present or candy cane or whatever, just as long as they don't scribble or take up the whole tree.  On another window we write down what they did to serve, such as helping a sibling, cleaning the church, writing someone a nice letter to cheer them up, etc . . .   So far, the kids have loved it, and have drawn some fun ornaments.

the banana ornament is my favorite

Reindeer Spies

Several years back, before I had ever even heard of the "elf on a shelf" book, my sister told me about a tradition she did with her kids with a stuffed elf toy she hid around the house each day before christmas.  I thought it was a great idea, but I didn't have an elf nor could I find one cheap enough that I liked (don't you think the elf from the book is a bit creepy?).  I happened to already have two bendable reindeer that had been given to us as a gift though, and I thought they would make great reindeer spies.

I told the kids that these were special reindeer who were assigned to watch them and report back to Santa on their behavior.  In the beginning we gave them names, but we forgot them year to year, so now we just call them "the reindeer spies".  Each day I put them in a different place and each day the kids are excited to try and find them.  Since they are pretty light weight and have wire in their arms and legs, they are easy to hang and put in interesting places.

Our reindeer don't do anything sneaky, they just appear in different places. Actually, sometimes they just stay in the same place because I forget, but the kids don't seem to mind too much. I guess they assume they've been so good that the reindeer don't have anything to go back and report to Santa. 

Occasionally I will have the reindeer spies leave a note for the kids pointing out good behavior they've seen. The kids respond really well to positive reinforcement, so if I point out (I mean, the reindeer point out) that Maren did a great job helping her brother get breakfast one day, all the kids will be more attentive to helping out their siblings at breakfast. It's a tradition we've had a lot of fun with. 

The Santa Thing

I LOVE the Christmas season.  It is my favorite time of year.  I'm one of those people who starts buying presents in September and listens to music in October.  I usually have my decorations up before thanksgiving and our list of activities planned ahead.  I was thinking of what activities I was going to post on the blog and thought I should first take a moment to explain something.  In our family, we don't do Santa.

Well, maybe that's not completely accurate.  We PRETEND Santa, but I have never done anything to try and convince my children that Santa is real.  I tell them "Santa is something fun we pretend at Christmas time."  We still write letters to Santa, sit on santa's lap and tell him what we want for christmas, leave cookies out for him christmas eve, read books about santa, and tell the kids that they better behave because Santa's watching them, but they know it's all pretend.  Kids have fun pretending.

Why do I do this?  I just want my kids to know that Jesus is real and Santa isn't, that Christmas is more about Jesus than Santa, and to know that I won't lie to them.  I know that I'm in the minority among my friends and family in this decision and some accuse me of taking the magic out of Christmas, but to me the magic of Christmas is not about Santa coming down the chimney and filling our stockings, but about the Son of God coming to earth to be our Savior.  And I'm pretty sure that Christmas is still wonderful and fun for my children.

I do make sure my kids know not to tell other children that Santa is pretend, and so far we haven't had any problems.