EtsyKids: Santa's Sleigh Ride Team Holiday Sale

Graphic by Twinkle Star Art

This holiday season, join the EtsyKids Team for a ride in Santa's Sleigh! Starting November 1st through Christmas Eve, participating shops will be sharing the holiday cheer with a shop sale of their choice. Santa will be traveling to each shop to take advantage of these great savings and you can come along and perhaps snag a deal of your own! To help Santa, and so he doesn't get lost, we'll be tracking his journey with a new blog post at each regional stop and highlighting the stores he's visiting.

This week, he's starting his journey in Canada. And those Canucks know how to craft. See for yourself...

Each of my one-of-a-kind hair accessories and finger puppets is 100% handmade. That means hand-cut (no craft punches or die cutters), hand-stitched (no glue), and designed by me.

I'm offering 1 free hair clip (5.00 value) with the purchase of any three clips Let's Shop!



Simple and stylish designs for everyday living.

I'm offering Buy 1 item take 10% off your order, buy 2 items take 15%, buy 3 or more and take 20% off your order (prior to shipping) Let's Shop!



Here you will find quilts, crayon bags, crayon rolls, tea wallets, coasters and eco friendly cloth napkins. Let me help you find the perfect gift!

I'm offering 10% off your total order (prior to shipping) Let's Shop!


Stay tuned, Santa will be visiting a new region on Thursday!

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reposted from: EtsyKids: Santa's Sleigh Ride Team Holiday Sale

Phew!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks around here! Working at a florist is always hectic around the holidays, with all of the holiday centerpieces, party arrangements, poinsettias, wreaths, and other floral gifts. So the couple of days before Christmas were busy, busy, busy! Then we traveled to visit my husband's family for Christmas, which was super fun! I have the most adorable nephew who is exactly 2 months younger than little g (who will be 18 months in a couple weeks!). The two of them were so funny together. Last time they were together, he was a crawler and she was just starting to walk. This time they were both running all over the place! It was great to see them start to interact with each other a little. We even got to play in the snow!


The one downfall of the trip was that we were all sick! Poor little g got ear infections, and my husband and I both got a virus that I still can't seem to shake. I really hope it goes away soon. Since we were all feeling a bit under the weather, we decided to take it easy for New Year's, and just use the precious day off to rest. Plus I knew that I had a busy weekend coming up again - there's a big bridal show here the first weekend in January every year, and the florist shop I work for always has a booth there. Friday we were busily preparing bouquets and arrangements for the show, which was Saturday & Sunday. And now we will be traveling again this week! I'm looking forward to seeing my family, but I will be glad to be back home with nowhere to go for awhile. Then we can all just kick back and relax a little! Yay!

Baking Christmas Cookies with little g

Making Christmas cookies is so much more fun when you have a little helper. Little g and I made gingerbread and sugar cookies together this year. She helped spread the flour around on the table, cut out the cookies, and of course sample the finished product! It was fun to watch her try to use the cookie cutters. She definitely had the right idea, and ended up with some interesting shapes. So we have quite a few abstract cookies this year, and they're all delicious!

I adapted a sugar cookie recipe I had to be egg-free and dairy-free, since there are little ones with allergies in the family. I know it can be hard to find good egg-free dairy-free recipes, so I'll share mine:

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup coconut oil
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt. In large mixing bowl, beat coconut oil until soft. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add applesauce and vanilla; beat well. Add flour mixture and beat until well mixed. Cover and chill at least 2 hours.

2. Roll dough 1/8" thick on a lightly floured surface. Cut with cookie cutters and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes or until done. Cool on wire rack.

3. Decorate if desired, or eat them immediately! Yum!!


I found that the coconut oil worked pretty well, since it is solid when cool. You could probably also use shortening instead of the coconut oil, but we didn't have any on hand. Another tip: if you let the cookies sit on the cookie sheet for a minute or two after you take them out of the oven, they're much easier to take off.

I snagged a treasury! Hurrah!!

It's not often that I am able to snag a treasury. When I logged on to Etsy tonight, I popped into the treasury just for fun, and low and behold, there were treasuries set to expire in just a few minutes! What luck! Treasuries are loads of fun to make, but it's rare that I'm actually around when there's a slot open. They are coveted by many Etsy users, and get snatched up quickly! I didn't really have a plan for one, so I had to scramble to put one together. I decided to go with a Christmas theme...'tis the season, right? So I picked out some adorable Christmasy items for kids:

My Christmas Kids Treasury

Ho, ho, ho! :)

I've always loved Christmas time, and get into the holiday spirit on the early side. Those who know me well know that I excitedly get out all my Christmas music shortly after Thanksgiving, and start decorating and baking right away...I've been known to bake a large assortment of cookies to mail out to family and friends (I think the most I ever made was 17 different kinds of cookies!). But this year I'm finding that I'm just not in my usual holiday spirit. I can't believe Christmas is already next week...it seems like it really snuck up on me this year! I did manage to get a wreath decorated for our front door, and we finally got a tree up and decorated it last week. I'm hoping to at least get a little baking done before next week. Little G helped me mix up some gingerbread cookie dough this morning. She loved dumping the flour into the bowl! The dough is now chilling in the fridge, so when she gets up from her nap, we can try rolling it out & cutting out cookies together. Should be fun, and I hope it helps me get into more of my usual holiday spirit!

12 Days of Christmas with the EtsyKids Team!

I've always loved the 12 Days of Christmas...although, I've yet to figure out what I would do with all those animals! Fortunately celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas with the EtsyKids Team, you won't end up with a house full of clucking hens and honking geese, but you could end up with a fabulous prize! Here's the details (originally posted on the EtsyKids blog):


On the first day of Christmas, the ETSYKIDS team members gave to me….a Christmas event you really must see!

November 28th – December 10th, join EtsyKids for 12 days of fabulous, festive fun and dreamy holiday prizes.

Here’s how to play:

Each day the EtsyKids blog will contain a post showing an image that’s hidden in an item listing on a few different EtsyKids team members’ shops, along with a clue on how to find it. When a contestant finds just one of the hidden images, they send an Etsy conversation to the day’s entry collector with a link to the listing where they found it. Once their conversation is received, they’ll be entered into a drawing for an amazing EtsyKids prize. Those who find images for all 12 days are entered into the grand prize drawing!

Participants may use one of two methods to find the images:

1. Begin by looking at each of the 7,000+ EtsyKids listings, or

2. Decipher the clue to the keyword to narrow down the listings to under 100.

The clues are word association to the keyword. After you think you have the keyword, enter that word and "etsykids team" into Etsy's search, and start looking!

Example: Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus...........nativity

Thus, you would enter "nativity etsykids team" to narrow down the listings to hunt through. The clues start out easy, and they get harder!

Please do not post the answers anywhere - all answers will be revealed at the end of the game.

If you don't jump into the game until after it's started, no problem! You can still enter that day's drawing, as well as the remaining days, then go back and find the previous days to enter the grand prize drawing.

The Etsykids blog will also let contestants know who to contact to enter, as well as the prize(s) that will be awarded that day. The number of prizes will increase each day and the winners will be selected at random.

***Contestants can enter once each day.

Within 24 hours of winning, the lucky winners will be contacted via Etsy Conversation, and MUST contact (via Etsy Conversation) the prize donor with their mailing address within 2 days of being contacted. If they fail to contact the prize donor within the given time, a new winner will be selected.


It has been a lot of work to organize in a short amount of time, but it should be tons of fun, and I'm super excited about it! I hope lots of people enter for a chance to win some really cool stuff!