Making candy and crafts with the grands

 

 This year our special activity with four of our local grandchildren took place the Tuesday of Christmas week.  It was the day that worked out for everyone.  As they get older there are things that could potentially conflict, and their responsibilities of work, orchestra, and other activities have to be worked around.  

Some readers may recall that last year we tweaked the tradition and did some candy making and crafting with them, and skipped the shopping part of the expedition.  We did, however, continue our ice cream sundae tradition at Kellerhaus.  In today's post I'll only describe our candy making and crafting.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I was thankful to be able to find the candy making plan I had made last year.  I thought it was permanently lost and that I might have to start over with a new plan.  So very thankful that was not the case!

So those are the candies I planned for us to make.  You can find the recipes here if you search, but I'll link to most of them:

Chocolate Dipped Orange Candy Slices are such a fun and easy homemade candy.  We make them most every year!  

Arlene’s Easy Fudge is another favorite of mine -- so incredibly easy!

  Drizzled Peppermint Cookies is another super easy recipe, starting with purchased oreo-type cookies.

And Easy Salted Caramel Fudge is just one step beyond Arlene's fudge, as it's the same simple type of recipe with baking chips and sweetened condensed milk.

We shared a nice breakfast before beginning, but I'll share the particulars on that another day.  

Last year I found that it was good to have some crafting opportunities available during the candy making, in case there was any down time while waiting for different steps in a recipe.  So I brought out a lot of craft supplies and Christmasy embellishments right at the start.  Of course that meant that some wanted to jump immediately into crafting!

Sam prepared both kids of fudge.

Josiah was in his crafting element!

Julia and Ari worked on the drizzled peppermint cookies.  They also made the chocolate dipped orange slices.

Ari made the ornament above with a little gluing and lettering help from Julia.

Josiah is a detail guy for sure.  He may be working on a snowman here, I'm not sure.

All in all, it was a sweet time together!