I’ve got the holiday spirit. Bad. And it’s all thanks to our 3-year-old son.  Seeing his little face light up at every holiday detail fills me with warmth and joy. We turned on the car radio the other morning as little Michael Jackson was belting out “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” Jack was giddy and screamed, “We sing this at preschool! I know this song!”

The magic is real and I want to be a part of it.

Here are some ways we’ve been keeping the holiday spirit alive in our Anchorage household. Share yours in the comments!

1. Portable North Pole

A friend told me about Portable North Pole, a free online program where you enter a few generic bits of information about your child, what you’d like him to work on this year (we went with “brush teeth every night”) and a photo. In a few minutes you have a personalized video message from Santa.

Our son Jack was stunned when he watched it. He made us replay it four times. Let the Christmas joy begin.

2. Get into the kitchen

Our preschooler loves to help out in the kitchen. At Thanksgiving he helped me make pumpkin pie and it was a kitchen bonding experience. He measured the flour, cracked the eggs and turned on the mixer.

Last week we made perfect potato latkes and Jack was a terrific sous chef.

Whether it’s Christmas cookies or candy cane bark, there’s plenty of ways to get your kids culinarily involved.

3. Donate to a local shelter

Each year Bean’s Cafe, a local homeless shelter, turns to the community to help out with Beanie Boxes, which are wrapped shoeboxes filled with necessities such as deodorant, toothbrushes and socks. Have your child help you fill up a shoebox with goodies, pick out the wrapping paper and ribbon and drop it off.

This year we collected items for AWAIC, the local women’s shelter. I made a list based on what they asked for and included little clip art pictures of each item to make it visual. Jack and I went to the store and he selected three items from the list to donate.

4. Felt Christmas Tree

This is a project I put together two years ago, but it’s still fun to play with. Buy a couple of yards of green felt and cut out a tree shape. On several different colors of felt draw some simple shapes and have your child cut them out to create ornaments. Pin the tree to the wall and let him decorate his tree to his heart’s content.

Click here for a more detailed tutorial.

5. Go to a holiday movie

Up till now we’ve avoided taking our son to a movie theater. I remember being a non-parent and cursing the world whenever a screaming kid was seated at our movie.

Thankfully there are kid-friendly options. We recently took Jack to Williwaw where they were showing a kid-themed Christmas film as a fundraiser for Special Olympics. It was Jack’s first movie theater experience and a positive one. The manager passed out free popcorn and families roasted marshmallows over a s’mores kit.

Williwaw has several more movie nights planned. There are two show times so you don’t have to worry about staying out past bedtime. Plus it saves you a night of having to cook dinner! Click here for show times.

If you can’t make it to Williwaw, there’s always the peanut gallery at Bear Tooth Theaterpub. Tickets are cheap and if you catch an early show you don’t have to feel bad about making noise in the balcony area.

6. Make snowflakes

Many tiny tots are hard at work on their fine motor skills. Ours loves cutting out paper. Work on making paper snowflakes together. Jack was happy with just cutting up pieces of paper and taping them to the window. We’ve got sort of an abstract impressionism vibe going on.

Here’s a simplified way to make paper snowflakes that is perfect for new scissor users.

7. Visit the Gingerbread Village

Every year the Hotel Captain Cook sets up an elaborate gingerbread house village in their lobby. Check out their live gingerbread web cam to catch a glimpse.

Afterwards, head the the store for some graham crackers, powdered sugar, gumdrops and Necco wafers and build your own.

8. Write holiday cards

I’m a big supporter of snail mail. Have your child help you with your holiday cards by including their scribbles and drawings. Jack actually drew a Christmas tree for his preschool teacher, so that definitely was included.

9. Look at the lights

Kids tend to love sparkly things that light up. Thankfully it’s dark most of the time here right now so it’s easy to find trees and houses adorned with twinkly lights. Start off at Town Square Park, which has some of the most stunning blue lighted trees.

If it’s not too cold, take a stroll through the Alaska Zoo at their evening Zoo Lights event. All the pathways are illuminated by animal-shaped light fixtures, some of which are animated. If you’re lucky you might spot a real, non-napping animal.

This week, Jack rushed inside after school to tell me his wish finally came true: the shooting star was on. A house over on Elmore and Huffman has a tall pole that lights up to the rhythm of holiday music that you tune to your car radio. Jack’s been waiting for it all year; and it’s free!

10. Have Santa mail a letter

Ok, this one is a little manipulative, but I had to give it a try. We have started a tradition in our family that in order for Santa to deliver toys to us, we have to give toys away to someone else who needs them. Instead of boring old parents telling their children to give away their toys, why not have Santa ask?

Santa mailed Jack a letter explaining that sometimes the elves fix up old toys in the workshop to give to other kids who don’t have many things. It worked like a charm. Be sure to put the correct return address.

The post Guest post: 10 ways to get into the holiday spirit with kids appeared first on Julia O'Malley.

No “Where the Wild Things Are” party would be complete without, of course, a few Wild Things. I admit, I’m at least a day late posting this because it’s Monday and we’re kicking off the next weekly theme for our Halloween Blog Party today over at Alaska Knit Nat. Twin toddler Wild Thing wrangling is my excuse.

To accompany my Max costume, here is my DIY Wild Thing costume tutorial for my little wilds. And please believe, the definition of wild is trying to photograph these two in costume. The outtakes are worthy of their own album.

I opted to use hooded sweatshirts as the foundation for each costume, which is great for trick-or-treating in Alaska because we can layer underneath as much as we need to. And because of how I built the costumes, I can always remove all the DIY elements and re-use the hoodies after Halloween. (Or not, and just let them run around with horns the rest of the year.)

For the Moishe (or Carol) costume, I purchased an orange Kids Corner hoodie from Fred Meyer ($9.99) and gray knit pants from Old Navy ($4.97, they were on sale for 50% off). The pants are one size larger than what my kids currently wear, and we already owned the same pair in their size. Because I planned on cutting up the pants, I wanted to make sure we had a layer for them to wear underneath. The orange hoodie ended up giving our Moishe a Bert-and-Ernie vibe, but we’re rolling with it. Starting with a pale yellow hoodie (if you can find one) might be the better options.

For the Bernard costume, I purchased a navy hoodie and matching sweatpants at Kohl’s ($7.99 each).

Other items I purchased included felt sheets in orange, gray, white, yellow, and black (six sheets total at $0.98 each) from Michael’s, faux fur squares in white and black ($3.79 each) from Michael’s, and a large piece of shaggy black felt ($11.99) also from Michael’s, which I ended up not using and will return. I also bought yellow duct tape ($3.54) from Target and a package of UGlu glue dash sheets ($9.49) from Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Store. I highly recommend these UGlu dashes because they hold (and hold up through a toddler tugging session) better than fabric glue with zero mess.

Most of the elements for each costume are similar so I made them in tandem, but will be sure to point out the differences below.

First, I cut out the eyes and nose of each character freehand from the various felt sheets. Using the UGlu dashes, I secured the loose elements together.

Next, I cut out the teeth for each character from white felt, leaving approximately an inch strip of felt along the opposite edge of the teeth. Each set of teeth are only as long as the felt sheet.

I also cut out Bernard’s ears, again freehand.

The horns were probably the most challenging part of the costume. I drew a horn shape freehand on a piece of white felt, cut it out and used it as the template, drawing and cutting seven additional horn sides (eight total for four horns).

Once cut, I placed two of the cut-outs back to back and used a simple running stitch around the edge to sew them together. Next, I turned the horns right-side out and stuffed them with shredded cotton balls, leaving approximately an inch and a half of felt at the end of each horn.

Because the horns were to be stitched onto the sweatshirt hood, I needed to create a base. Using the inch and a half of felt left at the end of each horn, I folded each side in, similar to wrapping a present. To secure the felt in place, I stitched a few loops around the top and underneath the folds. (For Bernard’s horns, I also folded the ears in half length-wise and included the ear in this loop stitch so it was attached to the horn.)

Once the horns were secured, I glued the eyes and nose in place on the top of the hood and then lined the inside edge of each hood with the felt inch edge of teeth so that just the teeth could be seen – all using the UGlu dashes.

For the rest of Moishe costume, I used the yellow duct tape to create yellow stripes on the orange hoodie. I worked slowly, ensuring I could wrap the tape all the way around the back of hoodie or all the way around the arm so that each stripe was one long strip of tape. Where the tape had to be cut (at the zipper or shoulder, for example), it required a bit trial and error to make sure the tape ends lined up, but the tape is forgiving.

To create the feathered effect on the pants, I sketched alternating “Vs” down each pant leg using chalk and then cut the “Vs” by pinching the pant at each V and snipping it at an angle. I also cut a zig-zag along the bottom edge of each pant leg.

The final piece for each costume was securing the faux fur on top. For Bernard, I cut a small patch of white fur and secured it between the horns. For Moishe, I cut the black fur rectangle in half, stapled the halves together end to end and then starting from the center of the hoodie right behind the eyes, secured the fur at an angle on each side all the way down to the base of the neck. I cut slits in the fur and slide it over the horns, and secured the back edge of the fur along the back of the hoodie using additional UGlu dashes.

Leslie Boyd, aka AKShopGirl, lives, writes and raises twins in Anchorage. This post originally appeared on her blog.

The post DIY wild thing costumes! (To go with mom’s wolf suit) appeared first on Julia O'Malley.

1) Free day at the Anchorage Museum with a holiday concert. Anchorage Concert Chorus, Alaska Flute Studies Center and the Carhartt Brothers will be making music. (Say hi to my dad, he’s in the chorus) Starts at 1 pm and goes to 4.

2) TubaChristmas is maybe my most favorite holiday concert (sorry Dad) because all the musicians are all having such a blast. Plus tubas. It will be in the lobby of the Anchorage Center for the Performing Arts and it starts at 2.

3) Captain Cook Gingerbread Village. Massive miniature village made of cookie. Kids go crazy for it.

For more holiday delights, go here.

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