I’m lucky for a lot of reasons (more than I whinily admit to most of the time) and one huge one is my child’s caregiver.  I could say babysitter but caregiver describes this wonderful person far better.
I never, for a second, worry about my child when I’m at work.  I miss her, think about her…but never worry.  Wee one is cuddled, read to, talked to and loved by this amazing woman.
So what do you get someone like that for Christmas.  We’ve chatted a fair amount about our ideal Christmas’ (no presents? just seeing people we love) and our dismay over the scary buy, buy, buy mentality that seems to seize people this time of year so I knew that I really wanted to do something that was just nice.
How about a kiddo produced ornament and some homemade treats.
Off to pinterest I went to find a recipe for salt dough.  Got my best helper into the game and went to town.

We made trees, handprints and stars.  What I loved about this activity was that I had the dough made and we had everything ready to go into the oven in a short enough time period that the kiddo was still interested.  Important to remember; if you want to hang these you need to poke the holes in them prior to baking.
A couple of days later we ‘painted’.  Note:  you don’t have to wait a few days to paint.  I just ran out of time until then.
Tada!!!  I know it is a bit of a hodge podge but I love the idea that we’re making a couple of things that capture this particular kiddo time period.
This was so much fun that I decided that we would do similar care packages to our fantastic, next door neighbour and a couple of close friends.  To go with the ornaments I made a big batch of quinoa granola for Christmas morning.
I also had wee one go crazy with her crayons on paper bags.

Hiding from view are homemade pannetone which I’ll show you how to make tomorrow 🙂

Popped everything into a pretty bag and we were ready to deliver.
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