Reindeer Nails and Graham Cracker Houses

Sarah is a girly-girl with an edge.  In addition to the no-pants rule, she loves anything sparkly, light, ruffly, and glittery.  That being said, she enjoys playing ninjas and superheroes with the boys in her class just as well as playing house.  One of the girly treats we indulge in from time to time is at-home mani-pedis.  Since I haven't had a manicure in 7+ years, Miss Priss and I aren't in any hurry to hit the salon for the real thing. Usually we alternate wild glitter colors (patterns = algebraic thinking), but since it's the Christmas season, we went for something more festive.  I saw these nails on Pinterest and decided we could do something similar.

Here are the results:

Of course little brother wanted Rudolph nails, too, so we gave him a pedicure.  Using a Sharpie for the antlers was a huge help, but teeny-tiny toddler nails are (not surprisingly) hard to paint with any accuracy.  Luckily, my clients were perfectly happy with my imperfect renderings of Santa's nine tiny reindeer.

In fact, the kids' nails were so cute that I painted my own nails as well.  There was a whole lot more surface area with which to work, and I can stay still for more than 30 seconds at a time, so mine turned out pretty cute.

Once our nails were dry, we tried out another Christmas pin: graham cracker houses.  These things looked so easy and cute, but guess what? Total pinstrosity.  I crumbled up half the box just trying to get the angled roof line precisely cut.  Plus, I had to do a lot of the construction work FOR the kids, which totally defeated the purpose of the activity. 

The kids would have been just as happy had I squirted icing straight down their gullets instead of going through the charade of gluing the houses together with it and then eating it. 

If anybody knows a trick to this, let me know.  Sarah and Will are asking to do it again.