Pollywog's Place Blog

Creative Gift Wrap Ideas

Published on December 2, 2023November 28, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

I don’t know about you but my phone has been going crazy with notifications about packages that will be arriving as we just finished up the majority of our Christmas shopping. I have a huge black tote in my room that I am keeping the gifts in… yes, I believe they will all fit in the one tote this year.

Now, I have to figure out how to wrap them. I have a bunch of leftover paper from years past. There was a time when I liked to have things color coordinated and usually each kiddo had their own paper to keep things a little more organized as the tags seemed to get lost before Christmas morning. I have always seen the towers that people do with different figures and they look so cute but I don’t want to buy special paper for them.

I have an idea of just buying some fabric and making reusable bags but maybe making them so that they could stack and make these adorable gift towers… with our new 3-4 gift rule it might make this a real possibility!

Here are some cute pics of the ideas I have from Pinterest:

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Holiday Planning Progress

Published on December 1, 2023November 29, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

How is everyone doing? I hope we all made it through Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday without any serious damage. I also hope everyone has a good plan to get through the next month… we have definitely had some unexpected challenges around here like my oven and some sickness but we will survive!

We’ve been enjoying our Advent Study by Amanda Bennett with the lap book and other Christmas activities that we have been doing. The kids have been reading ‘A Christmas Carol’** aloud and doing a unit study** that goes along with it and we plan to watch the movie when we finish the book. **You can find the unit study HERE.

So far this week we have been able to gather all of our notes, menus, and lists from Thanksgiving to add to our Holiday Planner. We have put away the Thanksgiving folder and have pulled out our Polar Express folder, St. Nicholas Day notes, and of course our Christmas. I also probably need to pull out the New Year’s folder too but I haven’t just yet.

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Easy Homemade Bread

Published on November 29, 2023November 29, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog16 Comments

I know I’ve mentioned in a few posts that we’ve been making our own bread again. We love sourdough bread but a few of the kids had mentioned that they really wanted something more like store-bought so I tried a few recipes and with a couple of tweaks we have found a combo that we really like… Mr. Awesome and I haven’t been eating much bread but we have tried a slice here and there as it smells so good! It is quite exceptional when it’s still a little warm and smeared with real butter and then drizzled with a bit of local honey… mmmmm!

This bread is great to use as rolls and as an alternative to English Muffins for breakfast. It also toasts up really nicely! We save all the breadcrumbs in a baggie in the freezer to use in our recipes where breadcrumbs are needed.

I recently converted my sourdough starter ‘Fran’ to a pasta madre/lievito madre/stiff dough and I like the results so far. You can learn more about this process HERE. I think I want to try to make some Panettone for Christmas this year so I wanted to get some starters going and get a little more familiar with the process.

I’ve also been researching about the Herman starter and Charlie starters so I may want to them out as well.

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Free Printables for Holiday Shopping plus some tips for buying for special needs kiddos!

Published on November 28, 2023November 28, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog8 Comments

It might be a little late in the game for these goodies but I needed to make some for my Holiday Planner anyway and I figured I’d share them here just in case anyone else could use them. They really aren’t anything fancy but I did try to make a couple of festive options to help you feel a little more in the Christmas spirit.

We plan to start implementing the 3 or possibly 4 gift rule in our home because things are just so expensive and our kiddos really have everything they need and a lot of what they want so we don’t want them asking for tons of things that they won’t or can’t use. We really want them to stay focused on the reason for the season … we are dedicating these weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas for an Advent Study. We also want them to think about gifts and appreciate the time, thought, and money that goes into each gift they receive and not what they expect to find under the tree.

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Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 7 (The Week After Thanksgiving)

Published on November 27, 2023November 30, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

Thanksgiving is over but there’s no time to rest yet as the real preparations are beginning for the holidays! One of the biggest things we need to do is to take time to sit down and evaluate how our Thanksgiving was. What was everyone’s favorite part? Was there anything that didn’t work well? Do you need to set up a rotating schedule to have dinner at other family member’s homes? (Odd year here, Even year there, or every 3rd, 4th, year?) Would it be better to have a potluck-style meal where everyone brings something? Was there anything you would like to do differently? Start now for your planning for next year so you don’t forget these ‘little things’! We will also be getting all of our Fall decor ready to be put away next week so we can start pulling out the Christmas decor.