Saturday, December 13, 2014

Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

The Girl Child wanted to build a gingerbread house this year, but with our dietary restrictions the only place I could find a gluten and dairy free kit was online and it was $29, plus shipping, plus a several week delivery time.

Yea that's not happening. I don't really have the time to be baking gingerbread walls either, so...sorry kid.

A couple days later I was in the grocery store and just happened to walk past the largest marshmallows I have ever seen in my life. I stood there for a minute and started thinking about the ridiculous amount of cookies the food pantry had given us and the left over frosting and chocolate chips that I had from another project. I grabbed a bag of the ginormous marshmallows, a jar of marshmallow fluff, and headed home.

I decided that while we couldn't make a gingerbread house, we could make snowmen!

Be aware this was made by a 3 yr old so it's imperfectly perfect.


I have to say, not only do I think the project went well but the kids had a blast!!

Do you want to try it too? Of course you do! (I'm feeling a little over confident here)

What you will need:


(We used gluten and dairy free ingredients but obviously feel free to adapt)

The largest marshmallows you have ever seen in your life
Marshmallow fluff 
Frosting (we did white and red but feel free to go crazy!)
Pretzel sticks
Chocolate chips (The allergen free ones that we used were unfortunately really tiny)
Oreo-Style Cookie (Please note that while the cookies pictured in this photo are gluten free they are NOT dairy free)
Carrots

Set Up:

Cut the carrots into an appropriate "nose size" width. Leave them long so that they can anchor into the marshmallow.

Open the Oreo so that you only have one half . It will be used to make the bottom of the hat

The marshmallows that I got had two colors in them so I took a pink one and cut it smaller to make the top of the hat.

I then pre-set everything on the kids plates just to make things easier.





Directions:

I had the kids stick the nose into the head first and then the pretzel arms into the body.

I then used frosting to make eye, mouth, and button "dots" where the chocolate chips would go, and then had the kids stick the chips on.

Next we used the marshmallow fluff to glue the body together.

Lastly we used the marshmallow fluff to adhere the top hat on by combining a cookie half and the cut marshmallow. I then let the kids spread red frosting on it to cover the pink. Honestly, I hate the way the hat came out but I really couldn't think of a better way to make a top hat. If you don't have allergies I think they make chocolate marshmallows, or you could use a Hersey Kiss. I didn't even let them eat the hat because they don't eat artificial colors and the cookie wasn't dairy free. I probably could have come up with something better, I just wasn't that invested didn't have the time.

The whole project took less than 15 minutes and the kids had a lot of fun!


Our version of this project was pretty simple but you could do all kinds of things with it. Give your snowman a candy cane broom or use the extra frosting to make snow on the ground. Make him a red licorice scarf, anything! 

(Leave suggestions in the comments because I would love a different hat idea! If you build a snowman make sure to email a picture to notmyshametobear@gmail.com and I will feature it!)


14 comments:

  1. Use more sprinkles/ pretzel sticks to give the snowman hair!

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  2. SO. STINKIN'. CUTE!! We don't eat gluten and/or RARELY dairy in our house as well so I LOOOVE this idea :) Thank you so much for sharing.

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    Replies
    1. Let me know if you make one, I'd love to see it! :)

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    2. DEAL! I'll email you this weekend :)

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  3. For some reason my spam filter is catching the comments from someone asking if I would make a snowman and not let the kids eat parts of it, why wouldn't I make a gingerbread house and only let them eat parts of it. I'm hesistant to move the comment back here because if it's being caught in spam there is a good chance I or another blogger has marked you as a spammer or troll before.

    But, to clarify for anyone else who is wondering, my kids don't eat gluten at all or anything that has come in contact with gluten, I am EXTREMELY strict with that so anything that touched the gingerbread would have been off limits. The snowman was gluten/dairy/artificial color free with the exception of the hat. While the kids are dairy and artificial color free I'm not as worried about cross contamination which is why I just had them take the hats off when it was time to eat the snowman. I just told them that even gingerbread houses have parts people don't eat. As far as this not being an organic project, while not ideal, it was a treat. :)

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