This is the time of year that between all the craziness of the holidays and trying to keep up on the normal day-to-day happenings of my family, my brain turns to mush. I blame this partially also on the cold weather. This Midwestern cold goes straight to the bones, or to the brain in my case :) When it comes to thinking of creative and fun ideas to do with my family, I tend to just draw a blank. I found a few fantastic Christmas hacks that either make things faster, or are just really fun, creative ways to do things that you might have not thought of. I hope you enjoy these ideas and try out a couple of them.

Freeze whipped cream dollops for a hot chocolate bar. Squeeze dollops of whipped cream onto wax paper, freeze, then store in an airtight container in the freezer until you are ready to use. They’ll get melty once placed into a hot mug of cocoa.

Use your leftover egg cartons to store ornaments.

Turn candy into Christmas lights by using almond M&M’s and green Mike and Ikes. Take a sharp knife and cut the Mike and Ikes in half. You can get a cleaner cut by heating up your knife a little bit with a lighter first. This is absolutely optional and not recommended if you are making them with your little ones. Then stick that Mike and Ike onto the larger end of the almond M&M. This would be so cute on a cake by piping a thin, green line of frosting and sticking these to it so it looks like a string of lights.

You can create easy hot chocolate stirrers by sticking marshmallows on the end of straws or candy cane sticks. You can make them even more festive by dipping your marshmallows in chocolate and adding red sprinkles. These would make fantastic neighbor gifts as well! :)

Use Christmas cookie cutters to bake brownies in. You can also do this with Pancakes. This would be a super fun tradition to do for Christmas morning and I think kids would LOVE this!

And my last idea for some Christmas fun is to use condiment bottles filled with icing to decorate cookies. This is also something that would be so great with kids and make it a lot easier for them to let their creativity shine. You can also use melting chocolate in these condiment bottles and keep it warm by setting the bottle in a bowl of hot water while not in use.