LDS Missionary Nutcrackers

My mom has a large nutcracker collection she put out in her home every Christmas season. I also have two brothers a year apart in age, who have chosen to serve religious missions for the LDS church (AKA mormons). My mother is very proud of them so I thought of this idea last Christmas season to make missionary nutcrackers. Honestly I thought that maybe someone had thought of this already and I could just buy some, but I could not find any. I decided I would make some. I went to all the craft stores I could find to get a unpainted nutcracker, but had a really hard time finding one that would work, because they all had crowns or hats on them. well to make a longer story shorter I did not find what I was looking for. Then After Christmas I went to Target and checked out their clearance Christmas items and came across what I wanted.

Before

After

 LDS missions are two years long so my brothers will be overlapping a year. One left last year about this time and the other will be leaving a few days after Christmas this year. I am posting this now because I gave them to my mom yesterday for her birthday (Happy Birthday MOM!) so she could display them this Christmas season.

 

The above photo has a hat and a belt buckle, which are not worn by LDS missionaries, but I could not resist the belt buckle because my youngest brother is known for his many large belt buckles. He is going to be serving in the Ghana, Accra mission.

 

 This nutcracker seemed the most ironic to work as a LDS missionary. Mormons do not believe in gambling (see above photo). It was fun to replace the face cards with a Book of Mormon and pass-a-long cards. This brother has been out almost a year and he is serving in the Uganda, Kampala mission. yup both in Africa.

The ties are made from ribbon, the name tags, book, and cards where printed off my computer and mod-podged on. I sewed the pants onto the nutcracker (a lot harder then you would think. because I did not disconnect the doll from the stand I had to hand sew it onto the doll. It is on the inseam so it was not as noticeable). I used the buttons from the one nutcracker and I painted the years, name of brother and name of mission onto the base of each one.

Other birthday party ideas

We have had a party every year for each of my boys, even the day I came home from the Hospital with toad 2, we had a party for toad 1 (my mom helped a lot with that one). Here are some cakes and ideas from the past birthdays at our house and one from my sister's house, because it was so cute I had to throw it in.

snake cake

dinosaur cake

pin the horn on the dino or a pinata.

drum cake

ducky cups

duck snacks and cakes

ducky cake

ducky cake

ducky cake

Here is a cute carnival birthday party.