Marshmallow Rudolph

After a long day at work, there's nothing better than spending 2.5 hours making cute little treats for a 1st grade Christmas party.  At least that's what I kept telling myself.   I was in charge of "something sweet" for the party, and being the overachieving crafty momma that I am, I turned to Pinterest for some inspiration.  My little guy got to choose the crafty snack and settled on reindeer pops that were originally to be made from cake balls.  Since that seemed like way too much work, we opted for chocolate coated marshmallows instead.  Here's what you need to get started:

Marshmallows, sucker sticks, almond bark, red hots, white beady looking things, treat bags, and brown pipe cleaners.   The shopping part seemed easy, but ultimately involved visiting three different stores to find these items.  But being the overachieving crafty momma that I am, I made it happen so as not to disappoint the world's cutest 1st grader.

Since this part of the project involves little technique, I enlisted the assistance of my cute little helper.  He shoved sucker sticks into 30ish marshmallows while I melted the chocolate coating.

Then my handsome assistant carefully and methodically covered the marshmallows in chocolate as I hovered over him, reminding him that we had 30 more of these to make and he needed to be in bed in two hours.

Then, because I wanted to finish this project in one evening, I suggested that he count out reindeer noses while I coated the remaining marshmallows. and put them on a wax paper sheet to dry.  My chocolate started thickening up and eventually got lumpy, resulting in some odd looking reindeer, but I carried on, reminding myself that 1st graders don't expect perfection.

Using a clean cheapo paintbrush I stole from my handsome assistant, I used more melted chocolate to attach a red hot nose and two beady eyes.  After a few saggy eyeballs and droopy noses, I realized this step works best if the marshmallows are lying face up and given time to dry a bit.  I originally thought this would be the final step in creating reindeer faces, but those beady little eyes looked a little too lifeless and alien for my liking, so I grabbed a toothpick to add a tiny drop of chocolate to the center of the eyes.

After the chocolate dried and all noses were secure, we shoved the marshmallow pops down inside treatbags and I started making antlers. After much experimenting, I found it was easiest to twist a circle like shape at each end of the pipe cleaner.

Then I squished in the center of each circle to make a heart like shape that would eventually be squished even more until it resembled an antler.

I did this to each end of the pipe cleaner and then bent it in the middle so that I could wrap it around the top of the treat bags.

Then I twisted the antlers around the top of the treat bag to complete my little reindeer friends.  We only needed 24 for the party, but I made several extra so that I could pick the prettiest ones for the class party and save the lazy eye, droopy nose reindeer for home.

It was way more work than I anticipated, but it was all worth it as my little first grader squeezed my neck and proclaimed "You are the bestest mom ever.  My friends are gonna love these!"