Nutter Butter Snowmen {Easy!}

So…let’s just put it all on the line here. I don’t know if this Christmas break has been rough on anyone else, but it seems like my kids have become wild animals. Wild. Animals. I don’t know what schools are doing everywhere else, but my kids didn’t get out until right before Christmas and then they don’t go back until the 8th. So all of the happy fun Christmas-y anticipation happened while they were still in school, and all the mopey, messy post-Christmas-ness (and then some) is spent here. In my house. My kids are all on each others’ last nerve. They’re fighting over the minutest details. They are sobbing hysterically about party blowers and quarter-length sleeves. Things are tense.

So…after I send them outside to run up and down our driveway until the dogs next door have worked themselves into an obese beagle frenzy, they come inside and we listen to the Frozen soundtrack (because that is the one thing they don’t fight about, although they do fight about who gets the ice powers–my daughter is Elsa, and my son is the neighboring ice prince Schmelsa, who also happens to have a spunky red-headed younger sister. Totally serious. He thinks I’m not onto him.)

All ice powers aside, we spend a lot of time discussing hilarious magical snowmen. About 52,000 times a day, someone says, “Winter’s a good time to stay in and cuddle, but put in me in summer and I’ll be…a happy snowman!”

So after our last freakout, we decided to make Nutter Butter snowmen. We managed to (mostly) not fight for about 45 minutes, which I will take.

You’ll need Nutter Butter cookies (I’m not aware of any similarly shaped allergy-friendly cookie, but those familiar with that world and those products might have some good ideas), white chocolate bark, mini M&Ms, mini chocolate chips, pretzel sticks, orange Tic Tacs, and, if you’re feeling especially awesome, Twizzler Pull ‘n’ Peel licorice.

Line a baking sheet (or, if you’re feeling ambitious, a table) with wax paper or aluminum foil. Melt the white chocolate bark

and then dip a Nutter Butter in the white chocolate…

and place it on the prepared wax paper. You’ll want to work with about 5 cookies at a time; any more than that and the chocolate will start to harden before you can finish them and then you’ll be sad. At least I would be.

Carefully place 2 mini chocolate chips (pointy side up) on the “face” of the snowman as eyes and then about 5 to make a smiley face. Place 2 mini M&Ms on the snowman’s belly and the orange Tic Tac in for the nose.

Allow them to dry (you can work on more snowmen while the others dry) and then break a pretzel stick in half and use more melted white chocolate to stick the pretzels to the back of the snowmen (like arms). If you’re feeling REALLY awesome, you can tie about half of a pull ‘n’ peel strand around each snowman’s neck as a scarf. I am not awesome. I forgot until it was too late. Sooooo…yeah.

Anyway, my kids loved it and it reminded me of how much fun it is to hang out together when we can all get along. So if you’re looking for something fun to keep your kids busy for, say, 25 minutes, I’m your gal.