Merry Christmas

Wishing you a Merry Christmas!  I hope you all have a wonderful day while enjoying family, friends and delicious food.  We've been a little busy and so I haven't posted in a while, but I promise I will post when I get home.

Christmas Tour...

I've finally finished all the Christmas decor for this year and I've realized that I've got a lot of shopping to do the day after Christmas this year.  Our new house has so much more space to decorate and so it's looking a little bare, but that's okay.  I didn't want to go too overboard with decorations this year since we won't be here for Christmas, but I still like some sparkle... after all it is Christmas.  Since we won't be here for Christmas we opted to save the money and skip the tree, which is so so sad, but I'll make up for it next year with two trees.  Hehehe.  Just wait till dear hubby hears that.  Anyways, enjoy your little tour!

Join me over at The Nester's Christmas Tour of Homes 2009

Giveaway Day!!!

Don't forget about my giveaway today over at Craftaholics Anonymous!  One lucky winner will get a set of three of my purple sweater flower pins.  They look so cute on bags, scarfs, hats and just about anything else you can think of to add a flower to.  Linda has some great tutorials lined up this week and has some awesome giveaways to go with those tutorials.  Make sure to visit her each day this week.

Well I'm off to do my Christmas baking today.  I have some great recipes to share with you tomorrow so be sure to check back.

Happy Anniversary

Happy Anniversary Babe!  Six amazing years!  You are such a wonderful loving and supportive husband and father.  You are a great provider.  You are an extremely hard worker.  You are always a good example to me and make me want to be a better person everyday.  You support me in my crazy ideas.  You give me a shoulder to cry on when I need it.  You know how to make me laugh.  You warm up my side of the bed at night so I don't climb into cold sheets.  You get up with the munchkins on Saturday morning so that I can sleep.  You fix things around the house (granted you usually break them :).  You treat me like a queen!

It's amazing to think about how much we've done in the last six years.  We've finished three different college degrees, moved five times, taken some amazing trips to Hawaii, Brazil, New York, Bahamas, Florida, Glacier, Canada and done countless road trips all over and we've added two of the most beautiful munchkins in the last two years.  What more could I ask for?  I love you so much and I'm so grateful to be married to such a wonderful man!

 

Why Is Life So Busy?

Why is it that life always seems so busy?  And when you don't think it could get any busier, it does.  We've literally had something going every single day of this month and will continue to have something everyday until we leave for Christmas vacation.  So here are just a few of the many things I've been up to...

-Both kids have been sick with colds again!

-I finally got all of my Christmas decorations put up today... I started this process two weeks ago.  It seems to take so much longer with munchkins.

-A friend finally convinced me to give the "Twilight" series a try and now I'm addicted!  I watched the movie three times on Tuesday and just had to watch it again on Wednesday before returning it.

-Due to this new and I'm sure unhealthy addiction I had to go see "New Moon" tonight.  Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband who was willing to take the munchkins for the night so that I could go feed this new addiction.  I'm really looking forward to Christmas vacation when I can read the books.

-I've been trying to keep up with load after load of laundry, cleaning room after room and then vacuuming endless amounts of dog hair.  Thanks to this absolutely butt numbing cold weather we've had, our dog has been living inside.  I hate it when the dog lives inside.  There is so much nasty dog hair that comes along with her.

-Do you remember my post about "so many projects, so little time"?  Well I was really on a roll for a while, but then life happened and we just got so busy.  Now I don't mind being busy, but this is that kind of out of control busy and you feel like you can't keep your head above water long enough to breath.  I don't like being that busy especially when I just want to do my projects.  So I have gotten about half the things on my list done and I've managed to get other things done that weren't on that list, but there are still things on my list that need to be done.  There are a couple things that I know I can get done before we leave for Christmas, but I know that not everything is going to get checked off that list.  Oh well.  There's always next year.  It'll give me something to do while I wait for "Eclipse" to come out. :)

Anyways, we leave in a week for California for a not so white Christmas so I'm going to have a very busy upcoming week.  I've still got to do all my Christmas baking and get all the goody plates delivered, finish Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, pack for two whole weeks (this is not a fun thing to do), address and mail Christmas cards and the list goes on and on.  So I might be MIA for a few days and I'm sure I won't have any fun projects, although maybe I can squeeze a few in there somewhere.  We'll see I suppose.  Don't give up on me though, I'll be back as soon as possible.  Also, don't forget about my giveaway over @ Craftaholics Anonymous on Monday.

A Little Door Jingle

This year I've really been wanting some jingle bells for our front door handle, but (you knew that but was coming didn't you), with an active toddler who loves to try everything out, I was afraid of what would happen to those jingle bells (either Ella Bella would destroy them or I would end up destroying them :).  So after reading this post over at Craftaholics Anonymous I decided to try a different approach the jingle bells.  I attached a few bells and some ornaments to pieces of ribbon cut at varying lengths, sewed a button at the top to hold all the ribbon together and look cute while doing it and then hot glued it to a picture frame.  Inside the picture frame I inserted some pretty Christmas scrapbook paper and since I have a metal door I glued some magnets to the back of the picture frame to hang on the door.  This way I get my jingle bells without the munchkins destroying them or driving me crazy.  It's win win!  If you decide to do magnets then make sure to use super strong magnets.  I used what I had on hand and the frame keeps slowly sliding down the door.  Last night while making Ella's birthday cake I actually heard it crash to the floor.  Whoops!  It would also look cute hanging from one of those two sided wreath hangers or just attaching some ribbon to the frame and then pinning it on top of the door with an upholstery tack.

Giveaway!!!

I'm so excited to be doing my first giveaway next week for Linda @ Craftaholics Anonymous!  She is having one whole fabulous week of tutorials and a giveaway a day to go with it.  So you might ask what my giveaway is... Well, because I love my flower pins so much I decided to make another set of three to share with a lucky person.  So one lucky person has the chance to win a set of three flower pins if they head over to Craftaholics Anonymous on Monday, December 14th.  Check out her blog the rest of the week as well to see all of her great tutorials.  I must warn you though that once you visit you will become addicted and feel the need to start crafting. :)  Thanks Linda for letting me be part of your tutorial/giveaway week!

Happy Birthday Ella

Today was Ella's 2nd birthday.  I can't believe how fast my baby girl is growing up.  For her birthday we decided to get her a play kitchen since she has really started to develop her imagination and she likes to mimic what I do.  What better for her to mimic than to develop a love for her kitchen and cooking.  She really likes helping me in my kitchen and so far she has really enjoyed her new toy.  

We were planning a birthday party for Ella last night with a few of her little friends from church, but both Ella and Cameron have been sick with colds the last few days and it turns out that a good portion of her friends have been sick as well.  So the birthday party didn't happen this year, but we had cake and ice cream tonight as a family and then read some Christmas stories and sang Christmas songs.  Since she's only two I figure she doesn't know the difference.  I think I was more broken up over no party since I figure we didn't get to celebrate Halloween or her birthday this year due to sickness.  Oh well.

Here is Ella "helping" her dad assemble her new kitchen.  We started assembling it after she went to bed so that we could surprise her the next morning, but she didn't want to go to sleep and after repeated attempts to put her in her bed we just gave up and let her sit up with us.

How cute is this?

Ella with her new and assembled kitchen

Here is my "cookie monster".  Ella has always been a good eater.  She loves her veggies, fruits and just about anything healthy, but she really loves her cookies, ice cream and other sweets as well.  She has started asking me for cookies a lot lately and when I tell her no she gives me the cutest looks and in her sweetest voice says, "Ella cookie monster".  How can you say no to that?

Here is Ella opening her present from her Grandma Mary and Grandpa David.  She loved the book and quickly got to work on all those little flaps.

Our Thanksgiving Recap

I actually hosted my first Thanksgiving this year and I have to say I think it went pretty well.  Andrew's family was here and so I had a little help which was great, but I was more than happy to do the majority of it while they played with the munchkins.  I was especially thrilled to have my first turkey turn out so delicious.  It was literally falling off the bone it was so moist.  It didn't look very pretty, but it sure tasted good.  We did the traditional green bean casserole, yams, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberry sauce and jello with it.  Since my brother-in-laws Brazilian girlfriend was with us they made some delicious cheese rolls to go with dinner instead of the traditional rolls and butter.  They were sooo good.  For dessert we had the usual pumpkin pie with some delicious whipped cream and my favorite chocolate pie. Mmm mmm!  We had a great time and it was nice to have Andrew's family here to visit.  On Friday, I did the usual Black Friday thing with a friend and her sister-in-law.  We were at Sears at 4 am.  Craziness!  It seems like each year gets earlier and earlier.  Good times though.  I was so excited to get a pair of sawhorses finally.  Can you believe I've been doing all of my projects without them.  I am actually working on a project currently and got to use them for the first time.  What a difference they make.  After Sears we headed over to Wal-Mart.  Oh My Goodness!!!  We actually managed to get everything we wanted, but holy cow it was a mad house.  After spending a good hour and a half there we decided to forgo more shopping since we didn't really need anything else and go to breakfast instead.  It was fun to go out with just the girls for some early morning shopping.  Friday night we decided to ride the trax to Temple Square to see the lights for opening night.  Temple Square is always so beautiful, but especially at Christmas time.  Unfortunately, it is always way too cold and with two little munchkins we're pretty limited on the time spent there.  Friday night and Saturday morning all of our guests headed home so we had a pretty laid back Saturday and Sunday.  We managed to get all the laundry done, clean the house (there was way too much dog hair from two dogs), I snuck out to JoAnn's for a little bit and we got to enjoy our new In N Out again. :)

Me and Mr. Turkey saying saying hello :)

Doesn't she look so pretty all dressed up

Doesn't she look so tasty

Look at those perfect peaks on those mashed potatoes

I have to say the table was a little disappointing to me... I had big plans and then I just didn't have time.

Me and Mr. Handsome waiting for the train

Ella Bella and her daddy at Temple Square

Gorgeous!!! Unfortunately we didn't notice the battery was dead in the camera until we got there.  So we only have a couple decent pictures.

I've taught her right.  Dipping her fries in her shake.

Oh I'm hungry just looking at this picture.

Flower Pins

Here is another project that I've been working on.  I had the flowers done about a week ago, but didn't have any pins for the back of them.  So I couldn't attach them to my diaper bag.

Here's how I did it.  I used leftover material from Ella's Sweater Dress.  I used this flower pattern from Wise Craft.  I used two big flowers, one small flower and then I cut another flower that was just a little smaller than the small flower pattern.  I also cut out a tiny flower that was just bigger than the button I used to assemble the whole flower.  Since I was using sweater material and it's chunkier I didn't follow the directions given on the Wise Craft tutorial.  I just layered the flowers from big to small and then sewed the button in the middle to hold it all together.  I hot glued a pin on the back so that I could attach it to my bag without it being permanent.  I might want to use the flowers elsewhere as well.  Maybe a scarf, another bag, or a sweater.  Who knows?  So I didn't want it to be permanent.  Anyways, it came out cute I think.  Now I want to make more so that I can have a whole flower collection. :)

I'm a creative cat over at:

Munchkin Christmas Pics

I know I'm a terrible mother because I don't take my kids and get their pictures taken as often as I should, but I finally did last week.  The last time Ella's pictures were taken was at 6 months with her cousins and as a baby at 6 weeks.  Cameron had never seen the inside of a studio until last week.  Now I remember why I don't take my kids to have their pictures done professionally.  Let me begin by saying that I do think the pictures came out cute.  But, does anyone else feel that they take better pictures of their kids at home than some professionals do?  I always feel like my children are forcing smiles and aren't very comfortable.  Whereas at home, I get out the camera and Ella starts smiling and saying cheese.  It's like night and day.  Plus there is always a part of me that feels like I'm paying way too much when I'm not completely satisfied with how the pictures came out.  Anyways, I'll stop complaining now because like I said, I do like the pictures.  They're just not as adorable as I was envisioning.  Maybe we'll have to do another photo shoot at home in their Christmas clothes.  

I just have to say that this was last minute and I didn't take the time to find black socks for Mr. Handsome.  Now I wish I had because it drives me crazy looking at those white socks.

I think this is my favorite... plus you can't see those darn socks.