It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

We've had all kinds of Christmas happening around here...

The tree came out the day after Thanksgiving, and it didn't take long for the rest of it to come out, too. I had a bit of a hard time locating our Elf on the Shelf, Red...the box was where it belonged, but no elf inside. He apparently made an escape. Eventually he was found (in my closet?) and we have fun looking to see the new place he lands each morning. Although sometimes he's "tired," or there's "bad weather"...so he stays in the same place. :)

Thursday night was Lucy's holiday program at preschool. Short and sweet, and full of little angels.

Today we had a couple more great Christmas traditions to keep us in the holiday spirit. First, Breakfast with Santa at Lucy's preschool. This year, she told Santa she wants Legos and new orange tracks (for her Hot Wheels set). She did great talking to him, and we had a fun time catching up with some of her classmates who have moved on to kindergarten.

Right after Santa, we headed over to our church for the Advent Fair. Lucy got to decorate cookies and have them baked right there, sing Christmas carols, decorate cards, make an Advent book, and participate in a live Nativity scene.

It's Christmas all over the place!

I'm Committed

To fall, that is.

How do you like our display? When I bought these shelves I intended to switch photos every month. That hasn't quite happened, but I have managed to switch every season. It's fun to look back on some of our favorite photos from falls past.

We do have a special Halloween display that will be going up too, stay tuned!

Shelves - Pottery Barn

Frames - Miscellaneous collection from over the years

Harvest sign and owl - Target

Banner - Made by me with materials from JoAnn's Fabrics

Money and Nail Polish Flower Bouquet

Say what?

We got a list from our niece with her birthday gift wishes, which went a little something like this:

The list is mostly want to least want.

 1.iTunes card (mostly want)

 2.Money

 3.Stuffed animal from Fleet Farm-teddy bear

 4.Mints

 5.Pillows from Pier 1 Import

 6.Gift cards for Justice+Target

 7.Nail polish+nail polish remover

 8.Clothes

Money was easy, but how could I make it into something more than sticking bills in a card? Maybe I could try making some of those folded money flowers? As I browsed the list, an idea started to form...why not add some bottles of nail polish to some money flowers, and make a bouquet. 

So this is what I came up with:

The very best part of this project was that I used things that we already had on hand (minus the nail polish). I had some clay pots around for Lucy to paint, and she enjoyed painting one for Miss H. I had floral foam from her birthday party a couple of years ago, when we made cake pops. Lucy cut up scraps of scrapbook paper I saved from another project for the grass. The purple pipe cleaners were from one of her school projects. 

I made the money flowers using this tutorial, and it was pretty easy! I used a glue gun to attach them to the pipe cleaners. Lucy and I assembled everything but the nail polish before we left, and bought four bottles on the way to the party. While I was in the store, I realized I should probably cover up the labels on the bottom of the bottles with something, so I picked up some Mentos and while driving to the party, filtered out the yellow ones and taped them to the bottles I had stuck in the foam. Voila! It turned out really cute, and the birthday girl loved it.

And I didn't even need Pinterest! :)

Things I Actually Made From Pinterest - Valentine's Day Edition

If you're anything like me, you're slightly addicted to Pinterest. All these wonderful recipes! All these cool crafts!

All these feelings of inadequacy!

I have probably pinned hundreds of things, and actually only attempted a few. Since I choose to view the glass as half full, I am going to start telling you about the things I have pinned and actually tried to make. This is not to act as a catalyst for your own feelings of inadequacy, oh no...this is all about me. I need to facilitate my own feeling of accomplishment. I've got to get it where I can.

Any holiday is a good excuse to look for some fun crafts or recipes. So for Valentine's Day, I looked for a couple of easy things that Lucy and I could do.

First, a craft project - heart "suncatchers." This turned out to be a little ambitious for a three-and-three-quarters-year-old, so I of course ended up doing most of the work. This wasn't a bad endeavor but for trying to peel the tissue paper off the waxed paper. I am convinced there is an easier way, but I followed the directions, and in the process created lots of holes which I then patched with tiny pieces of tissue paper. On the plus side, cutting all those heart frames results in an excess of paper hearts, which a certain preschooler kept busy coloring while I swore at the tissue paper under my breath.

Also, they look pretty, eh? (That's my niece presenting the close-up shot).

For the 2nd Pinterest adventure, school valentines. I don't think I actually pinned this idea, but I definitely saw something like it while browsing. I wanted to do something other than candy, but not anything that was too time or craft intensive, since Lucy had to bring 34 valentines for the toddlers and all the preschool rooms at her school. Solution - popcorn! I used Trader Joes 94% fat free popcorn, which is delicious and comes in small bags. It is also only $1.99 for 6, so while it's more expensive than buying a box of valentines at the store, I definitely felt good about giving something other than candy and still not breaking the bank. I took about 10 minutes to create a sheet of labels, Husband printed them, and voila - "Valentine, you make my heart pop!" Lucy signed her own name to most of them.

So that was our Valentine's Day Pinterest experience!



Thank-Yous

You may remember that Lucy had a bit of a "Hungry Caterpillar" theme for her birthday. Well, since you all should have received your thank-you cards by now, I wanted to share with everyone how we carried that theme over!

Lucy used thumb and fingers to make her own caterpillars with paint.
I added the face and antennae, and Lucy helped me stamp "thank you."

 

I love the way these turned out!



"Big"  Birthday Party

On Sunday we had family over to celebrate Lucy's birthday. We ate lunch, opened gifts, had cake and ice cream, and tried to beat the 90+ degree heat and humidity. Lucy got lots of clothes for her birthday this year, in fact lots of people shopped at the same place and picked very accurately items that were "so Lucy..." so we had a few duplicates, which was very funny.  However, I think the biggest hit was the new Barbie and convertible from Auntie Marcey and Uncle Haver.

For weeks (maybe even months) this girl has been saying she is having "chocolate cake with chocolate frosting" for her birthday. I was struggling to come up with some sort of theme to go with the very brown edibles. About three days before the party, I decided to theme the party loosely after one of her favorite books "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." For those of you unfamiliar, it's an Eric Carle book about a caterpillar who hatches and is very hungry, and it chronicles all the things he eats on the different days of one week, ending with him building a cocoon and crawling out as a beautiful butterfly. On Saturday, he eats a bunch of junk food and gets a stomachache, and one of those foods is chocolate cake. I didn't go too far with the theme because honestly it was probably lost on this mostly-adult crowd (and I didn't have much time!) but I was able to get a couple of cute things done.

All in all, it was a good party and it was great to see family and give Lucy a chance to play with her little girl cousin. Thanks to Husband for acting as head caterer, and to my parents for staying up late with me to make cake pops!

Inspiration for this banner was from here, and I made a couple
of my own modifications. Turned out really cute!

I ordered a chocolate cake from Target, and added some sprinkles and cake pops to make a caterpillar,
as well as some strawberries (notice the holes because he "ate" through them!

Here you can see how we added the pops.

A better pic of the cake pops, pre-cake. I got the idea here and followed the tutorial.