December Photo Project--Making Memories

Merry Christmas Everyone!!  I hope you have a magical day filled with love, laughter, family and smiles.  We are busy celebrating with our extended family but I wanted to share some highlights from the past month. 




December 1st--Writing to Santa

December 2nd--Our Tree

December 3rd--Playing with the Nativity

 

December 4th--Making Christmas Tree Garland

December 5th--Advent Wreath

December 6th--Skyping Christmas Carols

December 7th--My Little Elf Z's hat

December 8th--Meeting Santa

December 9th--Making cookies with friends

December 10th--Lil' C checking out the tree

December 11th--Making Suncatchers for the windows

December 12th--Opening up the book of the night

December 13th--Z's ornament gifts

December 14th--Blowing out the Advent Candles--This Wreath has holiday decorations that use to belong to both my grandmothers :)

December 15th--Biggest Card Ever from Mimi and Grandpa

December 16th--Picnic in front of the tree

December 17th--Night Tree

December 18th--Looking for Christmas Lights

December 19th--Our Homemade Salsa Gifts

December 20th--Z's Homemade Vanilla Gifts

December 21st--Winter Solstice Dinner by Candlelight

December 22nd--5th Annual Cookie Decorating with my BF La

December 23d--Elf Beach Party

The rest of the photos will come after Christmas :)  Merry Christmas Everyone!!

A Special Gift for Daddy--Don't Look S

Z came to me a few weeks ago and asked me to help him make a special gift for Daddy.  He wanted to use the sewing machine to make it and so I suggested a pillow :)  Z picked out some mussel fabric from my box of extras (I used this to make my god son's quilt) and we set to work.  He helped me cut it, pushed the pedal as we sewed it together, turned it right side out and then stuffed it until it was nice and fluffy.

 

 He was so excited about the final product and can't wait to give it to S :)  He says that as soon as he runs downstairs Christmas morning, he is going to get Daddy's present and give it to him.   It was made with LOTS of love.

Making Keepsakes

Last month on Pinterest I found this tutorial and knew it was something I wanted to do. 

Sarah, from Clover Lane, took all of her Christmas card photos from over the years and made these keepsake ornaments to decorate her stairwell at Christmas.   I decided to do the same and took one of my favorite holiday pictures from the last three years and created my own ornaments for my stairwell.  Can you see one of them there between the two stockings??

I also made ornaments for three dear friends.  They were not hard to do, mine are far from perfect but  I learned a lot from the process and hope to do better next year :)   It was really fun to do and a great way to remember holidays past.

Elf Magic Fun

Our Elf Magic elves, Park and Molly, have been very busy since their arrival in the middle of the month.   Here are a few of the things they have done while we are asleep :)

Playing a game of Candy Land with some stuffed friends

The Elves made pancakes for themselves

The Elve's had a marshmallow bath

They decorated the dollhouse for Christmas

They built this castle and hid inside :)

They also snuck into Z's room and played with his pirate ship, decorated the house in Candy Canes, went on a beach vacation (I'll post that later), cooked S'more's over a candle, hung out in the freezer, had a marshmallow fight and hid in our tree.  It has been so much fun having them here and we are very sad that they have to go soon :(

A Gift for Lil'C

I am soooo excited about the present that S made for Lil' C.  He worked very hard on it, despite his very hectic schedule...the man works 24/7.  Z really enjoyed helping him and even I had a part in the project.  I think that is what I love most about it, we all had a hand in creating it for her :)  So here it is.....

It is a handmade doll cradle and she is going to LOVE it.  S built it, Z helped sand and paint it and I made her a pillow and mattress for it.  It was a true family effort.  I wrapped it up with her baby doll in it so she would know exactly what it is :)  The cradle rocks, S painted it white to go with her play kitchen and the mattress is pink......it is PERFECT.  I hope that she keeps it forever and one day passes it down to her children.  I don't think I can wait 4 more days!

Happy Winter Solstice and Happy Hanukkah!!

Our Night Tree

 One of my most favorite Christmas books is Night Tree by Eve Bunting.  It is the story of a family who has a real living Christmas tree in the woods that they visit each year to decorate for the wild animals.  S and I both love this story and decided that the kids were old enough for our own Night Tree.

Our tree is in the corner of our backyard, which we love because it is easy to see from the window.  Z and I made birdseed ornaments to hang (although only 1/8 of them survived), we bought a suet feeder and we sprinkled birdseed on the bottom of the tree.  We had hoped to make popcorn garland...maybe next year.

We went out to our tree in the middle of the afternoon (S said it would be too cold if we waited until night fall) and we decorated our tree.  We sang a Christmas carol, just like in the book and hoped the animals would enjoy their Christmas/Winter Solstice treat.

Now the waiting game begins....we have yet to see any animals at the tree but we hope that we will  :)

Homeless Stockings

S and I moved into this house almost 6 years ago.  It was February, I was pregnant with Z and our favorite room was the family room with it's vaulted ceilings and floor to ceiling brick fireplace.  The one thing the room lacked was a mantle and I asked S the first month we moved in to please install one.  Other things took up our time (removing wallpaper, rotted master bedroom deck, the birth of our first child etc.) and the mantle never came to be.  I was determined to have a mantle to decorate and hang our stockings from for our first Christmas in the house and so in early November, I ordered an unfinished mantle from Lowes.  S picked it up, stained it and had it up by Thanksgiving...my HERO!

The stockings were handmade out of felt and fashioned after the ones my mother made for all of us (pictured below).  They looked so nice hanging by the fireplace and I hoped they would mean as much to our children as the ones my mom made for us did.

This year we installed the pellet stove insert and I couldn't wait to spend Christmas morning in front of the warm cozy fire.  S and I talked about not using the stove on Christmas Eve night so we would not cook Santa could hang the stockings for Santa and not have a fire on our hands ;)  Unfortunately they would have to be boxed until then but I wanted to see how wonderful they would look next to the new stove.  Never did I imagine that they would be too long.  Two stockings fit on either side of the stove but that left two stockings homeless....what to do??

I looked into buying shorter stockings but money is not available right now for such things and besides I LOVED my stockings.  I could shorten my handmade stockings but they are already so skinny that I was afraid that they wouldn't hold much at all.  Then it hit me in the middle of the night (maybe the work of some angels in Heaven)....hang the stockings on the railings of the stairwell.  This is what we did as children until we moved to a house with a mantle and this is also what is done at S's parents house.  So off to Michael's we went with our coupon to buy green garland for the railings.  We also bought some silver ribbon to tie them.  Five dollars later and we had a wonderful solution that we are all very happy with!  I also hung some photo ornaments I made around the stockings (found the idea on pinterest) but more on that later :)

Where are your stockings hung???

Making Memories...

This was our 4th annual trip to the liquor store to see the trains!  It is one of our favorite outings and it is FREE (well visiting the trains is free, shopping for beer for daddy is not ;)).  Our elves, Park and Molly, joined us this time and we had such a good time.  The kids were so excited and then hit Friendly's for lunch :)  It was a very successful outing!