Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone! Sneaking this post in while looking for a recipe (shhh...). I hope that all of you had a wonderful, thankful and glorious Christmas.

We had a lovely day. Everyone was thrilled with what Santa brought. Ethan loved his homemade hat from Nana, Max's favorite may be a TV snowboarding game, and Abbie has been playing (virtually) with her Webkins puppies (Precious and Baby) all day. It is wonderful having my parents and Aunt Suzy here with us as is our tradition. Makes the whole day even more special.

We have stayed quiet and low key - many of us still in sweats - and I love it. Time to reflect, play with new toys and old, and just be together. I even snuck in a nap!!!!!

I hope your day was all you wanted it to be.
Take care, God Bless, Merry Christmas ~
Jenny

In Honor of Spincerely (who tagged me!)

Hardly Dashing Through the Snow
A Christmas meme borrowed from Annarella Handmade.

1. Egg nog or hot chocolate? Totally hot chocolate, with minimarshmallows please.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? Wraps them every year. Each child has their own special wrap so everyone can tell whose is whose.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? I like the white ones.
4. Do you hang mistletoe? No
5. When do you put up your decorations? Over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? My husband.
7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? Christmas day dinners with the whole extended family.
8. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? No.
9. What kind of decorations are on your Christmas tree? All different kinds — from handpainted to Hallmark.
10. Snow! Love it or dread it? Love it except for driving in it. But mostly love it.
11. Can you ice skate? Only if you want to laugh so hard you wet your pants!
12. Do you remember your favorite gift? I have a tendency to love everything I get, so picking a favorite is too hard.
13. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you? Spending time with my family. Also, the days start getting longer again. Good answer, works for me too.
14. What is your favorite holiday dessert? cookies
15. What is your favorite holiday tradition? hmmmm... I think cutting down the tree together at Angevines (if you look closely there is even a pic of my kids on their website!)
16. What tops your tree? An angel.
17. What is your favorite holiday book? The Polar Express and Twas the Night Before Christmas and numerous versions of the Gingerbread Man. I still remember reading them all to my classes and having lots of fun with it.
18. What is your favorite Christmas song? Love them all. Really love, Winter Wonderland.
19. Candy canes? Yes. I wonder how many WW points they are.
20. Who do you tag? anyone else who would like to play - just leave your answers in the comment section or leave us a link to follow.

There Spincerely - it took me awhile, but I did it! ;)

Christmas Crafting

Oh good grief! I simply cannot make these pictures go the way I want them to! It's been so long since I posted... and I wanted to share some fun ideas with you. We are finally Christmasing up. Yes, darn it, Christmasing is too a verb!

ANYway... we have been doing some fun and easy crafts that I recommend. I know some of you did the altered clipboards - well here are some more things to try. Max loves making the ornaments (also called God's Eyes) with yarn shown along with the sticks needed to make them. A very easy craft that just uses two skinny craft sticks and some yarn.

Another favorite of everyone was using tracers from the Family Fun website and making ornaments. Now what we did was 1. paint them then let dry. 2. Cut them out. 3. Using Mod Podge and a paint brush put the podge where you want glitter and then quickly apply the glitter. Then let dry. A lot. 4. Put a big thick goopy layer of Mod Podge over the whole thing and let dry. The Podge will seal in the glitter and make the ornaments nice and strong for the tree. 5. Finally put a hole in the top with a hole punch and add some ribbon or yarn (if you can wrestle it away from the kiddies making God's Eyes) to hang on the tree.

Right now you should all hop over to the land of Spincerely and thank her for the links to the podge (read both by the way, they are different) and her turning us on to the God's Eyes project. She is a good one for the fiber arts. I am told it is a good project to use up leftover yarn for those of you cross-hobbyists out there. Thank you Spinny.

The yummy food project we worked on (delish!) was to make "sugar plums". This is the marshmallow on a stick things. They were really easy and really fun. Go here for the directions. The picture is of our trial run - but we are making more for the classes and for Christmas Eve at Meme's house.

I hope that you try some of these projects. Do you have any other fun craft ideas? We love trying new ones. The family Fun website has sold me on their magazine by the way. We are making cones to hand out at Christmas time too. Have the ingredients and if I have time I will post pictures later.

Good, I updated my blog. Now I only have 50 bajillion more things to do before Christmas.

Happy Holidays!!!

I Will NOT Give a Mouse a Cookie!

Toddler Manifesto

1. If I do not like the story you are reading I will throw myself on the floor and yell.

2. I do not care if I interrupt the group.

3. Embarrasing Mommy is fun and a real crowd pleaser.

4. My way or the Highway.

5. If you are tired and cranky - I will not nap.

6. If you are trying like crazy to keep me awake in the car so I will sleep later - I will nap.

7. No people, giant mice are not cool.

8. I do not want my picture taken with a walking rodent!

9. The book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie", even a dramatic retelling, is not something to keep me occupied more then 23.4 seconds.

10. Oprah is not good television, "Do-la the Explor-la" is good television.

11. If a Mouse takes a cookie that mommy and I baked at home FOR the mouse I will freak out to the point of snatching the cookie from said mouse. The group may find this hilarious, mommy will not.

12. Mommy and I are now banned from the library.

(insert a mommy groan here)

(ps - just kidding about the library ban - but barely!!!)

Updates

Well! It sure has been awhile. Today is one of the first days that my back isn't killing me (just hurts a little) since the week before Thanksgiving. So please forgive my backlog. To catch you all up... a little quizzy (stolen from Spinny) (feel free to take yourselves and add to comment section)(especially you Matt, I am sure it will be funny!) and some pics.

One Word Answers - No Exception and No Cheating
1. Yourself: sassy
2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend (spouse): loved
3. Your hair: short
4. Your mother: sweet
5. Your Father: funny
6. Your Favorite Item: paper
7. Your dream last night: unknown
8. Your Favorite drink: water
9. Your Dream Car: Mercedes
10. The room you are in: playroom
11. Your Ex: ????
12. Your fear: death
13. What you want to be in 10 years? happy
14. Who you hung out with last night? myself
15. What You’re Not: skinny
16. Muffins: blueberry
17. One of Your Wish List Items: Cricut
18. Time: now
19. The Last Thing You Did: sipped
20. What You Are Wearing: sweats
21. Your Favorite Weather: SUNSHINE
22. Your Favorite Book: thrillers
23. The Last Thing You Ate: taquito
24. Your Life: BUSY
25. Your Mood: marginal
26. What are you thinking about right now? blogging
27. Your car: messy
28. What are you doing at this moment: procrastinating
29. Your summer: over
31. Your relationship status: happy
32. What is on your TV? nothing
33. What is the weather like? ultragloomy
34. When is the last time you laughed? yesterday
35. Who do you tag? You

Okay, that was fun. And I did have the advance help of stealing some of spinny's answers along with the quiz. Aren't friends great!

Now for the pictures. Unlabeled and self-explanatory. More soon! :)