It’s SO CLOSE to being done. Matt rocks. I rock. Hopefully our sweet girl will LOVE IT!
Santa and His Elves Have Been Busy
Christmas PJs
I’ve been having too much fun to post very much! It’s been a whirlwind past few days but so nice. I’m pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I won’t be getting more than 6 hours of sleep until Christmas is over and I think I’m OK with that. Santa is almost done with his projects and mommy finished up a big one this weekend. I made my kiddos Christmas jim-jams!!
I found a great tutorial via Pinterest and used it to create some cute PJ bottoms out of fabric we selected at Joann’s. The process is pretty simple and the original author explains it way better than I could. But basically, you use a pair of pants your kid already has as a template for the new ones. You cut out the fabric in two pieces, one for each leg, folded, so the cutting is really easy. The pants are cuffed at the bottom, though she shows an option for making a ruffle too. I wish I’d done Tabby’s with the ruffle, but they were the first pair I did and I was a bit unsure of myself at that point. I also have some fabric for myself and I think there will be plenty leftover to make Tabby a pair from the same so maybe we can both have ruffles on those. Anyhow, they were super easy to make – maybe an hour? Even the first pair which I know I was slower at was pretty quick.
The coordinating tshirts are very similar to the applique tshirts I made them last year at Christmas time. To recap: purchase tshirt, use fusible interfacing to attach design to shirt, sew around edge of design. I had the kids pick what they wanted on their shirts (a shape, their initial, etc.) and then used the remaining PJ fabric to make the appliques. Super super simple and the kids are thrilled with them!
Christmas FUN
So I started planning and shopping for Christmas a LONG time ago. And I made good progress, really I did, but for the past two evenings, I’ve found myself up at crazy (for me) hours and feeling pretty stressed. So now I am going to take a step back and reflect on all of the FUN things we’re up to, not the things that are stressing me out (just a tad).
- We made these super cute thumb-print cards for Tabby’s teachers a couple of weeks ago. Both kids enjoyed them, but thank goodness my mom was there to lend a hand or I probably would have had multi-colored fingerprints all over my walls. Ha.
- We have been having a wonderful time getting together with friends. Parties last weekend, parties over the coming weekend and friends coming to town after Christmas. Yay! Some of these folks we only see socially around Christmas and it is always a treat. I think it would be lovely to try to see them more often throughout the year as well!
- Ben LOVES Christmas lights and every day as we drive home from his sitter’s house (or really as we drive anywhere) he exclaims over them. Everything is so much fun with a kiddo experiencing it for the first time.
- Our Christmas Cards turned out really well! I’m so happy with them. Hopefully, they’ll be arriving in some of your mailboxes in a couple of days.
- Don’t get me wrong – money is flying out the door at an alarming pace, but as we have for a few years now, we put away money every month to cover Christmas and so I don’t feel quite so much angst about the extra out-go.
- Speaking of money, despite not really having the time for it, the freelance project I’m working on will give us a little extra income and that is hard to beat this time of year!
- My coach at the gym is in full holiday mode and putting us through Christmas themed workouts – yesterday’s was the 12 days of Christmas (don’t know what today’s was as I was a slacker and slept in) though conspicuously lacking in partridges and filled with squats and lunges.
- Matt and I have some fun projects for the kids that I’m looking forward to working on this weekend. And we get to spend a little time together just the two of us, wrapping gifts and watching Christmas movies.
- I am very excited about some of the presents we’ve found for our loved-ones and I can’t wait to see them open them.
- Matt executed a perfect fried turkey on Sunday and I know he’ll knock it out of the park on Christmas.
- At the end of all the craziness, I get to spend a lovely relaxing week in the mountains with my family and some friends. Not too shabby.
Christmas Frenzy
We are fully in the Christmas swing of things and I confess to being a bit overwhelmed. My to-do lists even have to-do lists right now and there is an event practically every night of the week, even if it’s just a haircut. This weekend was a crazy fun blur. Friday my friend and I took the kids to see Disney On Ice. It was a huge hit in all its Toy Story 3 glory. That night, we decorated my parents’ tree with them. Saturday there was Christmas shopping, a manicure (me, yay!) and two Christmas parties. Sunday we had our friends over and fried up a turkey and chatted until late in the night.This week it’s more of the same. Haircuts, house prep, a dinner party on Thursday, Bunco Christmas party on Friday (can’t wait!). And more on the actual weekend. You can hardly read our December calendar for all of the events piled on it.
I was up until almost 11 last night (incredibly late for me on a “school night”) putting in a photo order thru Shutterfly, updating lists and sending a few final Christmas cards. The fact that I rolled out of bed at 4:45 and made it to the gym this morning was nothing short of amazing. Today I have to do grocery shopping (a 2-store event) on the way home from work and leave Matt to pick up the kids and get dinner on the table. And in the middle of it all, I have a bit of freelance work to do. I do it to myself of course, but really … what would I take away?
Salt Dough Ornaments
Last weekend, as part of our weekend festivities, we made salt dough ornaments with the kids. I’m sure I made them a few times as a kid, but I saw this pin on Pinterest and of course grabbed it for future reference. The pin image looked so much better than the painted messes of youth and it seemed so simple: make dough, stamp, bake. But when I delved further and actually looked at the pin link, it turns out it wasn’t salt dough at all but some sort of ceramic material. That is one of the bad things about Pinterest … you only have the word of the original pinner on what it is until you follow the link and read. But that’s one thing that’s great about Pinterest too, ideas build off one another. And so I decided to try it anyway with the salt dough.
Salt dough is super simple to make: 1 part salt, 2 parts flour, 1 part luke warm water (our parts were cups and that yielded dough for plenty of ornaments). Mix it up, knead it into dough. Ours seemed a bit sticky, so we added a bit more flour and got it to be the right consistency. This is much like bread dough … should stick a little, but not too much.
We rolled it, cut it and used stamps to decorate. The key with the stamps is to not press too hard because of course if you do you end up with a black square instead of a pretty stamp. A nice benefit of this is that you get a shallow indentation as well as ink mark. The effect is very nice. Then we used a skewer to make holes (Tabby also used the skewer to make little dots in hers) and baked at 200 FOREVER. Seriously, they’re still in my oven.
They turned out really cute and pretty similar to the original Pinterest photo. I’d love to experiment with some textures and I’d also like to have parchment on hand next time … the wax paper was eaten up by the salt in the dough and we couldn’t bake on it, so getting them off the cookie sheet was a might tricky, although they’re pretty strong.
Last word of advice … keep them away from your dog. Tabby found out the hard way that Loki likes the taste of salt ornaments, followed by a long visit to the toilet for some water.
Almost Wordless Wednesday
Guess what wasn’t in my gym bag this morning … oops!
2011 in Review: Books
2011 isn’t quite done yet, but I know that my reading time will probably be somewhat diminished over the next 25 days. This year, I set a goal for myself to read 60 books (it was 52 last year, though I actually finished 62) and when I finish my current book, that goal will be met! This of course does not include random little reads I’ve picked up like camping books and crafting books and cookbooks and it also doesn’t include anything I re-read including about 5 of Susan Elizabeth Phillip’s books. I am incredibly grateful that our local libraries have kept their excellent levels of content, particularly audio, even in face of massive budget cuts.
I went through my list (I’m on GoodReads and Shelfari if you’re interested) and was pretty surprised to notice that out of the 60+ books I read this year just a handful were non-fiction. I really enjoy non-fiction – good non-fiction that is but I think it’s hard for me to find. So much of the “non-fiction” out there is so politically slanted one way or the other, it’s hard for me to get into it. I don’t really do politics, don’t’ really like politics and that kills off many possible reads in the non-fiction sector for me. I am also in some ways reluctant to read non-fiction because of the things that have happened with some non-fiction authors like Greg Mortenson. I really enjoyed his books and I as bummed and felt swindled when I learned that his non-fiction was really mostly fiction anyhow. But I’m determined to try and find some more good non-fiction and read it in 2012.
But enough about next year. Here are my superlatives for 2011: Continue reading “2011 in Review: Books”
Ben on Skis
This weekend we endangered all the guests on Vail Mountain’s Bunny slope by taking Ben up for his first go. Just kidding … our little danger “baby” did very well and had loads of fun. He has been trying to get on skis since last year, hopping on Tabby’s whether she was currently using them or not and trying on his gear every chance he got. Undoubtedly, his beloved sister’s love for the sport influenced him somewhat, but he is naturally into anything physical, he probably would have been gunning to get up there in any case.
We did the typical things you do with a first timer his age … basically catch and release. We ride up the magic carpet with him and take turns catching and releasing. He had a huge smile on his face practically the entire time or at least until he got cold and tired. He was his typically fearless self and even a few minor spills didn’t flag his enthusiasm. But his balance was something to behold and he could right himself quite well 90% of the time he started to fall. He asked to go back later in the evening on his first day and again when we asked him the next morning, so Matt took him back for another go. He didn’t make it long, but he had fun.
Tabby had new skis to try out and whether it was because of rusty legs or the new skis and boots, she had a few more spills the first couple of trips down the hill than the last time she was up. But in no time she figured it out and she was doing really well, moving beyond the “pizza” or snowplow technique and well into a nice parallel technique, beginning to turn and stop in parallel. She was super excited for us to get her up on the big mountain and neither of us can wait to have a chance to do so, but this go-around it was about our friends and their boys and Ben having a first go. Beyond that, the snow was pretty cruddy and we didn’t want to use our own skis so we would’ve had to rend which is a pain. But we have every confidence that she will be tearing it up when we’re back in Jan.
The rest of the weekend was lovely. For years we have done a “cookie weekend” with our friends and then as kids came, the kids as well, and my parents and sister. This year we backed off the cookies (we only made one type) and mostly just played around, watched movies and relaxing. Matt’s travel schedule meant we had to cut out one evening, but it was still nice and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.
As always, it’s a bit hard to come back to reality. Oh well.
Countdown to Christmas
We have had a couple of advent calendars … a string of mittens and stockings that you can fill with things and an angel one with pockets from my childhood. But neither was utilized very well and neither really fits the aesthetic of our house. So this year, inspired by (as usual) Pinterest, I conned Matt into helping me make an advent calendar. My first idea was to use a piece of metal and get a few of those nifty magnetic tins and stick ’em to it. I’m sure it would have been easier, but those dang tins are EXPENSIVE (at least any I could find). But 24 of these from Hobby Lobby were ~$20. The board and spray paint another $20. For $40 it isn’t the cheapest, but I do hope to use it for years to come. Here’s how we did it.
Zoolights
Well it just wouldn’t be the holiday season without a trip to the Denver Zoo for Zoolights. They deck out the whole zoo with amazing Christmas lights, play beautiful music, and have some fun exhibits for the kids … animals, ice carvers, fire dancers and SANTA. The last two years we’ve taken advantage of the member’s preview weekend right after Thanksgiving. It’s been a bit warmer than mid December and a bit less crazy and generally awesome.
The kids, as usual, had a wonderful time. This was the first year Ben really got into it all, clamoring for “Mo Kissmas Lights!” – Matt is thrilled as he sees Ben as his future accomplice in Clark Griswold style Christmas light displays. He loved seeing all the animals and would grab our hands and pull us from exhibit to exhibit.
The kids got to ride on the train and the carousel. They got to check out their favorite animals at night. They got to have a lovely later-night sugary snack … and, to top it all off,
they got to meet the big guy … Santa himself.