Well, I have several ornaments that have meaning to me and I thought I’d share them. I saw this idea on an other blog so I can’t take credit for thinking of this blog idea myself!

1. Katelyn’s First Christmas Ornament.

Awww… wasn’t she cute? Being the first baby, I have several “Babies 1st Christmas 2005″ ornaments. But this one is my favorite.

2. Madelyn’s First Christmas Ornament.

Sigh. Another “awww…” moment. Cuteness! I’ll be buying Jocelyn an ornament this year!

3. Our First Christmas Together.

This is actually one of our engagement pictures. (JC Penneys. Before all the artsy, fun engagement pictures were popular.)  Our first “official” Christmas together was in 2000, the year we got engaged. I have an ornament that I consider to be our first married Christmas together but it doesn’t include a spot for a picture. 200o was our real first Christmas together.

4.Remembering Our Troops ornament.

I think my inlaws gave me this ornament. I love it because it helps me remember each year to think of and be thankful for all our service men and women who won’t get to spend Christmas with their families for my freedom. It’s also a reminder to pray for their safety and return home.

5.Sock Monkey Ornament.

My family will laugh and get a kick out of this ornament. I had a sock monkey just like this one when I was little that was my “lovey”. My great grandmother made it. I carried that thing around everywhere. I still have that poor, battered thing and it’s falling apart. I’ve had to keep it away from my girls because they want to play with it. But, if I let them, he’ll be in pieces in no time!

6. “Melissa” Ornaments.

My parents gave me several ornaments with my name on it the year before I got married. It reminds me of my last Christmas living at home with my parents. I think my mom gave me this one!

7.Ornament From One Of My Favorite Students.

When I was a preschool teacher I got many wonderful gifts from my little students. I received this cute ornament from one of  my favorite the toddlers I had in my class when I was a toddler teacher. I just love the simplicity and quality of this ornament. Wait. Did I say favorite? Of course we didn’t have favorites! Psshhh.

8. Katelyn’s First Homemade Ornament.

Katelyn made this angel when she was four and at her little preschool she went to three days a week. It’s missing a wing but I think it’s so cute. Maddy has yet to make an ornament but when she does, I’ll be hanging it up!

9. Dunkin’ Donuts Ornament.

This ornament was given to me by either my inlaws or my friend. If you know me, you know how much I LOVE Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Mmm.

There you have it! What are some of your favorite ornaments?

A couple of years ago I learned about the Elf On The Shelf. I thought it was a really cute idea. You buy this little elf and hide him around your house each night so your kids can find him in the morning. You tell the kids that the elf is “always watching” and will tell Santa if they are naughty. The kids enjoy trying to find the elf’s new location every day and are more aware of their behavior and how it might affect what they will get for Christmas. I thought this was a cute idea so we got one. My girls named him “Diego”.

See him? He’s trying to blend in with all my other ornaments, waiting to be found by Katelyn and Madelyn.

We liked the Elf On The Shelf idea until we started thinking about how wanted to “do” Christmas for our family as our kids were growing up. Did we want Santa and his Elf to be the main focus? Did we want our girls to base their behavior on “Santa watching” and being put on the naughty girl list and therefore get less presents for Christmas? After our girls started getting  a little older and understanding more what Christmas was about we really wanted to make Christmas only about Jesus. And family. And thankfulness.

We were finding it hard to focus on Jesus when the girls were thinking about Santa and getting lots of Christmas presents. Katelyn started really asking about Santa so we finally told the girls the truth. They weren’t really bothered by it. Plus, they were still young enough for it not to rock their world that the jolly man didn’t really exist! We did give them the order that they may NOT TELL THEIR FRIENDS THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA.  We explained that many children still believe in Santa and that they would ruin the surprise if my girls walked around telling their friends he doesn’t exist. I know that “doing Santa” is a personal decision for each family and it’s not my job (or my children’s) to take away that choice from them.

We haven’t erased Santa completely from our home.  We are actually going to learn about Saint Nicholas and who he was and where Santa originated from. The character of Santa is actually derived from a man who did some wonderful and charitable things!

We still read stories about Santa and watch Christmas cartoons with him in it. Then there’s the Christmas songs on the radio. But we do all of these things knowing  that the spirit of Christmas is Jesus. And we read lots of books and listen to lots of Christmas songs that talk about Jesus’ birth and real reason for the season. I will share some of the Christ centered Christmas activities we’re doing in a later blog post.

These are some thoughts we had that really helped make the Santa/no Santa decision for us:

1. Do I want my kids being good because it’s the right thing to do and GOD is watching? Or because an Elf is going to tell Santa about how good or bad my kids are being and that reflects on how many gifts they are getting. I didn’t want my girls only focused on getting lots of gifts.

2. How could I, in good conscious, let Santa play the starring role on the day we celebrate our Savior’s birth? I felt like trying to do both would only confuse our girls.

3. In trying to teach our girls responsibility with money, being happy with less and being thankful for what we do have, I want them to know it is us who buys them their gifts. Not only do we want to set a good precedent but I don’t want Santa getting credit for our hard work! And trust me, our girls get plenty of gifts.  Whether they get 5 or 15 gifts we want them to be thankful for their gifts and understand that hard earned money was spent on their gifts. And that our family isn’t going into debt so they can have a ton of gifts to open.

4. We want them to understand that their behavior is not going to affect how many gifts they get. Being extra good isn’t going to get them more and more gifts and being “bad” isn’t going to make us buy them less. We’re not going to hold a grudge the whole month of December for any kind of naughty behavior and on Christmas morning give them a lump of coal. Our parenting should reflect love, mercy and grace. We deal with naughty behavior as it happens, they apologize and all is forgiven. We don’t keep a Naughty Or Nice list.

The elf still makes his appearance each Christmas season. But it’s not to keep tabs on my girls’ behavior. Each night I hide him before I go to bed and the girls can’t wait to wake up the next morning and try to find him. Then once he’s found they hide him for me. I think this will be a fun tradition to start.

I write this blog post to share with you how we celebrate Christmas and “do” Santa etc. Not to judge or tell others how they should do it. As I mentioned before, each family has to celebrate Christmas as they feel lead to. I hope I was able to coherently and concisely convey my heart on this subject!

How do you celebrate Christmas? Do your kids believe in Santa?

*Photo courtesy of Photo Bucket

Yay! It’s that time again. The halls are decked, the tree is (almost) up, Christmas music is on and I’m starting to see Christmas lights up everywhere. It’s Christmas time!!

As usual our family is trying to find ways to make sure we celebrate the true meaning of Christmas and don’t go into this season rushed, over committed and in debt. I’ve already had to say “no” to a bunch of things. And, oh, the guilt!! Being pregnant and trying take care of a baby and homeschool a 4 and a 6 year old is pretty much all I can handle right now!

Are you the type who has a ton of activity during the month of December?  We did one year and it was the WORST. Mike and I were fighting all the time. We were constantly rushing out the door to be here and there. Even Christmas day was stressed. We both said ” never again!!”. So, even though I love to do all sorts of Christmas-y things we aren’t filling our weekends with places to go.

This year we have our homeschool co-op Christmas party which should be a lot of fun. We’re going to a nearby town’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Our church choir sings for it and it’s always a fun event. A friend and I are attending our church’s Christmas concert and dinner. Usually I would be singing with the choir but this year I had to choose between singing in the choir or taking my girls to AWANA so I chose AWANA. I am still looking for maybe one or two other fun Christmas-y events to go to but that’s it.  I have a bunch of fun projects to work on for our homeschooling time. The girls are going to make some gifts this year and we’ll do some baking.

I wanted to share with you some of the ideas we’ll be using this year.

1. We’ll be making this neat printable advent chain this year from Spell Outloud Homeschool.

(UPDATED! I had the wrong advent chain posted before! Oops.)

*Photo courtesy Spell Outloud Homeschool

LOVE the daily scriptures to read with my girls.

2. I really also like this Jesse Tree by the Life….Your Way blog.

*Photo courtesy of Mandi Ehman

I’ve seen other Jesse Tree ideas and they were a little too hard for my girls at this age. This is perfect for them and much simpler. The girls have been collecting twigs and sticks for our Jesse Tree.

Each day we’ll do one ring from the Advent chain and one ornament from the Jesse Tree to start out our morning. I can’t wait!

3. Some crafts/baking we’ll be doing:

This adorable craft stick Christmas tree

Snow globes made our of baby food jars.

These beautiful and delicious looking candy cane marshmallow treats.

Ice Cream Cone Christmas Trees! How cute are these??

By the way, these are all ideas I got from Pinterest. Sooo in love with this site. You can check out  and follow my boards and especially my Fun Holiday Crafts/Cooking For Kids and Holiday Ideas For Mommy boards. I’ll be pinning away the cute stuff I find!

Here are some great blog posts with wonderful Christmas ideas and resources:

30 Advent Ideas from The Duty Chronicles

Christmas Ideas and Planners from The Peaceful Mom

101 Days Of Christmas by Life…Your Way

You can also check out the crafts I did last year with my girls here and here.

I’ll be sharing more ideas and resources as I go along! Once I get my house all decorated and my tree up I’ll share some pictures of that. I pray this Christmas season is full of joy and celebration of Jesus this year.

How’s your Christmas season looking? Are you stressed already?? What activities and events will you be participating in?

]]> http://www.simplymelsblog.com/simply-christmas-crafts-and-ideas/feed/ 1 http://www.simplymelsblog.com/christmas-gift-recap-extravaganza/ http://www.simplymelsblog.com/christmas-gift-recap-extravaganza/#comments Mon, 17 Jan 2011 17:44:22 +0000 SimplyMel http://www.simplymelsblog.com/?p=2757 I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile. I don’t know about you, but I’m nosy, and enjoy seeing what people got for Christmas. I’m not sure this list is going to encompass every.single.thing. I and the girls got but I’ll make sure to get the highlights in. This list is a mix of gifts from us, my inlaws, my parents, my sister and my brother/sister in law.

Here are the girls opening their stockings first thing Christmas morning:

Drum roll please….

The Girls’ Gifts:

Fur Real Friends Dogs

Disney Princess Dolls Gift Set

La La Loopsie Dolls

Pillow Pets: Katelyn wanted the unicorn and Maddy wanted the ladybug.

Step 2 New Traditions Kitchen: I  didn’t realize how small the kitchen was. I was a tad disappointed when we opened it. It was on the young side for Katelyn. She’s actually taller than this thing. Maddy will enjoy playing with it and Jocelyn can play with it as she gets older. I was excited because this was on sale at Target AND we had a coupon! I guess we should look at the measurements the next time we try to buy the girls a kitchen….

Various Barbies and Barbie clothes.

Disney Belle with rose dress and Beast/Prince Dolls: The girls had wanted these two for awhile. Belle plays music and the roses on her dress go in and out while the music is playing. They’re afraid of the Beast head that goes over the prince so they don’t play with that part!

Leapster2 plus 3 games: Katelyn received this and she LOVES it. I have to make her put it away several times a day or else she’d play it all day long.

Leap Frog Scribble And Write: This is Madelyn’s. She thinks this is her equivalent of the Leapster.

Fisher Price Kid-Tough Digital Camera: Katelyn loves to take pictures so she was thrilled to get this. We were thrilled at how chunky and solid it is!

Tea Cup Pigs with extra clothing and accessories: Have you seen these? They’re pretty cute!

Calico Critters Hedgehog and Mouse family: ( I am in LOVE with this line of toys. They are adorable! Aren’t these just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? Click on the link to see all of the different little families available for purchase. I want to eventually get several more families for the girls. They are just too cute!)

Katelyn got the Pickleweeds Hedgehog Family and Maddy got the Norwood Mouse Family.

Several Tag  Reader Books.

Zhu Zhu Pets and Zhu Zhu pet beauty salon.

B. Critter Clinic: Maddy got this: It’s so cute and right up her alley.

Parents Little MD in  Carrying Case: Katelyn got this. She’ s fascinated and morbidly interested in all things medical. So, we thought this would be something fun for her to pretend with. As of right now, all of her “patients” are always dying. I hope we get past this phase!

Various art supplies bought with gift card.

Disney Princess storybooks that include the girls’ names in the story.

Here’s a picture of my girls with some of their loot:

My Gifts:

A Nook!! I received this from my inlaws. I love it!! I’ve read several books on it already. It’s so easy to use and much easier to read in bed than a book. I could never find  a comfortable way to hold my book while reading in bed. Anyone else have that problem?

24 Piece Pyrex  Storage Set: This was also from my inlaws. I was thrilled to get this as well. I’ve wanted to get rid of my plastic containers for awhile and this gave me a head start in getting there. A post about that coming soon!

Miscellaneous Beauty care items

Gift Card to the Outback (For both Mike and me)

Black Ugg knock off boots from Target ( I’m going to get myself a brown pair too. I love these boots. They are super warm and comfy for my pregnant feet. I don’t wear any other shoe when going out right now) I bought these with a gift card from my sister. Thanks, Steph!

My parent’s gift to me and Mike was flying in for the week of Thanksgiving. It was an awesome gift!

So, there you have it. I worked long and hard on this post so you could “ooh” and “aah” over our Christms gifts. So go ahead…. start “oohing”!!

*wink*

TWO days until Christmas!!!  How exciting is that?

Even though we’ve had a rough few days with the stomach virus and migraines we still have the Christmas spirit.  Mike now has the stomach virus and is laid out in bed.

Hopefully we’ll be well by Friday and we can have a sick-free Christmas!!

It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas around here.

I decorated for Christmas very simply this year:

Due to the lack of room I couldn’t take out of all my decorations. But, I think I like it better this way. Less for me to put away!!

This is where I hang all of the wonderful Christmas cards I get every year.

If you sent me one, can you find yours? *wink*

We’ve also continued to focus on Christmas activities during our homeschooling time. We’re taking next week off!

Our self-drawn Nativity Scenes. I loved my girls’  imaginations and creativity on this project we did.

Here is their rendition of The Nativity Scene with Barbies and Bitsy Baby playing star roles:

This week we’re trying to get school in around the sickness that’s going around our house.  We’re doing some baking and making birthday cards for Jesus.Gifts are almost all wrapped.

Christmas is coming and we’re sooo ready! It’s really looking like Christmas around here…

This post is linked to Wordful Wendnesday hosted by Parenting By Dummies.

Today we did two different crafts. One was to enhance our Bible lesson and one was specifically for our Tuesday arts and crafts time. ( I don’t do a craft every day. Usually Tuesday’s and Fridays are the days we do artsy stuff) The girls loved that they got to do two crafts today.

For our Bible lesson we did “The Legend Of The Candy Cane.” If you’ve never heard the story you can find it here. I actually like the story we used today better. This was the best link I could find in a jiffy. We got our story from a pamphlet passed out at a Live Nativity we went to this weekend. It has more detail than the link I provided. I thought it would make a perfect Bible lesson!

The candy canes I printed out are from here. Then I had the girls glue the candy cane cutout to paper and decorate the red stripes with red tissue paper. They did this as I was reading the candy cane story to them.

Then I let them eat a small candy cane as a treat. I also asked them what symbols they remembered from our story of the candy cane.  Madelyn needed a little more help with remembering…

Pardon my mess in the background. We’ve been spreading out at the dining room table since my school room still has the bed my parents slept in two weeks ago for their visit. I’m “patiently” waiting for my husband to remove it so we can continue doing school in our school room.

The craft we did for our actual craft time today was taken from this Advent lesson and craft from Impress Your Kids. Yesterday we did a lesson on how Jesus’ birth gave us HOPE and that he is the LIGHT of of the world. Today we did the craft that goes with it.

We made candle holders out of jars and dyed rice. Amanda from Impress Your Kids used beautiful colored sand, nicer candles and jelly jars. I didn’t have any of those things so I dyed the last of my brown rice with food coloring (white is preferred but I had none) and cleaned out my fridge for some jars! Wow, did I have a lot of old jarred stuff in my fridge. I used rice because Amanda mentioned that as an alternative to the colored sand.

I only had enough rice for two colors so we chose red and green.

Per a tutorial I found online ( don’t remember where!!) I put rice in ziploc baggies, threw in a few drops of food coloring in the bag with some water. I shook it all around to mix it and let it sit for a few minutes. It doesn’t need a lot of time at all. 5-7 minutes is plenty. Once you see the rice is dyed you can pour it out. Then I poured the rice through a small colander to drain the water out and laid the rice out on paper towels to let it dry. It takes a while to dry and and giving it some turns with a spoon helps it go faster. I recommend you do this the day before if you’re going to do this craft with rice.

Then I let the girls go to town layering the two colors of rice in their jars.

The finished product! I made a little label to tape onto the jar that said ” Jesus is our HOPE, the LIGHT of the world.”. Then we put tea lights at the top and lit them. This craft obviously represents that Jesus is our light and the light  of the world. If you’re really crafty and good with computers you could print a nice, decorative sticky label to apply to your jars. As you can guess, I, uh…. didn’t have printable labels.

The back, so you can see the layered effect better.

Madelyn’s jar was a little wider and I didn’t end up having enough rice to fill up her jar. But, she didn’t care!

We really enjoyed this craft and I think these jars make a wonderful addition to our Christmas decorations.

This post is linked to the Hip Homeschool Hop hosted by The Homeschool Chick and The Tuckers Take Tennessee.

For my Top Ten today I’m sharing with you my Christmas wish list.

Think I’ll get any of these??

1. An iPad.

2. A maid.

3. A laundry fairy.

4. A spa day.

5. Shopping spree for fashionable maternity clothes.

6. Ugg Boots. ( I would love to get a pair of these! They look so comfy)

7. A personal chef that cooks delicious, healthy meals that everyone will like.

8. A bigger kitchen with new appliances and an island.

9.  A new cell phone. Preferably an Android or iPhone. I’m not picky.

10. I guess I should say” Peace On Earth?

This post is linked to Top Ten Tuesday hosted by Oh Amanda.

Join in the fun!

To be honest, I’ve kind of been in an energy low for the past three weeks or so.  Yes, I know I’m pregnant. It comes with the territory. However, this low energy, non-motivation seemed bad even for almost 6 months of pregnancy. I’ve just been a bum! Last week I was lucky if I brushed my hair most days. I think I skipped a couple of showers too.  I went over to my neighbors house in clothes I would never have been caught dead in!

Picture this: Me in some random, unflattering t-shirt, capri yoga pants ( because they were stretchy and I can still wear them) long, white compression socks and bright pink crocs! That’s pretty much how I look all the time at home now. I’d be so embarrassed if someone stopped by. I think it’s because I really have no good, casual maternity clothes. I don’t have many maternity clothes period!  It feels like a such a chore to find ones that actually fit my short frame. I usually have to order them online.

Boo.

And sleeping! Boy…did I sleep a lot. It was like I was in my first trimester again. I’ve  actually been sleeping in a lot here lately. Not just last week!  Way later than I usually do. Some mornings I don’t get out of bed until 8 am. And even then I feel like I have to drag myself out.

Did I mention I’ve been eating like a pig? My appetite has grown! But only for stuff I probably shouldn’t been eating as much. This week I’m focusing on eating healthier foods that will give me more energy.

I haven’t had my morning devotional time in about three weeks either. And I think my mood is missing that. I haven’t spent nearly enough time in prayer and I think it’s affecting me. For some reason I can’t get into the habit of reading my Bible at a different time of day. I have it set in my mind that it has to be in the morning before everyone gets up and if I miss that time frame…..my opportunity has passed. And since I’m not having my devotional time it also means I’m not having my blogging time either. I’ve been doing a lot of my blogging while Katelyn is doing worksheets during school time.

Since Jocelyn’s arrival is really going to  drastically change my schedule I guess I need to learn some flexibility!

Aside from my foul mood and funk the Christmas spirit has been alive in our house.

We saw  a great Live Nativity this past Friday night. Here the girls are warmly dressed and ready to go.

They have their coats on backwards, in case you didn’t notice.

On Saturday we went caroling at the Senior Center and in the town center where our church is. We sang for the Tree Lighting ceremony. It was so fun to be able to do that as a family and with our church family. We got to sing carol about the true meaning of Christmas to hundreds of people.

After all the trees were lit, Santa came around on a fire truck with a bunch of other fun characters.

Here’s our Christmas Tree. I call it the “ghetto tree” because half of the lights on our pre lit tree burned out this year so we had to string lights with a green cord on our white tree. The girls also had a huge hand in decorating it. And let’s just say *cough* that it’s definitely not how I would have decorated it. But they love it and had fun. And that’s what matters most.

How is your Christmas season going? Have you had any “funk” moments yet?

Seriously.

I get so excited when it comes time to pick out the design I want and  the pictures I want on my Christmas card. I pour over designs and look at several different websites offering custom made picture cards.

And, of course, I want to give one to EVERYBODY!!

I love sending them. I love getting them. Oh,how I love getting them! During the month of December you’ll literally see me skipping to the mail box to see how many Christmas cards I got that day. Then I eagerly open them up and read them. Then put them in my special spot each year.

S.e.r.i.o.u.s.l.y.

I’m annoying like that.

There’s just something so special and festive about Christmas cards!!  There’s just one downfall to my addiction:

It’s expensive!!!!

That’s why I jumped on this offer that Shutterfly is giving to bloggers! I blog about my favorite Shutterfly Christmas card designs and I get 50 free cards???

WOOHOO!

Shutterfly has a great selection. It was hard to find a favorite design. Or two. Or…three.

I usually like to choose a religious picture Christmas card because I do think Christmas should be about Jesus, faith and family. Shutterfly had some cute ones like this one:

and this one.

This is my  general criteria for a Christmas card that I’m going to send out:

1. Has to say “Merry Christmas” or ” Christ Our Savior Is Born”  or something that portrays the true meaning of Christmas.

2. I usually like cards with more than one picture. (Since I usually can’t decide which picture I like most for my Christmas cards)

3. I need to be able to add my own little message.

As you can see, both of my choices above fit the bill perfectly.

If you’re the type who doesn’t do picture cards, Shutterfly has a ton of cute, inexpensive regular Christmas cards to choose from.

Are you the type who loves Christmas address labels?

I am!  Christmas only comes once a year so I like to go all out. Shutterfly has so many to choose from I’d have a hard time picking just one design.

Are you a Christmas card lover like me? Do you have any specific criteria for them?  Or do you just scrap the whole Christmas card thing all together?

It’s really starting to look like Christmas around here! We had a big snow storm this weekend and everything is white. That’s nice for Christmas and all, but it’s welcome to skidaddle it’s way on out of here once January comes.

Keeping this holiday month simple this year was tough but we’ve managed so far! I’ve purposefully made myself  not stress about certain silly things and I’ve made myself say “no” to other things. For instance, I wanted to do all sorts of different baking the past two weeks. Well, I left it for the last minute so I was only able to do a little bit. I had planned on making some treat baskets for my Chiropractor’s office and hair salon as a “thank you”. I’ve been going to both for a long time now and I’ve had the same hair dresser for several years! Both are small businesses with a handful of employees so I wanted to share some Christmas cheer with them. Well, several sets of events led me to not being able to do that. And, boy, did I struggle with guilt! And I kept trying to think of something quick and inexpensive I could do for both (I had appointments at both places on Friday). Fruit basket? Gift cards? But I scratched both ideas because both would have been too expensive. I finally decided that I just wouldn’t be able to give them anything this year and that it was really ok. I gave my hairdresser an extra big tip and that was it. I could have let that bug me for days and I decided to let it go.

Another example: Katelyn had a $5 gift swap at her school and I hadn’t reread the newsletter before the day of their Christmas party. So, thinking I had all the correct info on the swap down pat, I bought a $5 toy at CVS on our way to the school. It was a little dog in a pinkish box that when you pulled it’s tail and vibrated and moved all over a flat surface. I thought, hey, this is perfect for boy or girl although with the pink box I hope it goes to a girl. I didn’t know how the teachers were going to do the swap and figured they’d choose the children that the gifts went to. Or something. Boy was I wrong! I got there and was the only one who hadn’t wrapped their gift and didn’t seem to realize that the name of the child( a boy) our gift was going to was taped inside Katelyn’s take home folder.

Duh.

So, I told the teachers I’d go home and wrap the gift and bring it back with the tag on it. They were very gracious and said that was fine. I’m sure they were thinking  why do parents not read the newsletter?? WHY??. I used to think the same thing when I was preschool teacher. And I did read it! I just didn’t read it correctly. And it was a long time ago. So I’m all angry with myself and thinking that dog is way too girly for a boy. I don’t want him being disappointed in a gift from Katelyn. So, I was going to return the dog to CVS and find something else more appropriate for a boy, in my opinion. Except that, I had already had other errands I was planning on running during her school time and doing that was going to throw a kink in my plans. I started feeling stress creeping in. Over a stupid toy! So I made myself calm down and decided that dog was perfectly fine for that boy. It wasn’t going to stay in the pink box. Once it was out it looked like any small, stuffed dog. So I went home, wrapped it, slapped a bow and the tag on it and took it back to Katelyn’s school. And  didn’t give it another though.

Ahh… that felt good.

We had no Christmas parties to attend this year and I decided to not host anything of my own.  We’ve had most Saturdays free, which has been nice! We’ve had to do minimal rushing. It’s been kinda nice!  Oh, we’ve had church and school Christmas events but those have been fun and pretty stress free. All Katelyn’s teachers (Dance included) got gift cards from us this year. All of our gifts are wrapped, except for a couple of things. So, now I’m ready for a fun time with my parents. I’m sure we’ll be doing a  lot of running around but it will be fun running around.

Here are some pictures I’ve taken recently-

Baking Cookies

Since I have a tiny kitchen and not much counter space I decided to set up on their train table.

Madelyn got a little too care free with the green glitter….

The end result!!

Wrapping Paper Fun!!

The girls really wanted to wrap stuff of their own so I gave them some old wrapping paper and let them go to town. There are several “gifts” under the tree that they wrapped. I have a feeling I’ll recognize these gifts…..

I have to mention that Madelyn is really good with scissors. When I worked in preschool one of the skills we worked hard on with the kids was cutting correctly with scissors. It was hard for some of the children to hold the scissors correctly. Madelyn is a pro!

And last but not least, I just had to share this picture frame. As many of you know, when we went to Texas in October we had pictures taken with our whole family. I had ordered a picture of my sister and her family and my brother. I was having the hardest time finding a good frame for those two pictures until I came upon this one at Kohl’s. It was in the clearance section ($2.50),  it was perfect and it was the only one! The colors of the frame go perfectly with the colors in the photos and I love the words on it. I had to post it so my sister and brother could see themselves proudly displayed on my wall. Isn’t it perfect?

I’ll be putting a small post up the day before Christmas but until then, see ya!!