Happy Halloween!

Joe had way too much fun carving his pumpkin tonight!  He didn't really have a plan when he started, but it ended up looking a lot like Toothless from 'How To Train Your Dragon'.  Needless to say, the kids LOVED it!!!



Christmas Cards

Trying to take a 'good' Christmas card picture can be quite the challange when you have two children, one of whom is 4 years old and would rather make silly faces than a nice 'picture smile'! Here are a couple of the interesting ones we got...

And this one almost made the cut - I was just experimenting with my camera & didn't know it would turn out so cute or I would have had them in their Christmas PJs...

And so here's what we ended up with:



Ornament Wreath

So I was inspired by this post I decided I needed to make one of these wreaths.  It just looked too easy for such an amazing result.  And the best part - IT REALLY IS THAT EASY!!!  I had a friend over and we knocked this one out in about an hour and I totally love it!

Peppernut Time!!!

Christmas has not officially started in our family until we have made our peppernuts! Now that the kids are older, they are allowed to help (mommy can't stand to waste even a crumb of dough!) and really look forward to helping roll out the little balls of dough.

Such concentration!  And quite a bit of improvement in ball-rolling skills since last year :o)  We just made these two days ago, and there's already quide a dent in the bowl...  I just might end up making two batches this year (One batch makes ~20 dozen bite sized cookies)

Christmas Tree Time

So this year, we decided to stay local and cut a tree down from a lot rather than head up into the mountains.  We started off the day with the kids opening up the drawer on the advent box and there were actually two activities in there - get a tree and go to a Christmas concert!

So, we got everyone loaded into the car and headed out!  Unfortunately, mommy didn't really realize how COLD it was outside, so after a short time of wandering around the tree farm, the kids both started complaining about cold toes.  We pushed them as long as we could trying to find the 'perfect' tree which daddy cut down and the employees at the lot carted it back to our car for us!

While daddy carried Janika back to the car :o)

We got home and got it in the stand right away before changing clothes and heading out to a choral Christmas concert - with both kids actually enjoyed and sat relatively still through!  The next day, we moved the tree into the house in preperation for decorating - those pictures will come soon :o)

Janika's 'New' Hat

So, a couple of years ago I made a basic knit hat using red homespun yarn.  When I got a notice from Janika's school that she needed to wear a stocking cap for her upcoming Christmas concert I decided to 're-new' her old hat.  It was a little too short now, so I added a single crochet boarder using some white homespun yarn I had leftover from another project.  Then I happened to see this pin and decided to make a snowflake embelishment to add - I love it!!!  Turned out super cute, and took less than an hour.  Best part of all, Janika loves it and won't take the hat off :o)

Thanksgiving Mantel

So it's been a while since I posted anything to my blog, and I've been wanting to start it up again.  I guess there's no time like the present.  I'll start off with my Thanksgiving mantel decoration, since I was so happy with how it turned out!

We bought some accent moulding at Home Depot, spray painted it and used some removable adhesive to attach it to the front of the mantel.  I was inspired by this pin to make some dried/pressed leaf candles.  I found some wheat stalks at the Goodwill and used empty cleaned glass jars to display it.  Add in some leftover halloween pumpkins and green candles and... Done!  I love the way it turned out, and have gotten lots of compliments which always feels good :o)