Holy Lack of Internets Batman!

Hey everyone! First all, Merry Christmas! Secondly, I'm sorry I've not been posting this month! My internet has been down with various issuses and I havent had access to the net or anything else. I'm only on now because I'm at my parents house for Christmas. I'll be back as soon as I can be! If there are any questions, comments, etc. I'll try to be back as soon as I can be! Take care everyone!

25 Days of Christmas

Since I'm really feeling the holiday spirit this year I want to really get my girls into it also. Along with our yummy advent I really want to teach them about the traditions and all the great lessons of the season. I've come up with a list of things I'd love to do each day. Three of our days are birthdays so they were easy enough! These probably wont be in order since some of these will have to be done when they can be.

1. Decorate the Christmas Tree
2. Put up lights outside
3. Listen to Christmas Music
4. Watch a Christmas Story
   
5. Make Christmas Cards
6. Take Christmas Pictures
7. Attend Neveah's party
8. Read The Night Before Christmas
9. Make homemade playdoh snowmen
10. Make Gingerbread houses
11. Watch a Christmas Carol
    
12. Go look at Christmas Lights
13. Attend Meghan's party
14. Write Santa letters
15. Go visit Santa @ the Mall
16. Watch Polar Express
    
17. Play Christmas Bingo
18. Go to Grandmas for Christmas Jammies
19. Christmas with Papaw's side of the family
20. Daddy's Birthday
    
21. Watch Prancer
22. Read Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer
23. Color Christmas Pages
24. Attend Kaleigh's party
25. Its Christmas!!!!
    

I can't wait to do these things and maybe more! Can you believe we have 3 birthday's in the family in December, plus Lily's little friends birthday?! Busy Busy Busy! January has almost as many birthdays but not quite!

Santa's Reindeer Games Freebie

Download Santa's Reindeer Games Here

Here it is! My first Christmas kit for this year. Inspired by T'was the Night Before Christmas and all the reindeer's names. Kit is 300dpi. There are 9 papers and 33 Elements. There will be a coordinating kit released in the upcoming days. Its like going from the North Pole to Home! If you download please leave a comment, or better yet a layout using my kit! That's all I ask :)

Advent Calendars

Last year, My mom, my sister, and I recreated our own advent calendars for our kids to mimic a design my mom made for us to use as an advent calender for literally as long as I can remember. Our old ones were a snowman, a Santa, and a Christmas tree. Each year my brother, sister and I fought over which ones we got to use.

To prevent this, when we made them last year we decided on ginger-breads that were pretty much identical. These are super easy to make. I made them and I can't sew to save my life!
These work best with candy canes or candy that you can tie a bow around the wrapper. My mom says we used to make it especially hard for her since none of us really liked candy canes or peppermints. Luckily for me, my kids love them! hehe They also make tons of flavored candy canes that they didn't use to.

I'm sure you could find small toys to do it with if you didn't want to use candy. But that will be more expensive.

Here is how we made ours!

Materials:

• Long piece of felt in any color you choose. Ours is 30" long and 3.5" wide
• 25 12" pieces of a thin yarn. It needs to be long so you can tie on the candy and still tie a bow!
  
• Light Brown felt
  
• White thread
• a needle
• Pipe cleaners
• large jingle bell
• Hot Glue
  

We started with our ginger-breads. We cut out the shape of our gingerbread from light brown felt. Each gingerbread you make will need two per advent. We put them together and started doing a blanket stitch around the edge. You could easily do a basic stitch for this, we just thought the blanket stitch looked really nice! When we had him sewn half way we inserted a pipe cleaner stick man into our gingerbread. This made it so our gingerbread can move his arms legs and even bow his head if the kids so choose! Our ginger-breads hold red and white pipe cleaner candy canes. Then we finished sewing up the gingerbread. Adding small knots for the eyes and button (you could add real buttons that would be cute!!) and a small mouth. Since my sister and I have girls we also added bows to the ginger-breads heads with red string to match our felt.

Next we cut a 30" long 3.5" wide piece of red felt. Any color you want would work though! It looks best if the felt is the same width as your gingerbread mans waist, so keep that in mind! Next we hot glued our gingerbread girls to the top of red felt, positioning it just above its armpits, down to its waist so the legs still move freely of the felt. Our felt is tapered at the end. We like how it left the nice point to hang the bell from.

Nearly done! this next part took a while. Not too bad but a tad repeatative for someone who lacks patience like me hehe. Spacing them about 1" apart sew the yarn pieces on one at a time. Tie a knot before the bow so they wont come off when they kids are removing candy (boy I hope that made sense!)

When you have 24 tie on the jingle bell with the remaining piece of yarn.

To hang them we made rings out of pipe cleaners and sewed them on the back of the ginger-bread person. Make sure this is re-enforced well cause they get HEAVY once candy is on them.

Tie on the candy and hang and hang on December 1st and enjoy this yummy way to count down to Christmas!

Final Tip: Help small kids untie the bows if you use wrapped candy. Getting the knot tied around a small piece of plastic is sometimes tedious work!

If you have any questions, feel free to email me or comment and I'll do my very best to answer them!

Busy and Sickly Week!

I have been sick for the past week or two. Its driving me up the wall. It just wont go away! I cant shake it off! Any enviroment change sets off the coughing. Which makes Thanksgiving with 14 different smokers in the house a coughtastic event! It was really fun and yummy though. As long as my babies (yes this includes the husband! ;) ) don't get sick, then I'll put up with being sick myself!

While everyone is out shopping today I'm sitting here at home with my kiddos planning the fun for the next couple weeks! 25 days of Christmas and stuff to do on those 25 days! Can you believe 3 of those things will be going to peoples birthday parties! In the week before Christmas our family (and extended family) has not 1, not 2, but 3 birthdays? Leads to quite a hectic time. Especially for my sister who has two children birthdays and Christmas in December to stress about! I'd be a basket case!

Lily got invited to her first birthday party recently. Its in December too. She cant wait! In the next day or two I thought I would let Lily help me make matching friendship bracelets with my beads on hand (I've got tons). What little girl doesn't love jewelry?

Off to finish making the advent list!

OH! How do you like the new Christmas layout? Some pieces are from my upcoming coordinating scrapbook kits! Eight Tiny Reindeer & Night Before Christmas :)

Love Bird Bedroom Inspirations

I have to decorate my bedroom. Its never ever been officially done. I've finally figured out what I want to do with it! (About time!) I want it pretty relaxing. We spend a majority of the time in here since both our computers are in here too. I wanted it kinda cutesy... My hubby may pretend to care... but I could paint the room bright pink and he wouldn't care. I was tempted to do chocolate and pink just cause I could. But I think my new plan is much better.

As of right now these are the colors (which may vary according to monitor and color settings)


The lovely yellow "Bumblebee" will be on the ceiling. This should help lighten the room from the darker colors.

The lighter "Blue Paradise" will be on the walls that have the windows and the door. The yummy "Mesquite Tan" is the trim (and tree!) color. I love the color of chocolate and blues (and pinks and mint for that matter!)

"Blue Coast" will be on the wall opposite the double windows. I think this will make all the colors pop and I hope they will work well together in the space.

If I add hearts to my lil bird accents I plan to do I'll probably do them in white.

Here is an inspiration board of other bird decor I'd like to imitate myself
.

The bed is kinda a "in my wildest dreams" thing! hehe I cant wait to do it all, but it will have to wait til after Christmas I'm sure!

The Host is becoming a Movie!

I'm pretty sure I've never mentioned on here how much I love Twilight Saga. After I finished it I thought my husband was gonna kill me cause I couldnt stop talking about it and surfing the interwebs, blogs, and forums for more Twihards ;)

A couple weeks after my husband started his new job and was working 18 hours a day setting up the store he bought me The Host to read since I love Stephenie Meyer. He also wrote a lil love note inside <3

The book is about Wanderer (aka Wanda) who is an invader of earth. Her kind take over peoples bodies. The body Wanda is given is the body of Melanie. Most of Wandas kind never have resistance from their hosts, but Melanie will not give up willingly. Wanda and Melanie have to learn to get along as two minds in one body. As Melanie shows Wanda thoughts of her beloved Jared, rather then let Wanda know any of the information she seeks, Wanda too begins to have strong feelings for Jared.

I didnt really see how they could make a movie since alot of talk goes on in Wanda's errrrr Melanies... head. But I'm glad to see its going to be done! It should be really interesting!

Stephenie Meyer talked about it more on her official site.

Oh, and New Moon comes out in 4 days 22 hours!!! Squeeeeeee!