The Weather Has Been So Delightful!

Seriously Delightful! The last few days the temperature has been in the high 70's and low 80's. It is hard to believe that it is the week before Christmas and we are walking around in short sleeves and no coats. 

Unfortunately it came to an end today. We are gray and the temps have dropped back down. It is only suppose to be in the 50's for the next week. Bah Humbug! I want that 80 degrees back!

Yesterday we took advantage of this awesome weather and drove over to Dallas. Neiman Marcus has an awesome Christmas window and it has these tubes the kids could climb through. I have always wanted to go to NYC to see all the Christmas windows but I haven't made it there yet. I thought I could at least see one that is relatively close to us.

The theme of the window was outer space. It had rocket ships and monkeys in astronaut suits, aliens, and these monitors that we couldn't quite figure out what they did.  

 The best part was these tubes the boys could climb through. They went in and out of the windows. 

 Here is where the tubes came out over the sidewalk. It was really neat! The boys had a great time and went through it twice. 

The boys sitting in front of one of the decorated windows. I only took my small camera with me (didn't want to lug the big one around downtown) so my pictures didn't turn out great. I didn't realize I got so much reflection of other buildings in most of my pictures. 

 After we got done at Neimans, we had lunch and then headed back to the car. I couldn't find any parking garages and ended up parking at a meter on the street. And that only gave us two hours to play. There was a small park right by our car so the boys played there for just a bit. 

I do like this picture of the boys playing with all of the big buildings surrounding them. Dallas is such a pretty city. I can't wait to go back and explore it some more. It really was the perfect day to be walking around outside. 

And I thought I would leave you with this last picture.

This is what you get when your kids ask you if they can use your camera to take some pictures of the Christmas windows. 


Thanks for visiting me! 

Getting that Perfect Christmas Card Family Picture

Last weekend, we decided that we needed to get ourselves together to take the always pleasant Christmas Card Family Photo. 


You know that annual picture where you lovingly request your children to put something on that resembles the Holiday season, then pose for a few hundred pictures. And for goodness sake, please look happy while we are doing it! Yes! We are a Happy Family! 


We wanted to take our big picture outside by the pool this year; but of course it was way too windy to do that on the day we finally get ourselves in gear to take the picture.  


So we move indoors to the living room by the Christmas Tree. I really wanted to use the lighted Palm Tree in the picture. 


Which was suppose to be by the pool. 


But it was too windy. 


Once again, procrastination ruins a good plan.

So we move the Palm Tree to the living room. 

Yeah. I know. It doesn't work. Darn. 

So the Palm Tree gets axed. In come the kids and the dog. 

Okay now let's make sure the remote clicker is working. 

Looks good. 

Look, I joined the picture now! That is the beauty of the remote. Very handy little device. 

Now if we could just get Maggie to look at the camera. 

Maggie, please look at the camera. Please.

Well, you know that old saying they have in Hollywood. Never work with dogs or

Children!

I think my motivation was gone by that last shot.

Thanks for visiting me. 

Super Easy Holiday Wall Art

So last week I was sitting in the doctor's office waiting room (just a check-up), when I picked up a copy of Southern Living magazine. I've never really looked at this magazine, but as I was perusing through it I came across the cutest idea.  Now I have looked all over their website for the instructions but I can't find them anywhere. And I didn't want to buy the magazine, so I just decided to improvise from my memory to make it. 

These are the supplies you will need. Three embroidery hoops (I have one 10" and two 14" hoops, orange felt, some buttons, scissors, hot glue gun, a scarf, and some fabric. I happened to have an old sweater set that was in my "to be donated/garage sale box" that I used. So this whole project cost me $5.16 for the 3 hoops and piece of orange felt since I already had everything else. Can you guess what I'm making? 

Lay your hoop over your fabric of choice

 and cut it out. 

You will end up with your three hoops

 looking like this.

Next I cut a long triangle out of the felt. 

To keep the edges of my fabric from fraying and showing, I hot glued them to the hoop. 

So your three hoops end up looking like this. 

Then lay out your face on the smallest hoop 

and hot glue them down.

 This is a no sewing project which I love!

Then hang the hoops up on the wall and you have a 3-dimensional snow man! 

I tried to use the wacky tac stuff to hang my hoops but it would not hold the larger hoops. I ended up just using a straight pen. For the scarf I hung it on one of those 3m hooks and then used a few straight pens to anchor it better too. 

Here is a side view. Now you could paint the hoops white if you wanted, but I like the look of them as they came. I added the vinyl hat and snowflakes. I cut the hat by hand, and used my Cricut for the snowflakes. 

The project was super fast to do. The actual snowman probably only took me a little over an hour to put together. The only thing I would have liked differently is to have the middle circle smaller than the bottom one. When I went to buy the hoops at Michaels, they didn't have any of the 12" size in stock. And I didn't want to drive all over the place for that size, so I just went with what they had. 

I hope you like my super, fast, easy, (inexpensive) Holiday wall art project!  Thanks again for visiting me! 

Cookie Night with Santa

Last night was Cookies with Santa night at the boy's school. I will be honest and say that I wasn't really wanting to go to this. It was rainy and cold outside. And warm and cozy in our house.  But they wore me down and convinced us to go. And we had a really great time! 

They had crafts for all of the kids to do. This was just one table out of about 10 tables with different craft projects.  

They also had a shopping area. The boys brought their own money and bought gifts. I believe they bought a gift for me, their dad and each other. I told them they had to buy presents first, then they could buy a little something for themselves if they had money left over. They both managed to have a little money left over to get themselves a little something. :-) (They get that honestly from both their mother and father!)

Then we wrote some letters to Santa and went to see the big guy. Connor has been having a difficult time coming up with something to ask Santa for. Here he is thinking about it. 

And thinking about it some more. 

Aha! Something finally came to him! 

Spencer jumped in there for a quick picture and to tell his list. Spencer has no problem coming up with lots of ideas for Santa! 

Then it was off to decorate cookies. 

Spencer came up with quite a masterpiece!

I'm still working away on my Christmas cards. I took this picture myself with the self-timer today. I thought it turned out pretty good! My goal is to have them all done and ready to be mailed out next Monday. That is my goal!!!


Thanks again for visiting me! 

More Holiday Planners

These are the planners I made in more traditional Christmas colors.

Here is a close-up of the Santa. He was from the Holiday Button Bits stamp set I got from Paper Trey Ink. They really have the cutest stamps.

I colored him with my Copic markers.

There is a snowman in the set that I can't wait to make up too. So cute!

And last night was Connor's final soccer game. Finally! It was suppose to end 3 weeks ago, but all of the rain we had in October kept extending out the season. He was very happy last night because he got his 2nd Soccer Trophy. Although on the way home he kept talking about how the trophy looked like it was wearing a bra. I told him I was sure it was just manly muscles.

In all honesty though, it does look a little like the guy is wearing a bra.

If you click on the pic to make it bigger, you can kind of see what he was talking about. ;-)

Thanks again for visiting me! And have a great weekend!

Christmas Planners

So last month I bought these cute notepads and stamp set from Paper Trey Ink. And I have been having so much fun making these cute Holiday Planners. They come together really fast and easy. (Click on the pictures to make them bigger.)

Nichole from Paper Trey Ink gave a free download template for the covers. (You can get it here. Just scroll down about half way through her post.) After I started making mine I found that I like to make them a little longer than what her template shows. You can see in the picture above that the center notepad just fits right inside the cover. That one is using her template exactly as is. When I started making them a little longer, it gave a little more room around the notepad. For me, I just thought it looked a little nicer and the covers seemed to close better. I also thought the inside pocket would be be good to keep receipts.

I have made a couple with more traditional Christmas colors. I will share those later this week.

So have you started your Christmas shopping yet? I have bought a few things, but I really don't start until it gets closer to December.

Thanks again for visiting me!

I'm Here!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We've been pretty busy. I'm still working on my December Daily album. I have up through Day 5 completed. I hope to post those layouts tomorrow. It is pretty gloomy and rainy here today, so not a good day to take pictures.

On Saturday, we went to the annual Cookie Decorating party. Our friends, Patty and Matt, hold this party every year in their neighborhood and invite us too. They have been doing this the last 4 or 5 years. They hold it in one of their neighbors' heated garage. That is why you see power tools in the background! It is a great place for it though, because once the kids are done decorating, they just lift the garage door and hose it clean. Perfecto!

Here a few pics from the night. Santa Claus even came for a surprise visit!

Connor is working on one of his masterpieces!

This is one of Spencer's. Doesn't it look yummy? (Maybe if you are eight, right? ;) )

And yep, he ate it right away. Can you say sugar rush??!!!!

2008 Wish Books

Well, I got one thing accomplished on my list of 1,000 things! It isn't really 1,000 things, but it sure feels like it some days!

I started making these little books last year. I thought it would be fun for the boys to each have a little book they could write their Christmas wishes in. And on the plus side for me, I get a neat little keepsake from each year. For instance last year, Spencer was into rocks. Way into rocks! He filled up 3 pages with the names of rocks. I kept telling him to just write ROCKS, but no, he had to list them all! It is funny to look back on that this year. I had completely forgot about it until I unpacked last year's books. I can't imagine what it will be like to look back on these in 10, 20 and (gasp!) 30 years!

So all of you out there with kids might want to start up this tradition yourselves! I guarantee you will get a good laugh and a "You wanted that???!!!" in a few years!

I used the Zutter Acrylic 4x4 covers and my Bind it All. I used Staz-On ink on the covers.

The insides are the same for both of the books. There are a total of 5 pages in each book.

I'm turning last years books into ornaments for the tree. I'm going to add a ribbon loop and hang it up. Thanks for visiting me!!