Post Christmas Wrap

We had such a wonderful Christmas weekend and I'm thankful that our entire family was able to join us, at our home.

Merry Christmas Y'all!

May you find peace and happiness in your world this Christmas!

Without the birth of our savior Jesus Christ,
we would not have a reason to celebrate!

Blogging Challenge! December 24th

Cookie decorating! Our time honored tradition!

This is the part of Christmas vacation that they look forward to the most. We did these all before 9 a.m. I have a house full of early risers!

I use this recipe for Glacé Icing. I love how it dries hard and shiny (and best of all - stackable!)

Check out Elisan's apron.
A present from my MIL the first year Randy and I were married.

Blogging Challenge! December 23rd

This is going to be a mini blog brain dump.

Here goes...

I realized... like reality set in and everything... that my 20 year class reunion is coming up in 2011. How can that be? I don't feel that old. Dang.

I have many, many things I should be doing right now, but can't seem to get my rear in gear to do it all. Nothing like waiting until the last minute... or not at all.

I've added running to my workout regime for the last two weeks. It's not that bad, although I must admit, I've only been running one mile. But, so as not to think I'm a total wimp, I'm running it as fast as I possibly can. Yesterday, I ran one mile in 8 min 33 secs. Not bad for a chick going to her 20th high school reunion soon.

But, the running totally wipes me out. I'm sooo sleepy right now.

This weekend we'll have a house full of folks. I'm looking forward to it and praising God I am not PMS'ing. (TMI, I know.)

My puppy is officially a "teenager" going through a bout of teenage angst. He is dying for a little independence, yet longs for lovin' and holdin'. He can't decide. But, come 7 p.m., he's a total lap dog. Totally.

We're going back to TiVo. I couldn't be happier. Cable DVR is horrible. We've had the cable DVR for a year and I've hated it from the first day we got it. Yay for TiVo!

Did I mention I'm sleepy?

I'm done, done, done with Christmas shopping! Yippee! Now, I just need to clean my "war room" a.k.a. spare bedroom turned into Christmas paper gift wrapping room.

I had a friend post on Facebook about people saying "Happy Holidays" versus "Merry Christmas" and she had such a good point, I felt it was necessary to pass it along.

• Posted on Facebook: "Please be kind to the people who wish you "Happy Holidays" They may prefer to wish you a Happy Kwanzaa or a Happy Hanukkah or a Merry Christmas but they also need to pay bills and feed their families. Just smile and say "Thank you" A snarly response may teach them a lesson but words with honey will make you both feel better."

You know, that's so true. I never thought about it that way... they are probably told by their employer that they must say "Happy Holidays" rather than Merry Christmas. I mean, sure... I prefer Merry Christmas... don't we all? But, yes... paying bills and feeding families is important too. That really made me stop and think. (Thanks Kendi!)

So... I'm off for now. Tomorrow is a big day around here. I'll try to throw up something here that is worthwhile. If not... oh well!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Blogging Challenge! December 22nd

As promised, here are a few of my favorite pictures of the girls from our photo shoot in November!

We had so much fun that day... once the girls loosened up a bit. Most of these pictures were taken in the final 10 minutes of us being out there. Remember... I took about 300 pictures!

But, these are my favorites! I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

When did I get a teenager?

This picture of Kyla is so cute! Captures "her".

Have I mentioned how much I love these girls?

And how much they love each other?

Strike a pose!

By far, one of my all time favorite pictures!



This one too!

Just so stinking cute!

Love her!

And love her, too!

Silliness abounds!

Done for the day!

Blogging Challenge! December 21st

This is such a fun idea for inexpensive (less than $5.00!) grandparent gifts! And, it lasts all year long!

A price breakdown:

8x10 photo processing - $2.50 - $2.99 (depending where you go)
Laminating at Fedex Kinkos - $1.99/each

EMAIL ME if you want me to design one for you!

Here's how mine turned out! Very cute!

Here's an example of a two I did for friends!

Blogging Challenge! December 20th

Oh my word! I just realized it's December 20th! Where, oh where, has December gone?!

Thanksgiving weekend I took the girls out to the university near our home for a Christmas card photo shoot. After nearly 300 pictures (thank goodness for digital cameras!) and one hour later, I have to say I captured some of the best pictures of my girls I've ever taken! (I'll show you my favorites this week!)

Once I got home, I got busy editing the pictures with Picnik (an online photo editing software) and I love, love, love how they turned out! Picnik can be a bit overwhelming if you don't know where to begin, so I put together an abbreviated tutorial to help you get started!

Here's my after picture.

Step 1:
Select "Cross Process". Use the slider to adjust the look of your photo.

Step 2:
Select "Orton-ish" for a nice saturated 'glowy' look to your photo.
Use the sliders to adjust the look of your photo.

Step 3:
Select "Lomo-ish" for dramatic vignetting.

Step 4:
Select "Boost" to bring out colors and increase contrast.
Use the sliders to adjust the look of your photo.

Step 5:
Head back over to "Cross Process" and add a smidgen more of this process if desired.

Step 6:
Add text if desired.

Blogging Challenge! December 19th

There was a live nativity scene at church today! The girls saw a camel for the first time today.

It was pretty neat to see all of the various animals! Our church is cool!

Blogging Challenge! December 18th (late!)

Okay, okay...I missed a day in my own challenge!

Randy came home late Friday evening after spending 17 days out of town on business. The girls and I were so excited... I completely (intentionally) forgot about my blog and concentrated on my honey!

See? I have a good excuse.

Even T.J. the puff dog missed Randy!

Blogging Challenge! December 17th

Okay y'all! This post is mostly for posterity because I don't expect you to watch my Kyla Mae recite the entire passage in Luke of the story of Jesus' birth. BUT, if you have a 1:19 seconds available, feel free to watch my sweet baby in action!

I love that our school places such a great emphasis on memorizing the passage about the birth of Jesus. And, after two years of, I pretty much know it by memory too!

By the way, if you are feeling really nostalgic... here's Elisan reciting the story of Jesus' birth back in 2008.

Blogging Challenge! December 16th

As you may recall, Randy took a new job in November. And part of that new job required training in Minnesota.

I'm happy to report that Randy FINALLY returns home tomorrow! In fact, he's been gone since December 1st! Nearly 17 days straight! As you can imagine, we miss him terribly! Especially this time of the year.

And he's soooo ready to come home from the frozen tundra. Last weekend, Minnesota had one of the worst snow storms in 19 years. He said the amount of snow was amazing to see. He also said that he could not imagine it being any colder than what is was over the weekend.

Meanwhile at home, the girls and I have had a fun, easy going time here by ourselves. But, nothing compares to having Randy at home.

Our one 'saving grace' was FACETIME on our iPods (4 generation). We were able to communicate face to face with one another. The girls loved seeing their daddy and it definitely gave me peace of mind to actually see him. I think it helped Randy as well, since I know he was worried about his girls!

I cannot say enough about Facetime. If you are considering an iPod for Christmas (or a new iPhone), Facetime is definitely a selling point. I'm hoping my parents get an iPod soon so we can chat with them via Facetime as well. (Oh, and it's free, so you can basically 'call' someone with Facetime and not use your cell phone (minutes). SWEET!

Blogging Challenge! December 15th

If you've been living under a rock and haven't seen these ultra adorable Charm It! charms, then let me be the first to introduce them to you!

Oh my word... to be a little girl again!

Kyla first spied these little charms at Hannah D's and decided that she wanted a charm bracelet for Christmas. She even wrote out her Christmas list to Santa as to which charms she wanted. (Sadly, Santa wrote me back and said that he wasn't able to fulfill the list exactly, but he was pretty darn close!)

Check out the website... or just head out to your local Hannah D's. (They are on sale right now for 15% off - regularly priced at $5.00/each.) By the way... they are MUCH cuter in person!

Blogging Challenge! December 14th

Today was Elisan's Christmas production at school. She had a small solo part, that OF COURSE, I'm posting on my blog for the world to see!

She had to try out for the solo parts along with 45 other kids (including 4th, 5th and 6th grades.) Only 14 solos were awarded - 4 of them to the 4th graders. She was one of them! I'm so proud of her!

Her part begins around 1 minute, 45 seconds.

Blogging Challenge! December 13th

This is going to be another hair blogging entry. I figure everyone can relate to it, since we all have it.

For my birthday, my friend Cyndi gave me a hair accessory called "Flexi 8". Apparently it's the "wonder bra equivalent" for hair. When I was at her home in August, I was checking out her Flexi 8 clip and it looked odd and I couldn't figure out how to use it. After she showed me how it worked and how well it worked in her baby fine hair, I was convinced that it was a great product. But, here's the kicker... you can only buy them online (http://www.flexi8.com) and at large and/or upscale craft shows and festivals.Cyndi bought me a large sized clip for my birthday because my hair is not only long, but it is very thick but fine textured. Meaning... my hair usually slips out of every type of hair accessory eventually.

However, I have to say, I love my new Flexi 8 clip. It's fabulous and I can't recommend it enough!

In other news... Today was Christmas Chapel at school and instead of wearing uniforms they students are allowed to wear Christmas attire. As I was rushing out of the door, I realized I neglected to take pictures of them before they headed off to school. I'm a slacker mom, I know. I did however manage to snap a picture of Elisan's cute hairstyle on the way to school.
Isn't this the cutest? I was proud of my work if I do say so myself! Maybe I'm not a slacker afterall.

Blogging Challenge! December 12th

Elisan is in the process of growing out her bangs and she wears a headband nearly every day to school.

So, I got busy and made her a few headband flowers to attach to her headbands and they turned out so cute!

I used renmant fabric I had on hand and cut out 4 petal flowers (using a hand drawn paper stencil as my guide) in four sizes. I gathered the inside of the fabric flower to give it a petal like look. Once I did that to each piece of fabric, I hand sewed them together and attached a cute jewel in the middle. To make things easy on me, instead of trying to sew on a strip of velcro to the back, I just simply hot glued the velcro directly onto the fabric. (Sounds like a lot of steps, but really, it's very easy, with minimal sewing involved!)

Here's a link from Tip Junkie for several styles of fabric flowers.



On this flower, I added about 8 layers of fabric because I wanted it to be larger and fuller. Again, I used remnant fabric I had on hand.