Playing with a new camera.
Playing carols on the piano.
Playing silly.
And playing with a new flat iron.
Tessa was good enough to wear her Christmas dress for dinner without a fuss, but as soon as she took her last bite of food...off it came.
And when we can't find Jacob, he can usually be found hanging around his door frame from his new pull-up bar.
We awoke yesterday to FROST on our roof and ice on the trampoline! What a glorious way to usher in Winter!
There's one for each member of the family....now I need to figure out what to do with them! Well, back to my holiday baking! Happy day!
I did finish all my wrapping this week. Actually it only took about an hour. Last year I tried something new. I bought four different wrapping papers so each child's was all in one design. Then I placed them under the tree...tag-less... I think it actually kept them from messing with the presents.
I do need a few cute tags, though, and of course I'm in LOVE, LOVE, LOVE with these from Emily Martin.
Aren't they just precious! For a free download, go here.
Uh~oh. We have trouble with a capital "T"! According to this article by Cool Mom Picks, "Congress passed the ill-conceived Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act, a law which goes into effect in two months and will absolutely decimate the small toy manufacturers, independent artisans, and crafters who have already earned the public trust."
Bottom line, this means that effective February 2009 it will be ILLEGAL for me to sell my handmade dolls. ANYWHERE!
Tessa is so excited about the world of letters...writing them and observing them in her surroundings.
As we drove by a neighborhood church displaying a large prominent cross, I heard, "T!" and then she sounded out the letter "T" followed by "turch....turch.....??...turch!"
She desperately wanted to make sense of the "T" in front of ch...urch!
On the way to our Nally Family Christmas Celebration today, I realized I forgot my camera. Darn! Foot stamping! I was really looking forward to capturing some fun memories of the cousins playing together. With such a big and busy family, it's mainly just the holidays when we all get together, making it pretty special!
Tonight they were in heaven, and I truly enjoyed watching them chase, play basketball, piano, guitar, swing, play "puppies", sing Christmas carols and giggle together.
This picture was taken at Thanksgiving, and now that it's been given as a gift, I can "blog" it! Unfortunately two of the kiddos are kind of hidden, but you get the idea. They are truly an amazingly talented and spiritual group of young people that I love dearly!
The guys slept out on the tramp last night. ALL NIGHT! The fresh air does them well, I guess! They stay out all night and are quite the campers!
Morgan got Buddy up with them in the morning and was trying to stuff him in the sleeping bag to keep him warm. Sorry, no pictures of Bryan! He was already up and off to a scouting merit badge round-up!
We stayed up late, granting the kiddos request to watch "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and once everyone was in bed, I was ready for a little spray painting! The dog looked at me like I was crazy, but this frame needed an overhaul! It's much happier being a black frame and my little Christmas "Joy" hits the spot.
It found a home on the top of my piano, snuggled between my flocked trees and happy angels.
Home Goods WAS good to me!
I thought they were so sweet and didn't want them lost on the Christmas tree.
So they're caroling among the trees appropriately placed on the piano...
...which my three boys spend a collective hour and a half at each day, blessing us with melodic love.
You may remember my complaining about our little Maltese, Snowball, who kept using the house as his bathroom. Well, the final straw came at Thanksgiving when he decided to use my sister, Dori's, leg as his personal "toilet".
Snowball now has a new loving home, leaving us with Buddy, and our two parakeets.
Nine is enough.
One of the highlights of tree decorating for me are the handmade decorations. Of course the ones the kiddos have made are so special, and some of my favs are these owls I made last year.
If you're wanting a fun and relatively easy handmade project, you may want to try these! They're a family favorite around here!
After posting about these little gumdrop creations, Tessa and I decided to jump in, head first to a pile of sugary sweetness and get our craft on! Above is the darling cookie houses over at Martha's site, which are just perfection. I decided that ours was a cookie "shack" compared to hers'.
But we sure had fun, by golly! We pulled out leftover Halloween candy and threw this house up in no time!
We gave the girl a muff for her cold hands and some stylin' boots!
