a little of this, a little of that

We've been spending our Christmas vacation being very lazy. Staying up late. Sleeping in. Playing with toys. Eating leftovers. Doing it all over again. You get the idea.

Yesterday Ben got his cast off. They even let Olivia take the x-rays (she pushed the button). She thought that was pretty neat. And check out the treats they gave the kids!

Ugh, I hate the yellow walls at that dr's office. Makes the pictures look so funky! Anyway, I know Ben doesn't look too thrilled in his picture. It's cause his leg still hurts. The dr said cause it was such a severe brake that it's just going to take time. He doesn't have to wear a cast but he still can't run, jump, etc. Not that he's even to that point yet. He won't even walk on it. So I'm on the hunt for a walking boot that'll fit him.

A word of warning ~ if your kid tries to break a leg, make sure they're at least in grade school when they do it so when you go looking for medical supplies you don't have to search the earth for them cause no one carries the "little" stuff. But I digress...

We've also been spending a lot of time taking care of this guy

My poor pup. He's almost 14 and really showing the signs of his age this week. When we woke up yesterday he couldn't get up, couldn't walk, couldn't do anything. I took him to the vet and found out that he has calcification between several of his vertebrae (basically signs of old age). There's a technical name for it but I can't remember. There's not much they can do for that so he got a shot and is on 2 medications to help with inflammation and pain. The meds seem to finally be working a little. He's still pretty wobbly and I'm not sure if things will get better or not. It's hard to tell if his reaction is from the meds or his condition cause he's acting a bit loopy. Not good when you have a dog that can't walk. Thankfully he was able to walk a bit more today but we still have to help him out a bit. After he starts improving (fingers crossed) I'll take him off the pain meds and see how he is.

So if you're the praying kind as I know a lot of you are, please say a prayer for my sweet old man. Cause I'm not quite ready to let him go just yet.

Christmas and beyond!

Sorry, I think Buzz Lightyear is rubbing off on me! lol Now that things are slowing down a little from all the Christmas festivities I thought I'd share a few pics from the last few days.

On Christmas morning the kids were shocked to find out that Santa had signed Ben's cast. Ben just looked at me in amazement and Olivia kept saying "what? how? huh? but how did he? what?" Too funny!
Yes, thanks to the nurses at the dr's office for planting that little idea in Ben's head!

They had so much fun enjoying all of their new gifts ~ every single one of them. Check out the Olivia the pig and reindeer that was waiting for them Christmas morning. That little piggy was just too cute!
Ben was so happy to see that Santa had brought him a talking Indiana Jones and Olivia was super excited when she opened her Littlest Pet Shop diary!

Yep, even the dogs get a little something from Santa

It's been raining since Christmas so the day after we went to see the movie "Bedtime Stories" with Adam Sandler. It was hee-larious!! You really need to go see it. You'll laugh through the entire movie and feel good at the end. Don't ya love those kind of movies! Here's Ben holding our big bag o' popcorn
And today I broke down and made a fire. I've been waiting. It's been so warm...too warm for a fire. But today I got tired of waiting for the weather too cool off and made a fire anyway! And we had Christmas smores :)
I didn't have any regular marshmallows but I did have some Christmas ones left over from making snowman soup. So we just called them Christmas smores. They were yummy just the same!I know the pics are a little dark. It's so rainy and gloomy right now and my kitchen gets no direct sunlight. You don't care, right?!

Well, I hear the boxes coming in from the garage and that means it's time to start taking down the Christmas trees. Ugh, this is the time of year that I don't like having 3 trees in my house! But, I dislike all the clutter more so I'm off to clean and put away decorations!

getting ready for next Christmas

Yes, you read that right. I'm already thinking ahead to next Christmas. I want to make sure that I'm more organized next year so that I'm not scrambling at the last minute to get gifts made, mailed, etc. Especially in case something happens like (God forbid) my son breaking his leg, tree branches coming in my windows...you get the idea!

Of course, one thing that will help me next year is limiting the amount of handmade gifts I make. Despite what I said in a previous post, I have now decided that I'm no longer making handmade gifts for family members. Don't get me wrong, I haven't changed my views on what is truly important this time of year. But I don't like my time being taken away from my kids to make gifts that are not appreciated. I will still make gifts for friends, teachers, etc. because I truly enjoy it.

Anyway, I decided to decorate up a little notebook to jot down notes, kind of like a To Do list for each month. So that when October rolls around I don't suddenly realize there's stuff I should have already finished. Next December my plan is to have everything done (except baking) before the month even starts. I've done it in the past so I know it's doable.

I bought one of those little Mead notebooks to hold all of my notes. A little patterned paper, stickers, a little ribbon, don't forget the jingle bell, and voila!

December Daily catch up ~ Days 8-15

Last night I stayed up late working on my December Daily album. I've discovered one helpful hint in working on this album. If you're not going to do this on a daily basis it's probably best that you still print out your photos on a daily basis and jot down the date on the back. I uploaded a bunch of photos online to be printed. Then when I got them home I had to go back and figure out what photos were for which days. Or, another idea would be to set up a separate file on your computer so that you don't have to go searching for photos. Next year I'm hoping to get this done on a daily basis as I think it would be much easier. But, nevertheless, I still managed to finish it all except for Dec 24 & 25. That goes to show you that it doesn't take long to finish if you get behind (I had only completed through Day 7).

I kept embellishments to a minimum. I wanted the album to be more about the photos. I noticed that Ali Edwards did the same thing in her album and I like her philosophy about letting the photos tell the story. And since my album is only 6x6 that doesn't leave much room for "extras" anyway.

So here goes, days 8 through 15:

I haven't figured out what to do with the backside of day 9 yet. I'll probably put some kind of embellishment or something. But for now I just left it blank.

Day 12 has an envelope for the kids' letters to Santa. I also added a little journaling card in there since I didn't have room anywhere else for journaling.

I also added some velcro to the envelope to keep it closed. Don't want to lose those precious Santa letters!
Just a note on my journaling card about the parade ~ the paper is actually the backside of packaging when I bought some of the number tags. I *always* keep cute packaging for scrapping later!
Just noticed a little typo on day 15. Thankfully it was easily fixed!

That's it for now. I'm already in photo overload on this post! I'll share more days tomorrow!

Merry Christmas!

I'm always sad after Christmas is over. All of the planning, preparing, shopping, baking, anticipation til the big day. Kinda like a wedding. Then it's over! But the good thing is...364 days til it happens all over again!

We went to church on Christmas Eve and the kids from Sunday School reenacted the story of the birth of Jesus.
Then we came home and the kids opened a present from me (new pjs) and one of the presents for each other (because it was absolutely *killing* them that there were presents under the tree that they couldn't open!)
Christmas morning the kids tore through all of the presents...in record time this year I think. Or maybe it's cause they're older and the presents are getting more expensive and, therefore, there's fewer of them to open. It didn't matter. They loved everything they got and played and played for hours. As on most Christmas days we stayed in our pjs all day. It was great!

I hope you all had a wonderful and joyous Christmas!

A Savior is Born!

Merry Christmas!

I saw this on Jennifer McGuire's blog and had to share (click to enlarge). This about sums it up, doesn't it?!

I can't wait to go to church tonight and celebrate. I always feel *so* good leaving church after Mass on Christmas Eve!

Are you tracking Santa?

He's over Nepal right now! Check it out here.

check out those lights!

We had a bit of a rough afternoon here. I had to do some errands and one of those was to take my son to get a haircut. Well, he was in a mood when we got there and I mean a MOOD. I've never seen him throw a fit like that anywhere, especially in public. He's been quite ornery, short tempered and emotional since he's had his cast on (can you blame the kid?). And I've given him more leeway than I normally would because of it. So, after I got back from church tonight I thought it'd be fun to kind of "start over" the day (even if it was 8 at night) and we headed over to the Ludy's Christmas lights. All I can say is WOW! The kids thought these lights were just so neat (I did, too!). I just can't imagine all the time and effort that goes into setting up something like this. Check it out

Santa threw presents into the chimney...then threw them backwards into the neighbor's chimney!


And check out my little snuggle bear and our pup. So sweet. The kids are taking turns sleeping on the air mattress while grandma's here visiting. And whenever an air mattress comes out one (or both) of the dogs try and sneak on!

Poor pup, she hasn't been feeling good the last week or 2 and I'm not sure why. Still trying to figure out if I need to take her to the vet or not. It doesn't seem like anything too serious so I'm hoping it'll pass.

Tomorrow my only plan (hopefully) is to bake some cookies! And maybe do a little cleaning. As usual I'm up late so I'm hoping the kids cooperate and sleep in a little....please????!!!!

the last of the gifts

Whew...the last of the gifts are done. The ones that need to be mailed, that is. But I think I'm pretty much done. Here's the Christmas mini albums I mentioned before. They're just 4x6 photo albums and I made a new cover for them. Inside I put pictures of the kids every year at Christmas.

I ran into Michaels yesterday to get some more Christmas tins. I had been waiting for these cuties to go on sale :) They were $1.25 each. I put some Blizzard Bites in them, wrapped them up with some cute cellophane (also bought on sale last month!) and I plan on handing these out to some of my friends & neighbors this week.

I also attached a copy of the recipe to the tin. I never used to do this but then I found if someone really liked my treats they'd always ask me for the recipe. So I figured it's just better to attach it to the tin and if they like it they can make more!

And then I found these keychain photo holders at Walmart. I added some stamping, photo and ribbon and it's done.

I know the photo is bad. I didn't have time to "set it up" and get a really good shot. I have lots to send out to the post office today.
One last thing, whenever I mention to people that a lot of my gifts are handmade I get asked "do people like them?" and how people react to getting handmade gifts instead of store bought gifts. (And Kelly, I know you had left a comment recently about that, too). The simple answer to that is that I give gifts from the heart. I give things that I would appreciate getting. I don't just walk into a store and grab the nearest meaningless "thing" that's sitting on the table. I know we've all received those gifts, right?!! Not that store bought gifts can't have meaning, but you know what I mean.

Sometimes people appreciate the effort I put into gifts, sometimes they don't. But it doesn't bother me. Because this time of year is for giving from the heart. And quite frankly, my Christmas list is *long* and, therefore, I simply cannot afford to spend countless dollars on everyone at Christmas. And I won't go broke trying to please people. That's not what Christmas is about. And you see the boxes I have to mail out each Christmas. My shipping costs add about $20-$40 to my Christmas budget because all of my relatives are out of town. So I do a lot of baking, and handmade presents. I could be like others I know and buy a dishwasher, or a computer, or a digital camera for others for Christmas. And I'm sure they're liked more for it. That's ok. If I'm only liked for my gifts, then those people do not understand the true meaning of Christmas. And that's sad.

No one should ever be judged by their gifts as "not good enough" or "you didn't spend enough". I don't try to "keep up with the Jones". I do my own thing. I'm not concerned that someone else can spend hundreds of dollars on their parents or kids or whatever. I can't. And I don't worry about it.

So I hope that explains my rationale behind my gifts. I enjoy Christmas. I enjoy making something for someone rather than just buying a gift. That's just who I am!

yep, I'm a night owl

Always have been. I love to stay up late scrappin' (or whatever) til the wee hours of the morning. Problem is, I still have to get up early so in the morning I *so* regret staying up! It's about 1:45am right now. I've been working on some final Christmas gifts. The kids have Sunday School tomorrow morning so I needed to make sure that I finished their teachers' gifts.

I also worked on some altered mini photo albums for the grandparents.

I'm putting pictures of the kids from each year since they were born. I figure they can add photos to the album over the years. These are super simple books to make. I found the photo albums at Target. I think I may make one for myself, too. I'll share more pics tomorrow when I have better light and the Stickles are dry. Til then, I'm off to get about 4 hours of sleep til I need to get up for church!

Oh, one last thing, I just had to catch this photo of my Xmas tree as I was walking out of my scrap room
All of the lights are off in the house except my scrap room and the Christmas tree. Although, notice that the top of the tree is a little dark? Yeah, that set of lights went out :( I was going to try and take it off and replace the lights. But now that it's so close to Christmas I just said forget it. The tree's coming down soon anyway.