Christmas via Pinterest, Part 3

Yes, three posts in one day... got to make up for lost time.

The Advent Calender has been a great source of holiday inspiration. And fortunately no one, and when I say that I mean Marley, has been upset if we don't get around to something that day. Past days have said things like Christmas movie with dinner, cocoa and cookies for dessert, invite a friend for dinner, help a family in need, today's is make a popcorn garland, and yesterday's was make a gift for each other.

In my back pocket I had snow globes as a Christmas craft. It had been something I wanted to do for a while and found a simple how to on Pinterest that comes from Martha Stewart, link. Really it was a no brainer, but the glycerin part I wouldn't have thought of.

I had been saving jars for sometime, we have tons of glitter and sequins for snow, and lots of plastic animals and creatures. All of this equals snow globes.

Abe and I made ourselves some hot cocoa, because all Christmas activities need hot cocoa, and set off to make Marley's Christmas gift. We had to stand the animals on little plastic caps we had, and unfortunately some of the toys we wanted to use just wouldn't fit. Sorry, no tiger or Smurf snow globes for us. The moose and giraffe were the only ones we could use. The animals came from a bucket of animals Abe got for Christmas last year. It's from Target and was less than $15, it had a variety of sizes too. The Dollar Store would most likely have some good ones.

The glycerin was hard to find, CVS carried it, and at Target they thought I was asking for Listerine. Umm, no.
We used hot glue instead of what the tutorial called for and it seemed to work just fine. I also hot glued the tops on and the ribbon around the caps. I haven't been able to pull off a great photo of these, but the boy really enjoyed making them. Marley will be getting the giraffe one for Christmas and the moose one is for Abe. I kind of think the giraffe one looks like one of those jars filled with body parts and formaldehyde, maybe we'll remember this come Halloween.

Christmas via Pintrest, Part 2

I found this a while ago on Pinterest and finally got around to giving it a try. Very easy, we used tangerines instead of clementines.

Link

I'm thinking that a few of these on your table for Christmas could be part of an excellent centrepiece. If definitely smells, but it's very subtle and natural. Our candle lasted about 6 hours before the top started to burn and made everyone run around looking for what was on fire.

Today I'm going to push aside the Christmas stuff I should be doing a give these ribbon birds a try.

Catching up

Lots of things happening, school things, baby things, life things, holiday traditions, etc. Playing a little catch up...

Someone is standing up. On EVERYTHING.

Cute soakers are even more necessary now.

Advent Calender Day 14, Bake Cookies.

Holiday Concert.
Someone decided to go girlie on us and wear ruffles.


Enlisting the help of this guy to do some cleaning.

Babywearing seems to be the only way I can get things accomplished these days.

Nurse while doing dishes.

And baby on the back while putting away laundry.

Someone was a little hungry this morning and was wondering if the buffet was his Mommy.

Nope.

Not even close.

Advent Day 3, Make a Wreath For the Front Door

Yes, just like the first two days this was also met with a little bit of "do we really have too?" It was driven more by the idea of doing it together as a team, but eventually we got past the idea of splitting the wreath in half for each child to do a side and it was decided that both children's findings would look good all over.

The kids were instructed to find things to put on the wreath. I gave them each a bowl and pushed them out the back door while the baby and I got out the glue gun, wire, and various findings I've been stashing away for something like this.


I sent affirmations to my inner pack rat after this was finished. How happy it is to see things go to good use. Old clip-on earrings from a Grandma, brooches, and ornaments I would never have had room to add to the tree but couldn't throw away because they came from another side of Grandparents.

Of course there were pine cones as no wreath would be complete with out some. Marley attempted to braid pine needles, but they quickly fell apart. Abe brought his bowl back in with a dozen or so pine cones and handfuls of dead grass. The grass never made it to the wreath and I was instructed not to throw it away, it's special.
The wreath was also a good place to add some of Declan's handmade ornaments from when he was a child. A rather special God's Eye I'm sure. Special enough that his Mom never threw it away and now neither will we.

Our special letter from Day 2 was put in the mail. The children have also been instructed to write a letter to Santa and make snow flakes. We've yet to do either, but I having a feeling there will be some snowflakes on the wall this evening, especially after today brought the first snow of the season.

Christmas via Pintrest, Part One

I'm not even going to go into what Pinterest is, because by now everyone is in the know and if you aren't well then, I just don't know. Once Halloween has passed I begin to feel the strong draw toward all things Christmas, and this year Pinterest has helped me figure some stuff out. First things first an Advent Calender. We've done the Trader Joe's chocolate one in previous years, but Pinterest has challenged me to become a better mother/wife/human being #sarcasam. I knew I wanted something that was for both kids, Robin's not going to remember anything this year, and I wanted things for them to do, not things for them to eat or have. After searching through the hundred or so links for "DIY Advent Calender" (the nice/funny thing about Pinterest is you can put DIY in front of any word and get a myriad of options, most very clever, lots involve hot glue and pvc pipe and yarn), I found a couple that inspired me. Here they are.



Here is ours...

I'm pretty damn pleased with how it turned out. I thought about putting up a tutorial, but I'm pressed for time today and lazy, so I'll just tell you what I used. Brown craft paper cut into about 7x7" squares, yarn, little pieces of note paper to write what to do each day in the envelopes, gold notary stickers, various Sharpie markers, red jewels to decorate, ribbon and nails to hang it on the wall, and clothespins to hang the envelopes (next time I will use smaller clothespins).

$15 and 2 hours later I kind of rethought not just taking the $1 Trader Joe's chocolate calender, but I'm trying to convince myself that this is worth it. I'm not sold on it yet. It's only been two days and each has been met with adversity from Marley.

Day 1 was "Hot chocolate with breakfast." I was unprepared and out of the cocoa powder I normally use to make "real" hot chocolate, not the instant stuff. Here is the conversation Marley and I had...

Marley, "Is this instant?"

Me, "Yes."

Marley, "Oh, I can see you just didn't have the time" said in a voice that was like "I will always have the time when I am an adult."

Me, "I did have the time, I was out of cocoa powder."

Marley, "Oh.... it's alright."

Just alright? She wouldn't be saying this about a piece of penny chocolate.

Day 2, today, was similar. Open note, it reads "write a letter to send to someone". Our conversation went along the lines of it being "lame!" and "just like homework!" and "worst day ever!" Okay, maybe not that last one, but we were close. There was a reminder about the reason for the season, we went for the family and friends route over the birth of the sweet babby Jeebus, but still she was like "I want my chocolate!" Maybe next year dear, maybe next year.

And how has Abe reacted? He's pumped about this. He doesn't remember the chocolates last year, so this is the norm. We're writing letters this afternoon and you might be getting one! He was pretty definitive about who gets his letters, and surprisingly he didn't say his girlfriend Tuna Fish.