almost wordless wednesday

This is Avery and her cousins showing off their Christmas craft. Isn't it too cute? I just had to share...

kinda 'carey

That's what Avery says about Santa.

"Mommy. Santa is kinda 'carey." or "Santa's a little ceepy (creepy)".

Sometimes, she'll try to trick us into believing that she is over her fear of the jolly rotund one. Especially now that Christmas is over and she's been told that Santa has gone back to his house.

"Mommy. I yike Santa."
"Mommy. Santa is my fend."

Yeah. Right.

I have evidence to the contrary.

My brother Joseph dressed up as Santa on Christmas Eve at my parent's house.
My sister and Sister-In-Law joined in the fun by dressing up as elves. Of course, they looked adorable...which, if I'm being honest here is slightly sickening. And unfair.



See what I mean?

Then there was my newly married brother, Jordan. He dressed up as some kind of creepy reindeer clown. With a faux beer belly. I'm not really sure what that was all about, but even I was a little scared of that.

Poor little cousin Rachel. She's too young to be afraid... Next year, my friend.

So - here's the part where I show you that "evidence" I talked about earlier.
You are now viewing Avery's response to her BFF Santa:

She's not exactly looking happy to see Santa, is she?

Avery's cousins were a little freaked out too.
They weren't sure whether they wanted to hug him or hit him, but they definitely didn't want to sit in his lap.




My mom bought a beautiful wedding cake from a yummy bakery in town and had "Santa" bring it out to the newlyweds.
I'm not sure what she had pictured in her mind for the whole wedding cake reveal, but I'm pretty sure it didnt' look like this. Even in her wildest dreams.

This is quite possibly the creepiest wedding cake cutting picture of all time.
AKA my "Big Fat Redneck Wedding"!

Whenever my brothers get together, my poor mom and dad don't stand a chance. This is a picture of my brother harassing my dad. This picture makes me laugh.


I'm not sure if Avery will ever learn to accept Santa if my brother has anything to do with it. She may be permanently scarred. Poor thing.

ambitious goals and a 3D letter craft

I had lofty goals in October of this year. My goal: to make handmade Christmas gifts for my friends and family. I figured that it would be really fun and I would save tons of money.

Then, reality hit.

Reasons why making Christmas gifts was out of the question:

1. It takes much longer than a couple of weeks to make presents for everyone. This year, I need to start earlier.
Like months earlier.
Possibly tomorrow.

2. I had a baby.

3. oh... and I HAD A BABY.

I did manage to crank out one or two handmade gifts between feeding a screaming infant and putting in the Dora DVD for the one MILLIONTH time.

(Please Lord, let this DVD pacify Avery for at least 2 minutes. I just need to go to the bathroom. Oh, and Lord - would you mind running interference for me while I'm in the restroom? Please keep all flying objects far away from Charlie's little head. Thanks, Lord).

This was a gift for my niece, Anna. I bought a paper mache letter "A" and decoupaged scrapbook paper to it. Then I embellished it with ribbon, sequins, and a flower.

I attempted to distress the paper by using shoe polish on the edges of the scrapbook paper before sealing it with mod podge. If you click on the picture, you can see what happened. I'm not super pleased with the result. I think that I need to get real distressing ink and try that next time.

This was super fun to make. Too bad I only had time to do one... There's always next year!

yes!

The other night at my Mother-in-Law's house, David took Avery to go to the restroom.

When she was finished, Avery ran back into the room and spontaneously yelled, "Mommy! I pee-peed on the potty! Yes!".

Of course, the first time, we didn't have the camera rolling - so this is our attempt to get her to recreate the cuteness for the camera. She cracks me up!

zoo lights

This year, we took Avery and Charlie to Zoo Lights: a light display at the zoo in our town. Since Avery has an unnatural fear of The Man in Red, Zoo Lights was just her speed.


The weather was 70 degrees on the night we chose to go to the zoo. I was so thankful for the crazy weather -- it gave me the opportunity to take our little Charlie out so we could all go together.

Despite the warm weather, there was still snow at the zoo - even if it was the artificially generated kind. We get the obligatory ice storm every year...but since that's the only kind of cold precipitation that we typically get around here, Avery really enjoyed the "snow"!




We met our friends The Malahys there, and Carter and Miller got LOTS of love from Avery.




After looking at the lights, we went to a room where the kiddos decorated sugar cookies...and played Ring Around the Rosie.




It's been so fun to create new family traditions and memories with our little ones this year. Seeing Christmas through our Avery's eyes has made things so special. I look forward to many more special memories with our little family. I am overwhelmed with thankfulness for the blessing of our little ones. Especially during this time of year! What a special gift children are!

I hope that you are enjoying your Christmas Holiday as much as we are...
Merry Christmas to all our friends, family and bloggy buddies!

between feedings...

Turns out that there is a limit to multi-tasking.

Crafting and nursing at the same time is NOT recommended.
Glitter and newborns? Not such a great combo.
Spray adhesives and swaddling? Not so smart.

SO - here's what I've been up to BETWEEN feedings...
Remember these cute little paper houses that I got at Hobby Lobby? They are on a shelf in my bathroom.

I finally got around to painting and glittering them. It took me a full week to finish them - since my crafting sessions last all of of 10 minutes now, but here is the finished product:


Let me just say that I'm officially in love with Diamond Dust and Snowtex. They were sooo fun to use and made my little paper mache houses look so fancy!

AND - I managed to get some Christmas shopping done last week. I found the most adorable snowman for my friend and just had to buy one for myself.

Merry Christmas to me!
Isn't he lovely?
He makes me think of the sweet little boxes and preciousness that Cherry from Cherry's Jubilee makes.

Have you seen her blog? She is crazy-talented and currently my Crafty Crush.
I want to go over to her house and (after a cup or two of reaaallly strong coffee - so I'm actually alert) have her teach me how she does all her lovely, lovely crafts.

I've made a few Christmas gifts, but I'm going to have to wait to post pictures of those - I can't spoil the surprise! :-)

life. love. coffee.

Greetings from Newborn Mommy World!

I'm still here (at least physically - mentally, not-so-much) and surviving on the Newborn Mommy Diet: caffeine, caffeine and more...caffeine.

I'm currently on my second cup of coffee, which means that I may actually be coherent for a few moments. I thought I'd take advantage of the caffeine high and attempt to type something that may actually sound close to intelligent.

Notice I said, "close".

I'd better hurry, though... the effects of caffeine aren't as strong as they should be when you get less than 4 hours of sleep a night.

Mommy Memory is a funny thing. It seems that you never quite remember the "trials" of parenthood as clearly as they actually occurred.

I remember feeling tired and stressed when Avery was a newborn, but I'm realizing now that the memory of that kind of exhaustion is much kinder and gentler than the reality of that kind of exhaustion.

I am tired.
Don't get me wrong - I'm blissfully tired.
I'm totally thankful to be tired.
But I'm tired.
I'm really tired.

Although it feels a little like one reaaaaallly long day since Charlie was born, it's actually been 4 WEEKS! I can't believe it!

Charlie is growing and changing every day. Can I just tell you how crazy it is that he looks just like his daddy? He's his little clone. It's like I had nothing to do with his conception at all. Slightly unfair. Since I was the one hoovering over the toilet for 14 weeks.

I'm so pleased with the way Avery has adjusted to life with her new brother. She has been surprisingly gentle and loving to him over the last couple of weeks and seems to be ok with the fact that Charlie will be living at our house from now on. She has her moments, but she's 2.

Avery and I are go, go, goers normally. The last few weeks have definitely been an adjustment for us. We try to get out of the house for a little while every day, but it's much harder than I thought it would be to take a newborn and a 2-year-old out by myself. Usually, we end up waiting for Daddy to come home before we go anywhere.

The other night, David and I used a gift card and went out to dinner. We dropped Avery off with her grandmother and we took Charlie with us.

This is why newborns rock:

He may not sleep at night, but he WILL sleep right through dinner.
Knowing that In a few months this will NOT be possible, I'm taking full advantage!

almost wordless wednesday

Just like mommy!

holiday open house

It's time for my open house. I even cleaned for the occasion...sort of...just don't look too closely!

Here's the view from my front door:


My Dining Room -

Here's another picture of the Dining room - in this one, you can see the where I hung my Christmas cards. They are on twine and put up with clothes pins.

my decoupaged picture frames

The "stocking holder" I made. Sadly it had to turn into a "tussie mussie holder" - since I can't find my STOCKINGS!!!

Speaking of Tussie Mussies - here is the one that I made. I planned on making 4, but I got frustrated and quit.

That's right.
I'm a crafty quitter. I'm owning it.

Kitchen Pictures - these are the reindeer foot and hand prints that I made with Avery and Charlie the other day. I especially love how little Charlie's handprints look like blobs because I couldn't get his fists to open. So precious.

These are the button trees I made a couple of weeks ago. They almost KILLED me.

Ingredients for the perfect Button Tree:
1. a million buttons
2. a million and two pearlized straight pins
3. mod podge
4. every shred of sanity you have left
5. the sickening feeling that you should have just bought a $20 tree and saved yourself the hassle.

This. Oh, this... This is the Josh Groban door hanger that I WON last year at our Worship Team's Christmas Party. It was a Dirty Santa gift. Did I mention that I WAS THE LUCKY WINNER of this GEM???

It makes me laugh. I love it. He's decoupaged. He's fancy. He's jingle-belly and wearing a Santa Hat. He's fabulous.

More Christmas cards hanging in the window over my sink

This is Avery's handmade Christmas Wreath. That girl LOVES to paint. Isn't it sweet? I got the idea from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman.

This is the totally touchable, stuffed, felt Christmas Tree that is in our playroom. The ornaments are nativity pieces. Next year, I'm going to wrap each one up individually and let Avery put one on the tree during the last few nights before Christmas... Kind of like an advent activity.

This is a board I made this year.

I love this ornament. It is my favorite. It was Avery's preschool ornament from last year. I love her smile in the picture. It makes me happy.

This is the top of a little bookshelf in the playroom. I put the Christmas Card Wreath I made on the wall and have a basket of Christmas stories and a yummy-smelling rosemary topiary on top of the shelf.

The fuschia tinsel tree in Avery's room and a Christmas prayer candle that was mine when I was a little girl.


This is the shelf in my bathroom. I found the little bottle brush trees at Garden Ridge and did a little work on them. They used to have colored ornaments on them. I took those off and added pearl ornaments instead. Then I glittered little wooden stars and put them on top. I like the white better.

I bought those little houses at Hobby Lobby. I still have to paint and glitter them. I'll post a picture of them later.

A snowflake themed wreath on the wall in my bedroom -

That's it... It doesn't take long to tour Itty Bitty House.
Check out Kimba's blog for more open house tours!

storytime with santa

or could it be...SATAN?


We took Avery and Charlie to a Museum in town for something called "Storytime with Santa" last week.

Most kids love Santa. This is how Avery feels about Santa:

Do you see it? The fear is palpable. At one point, Santa stood up and to talk to the kids on our side of the room. I thought Avery was going to lose her mind. She kept saying, "NO! Too close! Too close!"

After "Torture Time with Santa" was over, we were served donuts and chocolate milk. Since Santa was no where to be seen and there was a yummy sugary confection involved, Avery's mood drastically improved.

My poor genetically doomed child: her mood changes on a whim... just like her mommy.



Once the kiddos were all sugared up, we took them up the stairs to look at Christmas Trees.

Here's what happens when you are a toddler and people ask you not to touch something:


The last stop of the night included a walk through the "Enchanted Forest". The Enchanted Forest is basically a display set up with Winter themed mechanical animals and scenes. It's been around since my mom was a little girl and although it's changed locations over the years, the displays have remained the same.

Growing up, It was our family's tradition to see it every year. As a little girl, I thought that The Enchanted Forest was so magical and wonderful. Sometimes being an adult stinks...

Turns out that once you are an adult, the Enchanted Forest loses it's "enchantment".
In fact, it's pretty darn lame.

Avery didn't think so, though.
Look at her face here:

It's so much fun to watch her see something for the first time... THAT is definitely magical and wonderful.


At the end of our Enchanted Forest tour, Santa was waiting to take pictures with the kids.

Obviously, we bi-passed that...No picture with Santa this year. Avery was grateful.

Avery had a great time - minus the storytime with Santa part. We may have to take her to therapy later in life for post-traumatic stress disorder from the whole Santa experience, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.