Tag: holidays

Easy Christmas Decorations

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Holy cats. This Christmas has been screaming towards us like a Mack truck. I feel like we’ve been scrambling from the get go to catch up / get ahead of this holiday. When we were putting up decorations, I realized one of my favorite things is one of the simplest. It’s  a trifle dish full or ornaments surrounded by a fresh, live wreath. And this past weekend, I found a banner that cascades out of the middle that really is the icing on the cake – er, trifle. And really, it’s so something that Kristin Thomson at www.oneprettyplace.com could whip up lickety split.

Ali Hearts Coffee

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I love making mini Christmas trees. They are so fun to dream up,  to create and so fun to give as gifts. Peter’s mom and dad are both UofA grads as well so their tree is a UofA theme with all four of our graduation pictures as ornaments. My mom has one with an ornament for each of the kid’s family’s. I have aspirations to make one for Bay with a picture from each Christmas, but I haven’t found the right inspiration yet. But I did find inspiration with some coffee…

My sister, Ali, has always been a lover of Starbucks. She even worked there for a short stint in high school. I knew she had been collecting the mini ornaments they sell at the holidays so I asked her to bring all that she had and compiled them all into a tree.

I usually pick up a box of three, mini, prelit trees from Michaels in the after Christmas sale. So I had the perfect little 14 inch tree for the project. I tied on the ornaments, glued on some bells, tied on pretty ribbon and found the perfect espresso cup as the topper. I also found a mini tree skirt at Target – perfect!

Cookies Gone Wrong

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Yesterday afternoon, Bay and I put on some Christmas music, lit a cinnamon candle and fired up the oven to make some Christmas cookies.  B was thrilled to play in the left over dough, flour and sprinkles while the cookies cooked. It was a lovely afternoon.

That is until two cookies escaped the baking sheet and dropped into the oven where they broke into a million pieces. Crap. I decided to just close the door and let it cool before I attempted to clean them up. Until the kitchen began to fill with smoke.

“Why not let it self clean??” I thought. So I put on the self clean setting and returned to icing the trees. Until I noticed that it appeared we had a yule log in our kitchen…yup the cookies had ignited in the oven. I quickly turned off the oven and stepped back trying to decide what to do next – get the extinguisher? Call 911? As I contemplated, the fire quickly went out. Bay casually looked over from her sprinkling duties and said “Mommy, there’s a fire in the oven”. Yes, yes there is kiddo.

Despite our house smelling like a camp fire, all is well. The oven cooled and is no worse for the wear (I think). I cleaned out the chunks of cookie and it is now happily self-cleaning (I think). The windows are open, the fans are going and there are holiday scented candles burning so hopefully by this afternoon there will be no evidence of our almost fiasco.

When my cousin Will arrived last night to watch UofA and eat us out of house and home (I was prepared with 3 lbs of tacos) I told him what had happened. He responded “what’s with you guys and fire??” – referring to the grill fire of 2009. It’s nice to have family who cares about you.

On the bright side, the cookies were delicious! Chef Mini Wand does it again!

The Chef hard at work.

Check out that post nap hair.

Much like shoes, you just can’t have too many sprinkles.

Tree Hunting

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Peter finally convinced me this year to go up North and cut down a Christmas tree. I have always been opposed because his plans involved me sitting in the back seat with a squirmy, crying  kiddo while getting motion sick for 5 hours while he sipped hot chocolate, sang along to Christmas songs and drove his oh-so-precious truck.

He agreed to move the location to a much more reasonable destination and went the first day permits were available to ensure that we got the right area. The plan was that we would drive up just north of Payson, get our tree, eat a picnic brunch and head back while the munchkin napped. When I told our friends Beth and Grant of our plans, the wanted to join. So now we would have a party for our Griswold style tree hunting. We were certain it would be a disaster, but hopefully a hilarious disaster.

Sadly, Mother Nature had other plans. She decided to dump 2 feet of snow on the usually dry area the day before our trip. After looking at the web cams and the road conditions, we decided it wasn’t safe to risk an accident or getting stuck. So we opted for church, breakfast and tree hunting at a lot with our friends.

PW and I each can’t remember the last time we had a real tree. We have an awesome, pre-lit version that is so easy we just always go with that. But the live version is pretty great – we bought from a local nursery and the thing might as well have been cut down by us it’s so fresh! Here are the highlights:

Getting her in place.

Uncle Grant ATTACK!!!

Aunt Beth 🙂

Straightening it out…again. It only fell over twice.

Ta da!! I was trying to get tricky with my camera to get lots of light, but it didn’t quite pan out…

Who is that teenie, tiny lady?!

Old School

From the time I was little, I remember Mame had this on her dresser.

I’ve actually done a good job of making a photo ornament for each year. I love looking at all of them!

Giving Thanks

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Holy moly. It’s been a crazy week! Thanksgiving was one of the best yet  – after 5 years of hosting, I think we have feeding 20+ down to a science. We’ve gotten to see and spend time with old friends and lots of extended family. Baylor is officially BFFs with her second cousin, Abby. And is solidly convinced that her (step) cousins are the best.

Mother Nature threatened, once again, to rain on our parade. I literally stepped out onto our patio with my hands on my hips just daring her to keep sprinkling all over my beautifully set table. Thankfully, I have a very convincing “mom stare” and she backed off before my linens were soaked. In fact, the sun came out by the time all of our family and friends arrived with side dishes in hand. PW’s turkeys were the best he’s ever made and the entire evening was…relaxed. The everyone ate and then sat and enjoyed the beautiful Arizona weather, candle light and kid’s laughter.

{Mother Nature threatening to ruin my table!}

{Chef Wand}

{Chef Wand’s Turkeys}

{Titi and cousin Zoe}

{The hungry crowd}

{How many kids can you fit on a toddlers climber?}

{this many!}

{How do you make tree climbing more interesting? Do it in a tree not really meant for climbing and add fire!}

{A sweet note from cousin Madi about being thankful}

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving too! I am very thankful for you reading, commenting and liking my humble blog 🙂

Happy (belated) Halloween!

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Yeah I know this is a day behind, but trying to create Halloween too far in advance is just too much work!

We had a great weekend filled with lots of pumpkin carving – or drilling in Peter’s case (don’t ask because I can’t explain). We had a blast scooping out the guts, trying to interpret what Baylor wanted hers to look like and watching Peter create a master piece using pipe cleaners. Here’s how they turned out:

{Baylor’s classic “pumpin”}

{Peter’s. Enough said}

{And the pièce de résistance – Cannibal Pumpkin!}

This is the first year that Bay really got the whole enchilada. She likes to dress up and she totally got the hang of trick-or-treating once she realized there were M&M’s involved. We were also lucky to inherit a hand me down Minnie Mouse costume from Bay’s cousin Madi. It was the real deal too; dress, ears, gloves, ring, tights and shoes. She was in love. Minnie is one of the only characters she really knows so she was excited to look like one of her favorite “amimals” or stuffed animals.

The gloves didn’t last long and the tights were too hot, but the important parts were there! Including a Minnie bracelet from our super cute neighbor.

First stop of the night

Aunt Christiane  (Titi) and cousin Zoe the Gnome

Enjoying all the candy she could eat!

What My Christmas Gifts Say About Me

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So this is belated, but it’s still funny so here  goes.

My sister gave me the following two gifts:

My first thought was “amazing gifts that will get used daily”. Then I started to think  about what her gifts say about me:

1. I have great sister who really knows me.

2. I got two gifts that will definitely get use.

3. I may have a bit of a caffeine addiction.

4. Perhaps I talk a little too much about my love of wine.

5. My sister is a smart ass.

A Little Too Ambitious

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After a long, but fun weekend with family and friends, we decided that we needed to take down a few Christmas decorations. The two “live” wreaths are very dead, the red roses are done too and a few other things needed to go. So we started absent-mindedly removing a few things with the goal of taking it all down next weekend over New Years. As we both separately worked on our projects we would say “I’m going to do the manger too” or “I think I’ll take off the ornaments and we’ll do the tree next weekend….”.

Before we knew it, it was all down. It was packed and the boxes were awaiting transport back to the storage unit. Christmas was done.

Normally, I am elated when all the clutter and mess is gone. I love it through Christmas, but shortly after, I start feeling itchy at all the extra stuff in our house and get the very strong urge to get it out. But this year, I am struck with the fact that I miss the tree. I want the warm glow of it back…but I know by mid-week I will be deep into cleaning out closets, the garage and kitchen cabinets, behind all the furniture and the ceiling fans. And by next weekend, I’ll be ready to welcome winter / spring and will be into planting bulbs and a delicious new garden.

But for now, I miss the tree.

BTW – these are only the “pretty” ornaments. I didn’t get a pic of it fully decorated…sniff…

Christmas 2010 = Success

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I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas, we certainly did. Our goal was to cut back on the retail side of the holiday as mentioned in Christmas in August. And the result was a success. We had a wonderful holiday with little stress and a lot of fun.

The only real downer of the weekend was our annual spat driving to my step sister’s house Christmas morning. We get together with all of our family and in a deluge of paper, open presents. It’s crazy and so much fun. But for the third year in a row, there has been an argument that has thankfully ended happily while we drive. Not sure if it’s the early hour, the getting-three-people-out-the-door-on-time or what, but there’s always something. Last year the climax of the fight was me saying “It’s done! I’ve already bought all the gifts so no matter what we spent, it’s done! So you’re going to drop it and we’re going to have a happy, goddamn Christmas!!”. Followed by three seconds of silence and then a car full of laughter. You know it’s bad when swear words are in the same sentence as Christmas. This year’s argument ended similarly with me saying “I might be grouchy, but you’re throwing out the bait and I’m taking it!!”. Silence…me realizing that none of that made any sense, laughter and then it’s over.

Updated with a great pic of me and Ms.B:

The Holiday Home Goods Parade

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I have a very large family and we get together often. But they’re almost all informal and involve food that doesn’t require utensils and paper plates. But for the holidays, we like to get a little fancier. The problem is that collectively, we have enough plates, silverware and cloth napkins for everyone. But alone, we come up short. So for each holiday there is a parade of items that travels from one house to the host house for use. I’ve pillaged my mom’s supplies for so many years of Thanksgiving’s and Easter’s, I don’t even  need a list of what I need to borrow and she usually just has it all out for me. 10 plates, the spare silverware, serving pieces, bake ware, a table-cloth or two and always the really pretty folding chairs all make their way to our house. It’s not that I don’t have these items myself, it’s that I don’t have enough for 18 people and 5 kids.

This Christmas is no exception. The folding chairs are in the back of the car already. Linen napkins too. My pretty silver shell dish is awaiting shrimp cocktail for Christmas morning and a spare “giant” table-cloth (we describe the length of the various table cloths that my mom and I own not in feet, but by the length of the table. I.E. “with one leaf in or with all three leafs in”. We have really big tables) is ready to go. And so the parade of items makes its way back across town. It just wouldn’t feel like the holidays if someone wasn’t walking in with chairs under one arm.