I'm Back

I'm finally back. Seems like its been a while! Like 3 weeks. Right? I know, I know! I was enjoying my vacation. We had a lot of fun!

Our kids got out of school early this year. It was nice because I had one full week to prepare for the holidays without any school events! Well minus Basketball practice for my son! Yep! He made the team this year! YEAH! So proud of him.

So on to our vacation...I spent that week sewing and packing. We planned on surprising the kids with a trip to DISNEYLAND for Christmas. Because of the cost of tickets and food, I was making a lot of the kids gifts this year. The older kids all got some Disney patchwork blankets when they were younger and I wanted to make one for my youngest. I had saved all the material from making the last ones. So it was very easy to make it. Thankfully most of the material was already cut! Woo! Hoo! Got that done! Then I made each of the girls a cute lil owl pillow! They turned out so, so cute! Because my son is 12, I decided not to make him a cute, cuddly pillow and bought him something. ha!ha! I also made a cute puppy blanket and pillow for our employees new baby. I love how it turned out! 

By the way, I will be sharing pictures below. Don't worry!

We made our family members ornaments this year for Christmas. They were snowmen made from white tennis balls. Very cool! We made a few more things for them too. For Daddy this year, the kids made a really cool shirt. We saw it on Pinterest. I will try and find the link to it sorry. But they drew on the back of a shirt. Roads, buildings and personal touches. On the front it said, "My Favorite Shirt". They also each picked out 1 car to go with it. They love drawing on daddy's back with body crayons and thought this would be fun too! My hubby and kiddos are so sweet too! They went to our jewelry store and picked out charms for a Pandora Bracelet for me! I love it! They picked out an elephant, chick, good luck (my oldest daughter picked this out. She is always so lucky. Finding four leaf clovers and money all the time) an airplane, orange jeweled flowers, one with two hearts from hubby and while we were in Disneyland, a Mickey Mouse charm. I was very happy.

So here is how we surprised the kids... Hubby is always on Craig's List! We told the kids that we had to head south to look at truck dad found on Craig's List. They wanted to know why we were taking our Christmas stuff. We just said that we were going to celebrate with family down there and needed to bring stuff. They bought it! YEAH! So we left and drove as far as we could. It's about 9-10 hours depending on stops. We made it more than half way before we stopped at a hotel. The next morning, we went to the complimentary breakfast. The kids were still clueless. We then told them, that we were going to let them open one gift before we left. They were excited. I had wrapped up their Disney blankets and Disney ID's. We knew that when we left the hotel, we were going straight to Disneyland. The kids couldn't wait to look at the truck and leave. Ha! Ha! So we went back to the room, and videoed them opening their gifts. They were very quiet! Then when they realized it was all Disney, they screamed a little. ;0) We told them we were going right now to Disneyland! My youngest, so cute, asked "After we look at the truck?" LOL "No sweetie, we tricked you! Did it work?" we said. They all said "YEAH!" We succeeded in keeping the secret. We wanted to drive further, but we knew the older kids would know where we were going by landmarks, since we have been to Disneyland before. 

Disneyland was awesome! We spent 5 days there. Including Christmas Day! It was so busy, but worth it! I can't say we will go back on Christmas day again, but like someone said, we were able to mark that off our bucket list. Check! I will share a few photos below of our trip. But I have to say, one of their favorite parts was going to the Animation Academy over in California Adventure. We went there 5 times and it was the first thing they wanted to share when they got to school. They all love drawing and I was quite proud of our artistic family!

The rest of our family vacation was spent relaxing and resting from the long trip. Kids are all back in school and the routine is back on. Kind of nice. I missed the routine!

Here are a few pics

Our Snowman Ornaments...white tennis ball, baby sock, and permanent markers.

Disney Blanket...this is the disney blanket I made for my youngest! Sorry it's not the best pic!

Back of the blanket

each of the kids had mostly the same fabric, but all different designs.

Front of the blanket

I embroidered her name and added the cute lace border.

Daddy's Favorite shirt

It was late when we finished and I snapped this with my cell.

One of the owls before it was finished. There is another pic below of them holding them.

We printed out and framed these for family.

Here is a pic of a lighted Christmas Tree we made. If you are interested in how I made this, just send me a quick email. I'd be happy to share. I do have better pictures and I added a bit more to this too!

The puppy pillow and blanket I made for our employees baby.

...Christmas Morning...

Very bad quality photo. Sorry. But it shows their smiling faces. That's all that matters. Right? LOL

When we surprised them with Disneyland

With their blankets and Disney ID's.

A few pics from Disneyland

Happy New Year Everyone! I can't wait to see what this year brings.

Thanks to everyone who sent us Holiday wishes via the blog, text and email! Hope your vacations were as fun as ours. What did you do?

Happy Holidays

We wanted to wish you all a Happy Holiday Season!

Jamie and I will be spending the holidays with our families and will be back in January with a bunch of new posts. Until then, please enjoy browsing around.

Here's Tara's Christmas Card! ;0)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

Happy New Year!!

I pray that your Christmas celebration is filled with Jesus! I pray that you are aware of the blessings around you. I pray that you take time to capture the moments and memories that make up your family and loved ones. I pray that you experience Christmas through the eyes of a child with all the wonder and excitiment that it brings. I pray that you cherish every moment you have with your loved ones. I pray that you are blessed in new and exciting ways.

I had asked my Aunt if she would help us take some photos of our family after our Thanksgiving feast so we would have a current photo for our Christmas card. I also wanted to make sure to be in some photos with my kids. It was a joint effort between my aunt, Greg and myself and I think we did pretty good. Yeah, I don't really enjoy being photographed and I'd like to lose some weight before I'm photographed but my kids won't be saying that when they look back as these photos ("man, I wish mom would have lost 10 pounds before we took those pictures"). They will be saying things like, "remember when we ran around in the backyard and remember how Micah didn't want his picture taken. And remember how dad threw us in the air. Yeah, those were good times." So, here's to capturing good memories, picture perfect or not. And if you have to photoshop a blemish or two I give you permission!! We can put our best face forward right ;)

    

  

Here's a "real life" shot for you!

I'll see you back here in 2012! If you'd care to follow our Christmas adventures and just life in general join me on my family/photography blog!! Can't wait to see you there, and let me know you stopped by! And don't forget my shop is open if you need any last minute gifts!!!

DIY Glitter Nail Polish

So today I have a very fun and quick project. DIY Glitter Nail Polish! It is so easy, the kids can do it! But....if you need stocking stuffers, you might want to make these yourself. Just make sure you mail them to the North Pole for Santa to deliver in time for Christmas! ;-)

What you will need...

Clear Nail Polish

Glitter (variety of colors)

Sling shot balls

Funnel

So my these colors are my daughter's favorites!! I made these per request. ;o)

First head over to the dollar store and pick up some clear nail polish. The dollar store is the only place you will find them that cheap. They even have glitter. They might not have a huge variety of glitter, but you can always pick some more up at a craft store. It will just cost a little more. I had glitter already from another project. I did get mine a Michaels. The Tulip brand. You get a lot and it goes far. You will want to get the sling shot balls because they are heavy enough to shake around the glitter. I tried BB's and they were way too light. If you don't have a funnel, you can make one from paper or even use an envelope.

Once you have all your supplies....just add your choice of glitter colors to the clear nail polish. Add the sling shot ball and shake. That's it!

If you want more glitter, just add more and shake. If you are having trouble finding the correct weighted ball to shake, you can always stir the glitter in with a toothpick. It will settle after sitting, so you will need to stir again next time you use it.

Our Glitter Nail Polish Colors (in the pic above)

I had pink and blue glitter from some shirts I made. My oldest loves blue and my youngest loves pink. So that was easy. My middle daughter loves purple so we just mixed the blue and pink together to make purple. Easy Peasy! 

Just follow your basic color changing chart with your glitter to come up with your favorite colors. 

When you paint them on, they will have pretty Glittery Nails!

~ Decorate your bottles ~

Want to add some cuteness to your Nail Polish Bottles? Let the kids draw on them with permanent markers or add some cute stickers. You can even get some puffy paint and make some cute flowers, hearts, ect. on them!

Hope your day is amazing day!

Christmas crafting with kids

We got our first snow here in West Tennessee early this week. My kids were so excited. This is really the first time that they've experienced a real snow fall. When we lived in Texas it snowed about 1/4 of an inch in February of this year and it only stuck to the driveway (so that's where they made their snow angels). So, they were super excited. They played outside in the snow...got cold...came in and had hot chocolate. We've also been doing some more crafting and Christmas crafting in particular. My kids love to do "projects", and ask to do them all the time. I figured it was time I start actually doing some of the things that I pin on my pinterest board...so we got out the construction paper and got to work!

The first thing we made was a Christmas Tree ring Advent calendar from Make and Takes. Naomi was able to do this pretty well on her own, I just had to tell her where to put the next ring, however I had to help Micah with it quite a bit.

 Then I decided to cut out their handprints and make a wreath. My mom used to make a big Christmas tree with her second grade classes handprints. I'm sure this wreath has been done before and is nothing new but it was fun to make and it'll be fun to see how their handprints grow over the years. So, I just traced their hands on one piece of paper and then cut six out at a time. Then you just curl the fingers in a bit and then I glued them to a cardboard cereal box circle.

Glue them around the circle and keep layering them until the wreath looks full. Then I just glued some red circles around and covered the middle with a big red circle and as you can see wrote "merry christmas" on the circle to cover up the ends of the hands. I think I used about 24 handprints (half from a 5 year old and half from a 3 year old).

I tried to trace Hannah's hand so that I could make a small Christmas tree but she threw a fit. I'll try again some other time. But, you can use the handprints to create a Christmas tree as well. Just start the hands with the curled fingers pointing down but the hands curling upwards and layer the handprints in the shape of a tree. I'll try and get a photo of one soon!

Happy Christmas crafting!

I'll be celebrating my 32nd birthday tomorrow...and I'm hoping to do 32 random acts of kindness within the next week. I'll let you know how it goes!