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Less than four hours left in 2011 - a year that was filled with blessings, new experiences, new friends and old, family, fun, highs and lows, a fish and a dog. All those things that shape us, carry us, and bring us another day further - another day richer.
If we are just as blessed in 2012, we can only be grateful.
Wishing each and every one of you a healthy and blessed new year - thank you so much for sharing in my journey.
peace!
(click the photo to see them a little larger)
As promised.
Each year I get a new hand carved santa from my husband added to my collection. Okay - so those that have been reading my blog for awhile know that the natural colored four santas in one is actually for our children, but I'm taking good care of it until they move out.
This year I got two - the hands in the pocket Santa on the end, and the little shelf sitting Santa in the front near the end. My husband used his last two pieces of basswood for them, so they are smaller than usual. He has 'place an order for more wood' on his list for when things slow down. (He orders from a place in northern Minnesota)
Should I have taken close ups of each?
Maybe after I run to Costco.
*wink*
Still sharing bits of our Christmas, and I'll still share my Santa collection - yesterday just sort of slipped away from me is all. Imagine.
For now, let me share a bit of my husband's gift. He was the unexpecting very surprised recipient of a new Kindle Fire. We don't often do gifts, he and I, preferring instead to get something for the house - so he was completely caught off guard, which I secretly enjoy. With his new busy schedule and more traveling in his future, combined with the fact that his work laptop locks so many websites out - it was just the right gift. Besides all that, he digs reading.
But it needed a cover.
I decided to go with a hardcover book for a cover - this will protect it a bit more in his work environment and travels.
To pick a book to start with, I simply raided the upstairs closet slash bookshelf. My sense of humor led me to using either the Book of Lies or The Double Agents. In the end I chose The Book of Lies only because the Double Agents had a purple cover underneath the jacket, and upon further inspection of the bookshelf, it seems like perhaps my husband is collecting all the W.E.B. Griffin books, but there was only one Meltzer. Easy decision.
I began by measuring the Kindle Fire that was hidden under my desk, and was tickled to find that it fit perfectly between the page number and book title on each page. I marked the lines with a pencil.
I then measured an approximate amount of pages I would need for the Kindle - those in the middle and rubber banded those on both sides to keep them separate.
I used Elmers Glue to adhere the middle pages all together, just along the outside edges. I used a brush to apply the glue.
It was here that I accidentally lost all the remaining photos of this step by step process.
After the glue had dried, I used my exacto knife to cut along the lines down through the entire middle section.
All trimmed out, I used glue again to adhere the middle section to the back section, and to smooth down the inside edges.
I then adhered a ribbon inside the book to make flipping the Kindle out just a little easier.
It now sits safely on our book shelf, protected from little boys.
Our Book of Lies.
I crack me up.
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I also made a soft side cover out of wool that I had felted, but unfortunately those pictures were also lost. In a nutshell, I sewed an envelope complete with an elastic strap for closure.
He seems to be gravitating towards the hardside.
With just the little boys and myself home this week, Tuesday seemed like a good day to start taking down the Christmas decorations. I know I've mentioned my Aunt Mary-like tendencies before when it comes to me putting away the ornaments, but hey - we'll do it again.
The kids (and husband) know that putting away the ornaments is my job, and my job alone.
Each of the four kids has their own box, and I put those away too. It's a little hard to explain to Mark why his box is so much thinner than his 16 year old brothers but he'll catch on.
Besides being fun memory joggers, the notes always make it easy for me to inventory the ornaments and help to make sure none are left on the tree or under the couch.
Some of the notes give me a little 'oh yeah' giggle.
We had a handful of new ornaments this year that required new notes. This ornament I purchased for myself - I figured it was a good way to document the year I knocked 'go up in a hot air balloon' off my bucket list.
My cardinal ornament collection is also growing. I try to add one to this collection each year - and they can be any sort - metal, wood, ceramic, glass. I'm not fussy. Although I didn't buy that big fat fluffy one - my mom bought that for me, and it makes me smile every time I pull it out of the box.
I'm partial to clip on ornaments - I think because we had a few on our tree growing up.
This year's cardinal.
And then there was this batch of new ornaments that came by way of my husband's carving class - they each participated in an exchange making five of the same ornament. It's fun to see the different carver's styles.
Tomorrow I'll share my Santa collection - we added two new Santa's this year.
I'm going to consolidate the last three days into one post here.
We had a quiet Christmas Eve at this house. I took some time in the afternoon to go for a walk about town, and in doing so I saw that the carriage rides were still running. I walked back home and gathered the family.
We've done this carriage ride years ago, but I think it was before the two boys came along. Brian is on the left wiggling a loose tooth, hoping the tooth fairy and Santa would come on the same night. No luck there - it's still wiggling.
Wendy took this picture of my husband and I. It was when we saw it that we realized they forgot to put the tinting on my husband's glasses. He has to try and fit that visit in sometime this week.
As for the carriage ride, we'll make sure to fit it in again next year.
Back home, we ate dinner and then hopped in the van to go for a light tour. The original plan was to go through Hines Drive - but we've done that quite a few years so we decided instead to just drive through some subdivisions. We got off on the Beck Road exit, took that down to 8 mile, drove through downtown Northville and then headed up 7 mile to Uncle Georges - stopping to drive through a few subs along the way.
We found one house that had us tuning our radios to 88.5 and it was flashing and dancing to the music. There was a whole string of cars in front of that house - kinda cool, but I'm glad they aren't my neighbors.
At George's we enjoyed a bit of Waldo hunting, some Leaping Louie and Break the Ice before heading back home. We got home just before 10, and the kids were all sound asleep by 11.
On Christmas morning, the teenager was actually the first one awake, which was strange. He knew all his presents - in fact, he'd been wearing one for two weeks already, but he must have thought and hoped that Santa was tricking. He wasn't.
At 7:45 am, Tippy figured it was about time someone woke up and fed him so he went for Mark. It was a blur for a bit after that.
Brian got a lot of Legos which kept the kids busy all afternoon.
Wendy got a keyboard, which kept us entertained all afternoon. No, Really.
And it was a good quiet day. The boys went to church in the morning, and the girls went at night - and we had a ham dinner with cheese potatoes for lunch and nobody showed up to share it with us, which was strange, but the quiet day was nice too especially since my husband had to wake up for work at 3:30 am Monday morning. He spent a good portion of the afternoon snuggled on the Lazyboy with his new Kindle Fire.
With just me and the three youngest home the day after Christmas, the intention was to have a jammie day - we were all so tired. But the pull of Monday and the pull of the sunshine was too much for me. We ended up heading out to the local park to enjoy the 56 degree sunny afternoon and took down Mark's preschool tree while we were there.
Home again, the kids spent the afternoon doling out lunch and treats by way of playing restaurant with the cash register that Mark got for Christmas.
Last evening Brian and I went shopping and got him some new shoes,
Today - today might be jammie day.
It's snowing - which has confused Brian "Will we have another Christmas now?" and it's dark and it's just me and the little boys home. Greg is working, Allan is working, Wendy flitted off to spend the night elsewhere.
I should probably do dishes and laundry and make lists.
Be good!
And not once did the 6 year old mention that - hey Santa, I would love new shoes. No - he just casually mentions it to his mother hours before Christmas - "Hey mom, I might need new shoes"
Ya think?
Hello! Happy Monday!
Merry day after Christmas! I hope your holiday - whatever you recognize and celebrate - was filled with joy - and LOVE!
As for today - Welcome to the All Things Love Technique Tuesday blog hop.
Technique Tuesday’s Stamping Techs are blog hopping again, and we are sharing love-themed projects this month. Seems fitting for me, the morning after hearing of two (or three?) of my husband's cousin's kids announcing engagements (Janine, Natalie, and ?) (you figure it out)
For this month's project, I went with a card that I made using Love, Ali (the heart and the sentiment) and Let's Call it a Date (the months of the calendar). I stamped each of the months on white cardstock, and then cut them each out, and then stamped the heart onto twelve scrap pieces of patterned paper and cut them out and adhered them to the calendar. It was a fun card to monkey with during a busy month. Fussy cutting relaxes me.
I used pop dots to adhere the calendars and give them some dimension.
Be sure to check out the blogs of everyone taking part in today’s blog hop:
Sharyn <----- YoU aRe HeRE
We love reading your comments so we will have some random draws for prizes.
From the comments received on all the blogs, we will pick one lucky person to win the Bear Necessities stamp set.
We’ll also pick one person to win the Home Tweet Home stamp set.
You don’t need to comment on all the blogs to be eligible to win. But the more comments you leave, the more chances you have to win!
Comments must be posted by midnight on Dec. 28th. The winner will be announced on Dec. 29th sometime on the Technique Tuesday blog.
Thanks for stopping by!
Someone asked her a couple months ago what she wanted for her birthday and she flippantly responded that she would love to have a skittle pooping unicorn. It was a tall order to fill in time for her birthday, so it was decided we would surprise her for Christmas.
Unfortunately, her dentist absolutely restricted her intake of all chewy sweet candy, so the order had to be changed to a horse that poops Reeses Pieces instead. She's not complaining.
(It was originally a horse. Greg added the unicorn horn and painted it white)
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eta: our kids didn't wake up until 7:45 this year. And only because they finally heard me bumping around the kitchen - one room away - digging out the stuff to cook the ham
Merry Christmas from our home to yours!
I've already put our annual Christmas card onto a layout - it fell into place nicely with January's Studio AE. and the December Daily by Ali Edwards set. Our Christmas will be full and busy, filled with building and learning new toys, a yummy ham dinner and church. Next week I'll put my December Daily together while we enjoy a lazy at home schedule. My husband, unfortunately, has to work bright and early the day after Christmas - we're thankful he was able to enjoy this week off instead.
Now I have to get to sleep, because if I don't get to sleep, Santa won't come.
We've been partying as if Christmas is coming over here.
On Thursday night we attended the extended Pennala party. That's Greg's side of the family. My intention was to take photos once Santa arrived, but, well, he musta got lost - so this is all I've got. I had the wrong lens for group pictures - that photo only shows maybe 20% of the peeps.
Last night we partied with my immediate family. These are the only pictures I got. I was enjoying just relaxing and visiting.
The kids played a version (not this version) of the Wright Family for the dollar gifts and it was good for laughs as they concentrated on the lefts and rights in the story.
My brother was the reader of the tale.
And it was good.
Today I'm preparing tomorrows menu
Baking for evening church
Making a chocolate eclair cake
And checking my list one more time in hopes I don't bump into anything crucial that I need.
Meijers was crowded enough at 10:30 last night - I can't imagine what it looks like over there today.
