It was a great holiday!

It’s hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone.  It seems like one big whirlwind since December 1st!

Now to take all the decorations down (not my favorite part for sure) and figure out where to put all the new toys.  I seriously need to get Lauren’s playroom organized starting with a massive clean-out, toy donation/sale and then some organization of what’s left.  I ordered some vinyl so I can make labels for the slide out toy bins with my Cricut.  I’ve been wanting to try cutting vinyl for a long time, but never get around to it. 

Instead of posting a bunch of pics from the holiday, I’m just posting the video I put together.  I’m trying to be good at making videos so Lauren has them when she’s older.  I just downloaded Windows Live Essentials: Movie Maker and it’s SOOO easy to slap something together using all your pics and video snippets.  They even improved on regular Window’s Movie Maker, which is what I used to use. 

Teacher’s gifts…

Well, I just finished up the holiday gifts for the three teachers at Lauren’s preschool.  I’ve been having so much fun playing with subway art lately, that I decided to make something personalized for the teachers.  I included their names, the school name and the classroom names along with all the other teacher related words.  I used these totally fun and funky unfinished frames from Cut it Out.  These frames are SO reasonable and the 5x7 size includes the glass.  Perfect!

I found some cute flower stickers at Michael’s and coordinated the paint color and subway art to the flowers.  I used CraftSmart acrylic paint in Apple Tart and used a varnish over the top to give it a sheen. 

I hope the teachers appreciate home made gifts.  Not quite as useful as a nice gift certificate to Starbucks, but at least there’s no calories involved! 

Linking up at Embellishing Life and ">Somewhat Simple. 

Holiday fun

One of our local dairy farms has an annual holiday event they call “Joy to the Herd”.  We met some friends there last weekend and Lauren had a blast.  They take you on a tour of the farm including the milking facility and then they have a video on how the milk get processed at the distribution plant.  After the tour, they drop you off at a big red barn where you meet Santa and Roxie, their cow mascot.  Everyone gets a chocolate milk and they have crafts and face painting.  Outside the barn, they have a big pile of snow and a snow slide for the kids.  Lauren’s favorite part was the slide and throwing snowballs…remember, we don’t see snow around here!

Yesterday evening we went to an outdoor mall with a very festive Christmas feel.  All the trees are lit up and they have carriage rides, Santa and a mini light show.  They were having a special event last night and Lauren got to take a pony ride.  At the end of night I asked what what she liked the best and this was it!

 

And here she is with the big man himself…she sure LOVES Santa!

Kickin off the season

I finally got the house decorated for Christmas and the boxes put away.  It’s a nice feeling to have this done so we can enjoy holiday crafting, baking and activities. 

Lauren is SO excited this year and anxiously awaiting Santa Claus.  I decided to start the Elf on the Shelf tradition this year and here’s our elf, Jingle.  Lauren has been having a lot of fun already finding Jingle each morning.  So far, he’s just been hanging out around the Christmas tree, but I’m sure he’ll be making his way into other rooms in the house soon.  ;)

Last night a couple of friends and I made these countdown calendars with vinyl from Pick your Plum, which I’m totally addicted too.  If you like to craft, get on their daily email list!  We spray painted dollar store pizza pans, placed the vinyl on them and attached ribbon for hanging.  Oh, and we hot glued a magnet onto a little star ornament to count the days down.  Simple and cute.

 

Here’s our tree this year.  We left the skinny tree in the box and used our nice, fluffy tree.  Unfortunately, we had to do the lights ourselves on this one which is always a test in patience.  We all get spoiled with the pre-lit trees.  You can definitely tell that Lauren preferred to hang the ornaments along the bottom, as that area is well covered!

Our old front door wreath was a little tired looking, so I put this together for the front door.  Hobby Lobby had all their Christmas ribbon on sale for 50% off and I thought this pattern was bright and cheery. 

For my fellow Tarjay shoppers, check out the cute throw pillows they have on sale right now.  Two of these Santa pillows jumped into my cart yesterday. 

Every Little Miracle

I heart this commercial...

Yo Gabba Gabba

Check out what we scored!

Joe is a big fan of Van’s shoes and Lauren is a fan of Yo Gabba Gabba, so we have been drooling over the Foofa pair for her.  We haven’t bought them because justifying $37 for toddler shoes she’ll have for one season, is a tuff sell for us.  Well, Joe and Lauren were at a shopping center today and just happened to stop into the Van’s store at just the perfect time.  The guy had just taken this sign out of the window display and Lauren was checking it out, so he asked if they wanted it.  Next thing you know they are carrying this big foam core sign through the parking lot!

Imagine having this for your Yo Gabba birthday party.  What an awesome photo op!  Too bad this party theme isn’t at the top of Lauren’s list (she keeps changing between Olivia and Minnie Mouse). 

  

Hmmm…I wonder how much this would fetch on Ebay to some Yo Gabba collector.  They have sort of a cult following, you know! 

Halloween Fun!

I can’t believe October has already come and gone.  It was a super fun month for us, and it sure did go by in a flash!

 

Last weekend Lauren and I headed out to the pumpkin patch to meet up with a friend. 

The girls had a great time picking out their pumpkins and decorating them with foam stickers.  Lauren especially liked the bounce house…not exactly typical Fall fun, but fun nonetheless.






 

 

 

Lauren has been bringing home some really cute projects from preschool this month.  When I picked her up from school on one of my Mondays off, I noticed wire hangers sandwiched between orange sheets of tissue paper with glue all around the edges.  They were sitting out to dry and I wondered what they were making.  Well, they tore off the edges of the tissue to form a pumpkin…I thought this was a cute idea and one I might steal sometime. 

This past Saturday Joe was off and we had a really nice day together, just the three of us.  I put on a big pot of chili and then carved a pumpkin.  Lauren wanted her pumpkin to have round eyes and a nose with a happy smile… 

I wish I could give you a great recipe for the chili, but I kept it simple and used my favorite Coyote Country chili seasoning mix.  It was SOOO good with shredded cheese on top and crackers. 

Here’s my Little Red Riding Hood cutie pie!  I bought this storybook months ago and we’ve been reading it at bed time.  She loves it and knew right away what she wanted to be for Halloween.  This costume was made by my Mom originally for my niece, Katie, who is now a senior in high school.  I love that Lauren is wearing Katie’s costume from about 14 years ago!  Maybe if Katie has a daughter some day she will wear it too. 

The girls had a blast running from house to house and had no problem at all going right up to the door yelling “trick or treat”.  Last year they were both still a little apprehensive.  It was so much fun to see how excited they were and Lauren did a great job, after a little coaching, saying thank you to everyone.  We only walked a few blocks, but the girls certainly got a nice stash of candy including a full sized Crunch bar that somehow disappeared out of Lauren’s pumpkin over night.  ;)

  

San Diego Trip

We just got back from a trip to San Diego this past Thursday.  I had bought tickets for the Phineas and Ferb live show months ago and it just happened to fall on the day we were leaving to drive out to California, so we did the show and then hit the rode.  Lauren loved the show!

 

We spent one of our days at Legoland in Carlsbad. 

This was our first time there and Lauren loved it.  The magic height seemed to be 36” for most rides, so she was able to ride pretty much everything.  Most rides also had a second height scale to determine if the child could ride alone or had to ride with an adult.  Lauren was able to ride a couple of things alone and she really enjoyed that.  Here she is sporting her new driver’s license….

 

When all was said and done, we had a really nice day at Legoland.  If you’ve never been, I think it’s worth a trip if you’re in the area.  It’s certainly not Disney and you need to realize that going in and adjust your expectations accordingly.  Also, I think it’s best for kids at least 36” in height up to about 8 years old.  For the price of admission I would certainly rather do a Disney park, but the fact that Lauren could ride pretty much everything made it worth it for us.  

We stayed with some friends of ours in a rental house on the beach.  This is the first time we have stayed right on the beach and it was so nice to hear the waves…it’s such a calming sound to fall asleep to.  This was the view from our sliding glass door. 

This was Lauren’s first time at the beach and she had a great time playing in the sand and putting her feet in the water.  I think next time we’ll go when it’s warm enough to actually get in the water and lay on the beach. 

The best part about staying at the house was stepping right onto the sand from our door.  We had a bonfire each night and Lauren had so much fun roasting marshmallows. 

I love how plants and flowers thrive in the San Diego weather and we this beautiful little nursery.  I would have loved to bring some things back, but they would just fry in our Arizona heat. 

Just for the boat ride, we took the ferry from the Broadway Pier downtown to Coronado Island…

 

and here’s my girl and her mega-watt smile…