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.