Making Presents...

This year,  the kids and I are making some presents again to give to our friends and family...We are also taking brown paper bags and decorating them with holiday decorations (stickers, stamps, markers) and ribbon... The tags I printed out from Organized Christmas ... I really love this site..It has great ideas that I use every year... Here are some of the things we are doing this year...  

Baking cookies to place in tins - 

1. "reindeer" cookies made out of Nutter Butter sandwich cookies, pretzels, and decorated

2. making "OH SO EASY" peanut butter blossoms (yummy!!)   You can find the recipe here.

3. Christmas Fudge

4. traditional sugar cookies 

5. M&M Brownies  - and I use the "BEST" ever brownie recipe (at least that is what the site called it, and I have to agree it was darn good...)  http://baking.about.com/od/brownies/a/bestrecipes.htm

Making soup mixes - the recipes I like can be found here.

Painting "glass ball" ornaments with our hand-print snowmen,

candy canes and Christmas trees. Then making some "snowflake" ornaments with beads and pipecleaners.   I found the idea here, although ours were definitely not that elaborate...

and then making "Snowman Soup and Reindeer Poop" which are 2 of our favorite stocking stuffer gifts for our extended family... which I also get the ideas from here.

Merry Christmas!!!

Frustration..

Yes!! I'm frustrated... I have spent the last hour or so trying to get my Christmas cards ordered... My internet server (FRONTIER) whom I do not have a good relationship with (it is slower than a sloth) is slow and then the Sam's Club site(who I order my cards through) is giving me trouble...So, dear family and friends, the Christmas cards will be late this year, "IF"  (crossing my fingers) they ever get ordered...  

 

our Christmas decorations...

Whew!!! We are almost done putting out our Christmas decorations...Why is it that decorating is soooo tiring? It seems that it takes some of the joy out of the season, because of all the work and effort that goes into "getting ready for Christmas"...This year I didn't do no where near as much because I wanted to be able to make crafts, cookies, and just have fun and enjoy Christmas through my kids eyes...

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Party with the Boy Scouts

DS recently had his Boy Scout Christmas Party... Here is a picture from his party...

 

Gymnastics Recital..

DD recently had her gymnastics recital... She was so excited...

The costumes they wore were just white tee's (which had bells painted on them by their instructors) and red or green shorts... They were sooooo cute!!

They turned cartwheels, did backbends, and forward rolls... the finale was a pyramid with several girls doing splits and backbends... DD is on the top of the pyramid...

After the recital, her brother gave her flowers which she definitely loved!!

 

What to do with a costume...

Ok... DD has a ballet/tap recital costume from several years past that I have been keeping because it was :

1. adorable

2. a great memory for her

3. it cost too much to get rid of...

So, I have hung it in her room on a padded silk hanger beneath a shelf with her birthday dolls... What do you think?

December Little Hands Art group...

This month we studied Nadir Afonso... A Portugese artist known as the creator of "Kinetic Art"... We learned about his education in architecture and his conversion to his art career (his first love) ad how he is still painting today in his 80's... We looked at several examples of his work involving his "Cityscape" series and how over the years his art had become more abstract...

  Aliados Square   Moscow

We did our own versions of his watercolor work... Here is some pictures of our group and their work...

 

Our week with Gingerbread Baby

This week we have been working on Jan Brett's "Gingerbread Baby"... We have had a great time visiting Austria, Germany and the Alps...We worked on measruements and fractions...We discussed spices and wher they come from...and the highlight of our week was making GINGERBREAD COOKIES using a recipe without molasses which turned out great...and they were YUMMY!!!

Performance Night...

Tonight was "Performance Night" for our co-op...DS take piano lessons there so this was his time for his recital... He did great...I was such a proud momma!!!

Our First Snow...

Yes!!!!

We have snow... Granted it is not much but it is the first snow and on Dec. 1st too...

The kids were almost as excited as I was ....

We took a walk outside, threw a few snowballs, and made snow cream...YUMMY!!!

Here is the recipe we used:

Basic Recipe                                                          

1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
scant 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
large bowl of snow (about 3 quarts)

Blend milk, sugar and vanilla. Stir in enough snow to make snow cream to an ice cream consistency.