Christmas 2013 Recap

We had a great Christmas this year! We got the boys for Christmas which made it extra special.

 

Hubby and the boys made a big wooden dollhouse for the girls. They had so much fun doing woodworking with their dad. It's not completely ready, they did the woodwork and now it's my turn to paint it and create the furniture, carpets and curtains for it. I'm pretty excited to work on this project.

 

My youngest stepson's birthday is on Christmas eve so we celebrated it with cake and ice cream.

 

I made sugar cookies with the younger 3 kids on Christmas Eve. They had so much fun cutting out shapes.

After we baked the cookies and they cooled, we frosted them with frosting, sprinkles and candies.

 

My Serenity is so funny, she wanted to write a note to Santa and leave cookies for him. I've never told her about cookies for Santa so she must have read about it in a book or something haha! She wrote this note all by herself, pretty smart for a 5 year old!

 

Here is a little collage of the kid's pics. I did it in the dark with white lights. I think they turned out super cool!

 

We spent Christmas morning opening presents and spending time together. I made monkey bread and cinnamon rolls and we went to my parents house in the afternoon. We spent the rest of the day riding bikes and scooters, playing football, baseball, bocchi ball and cornhole. The boys had plenty of kids to play with since I have 6 brothers! It was a wonderful time and the kids passed out right away when we got home.

 

Day after Christmas the boys had to go home. It's always a sad time. The girls cry and Aaron busted into tears too. After they left it was too quiet. It always hurts me seeing everyone so sad. Makes me want to fix everything.

 

This is a pretty cool pic. The first one was taken Christmas of 2009. It was my first Christmas with the boys. The second pic was taken this year 2013. 5 years difference! It's amazing how big the kids have gotten. Plus a new dog and 2 new sisters!

 

Hope my readers all had a Fantastic Christmas!!







Peppermint Tree Christmas Craft

So you know how I'm like all obsessed with peppermint and stuff? Well I made up this awesome craft that is easy, cheap and smells of lovely, lovely peppermint.

You will need those Styrofoam cones they sell at the dollar tree. They might sell them at Wal-Mart too. You can actually have any shape base of Styrofoam, a ball, a square, whatever be creative!

You will also need several bags of peppermints. They are $1 a bag at Dollar Tree and 1 and about 1/2 bags fully covers one cone.

Take a low temp glue gun and put a circle of glue on the back of a peppermint. Stick it on the cone, pressing a few seconds. Follow along in a line going all the way to the top.

If you come to a place where a whole peppermint doesn't fit, you can break it in half and stick it in the bare spot.

When you are done it should look something like this....

 

Make several of these for a centrepiece or put them around the house to smell it up like peppermint.

Operation Christmas Child

Our church is doing Operation Christmas child, a program where you fill a shoebox with little gifts for a child in a poor country. They also put in little brochures in the childs language that tell them about Jesus.

 

I think its a great outreach program and I was excited to participate with the girls this year. We decided to do two boxes this year, for two little girls. I took the girls to the dollar store and they picked out some school supplies, toys, candy and other little stuff for the boxes.

 

I wrapped the boxes in pink duct tape.

 

Haley packing her box.

 

Serenity packing her box.