Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from all of us to all of you! We have enjoyed reading your Christmas cards and messages. We hope you are all safe in your travels and have a truly blessed holiday season with friends and family!

Things here have been SUPER busy the last two months - that's my excuse for not blogging. However, I just couldn't stand to see the Halloween pictures as the most current post anymore. Here's a quick run-down:
- Lauri's get-away to Salt Lake with her friend Melissa
- Hosting Thanksgiving for Lauri's side of the family
- Lauri's 2 month tooth-ache that ended in a root canal today (well, actually, my dentist couldn't even finish the root canal yet)
- Lydia's 3rd grade Christmas program
- Felicity got braces
- Evelyn's first grade musical play - Melton the Warm-hearted Snowman
- 2 class Christmas parties
- Shawn put together our ward choir Christmas program
- The Stake Christmas music fireside
- Christmas planning and shopping
- Shawn took on directing the 5th grade play - Romeo and Juliet. Rehearsals start in January and Felicity got the part of Lady Capulet
- All three girls had their Christmas dance recital
- Getting ready for the new year in primary
- School, church, work, volunteering, a few minor illnesses and life in general

Halloween Festivities - Lots O' Pics

For Halloween this year Evie was a vampire, Lydia a zombie-bride and Felicity started out as Alice Cullen, tried a second version and finally landed as a witch for trick-or-treating. We didn't get around to carving our pumpkins until Halloween Day, but we did get it done. Here are some pics of the festivities - school Spooktacular included.

The girls at the Spooktacular

Lissy in the parade

Lydia in the parade

Evie in the parade (not a great shot - they walk by so fast!)
Lissy ready to go to her friend's party Friday night (her first non-birthday boy/girl party!)

The girls designing their Jack-o-lanterns
Lydia's "girl" pumpkin

Evie's "kitty" pumpkin

Lissy's "puking" pumpkin (hasn't puked ... yet...)Jack-o-lantern row

Lissy the witch ready to trick or treat

Lydia the zombie bride ready to scare

Evie the vampire ready to go a-haunting

Cedric - the hot dog

Happy Halloween!

October Projects

Felicity had to build a model of a Native American dwelling for class, so she chose a wigwam. She really wanted to make it using paper mache', which we have never really done before. Instead of using newspaper, we decided to use brown grocery sacks to make it look more like mats or skins. Well, it didn't work too well since the paper is stiffer and the paper mache' dried kind of white, so it became a "winter wigwam" and she added polyfill for snow. Shawn helped her make a fire inside the wigwam and she painted some wooden pine tress I had for the landscape. She also cut out some felt for mats for the inside. We think it turned out pretty neat!

Felicity's Winter Wigwam for school.

A view of the interior of the wigwam.

For our bookgroup this month we read "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman and it I was hosting again. When I saw these cookies on my friend Karen's website store I couldn't resist giving them a try, so I ordered the cookie cutter and some squeeze bottles to make the job a little easier. They're not nearly as pretty as hers, but I think they turned out pretty good - and they were yummy! I made enough that the girls and I also took some into Shawn's work last Friday.

Quick Update

Just a quick update on the last week and a half -
- Felicity has still had her cough - took her in last week and the PA said to give her Ibuprofen. Didn't help, in fact it's getting worse again. Taking her back in tonight.
- Getting ready for primary program.
- Lydia gets strep throat and missed 2 school days last week - LOVED watching movies all day in her bed (she did do homework too). I've never been so glad to hear strep throat as a diagnosis (and not swine flu).
- More getting ready for the primary program aftermath.
- Shawn gets strep throat and misses a couple half days of work.
- Cedric got a much needed haircut.
- Gathered up and bought costume supplies.
- Went to "marathon meetings", took activity day girls to retirement home to sing, set up for primary program, had primary program, prepared my sharing time "celebration station" for program aftermath (make a baggie of trail mix), then got someone else to do it so I could be primary secretary too.
- Made paper mache paste so Lissy could make a wigwam for an assignment.
- Took Lissy to the orthodontist for a consultation.
- Started to work for Shawn's office again (braces cost how much?!)
- Shawn started Karate again after his sprinkler installation class was over.
- I went to the eye dr. to update my contact prescription.
- Dance classes, helping at school, library, grocery shopping, presidency meetings - not much cleaning.
That's what we've been up to. We've gottten a lot done, but there's still lots to do. I guess that's what keeps us out of trouble and mischief, right? Our primary program went great and I think the kids had fun with the "celebration stations" afterwards (bingo, memory, coloring, make trail mix, and watch their singing practice videos.) It was a little more work than popcorn and a movie would have been - but I dont' know if they could have sat still for much longer. We also had the congregation write anonymous comments to the children, so we read those and sang some wiggle songs before we divided into our stations. Our pianist said if she had to play "My Eternal Family" one more time she would have puked! I think we're all ready for a break from the program songs for awhile.

Spooky Sign

Well, I don't really have a tutorial, but I'll explain how I made the Spooky sign. In Word I set my page to Landscape and minimum margins. Then I typed Spooky (I did EEK on a separate line too) in the font "Blackadder ITC" and set the font to about 200 points. I centered the text and printed it (black) on some vintage looking music scrapbook paper that I cut down to 8 1/2 by 11 inches so it would fit in the printer. Then I just cut a brown mat to fit my frame, cut my "spooky" to fit on the mat, inked the edges and stuck it on the mat.

I don't remember where I got the font, and I can't find it for free anywhere. If you don't have that one, something old fashioned and fancy, but a little creepy is what you're going for. I recommend having someone step on your frame so the glass gets a nice long crack in it, but that might be a little dangerous....

I hope that helps. I just make things up as I go along and use what I have laying around, so I may not explain things very well.

Note: To truly copy the sign at Roberts, I would have used a board, some modge podge and vinyl lettering.

Inspiration Continues

Monday afternoon, I was still inspired to be creative and complete a couple of projects that have been lingering around my "office" for awhile. I had some dollar store frames I've wanted to make decorations out of for about a year now. Before the wonderful shelves arrived, the frames were sitting on the floor and got stepped on by an anonymous party (of the young girl variety) and the glass in them broke. Well, I went ahead and threw most of the glass out (kept the least broken one for "spooky" effect) and made my projects. I don't know how creative it is if I'm just copying other people, but here are my new Halloween table toppers.

Spooky - copied from a decoration seen at Roberts craft store.

Eek - copied from a few blogs and a friend's decoration made by another friend.

Boo - a variation on last year's "boo" deocration to match this year's creations

Here is last year's:

Award Winning-Husband

While I spent almost 6 hours at Super Saturday last weekend, here is what the Best Husband (and kids) in the Whole Wide World did:

- pulled out the old tomato and corn plants

- bundled the old corn stalks to make me festive decorations for the front yard (I am so excited - I have always wanted these - geeky, huh?) (the pumpkins are from our sweet neighbors who called the girls to come over and pick them out from their garden) - drained and hung the hoses in the garage for the winter

- installed shelves in my "office/scrap room" closet so I could get all the boxes off the floor!

This so inspired me to do something "crafty" in my room that I made my "autumn thank you" cards for our card group this week. Then I used the leftover scraps from Super Saturday and some other random stuff I had and made a bunch of other cards. The girls were also inspired to be crafty and made baby beds and "rooms" out of boxes (sorry it's a bad picture).

Thanks Babe! You're the best!!