kirstencan

Handmade Robin

A Robin Costume for the 4yo's handmade Christmas present.

Long-sleeved green tee, oversized red tee with sleeves cut off, freezer paper stenciled 'R' patch appliquéd on - appliquéd stripes and collar also.  So. Easy.

It looked better without the stitching but I wanted to secure it.

In one of those lovely meant-to-be shopping moments, The day I was at Target picking up the t-shirts for this, there was a stack of toddler girl's GREEN leggings on clearance.  Only green.  He fits into a 5T.  He'll never know they were supposed to be for girls.

Ka-Pow!

He's gonna love this.

p.s. I'd love to take better pictures of these handmade gifts, but the kiddos are hanging out right outside my door - I'm lucky to get pictures of them at all!

Geeked out shirts

For our gift-giving strategy for the kids, I am trying to make something handmade for each of them. 

Here's what I made for Thomas.

At first I bought a red shirt to stencil, but Aaron couldn't believe I'd make one of our kids a Red Shirt, so I switched to yellow.  Just a simple freezer paper stencil for the collar and logo -  but my boy (who is at this moment asking if he can watch Star Trek now, NOW, NOW!) will love it.

The other part to his gift is another shirt (hopefully he'll forgive me for giving him clothes for Christmas...)

Totally digging this one.  My best stencil ever, I think.

I should probably wrap them separately, but I think that Star Trek and Star Wars can co-exist in the same packaging.

One down, two to go  - what are you making for your kids this year?

O Tannenbaum

I am totally digging our Christmas tree this year.  I mean, I love the tree every year, but this year we got an Alpine tree - which is better for the narrow corner-next-to-the-couch spot that is the only place we have to put a tree in our weird living room.

I liked how it looked from the start...

But I like it even better now.

I really love how the ornaments have room to dangle and you can see them better.

I'm always a sucker for Swedish ornaments...

And vintage ornaments...

And sparkly ornaments...

This tree makes me happy - and smells SO good!

Wannabe Photobooth

I posted about this on Pip and Ollie today -  but I wanted to share our fun advent activity for today here, too.

I tacked a piece of Christmas fabric to the wall of Monkey's room over his bed, set the camera up on the tripod and let the kids go nuts with the remote shutter release.

Kinda like this:  (taken with my little camera while they were busy with the other one)

We took about 134 shots - here are some of my favorite ones - not edited or cropped in any way.

 

 

 

Sometimes I'd watch the camera screen and tell them if they weren't in the shot - but that's all I did.  They had so much fun playing with the camera (without actually touching it - hooray!).

And for each of these funny shots that were inadvertently cropped or just plain funny, there are just as many of them looking sweet and smiling.  Love them - I feel like I got a present today!

I got in on the action, too - I took photos with each of the kids and then all together - I'm not in too many of our photos because I'm always behind the camera, so this was good.  And you can see my face in most of them, I promise.

I don't think we'll wait until next Christmas to do this again!

And then...

On Sunday I spent the evening singing with 20,000 other people and the Tabernacle choir. 

Can't beat that.

Today it snowed.

Not much, but more is on the way.

So I'm feeling MUCH more Christmas-y.  And that's a good thing.

So I made some more Christmas pillow covers this afternoon.

Much more cozy.

I think that's my holiday decorating mantra:  "Cozy and colorful".

Happy.  Now if only we had our tree already...

Tulle and then more tulle

Sorry It's been a little slow over here - we've been busy!  I'm trying hard to keep up daily posts over at Pip and Ollie, though!

I spent my Friday making 22 tulle hair poofs for my daughter's dance class.

 

And my Friday night with my daughter, mom, and sisters downtown for opening night of The Nutcracker!

The theater is old and amazing.

If there's anything more fun to do as a little girl than putting on your Christmas dress and going to a fancy theater, I don't know what it is.

So very glad we went.

I spent my Saturday running errands.  And wondering (once again) why my Costco parking lot is uphill.  You have to push your cart UPHILL to get back to your car.  Your Costco-sized, usually quite heavy cart.  And then you have to somehow load your car without letting your cart roll back down the hill.  It's not easy.  I really cursed Costco when I was pregnant, having back or knee problems, or hauling fat babies in the cart.  Or any combination of the above.

No photo of the parking lot.  I was too busy sweating and keeping both hands on the handle.

...

So anyway, how's your weekend going?

The first of December

Welcome, December!  We're all so glad you've come at last!

We don't have much of our Christmas 'stuff' out yet - but the quilt and the books are out - that's almost enough for me - the most important things for the holiday.

This is probably half of the books - they migrate throughout the house, of course.  I try to add a new book each year - this year it's Olive the other Reindeer. 

Oh, and this cool Raffi songbook that I picked up earlier this year at a library sale.

Princess loves it and picked "Petit Papa Noel" to play for her piano party - of course - it's in French!  And of course she sings along.

I also downloaded a few new Christmas songs - some Beach Boys and  - Ronettes awesome.  I love having all my Christmas music on shuffle. 

Let's see - I also get to get out a Christmas dishcloth I made - nothing if not festive...

Someone's been decorating her room...

We printed off the tiny advent calendar from Alphamom and she loves that she got to draw in each of the windows - super cute.

We also got out the new Playmobil advent calendar.  

Thomas is talking about Christmas non-stop.  He is sure Santa will bring him most of what's in the Lego and Playmobil catalogs (poor kid), and yesterday kept asking for "The Playmobil box with all the things in it!"  Took me a while to figure out that he wanted the Playmobil advent calendar.  I'm not sure he knew I'd bought one for this year - but apparently he really loved last year and so I'm glad I did buy one!

And although the peaceful woodland scene is supposed to have only a tree today - it is packed with people 'having Christmas Eve!'

Oh, and Pip is back!  Seriously, my kids LOVE Pip - so excited to find him today! 

 

Amy and I will be blogging Pip and Ollie's advent adventures again this year - so stop by!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving!  We are going to be spending time with family  - enjoy your feasts!

If you haven't seen it yet, grab your kids and watch THIS!

p.s.  Turns out I have a sinus infection + bronchitis.  Lovely stuff.

Again with the random...

Overheard:  Aaron to Monkey - "If you try some pie, I'll give you a carrot."

Doesn't that sound wrong?  He is quite the opposite of his sister... who also wouldn't try the pie (because it was blackberry).  Our kids are weird.

The girl went to her first ballet audition this weekend - a low pressure one for a small production of Coppelia - she thought it was SO fun.  Hooray for a positive first audition experience!

I'm feeling much better than last week - but still not feeling quite 100% - why?  I don't think it's H1N1 because I haven't had a fever, but it's seemed rather flu-ish and whatever it is has kicked my butt.  Still, I'm grateful, as it could have been worse.

Excedrin is my friend this week.  Also Takeout. Check this awesome Papa Murphy's coupon we used.

The kids were going nuts at the end of last week, since their routines were off (I had no energy for school) and I didn't feel well enough to take them outside to play.  On the plus side they haven't caught whatever it is that I had - so that's good - and kinda surprising.  I'm trying to get us back to  normal today - but still feeling super tired and foggy-brained.  Hence this jumble of a post today.

Thanks to my little sister for hooking me up with season 4 of The Office while I crashed pitifully on my mom's couch on Friday.  Also thanks to my mom for making us all breakfast when I showed up saying whining something like this:  "I think I need some protein - could you make me some eggs?  Oh, and Monkey forgot to eat his pancakes at our house - could you feed him?  Oh, and Thomas only had bananas because we're out of all other gluten-free breakfast foods for him - could you feed him, too?"  Yeah, I was pathetic and my mom was awesome - as always.

Thomas's current favorite movie is the 4th disc (bonus features) of Star Wars.  He's gotten such a kick out of 'the making of'.  And now all his playmobil people are filming movies (Action!  Cut!).

We opened a jar of the peaches that we canned - yummy!

Last night we ate pumpkin pie for dinner - from one of our pumpkins - also yummy.

Overheard: Princess to Thomas- 'I'm not a towel!"

Way to go, Real Salt Lake!  Woo!

Must vacuum before visiting teachers arrive.

The N is stuck on my keyboard - so annoying and making my H act weird, too.

How is next week December?  Seriously?  Better get an advent list ready for Pip.

We aren't doing the Lucia program this year - it was scheduled for the same night as the girl's Nutcracker performance.   Darn it - but at the same time it's kinda nice to have a lighter schedule this time of year.

Must. Reclaim. Laundry room.

That is all.

Sicky

Sick this week.  Ugh.

Trying to lay still on the couch.  Drinking giner ale and slathering myself with Vicks Vapo Rub (Ahh).  The kids have been great.  I had great plans for if we got really sick this year - plans for isolating the sick one.  But when the mom gets sick first what are you supposed to do?

I can't be isolated when I need to make sandwiches and be referee.

The boys may have been in the same clothes for several days straight.  They have been really good though - and have been playing ds for entirely too long.  But they also have been playing with this cardboard playmobil pyramid that Aaron made them - cool.

Yesterday was the worst day - and I just kept thinking:  Mom's coming up. Mom's coming up.

My supplies:  kleenex (not shown, kleenex garbage bag), carmex, hand sanitizer, library book, moleskine, pen, juice glass.

Thanks, Mom!  You saved the day (again).  Even though right after you left the boys dragged all the Star Wars toys back up to the living room and pulled all the quilts off of the quilt rack (again!) to make mountains for them - it made me feel a little better to not be living in a total disaster area.

 

My view.

I've read several books this week - can't complain about that.  And I've been reviewing/changing our Christmas lists hidden in my trusty moleskine notebook.  Yikes, I have a lot to do.  We have a slot system for the kids' gifts.  One from Santa, 2 from us, 1 handmade from me, and 1 book.  It's so much easier this way.  But it still feels like a little much this year. On the other hand, we don't buy our kids toys for no reason throughout the year - so this is our chance to get them that little something special.  I've had to juggle a few things around - so that list is getting messy - but I think it'll be good.

Now those mama-made gifts... plus the other handmade holiday projects I'd like to make... add up to one long crafty to-do list.  Yikes. I'd better get moving on that one!  How is it that when you're feeling lousy and can't do anything, that's when the pressure is on to work on your giant to-do list?

How about you?  How are your Christmas gifts coming?  Does your to-do list look like mine?

And now to disinfect the computer and go lie back down...