kirstencan

Mid-Holiday

We are enjoying our Christmas vacation with Aaron home, so I'm just popping in to say hi! 

Our living room still looks like Christmas morning somehow, even though I've filled our recycle bin.  It's fun to have all the toys out so they play  near us and together, but I'm gettin a bit tired of tripping over the legos.

We had an amazing Christmas, we were all so spoiled and recieved such thoughtful gifts.  Here is our book stack (here's last years).

Between us we got 35 books this year!  Crazy stuff.  Those who gifted books for the girl were way proud to find ones she hadn't read!  That is getting extremely difficult.

And they're sitting on my new quilt from my MIL!  King-sized, people.  Insanely gorgeous and awesome.  And warm.

Basically we've been reading, playing video games, and building.  Lots of building. 

It's good stuff.  Back soon.

Little Gifts

This year's teacher gifts were done at the very last minute.  Each and every one of them.  "Oh, you have dance in half an hour?  Better get a couple gifts made up really fast!"  Ditto with other dance teachers and piano.  Heh.

I've done tissue holders for teachers before, but I'm pretty sure not for any of the teachers we gave to this year.  Packaged with anti-bac gel and a Christmas card.  Simple.

Neighbor gifts were a reusable grocery bag.

Aaron thought these gifts were weird, and that our neighbors already think we're weird anyway (hanging our laundry to dry, manual/electric lawn mowers, walking...).  But I went with it anyway, sticking a simple card (couldn't think of anything really clever) in the bags.  I found the bags at a grocery store, having scouted out ones that don't have a store logo on them.  Conveniently, these also snap shut, which I like, and our neighbors liked them.

Our street traditionally does little gifts for everyone else on the street, but our neighborhood is super tight, so other friends in the 'hood got cards.  I was going to print gocco ones this year again, but decided on Costco ones instead - in part because it's so cheap to get so many, and I can give out as many as I like.

Oh, and we finally made the paper mache lanterns I've been wanting to do for years!  They were really cute to give out gifts with at night.  The kids had fun with that.

The other day we headed to a new Asian market nearby.  I was hoping for little cute stuff, but Aaron was hoping for mabutofu.  I won.  It's all gift stuff and restaurant supply.  It's like a big ol' Daiso, folks.  I was in heaven.  In fact, I might go back today.  Since we were there, we had the kiddos pick out their sib gifts to each other, and now we have a bunch of oddly-wrapped little packages under around our tree.  With super cute stuff inside.

Another little gift this year that deserves to be mentioned, so I remember it for next year:  I stuck some ribbon, jingle bells, and a gift tag on a Toblerone candy bar and stuck it in our mailbox.  "To Our Mail-lady".  She always waves to me since we're often out and about, and delivers many packages to us.  I peeked out when I heard the mail truck coming and saw her pick up the candy - she got the biggest smile on her face!  And then gave our house a big thumbs up out her window as she drove away.  Loved it.

Now to finish up/wrap the bigger gifts!  Are you done yet?

All is calm... sometimes.

I've been wanting to put up cut-out song lyrics since I saw this post.  But it just won't work in our space, sadly.  The idea is so awesome, though, it's stuck with me.

Then I saw (and immediately pinned) this glitter-letter garland and just knew I had the perfect place for it:  Over the big red canvas!

Except I didn't want to do the glitter/glue messy thing.  Then I heard of glittered cardstock, which I thought would be perfect.  Except what I could find of it only came in multi-colored packs and I wanted all the same (white, silver, or gold) and it wasn't nearly as glittery as I thought.

After checking out several other options, I found some glittered craft felt.  The really stiff felt.

Anyway, I did it.  And I love it.

I went to print the template from the original idea, but it's way small.  I wanted something bigger, so I just picked a chunky sans serif font (impact) and printed out my own.

After cutting them out, I hot glued the letters to baker's twine.

The felt will hold up better in storage than paper would have, so I can get it out next year!

And I call the below picture "All is silly and dark".

He won't ever stay still when my camera is out!

O Christmas Tree

So my kids weren't on board with the smaller tree idea.  Until we got one.  Then it was declared 'cute' and 'sweet' and 'a baby tree!' and all is well.

We got a 4' tree, set it in it's stand on a LACK table from IKEA, and even used our same tree skirt, just letting it hang.

I quite like the effect, and think it works better for our space.  It's the first time we've ever had a tree in our big front window!

From the outside it looks like a bigger tree anyway.

Star Wars and Star Trek ornaments are tucked in with my vintage wooden and Swedish straw ones.

And a couple of hexbugs...

We even got all of our favorite ornaments on.  I was worried about that.

This was the second year that I decided to skip the gold bead garland, but then added it later - it just needed something.  But it really needs RED garland.  Maybe next year.

I was looking at an older picture of our living room at Christmas time (edit:  here's an even older one!), and was shocked how much it's changed over the past few years.  Where we used to hang a wreath quilt we now have big portraits of the kiddos, which I don't want to take down for the holidays, so we put the quilt up over the school cubbies (down with you, paper tree!).

We have our sweater stockings, which I still love.  In part because they hang like stockings in old book illustrations instead of all stiff and facing front and perfect. In fact, I even turned them some for this photo so they weren't all sideways like usual.

Our mantel is now decked with a lighted garland and (breakable! We can do that now!) vintage ornaments.

Also nutcrackers, candles, bells, and photos of my babies on their first Christmas.

The view at night.  Cozy.  Especially with our Christmas quilt and pillows.

Yup, I'm not missing a bigger tree at all.  I do, however, wish it were a small alpine tree like we've gotten the past couple of years.  I am missing that.

But I can't complain.

Have you ever considered doing something quite different with your tree?  It's hard to break tradition!

Ornaments & Stuff

I've been loving all the stamped ornaments on Pinterest (so many!) so a while back (this was last month, actually), the girl and I tried it out.

We got paper clay from Hobby Lobby, which worked great.  Easy to work with.  And I bought a snowflake stamp.  It pretty much worked how I was hoping.

By far the hardest part was rolling them out to a consistent thickness, and if it's too thin, they get wavy when they dry.  It was a learning process.

I was going to do brown velvet ribbon, but found these already tied ornament hangers at Ikea - worth it!

I think they'll be gift tags for our family gifts this year.  But next year, I think we'll do them for all the Primary kids in church maybe.  With a CTR stamp.  If I start way before the holidays!

In other news:

I shrunk the Lucia gown we borrowed for Lucia.  I felt awful about it and was a nervous wreck until I the lady I borrowed it from  told me she  didn't care at all (whew!).  But I got called on the gown being 1/2" too short by the director and had to attach lace to make it work.  At least it worked!  Next year we're making our own gown.  With plenty of tucks and grow stripes.

Lucia went well, and my boys got to be pepparkakksgubbar (gingerbread men).

The boys insisted on writing letters to Santa (I'm not so into this tradition anymore) after watching Charlie & Lola (good thing you're so cute, Lola!) and are now asking for completely different things than they did when we ordered stuff for them.  Oh, goody.  We're trying to explain that Santa always brings something awesome, but not always what you exactly asked for, and that the elves have already finished making toys, so it's a bit late to change your mind.  Also, those elves.  Monkey keeps asking for crazy stuff that's not made anymore, and when I say that that was discontinued or whatever, he just says 'That's okay, Santa's elves will make it!'.  Ugh.

I had to talk to the youth in our ward about Swedish Christmas traditions, which was pretty fun.  The girl volunteered to come with me and play Lucia to them, which was beautiful, she did a great job.  I'm so glad she is willing to do stuff like that!

Our tree is up - more on that later.  We did go with a small one!

Yesterday my kids did this fun Elf Application - they all loved it!

And with that:  God Jul and Happy St. Lucia day!  Our girl brought us cinnamon buns this morning - yay!

Growing up and staying little

This girl child is now taller than her grandma (not me - yet!) but looks a bit like an overgrown child.  She is in the very last size of children's clothes but still needs the waist cinched (what size does that equal in juniors?!).  I'm trying to ignore that she'll need new pants very soon - they're starting to look slightly flood-ish.

She hates makeup.  Eye makeup, specifically.  On the one hand, thank goodness, and boy, her eyelashes are long enough without it, but on the other hand, putting stage makeup on her is a huge pain.  Last weekend was her dance recital and I bought her a liquid eyeliner and taught her how to do it herself (this is her third performance this semester and I'm tired of fighting her on it).  We started earlier so we didn't have to rush.  Much better than the stressful fight it usually is as we're trying to get out the door.  She did well (makeup and performance).

Oh, and performed on pointe for the first time (on the right).  Beautiful.

I watch the teeny girls rehearsing and remember watching her dance when she was teeny - wasn't that yesterday?  Her chubby legs stuffed into tights. No chub left.

She is asking for a Lego set for Christmas.  I had other plans, but then I realized that she was asking for a toy - and who knows how long that will last!  Time enough to get her the other thing later.  Birthday?   And remember our Santa dilemma last year?  We're on the same page now, but she does NOT want to talk about it.  Okay.

She is helpful and has started babysitting.  This has changed my life.  No joke.  Other people have asked her to sit as well, since they know she's responsible and home during the day when no one else is (and we can be flexible).  She loves this because she likes to play with kids of all ages.  She doesn't just 'watch' them, she'll set up a big tea party or something.

She is old enough to stay up and watch shows with us after the boys go to bed.  Her current faves are Malcom in the Middle and the new Sherlock series (we are all a bit impatient for new episodes of that!).

She kept asking when we'd get out the Little People Nativity, and said that was her favorite Christmas decoration.  Really?  Isn't that a toddler toy? But you know what?  We bought that when she was two, so it's a huge part of her Christmas memories, I realized.  Pip brought it out yesterday.

I keep thinking about her lately becuase we're in such a funny spot right now - but really it's a good place to be.