Christmas Craftin'

It wouldn't be a holiday if I didn't sneak in some crafting of some sort.  The idea of bringing the outdoors in is always appealing to me and when I saw this idea for table centerpiece I had to do it.
I basicially just took a cut log from outside.  We've been clearing some land so there were plenty to choose from.  Once I found the perfect log I had my handy hubby drill a few holes the size of a tealight.  I stuck in a few tealights, cut some greenery from outside and then I had myself a wonderfully rustic centerpiece!

I also decide this year that I wanted some Christmasy coasters.  Before I had a chance to look for any in the stores I found a neat idea online.  The coasters are just small terracotta saucers.  I painted them and added some holiday scrapbook paper to the bottom.  Then I sealed them with some clear varnish. They were so easy and quick to make that I may just have to make some for every holiday!

New Tradition

This year we added a new tradition to our Christmas festivities, or actually swapped out one idea for another.  Each year we usually add a piece to our Fontanini Nativity set, but the store that we usually get them from no longer sells the size we had been collecting and it was hard to find that size anywhere.  Also we had many pieces in  our collection and would soon run out of room if we continued collecting them.  So since we are all Lego fans we decided that collection the Winter village would become our new tradition and it was one that everyone could enjoy putting together and playing with.  Kenzie really had her heart set on the Village Post Office and was very happy when the elves granted her wish. Since it's completion the Post Office has been a very busy gathering place for the Lego minifigures.  The girls soon got busy naming the people and creating scenes.

Even some of the characters from the Lego Star Wars advent calendar have

made an appearance.  It seems even Wookies and droids have letters to send!

Wordless Wednesday

On the Naughty List

I know looking at that sweet face it might be hard to believe that he's on the naughty list but he most certainly is.  Tuukka is in fact number one on the naughty list, at least in this house.  You see Tuukka seems to like to chew things up when no one is home.  Only he doesn't chew up things that you normally expect a dog to chew up, like shoes and stuffed animals-lord knows there are plenty of those all over the house to choose from.  But not Tuukka.  Tuukka climbed up on the couch to reach the end table where he found a cordless phone to chew on.  He also seemed to think it would be fun to pull some of the keys off the laptop while he was up there. Oh and then there was the lighter...That was just one days destruction.  He has also chewed up several books, magazines and plastic cups-just to name a few things.
Needless to say Tuukka is back in his crate(now also known as the Box of Shame) when no one is home to watch him.  There are just too many Christmas decorations to risk having him loose. 
I will take some of the blame because when I was walking them consistently he didn't get into any trouble and that is when we decided to let him out of the crate.  I am now trying to be more consistent with the walks and maybe after the holidays we'll let him out of the Box of Shame again.

Its Beginning to Look a lot Like Christmas!

A week into December and the holiday is quickly approaching. The house is nicely decorated and cozy. And many of our holiday traditions are in full swing.  The kids receive daily treats from our advent calendar, usually it just a little candy, but about once a week I'll throw in a little extra goodie.  Our two mischievious elves made their return on December 1st. They arrived with a Lego Star Wars advent calendar.  A lego a day until Christmas now that is cool!  The elves have been up to their usual antics which have included a tea party, baking cookies and making an appearance in the nativity! We've also kept ourselves busy with games of  holiday Yahtzee and Christmas trivia. So for the most part we are in the holiday spirit.  The only thing that makes it not seem holidayish is the lack of snow.  Though we've had a few storms the snow has quickly melted and the weather generally had been mild, not the norm for this time of year.  I'm not complaining but I do want snow on the ground for Christmas!

Here Becca gets a little help putting the star on the tree from Daddy and Grampy.

Wordless Wednesday

Holiday Happenings

We had a very nice Thanksgiving which included a wonderfully yummy free range, organic turkey as the guest of honor.  My parents joined us for dinner and then spent the night so they could join us for our version of black friday.  Our version of Black Friday involves staying as far away from any malls and retail outlets as possible.  We do venture a mile down the road to the local tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree and the rest of the day is spent decorating the house for Christmas. We cap off the day cuddling on the couch with some cocoa and a Christmas movie.  It was nice to have my parents join us on our tree cutting expedition and I think they had a good time.

Wordless Wednesday

Kenzie is 9!

Mackenzie celebrated her ninth birthday with a sleepover with a few of her closest friends.  Her theme was pirates and the activities included a treasure hunt that sent the kids all over the yard and out into the woods.  And what pirate party would be complete without a viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean and a pirate cake?!

Pirates Family Fun Night

The release of the last Pirates of the Caribbean on DVD prompted another themed family fun night. It also may have directly or indirectly inspired Kenzie's halloween cotume and birthday theme.
Dinner was french bread pizza pirate ships and Kracken Cheese.  Desert was chocolate skeleton pirate cookies.  Activities was of course the movie and putting together a Pirates of the Caribbean lego set.
The lego set will also be decoration for Kenzie's pirate sleepover birthday party this weekend!

Wordless Wednesday

Trick or Treat???

 I call this a trick.  18 inches of snow fell on October 29th.  Though we are used to crazy weather and temperature changes here in the northeast this was new for me.  I have never seen this much snow before Halloween and I wasn't really thrilled about it because it potentially could stick around until April.  Winters around here are long enough!  The temperature has warmed up the past few days and we have seen a lot of it melt but it still looks so strange to have so many leaves still on the trees and
the ground still blanketed in white.  Despite all the heavy wet snow we didn't lose electricity, only our internet service for a chunk of the day-no big deal as we were busy clearing snow for most of the morning!

 The charcoal grill resembled a giant marshmallow.

Tuukka seemed to be the most excited about the snow, bounding around and burying his head in it.  It was such a heavy, wet snow though that it stuck to his long fur and he came in walking funny as huge snowballs had accumulated all over his belly!  They weren't easy to get off either!

Suprisingly the girls weren't that excited to hear about the impending snowstorm, but that might have come from them hearing us talk and being less than thrilled as we rushed around the morning before the storm getting last minute winterizing done earlier than we anticipated.
Of course waking up and seeing all the snow they were as suprised as us at the amount and how stranged it looked to have that much snow and still have leaves on the trees.  It wasn't long before they were clamoring for me to get their snow gear out so they could go play in the snow.

Luckily we got our trick or treating in before the storm.  It was cold but fun!

And last but not least the dogs got a little Halloween action too with their bandanas that I got at Disney last year.  Getting them to sit next to each other was not easy but at least Tuukka smiled for the camera!

Lego Love

I have been a lover of legos since I was young.  I have many fond memories of building things with my legos.  My best friend Tracy and I spent hours playing together with our legos.  I still enjoy playing with legos and lego sets have come a long way since I was young.
Lending to my love of the colorful bricks is their teaming up with some of my favorite movies and creating sets and video games with little minifigures from the movies.  This includes
Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Also finding out via the internet that there are many other adults who share a love of legos and some of these very creative people create photos, blogs, videos starring the little minifigures.  I only just realized that there are collectible minifigures, along the lines of trading cards, you don't actually know what you are getting when you buy a little package but it is kinda fun all the same.  The girls and I are kinda late getting into this as they are already on series 5 but it is fun opening the packages to see what you've got.
I plan on using this online inspiration to create some photo scenes with the minifigs.  One of my favorite lego blogs is the one where the guy did a lego picture a day.  He did a great job and though I do not want to go to that extreme you can expect to see some lego pictures popping up as inpiration strikes.
So here is the first one.........

Even pirates are afraid of clowns!

SnowFall

 We had our first fall snow of the season last night.  I do not get excited about snow before Halloween because it usually means we are going to be reallly cold for trick or treating.  It also potentially mean
an extra long winter, as if it isn't already long enough here in the northeast!  We got a couple inches and it will probably melt before the end of the day but there is a winter storm watch in effect for the weekend which could drop up to 6 inches and that just might stick around!
On the bright side I went out to try to capture some of the prettiness of the moment.  Guess it's time to bring in that lawn furniture...

Rolo Cookies

These are some super easy, super yummy cookies. All you need is a box of chocolate cake mix, 1/3 cup oil, 2 eggs and a bag of Rolo candy.  Mix together the cake mix, eggs and oil.  Use just enough dough to cover the Rolo into a ball.  Bake in  a 350 degree oven  for 8-10 mins.  You get a yummy cookie with a chocolatey caramel center!

Wordless Wednesday

Halloween Craftin

I enjoy crafting and one of the great things about the internet is the amazing amount of ideas you can find.  That is also a downside because I then have tons of bookmarks on my computer, in no particular order-yes I know there are ways to be more organized but I just don't roll that way.
Anyway I found this very cool website called pinterest where you can keep track of all the cool ideas you find and the website itself offers you the ability to see and follow what other people are pinning.
Now I just go to the website click on the idea and it takes me right to the idea.  With a special download button you can pin anything on the interenet wether it is crafts, fashion, decor, quotes, recipes-anything!
So I have collected a bunch of cool Halloween ideas and I will never use them all but while looking at other peoples holiday wreaths it inspired my own creation.It is a straw wreath with some fall leaves added and a spider web in the middle. Through pinterest I also got the idea to glue
magnets to the backs of little plastic spiders and bugs and stick them all over the front door.

I also found the idea for the cute picture frame covered with googly eyes. That inspired me to make the black frame with just a few eyeballs and ghost.  Both were really easy to make. Directions for the googly eyes one are here. 

For the ghost one all you need is a wooden frame from Michaels, black and white paint, wooden ghost cutout, googly eyes, ribbon and hot glue.  Paint the frame black and the ghost white.  Glue googly eyes in several spots around the frame.  Add some ribbon at the bottom and glue on ghost. 

Once I have pictures of the girls for Halloween I  will add those to each frame.

Go Bruins!

Around here we are always waiting impatiently for hockey season to start, but when your team is the defending Stanley Cup Champions you get even more excited. This was the case last week when the Bruins season officially started.  Dom declared Bruins day and told me to do my thing.  The girls again jumped on board with our theme day and wore their Bruins gear to school.  I made a Bruins dessert of chocolate and vanilla layered pudding cups and added the Bruins logo to the cups.
Dinner was homemade pizza where I used pepperoni and black olives to  make the Bruins "B".  This was a little bit of a stretch but if you know what you are looking at I think you can tell.
I even gave myself a Bruins inspired manicure!

Pumpkin Picking

We had some amazing weather this past weekend and it carried into the week.  Dom took Tuesday off so we could take out the boat for the season and after the kids got out of school we took them up to Butternut Farm to pick out some pumpkins.  The girls loved the little pumpkins and both picked out one.  But they also picked out a big one for carving.  They even let me take a photo without complaining!

Unfortunately the next day Tuukka decided to  have a little snack- on Kenzie's mini pumpkin!

Wordless Wednesday

Star Wars Family fun night

With the release of the Star Wars movies on blue-ray my husband declared Star Wars day in our house for family fun night. And me, who loves any sort of theme, enjoyed planning it even though I was only given one days notice.  The main entertainment of the evening would of course be the movies, but while I was buying the movies I found a Star Wars Lego Movie and Mad Libs which of course would add to the fun.  And yes I wanted the lego movie because it came with a cute little young Han Solo.
I wasn't able to come up with a fun Star Wars themed meal but did buy some star wars plates
to serve pizza on and for dessert we had brownie bite pops that I attatched some
cut outs of Lego Star Wars Characters.
Upon returning home from school the girls jumped right into the theme by playing lego star wars on the wii.  Once dad got home from work there was an epic light saber battle before dinner followed by some funny Mad Libs.  Then we all settled in for the Lego Star Wars movie-the Padawan Menace which had us all laughing.  We ended the evening with the viewing of episode one-The Phantom Menace.
With the opening night of Hockey tonight we gave of course a Bruins theme going on today!

Mckay Visit 2011

 Last weekend we had the joy of hosting the McKay family for  a visit.  We started  the visit off with a
campfire in the backyard where the girls entertained us with dance routines and Luke entertained us with his stories and curious chatter.  Once it got dark the we sparked up the entertainment with some fireworks.
 The following day the fun continued with a trip to the lake.  The kids braved the cool temperatures to do some tubing and then we took the boat to our favorite ice cream shop for lunch and dessert.
We ended our visit with the Mckays trying out Kenzie's go-cart.  It was a really fun time and hopefull we'll get a chance to visit with them again soon!

Luke gives the thumbs up before taking a turn on the go-cart!

Caitlin quickly gained confidence and was soon buzzing around the yard.

Scott didn't want the kids to have all the fun so he took a turn on the go-cart too!