Christmas Cookies

The girls made Christmas cookies with Elizabeth today. They had such a good time! I am NOT calm enough to have been able to do this...there were sprinkles all over the place, although honestly not as bad as I thought it would be. We had to leave 6 for Santa :)

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Grandma...

I miss you every day...

Look at the tree

So here are some MORE pictures of the tree that has been driving me crazy!!! Here is a picture of what it looked like last time I said it was finished...



















With all the newly added glitter, here it is...





So as of today, December 19 I declare the tree officially decorated. I won't add anything else...this year ;)

All that Glitters

Okay, George finished painting the kitchen on Sunday. It looks great! We will eventually replace the cabinets but the new paint color makes them look much better. I haven't had anytime to take pictures because I've been so busy trying to get the Christmas tree done. I thought it was done last week but it just kept looking, well, not quite right. Paula gave me 2 beautiful glass ornaments this year, they are much larger than the others I have. I won't lie, at first this worried me. I wasn't sure how they would look. OH MY GOODNESS! They are wonderful!! Their size was perfect, they filled in holes and looked pretty at the same time. You know me, I ran to the store to get more ornaments that size. I found giant red and gold GLITTER balls. I also found red and gold GLITTER snowflakes! Then there are the red ice skates with gold GLITTER all over them and the red GLITTER balls covered with gold leaf! I also found gold GLITTER stockings! And red ornaments with gold GLITTER designs on them. The tree is 7 1/2 feet tall and is currently covered with over 200 red and gold ornaments, as many with GLITTER as I could get! I have also hung shiny red and gold giant shiny balls with the red and gold GLITTERY stockings and on the entertainment center (I wonder what George will think of that???...It really was the only way to make a 57" TV "festive") Let's just say if it was GLITTERY, I suddenly had to have it. What can I say, I become obsessed easily :)

Wooden Houses

We went to Lowe's on Saturday and built wooden gingerbread houses. The girls really love going and building something. They love getting a patch after they build each project...now if I would just sew those patches on to there aprons! Anyway...have a look, George's carpentry skills are really improving! (Please note: there are more pictures of Ella than Emily because the room we were in was packed and I couldn't get at a good angle to get more than the back of Emily's head. Also, this note is mainly to alleviate my guilt)

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In other "house" news, we were planning on finishing up the kitchen painting Saturday afternoon and then move on to our bedroom on Sunday. It was all planned out (shocking I know), we'd go build in the morning, pick up the bedroom paint on the way home, and then while the girls played Jon & Kate or The Duggars (my little girls are so weird!), George would paint the bit left in the kitchen and I would scrape the horrid floral border off of my bedroom walls. So here's what happened...We went to build (obviously), we picked up the bedroom paint color, we got home and the girls started playing, I got the ladder set up and hot water in my spray bottle ready to scrape. I sprayed the wall and then I hear "Elizabeth???!"
"Yes, George"
"You need to come here please"
"okay"...BIG SIGH... "I'll be down in a minute"
"NO! COME NOW!!!"
When I got down stairs (5 seconds maybe) the kitchen window was open. I asked what he needed and George said "nothing now, the gas is off." THE GAS?!?!? "What happened?" I asked. Well, apparently George was pulling the stove from the wall, got it about an inch away when the hissing started. He leaned down to get to the shut off valve and "whoosh" the fire ball blew bast him. Luckily it mustn't have been very big because he still has eyebrows and our house is still standing. So he had shut off the gas but we called the gas company anyway. When they got there they noticed that the supply line had cracked, basically dry rot...no wonder we didn't want to buy an old house! George put a new supply line on so I could cook the rest of the weekend. The home warranty people said we still have to have a repair man come look at it...no active leak when he is here = no new stove for us...how sad. Anyway, we didn't get to do what we had planned so there are no pictures of the kitchen. George just finished that a few hours ago and I've been busy with 2 quasi-sick little girls, dinners, baths, bed-time and more dinners. I did get to whack some bushes yesterday while we were not allowed in the house but with no before pictures to compare to, you would not be adequately impressed. George will paint the bedroom next weekend...if we can agree on a color.

"Season of Giving"

So this has nothing to do with my girls in particular but kids in general. K.I.D.S. , Kids in Distressed Situations, is a charity that helps kids who are ill, living in poverty or who have been impacted by a natural disaster. Robeez, the best baby/toddler shoes in my opinion (the girls wore them), has a fantastic campaign going on right now. Follow the link at the end of this post to send e-cards to your friends and family. Every time you do, Robeez will make a $5 donation to K.I.D.S., that's all you need to do. You don't have to buy anything. You can register to win a set of Robeez and socks, but you don't even have to do that. So go ahead, click and send some holiday cheer!
http://seasonofgiving.robeez.com/intro.asp

The tree skirt

I also finished the tree skirt for the girls tree in the playroom. I am sooooo not Martha I wish I was, but I am just not. So here is the whole thing, skirt and all...no close-ups, the stitching is not good...

Decorating

Trying to decorate for Christmas this year has been trying to say the least. It seems simple, I have a simple theme Red and Gold...at Christmas my Italian comes out...(at least I don't have flocked wallpaper!) It was anything but simple for me this year. First, as you may know, my house was not built with a Christmas tree spot. I though I could put it in the living room window in the front of the house. Our old house had the living room in the back of the house so you couldn't see the tree in the window, for some reason I want the tree visible from the window. So I put it there and you couldn't walk by the tree to get to the playroom very easily. I could just see the girls crashing into the tree a billion times with strollers, buggies and anything else they were pushing or carrying. So I decided I would push it into the corner. It would be near the window and at least partially visible from the window...this blocked the entire doorway to the playroom. Back to the window it went. There was another corner in the living room I could have tried but it 1) wouldn't have been in the front window at all and 2) it would have partially blocked the doorway to the kitchen, so it wasn't going to work. I pushed the love seat into the room more and now we can walk by and get to the playroom...of course there is no escaping Charlotte's tail but oh well. Second, there is the fact the there isn't enough room between the actual door on the house and the storm door for my wreath. We have a red and gold wreath made out of giant jungle bells. As our last house was not able to have a storm door I never ran in to this issue before. It is also not advisable to hang it on the storm door as they are giant metal bells and I can't see it being a good idea for them to bang on the glass of the storm door all month. So I had to get a new smaller wreath. Not as easy as it sounds, I bought and returned several until I found one that was the right colors and the right size, it reminded me of something a woodland fairy from A Mid-Summer Nights Dream would wear. I really like it but it just didn't look right against a mauve door (imagine that) so I moved that inside. So I had to keep searching for this "perfect" wreath. Then I found a smaller gold jungle bell wreath...I tried to add red jingle bells to it but, come on, I'm just really not crafty. It looks okay, it will be better next year when the door is black. Third, I apparently had no recollection of what Christmas stuff I had to put on my mantel (I hadn't seen it in 2 years remember??). I thought I had a bunch of nutcrackers...I had 6. I thought they were all different...they were either Uncle Sam or Beefeaters. I had gotten 2 new ones this year, little princesses...they went with nothing. I put it all up and it was so bare...I added lit garland, that didn't help. I added tiny sparkly gold balls...you couldn't even see them. I added giant gold and red sparkly balls...it helped a little. I added more sparkly things AND hung my woodland fairy wreath over it and it was better. I got new red and gold sparkly stockings and now it looks pretty nice. Finally, there is outside. THERE ARE NO OUTLETS OUT THERE!!!!! How are you supposed to hang lights with no outlets?!?!?! Okay, I exaggerate, there are outlets...in the backyard. I don't want to run 4 million feet of extension cord to get lights to the front. George hooked the lights together so we can plug in in the garage. We couldn't get them up on the roof but that was more of a timing issue than anything else (at least that what George said). I don't remember decorating being this way. Of course the last time I decorated my house both of the girls took naps eliminating the need for snack/homework/hug/read me a book/craft breaks. When they are BOTH in school next year that should help. So it took over a week and there were many moments when I thought Xanax was in order but I think it came out okay...

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Gingerbread Art

Emily saw a gingerbread house kit in the store the other day. She asked if we could buy one, just like Grandma did last year..."except could we make it this time?" So we bought it with the promise we would make it this weekend. They were too tired after the parade yesterday so we made it this morning, at 7am this morning to be precise. Imagine my delight when I actually read the box and realized that the house was all together, all we had to do was decorate...the girls and I were so happy...we could skip to the "fun" part. They decided, together, that they were going to make it look just like the box...in their little heads it DOES look just like the box. (please note, I had NO help in the decorating, it was all them)

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Christmas Parade

I had never been to a Christmas parade until we moved to Helena. It was about 30 minutes long, local businesses, girls scouts and boys scouts had floats, churches and some schools, if I remember correctly. The first time we went, Ella was in her stroller and someone from a church gave her a penguin...we know her as "Penguino"...Ella still sleeps with her. There was also some strange custom that I was unaware of, they throw candy at you. Some of the little ones in the parade really pelt you with the candy. Anyway, Emily thought that was great and so did Ella when she was a bit older. I thought that that was just an oddity in Helena. Then we went to a Christmas parade in Springville, Alabama with some of our other friends and they did it there as well. So I had decided it was an Alabama thing. I was wrong. We went to the Dallas Christmas parade and apparently this is done in Georgia as well. The parade was fantastically fun for the girls, even if Ella was begging to leave after 45 minutes because she was frozen...it was only 41F!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (grey and damp too!). We stayed for the whole 1.5 hour parade. We were at the beginning of the route so we had a TON of candy thrown our way. Emily and Ella only picked up about half, they didn't want the gum or hard candy since they know I won't let them have it. A stuffed puppy was thrown to Emily. This little boy was on a float and I swear he did a double take and then started tapping, hitting almost, the adult with them saying "can I throw the puppy? I want to throw the puppy! Can I throw the puppy to HER? I am throwing HER the puppy"...it was very funny! Ella got a green teddy bear thrown to her about 20 minutes later. I promise you, this is almost more candy than they got at Halloween! Look what they did manage to stuff into Mommy and Daddy's pockets... (There is a green bear behind Ella's head)

Birthday phone call...

My birthday is tomorrow, December 3rd. I get a phone call every year on my birthday. My grandmother calls and sings, not says...sings, Happy Birthday, the whole song, and then apologizes for her voice...then we both laugh. Last year she called and she sang "Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you Liz" and then said that was enough, she apologized for her voice but neither of us laughed...we just chatted for a moment. That was it, the last time I spoke to her. She passed away 17 days later...December 20, 2007. I will miss her call this year.

My issues and the house (not related)

Okay so you know me right? I like order and symmetry. I think that there is a place for everything and that everything should be in its place. I like order and rules for everything I do, I like rules a lot :) I do not like chaos, I do not live on the edge... I like predictability, otherwise I just don't function well. I have issues and I am okay with them. That said, my children actually asked if they could help me decorate the Christmas tree this year. My heart started pounding, I think I even started to sweat...children, decorate my tree?!?! No, it can't happen they won't do it right. I remember I didn't do it right. I used to put like 5 ornaments in one spot, normally a light wire, and thought it was pretty. How could they decorate the tree without me being nauseous all season long...you all remember Ella's room right??? I have to just not look at it, I can't handle it at all... it makes me need Xanax!!!!





So I had an idea, I would get them each a little tree for their rooms like they had last year, except that one melted because I had to put a tree skirt on it which apparently made the motor over heat and the tree tipped over about 5 times a day ...I can't do that again and NO I can't just not have a tree skirt, this is me we are talking about and I think that tree skirts are made for a reason, you NEED them. So plan B, I got a tree for the play room. I tried to be as whimsical as I could stand...it is a pink tinsel tree. Then I took the girls to the store, showed them the ornaments for a tree the size of theirs (4ft), and told them to pick out what ever colors they wanted. I was going on the theory that if I had allowed a 4ft pre-lit pink tinsel tree in my house, how could their color selections really make it any worse. My little girls scoured all the ornaments. They picked them all up and inspected every last one. In the end Ella picked 2 boxes of gold ornaments and Emily picked 2 boxes of red ones...red and gold, just like the big tree. It sounds weird to have red on a pink tree, at least to me, but it actually doesn't look awful...that's as positive as I can be :) Anyway, I think it looks cute, you be the judge...

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In house news, we are well on our way to completing the projects that need to be completed by my self-imposed deadline of Christmas. George fixed the horribleness that was the kitchen wall...the border ripped off about 50 layers of paint and wallboard yesterday and then painted a bit of one wall only to discover that the color we wanted was not the same as the color we got. The current wall is way too green and not nearly grey enough...I got more paint today and we'll try that out after the girls are in bed. He was able to remove the "guardrail" that was decorating the tops of my kitchen cabinets, I was so pleased. The long term goal is to replace all the cabinets but for now, we'll just live with them. Here is his handy work...

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