Dice and Cookies

One of the best parts about my new calling at church is that I get to make crafty projects on a weekly basis if I want to. So last night I made these dice for singing time. They are approximately 5 inches squared. We're practicing a song for Christmas and I thought this would be a fun way to practice for our performance. If you have to sing a song over and over again, it might as well be fun. Used the digital holiday goodies from House of 3 again!

I've also been baking periodically throughout the morning. My sugar cookie dough is vast and must be dealt with. Here are the designs from this mornings efforts. I love gingerbread shapes with a little hearts cut out. My favorite sugar cookie shape! I also made some Mickey Mouse heads for good measure.

Happy Thursday!

Baby, it's cold outside

We are in a, er, cough cough, "lovely" frigid deep freeze of weather in Alberta. Brrrr. Good bless our furnaces, everyone! I'm behind on sharing photos, so much so that I won't even bother trying to catch up with the vacation photos because that seems like a lifetime ago now. California sunshine, were you real? But I do have more photos to share from the Festival of Trees that we went to a couple weeks ago. Thanks to Lara for encouraging me to go, we were first timers.

The Festival of Trees is an event that raises money for the University Hospital Foundation, so it's a great cause. They had a wonderful interactive medical unit set up where kids could give IV's to teddy bears, get a cast on their finger, really work with actual equipment. Of course I had to get a photo of Kia at the NICU. She's come a long way baby!We started our tour in the gingerbread and cake displays, where we each had to find our favorite gingerbread house and cake. Our favorites were: This log cabin that we thought was so incredibly awesome and this Who-ville cake:
You can see more entries at the Festival of Trees site. More Gingerbread houses here and more cakes here.

There were lots of amazing trees, home decor ideas and little crafty oddities to be enjoyed. I loved this entryway idea: So pretty! Russ get me that door, k? We found this orange tree that made us think of our cousin/niece Breann - so this one's for you Bree: Kia loved this tree because she's all about black and white these days:
I loved this one, I thought the owls were so charming and the branches looked all frosty:
And here are a couple more that we enjoyed:
Sock Monkey tree = Coolness! And this skinny little gold number with red berries and bobs just was the prettiest!Then of course, there is our Christmas tree at home, not a real contender but we love it!P.S. All the photos were taken with my little point and shoot so they are quite squiggy around the edges!

Advent Update

For those of you following the advent mail delivery this year, for ideas of your own, here is what the past few days were.

Thursday was a Christmas puzzle. It's a 500 piece gingerbread themed puzzle that is going to take some serious work. Russ and Kia enjoy doing puzzles, as do I, so hopefully we'll have some good sessions.

Friday we ventured out into the crazy high snow drifts and walked to the movie theater by our house to see A Christmas Carol. We all LOVED it. It's not for little ones that is for sure, (the ghost of Marley is really scary and had at least 4 families in the theater we were at comforting their very frightened children) but it really just absorbed us all in and took us into the story.

Saturday, we finally finished decorating the Christmas tree and Kia got some $ for Christmas shopping. She's 10, so money is just about the best thing in the entire world, even if it's money meant to spent on others. Instead of spending the money, we spent a great part of the afternoon digging walkways in the backyard and making tunnels through the snow...the snowdrifts were mammoth!

Sunday's have become Special Delivery days because the spiritual meaning idea is really going to be my focus on FHE days. So today she got a package with Christmas stickers and some fun new Christmas pencils for home and school.

There ya go...all up to date!

Singing Time

I forget to share some fun news last week. I have a new calling at church, and hint hint the title of this post is a huge clue! Primary chorister baby, and it's my first time with this gig. I've secretly always thought this would be fun a calling and I'm totally game for it. So all you readers who are old pro's, feel free to pass on some sage advice.

Some holiday gifty, crafty links coming your way!

I adore this fringe fleece scarf from the Make and Takes site. Such a great idea and one the busy crafty kid in your life would enjoy doing! And while your there, be sure to check out the awesome DIY Holiday Gift Guide.
For those do-it-yourselfer's out there, this game would be an instant family classic. Originated from A Bushel and a Peck of FUN, the idea is to create an individualized family board game of family trivia. She said the game is a combo of Monopoly, Sorry and Trivial Pursuit. I say it's super cool!I recently discovered this little gem of site called Love, Actually that is filled with ideas for couples. In the gift sections I came across this adorable idea: Fortunate to have you. I thought it was such a sweet idea and could translate as a fun family gift as well, fill the paper fortune cookies with love notes to little one, or activity ideas, skies the limit! The fortune cookie tutorial is from scrap friends.
Um, where was this tutorial when I was making prize ribbons for young women's in excellence? Design Sponge has a tutorial for prize horse ribbons people! I just think they are so pretty and would love to make one for each stocking. So up my alley.
Shutter sisters is offering this sweet 2010 Photo Calendar templates for free download. I think they're so pretty and totally plan to download it for my own personal use.
I love working with felt and have so much left over from my crafting in October, so I've been searching for Christmas craft ideas using felt. I fell in love with these sweet felt ornaments at Zakka Life. So simple, but so pretty.

Day 2

Are you wondering if we are in a sugar coma from all the chocolate projects from yesterday? Um, totally! Not to mention the kitchen is a chocolate disaster! I wish I had Aunt Joanne's chocolate room at this time of year. However, an hour of clean up today should set things right.

I'm currently wrapping all the Christmas presents I have and gauging how I'm doing on being done by this Friday. Russ may be the little Christmas project that holds me back, but for the most part, I'm well on my way. I have all the stuff in my closet, but now it's wrapped up, so little peeking eyes can just be curious, not informed! Anyways, here is tonight's advent activity and hope you all have a productive day!Digital product from house of 3.

Day 1

Our Christmas Tradition begins in earnest today. I've changed it up a bit this year in a few ways. It's no longer a big basket of wrapped items. In fact, there is no basket, nor can she see the envelopes or packages in advance. Instead each day a letter will be sent to a little wall mounted box (think post office box meets doctor's office door file holder) outside her bedroom that will describe that days activity. I had such fun making the envelopes and the cards inside. I used digital goodies from house of 3, which I love, and they worked great!


I meant to take photos, but instead we just got too busy and messy to be handling a camera. We made chocolate lollipops, peanut butter cups, chocolate dipped rice krispie squares and chocolate covered pretzels. Whew! Busy busy work, but we had a good time and our messy fingers provided yummy clean up options.

The Zoo

I've slacked on my sharing of photos and experiences with you. I loved the San Diego zoo...crazy loved it. The gardens! The interesting animals! The weather, the not being cold. We ended up being there on the day the new baby panda was named. Chinese tradition is honored at the zoo and Panda's are given a name on the 100th day of life.Ya, the panda's rock.The Koala's also rock, and they are everywhere...it's kinda impossible to not get a few dozen great shots of them. Taking this photo kinda freaked me out because he was right on the other side of what was hopefully extremely strong glass and he kinda stared right at me with his ears back in a ticked off sort of way. Gulp. I have a shot with teeth, but I'm not ready to revisit the experience, still too soon. :)
Here's where the kids will run to the computer and ask, "Mommy what are those two alligators doing?" I'll let you fill them on the details.
The hippos and all their water chunk.
I have so many photos of giraffes. Giraffes by themselves, in groups, eating, chewing, standing, stretching. I was giraffe snap happy!
Can you spot the elephant? And if you say me I will do you harm! I'm not bothered that I manage to dwarf the world's largest four legged mammal in this photo at all.
I truly have soooo many more, but now at least I don't feel bad about withholding them. If you ever have the chance to go to the San Diego Zoo, do it. It's a beautiful way to spend the day.

Our Christmas Advent Tradition

I think you all know what I'm talking about, but for those who are new or forgetful, check out this link, and this link, and this link. These past years have worked out quite nicely, yet it's time to change with the times. I now have a 10 year old. Which translates into busyness, she always want to be doing, going, making. A storybook is a 3 minute distraction, that's it! So my plan this year is to give each day of the week a theme:

Monday: Cooking/Decorating
Tuesday: Making/Crafting
Wednesday: Reading
Thursday: Playing
Friday: Watching
Saturday: Going/Doing
Sunday: Spiritual Meaning

Instead of packages - I'm currently making postcards, each saying something like:

Monday: Decorate a dozen gingerbread cookies with Mom and pick a family for us to deliver them to after Family Home Evening.
Tuesday: I've made a stocking for Roopert, I need you to decorate it! I have some special decorations ready for you on your craft table.
Wednesday: Pick your favorite Santa story to read with Dad tonight.
Thursday: I challenge you to a scrabble game using only Christmas words.
Friday: Pick your favorite Christmas movie from our home collection to watch with the family.
Saturday: Go to Fort Edmonton for the Christmas Reflections activity
Sunday: Set up the Nativity in the front room and read from the scriptures about Jesus birth.

There's an example of what I'm thinking of doing. Wish me luck! I'm making postcards in Photoshop and I'll get them printed out on Monday.

My Dog Ate My Favorite Ornament or Photos from the Exchange

An ornament exchange is a truly labour intensive event, but worth it when you have your wonderful pile of goodness. My favorite ornament of the night was a beautiful hand quilled snowflake, flocked with crunchy white glitter. It was so pretty. I say was, because this is it now:
My little turd ball of a dog that is banished to his suitcase bed for time and all eternity, ripped the blasted thing to bits and consumed some in the process for good measure to ensure I can in no way fix it. So I'm too depressed to share more ornament photos with you. Anyone want a dog?

Ornament Exchange and Scrooge

Two things that are filling my hours and days.

The Ornament Exchange being hosted by my friend Rachel is tomorrow. I thought it was Saturday, but it's tomorrow. There are 24 ladies involved and we make 24 ornaments to swap. For reals. I'm almost done. Not very impressive since I've had 6 - yes 6 months to work on this. Nothing like saving it to the last minute. (Shaking head in shame)

Scrooge, not the movie, not the book, I'm talking about the musical. Our ward is putting on the play/musical as our Christmas party, running two nights with a matinee. Have you ever heard of such a Christmas party? I didn't give it much thought until I was enlisted to sing and now I'm kinda gobsmacked at what a big deal this little project is. Trust me, I'll be updating you on this lots in the next few weeks.

Mmmmonday

Some points for Monday

• Did you miss this furry little face? Whether you did or didn't here's Roo from today while I was in the backyard photographing some Ribbon Wands. His nose is constantly crunchy with snow when he comes in from the backyard. The hair covering his eyes makes me mental, I want to cut it but I fear the consequence would be I blind the little wiggle worm.
  
• Okay, someone thinks I'm mad at them because of something I said on my blog. I'm baffled at what it could have been, but it's safe to say if I was I'm over it. Hope you are too!
• I'm working really really hard on getting all my Christmas shopping done by December 5th. I know there are some of you smiling smugly at the computer screen right now because you are already done, well on December 6th I hope to be just like you.
  
• Reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card for the first time! I think some of you will find this crazy that I haven't read it yet and still others of you will wonder what I'm even talking about. Soon I will have all the answers.
  
• Kia came home from school today, walked in the door, was attacked by bouncing Roo and promptly said, "I want a chocolate sundae with whipped cream." Um, hi?
  
• Guess what we're having for our FHE treat tonight?
  
• My house smells of evergreen pine. Strongly. Like a Christmas tree was maybe murdered in here and someone hid it's body in the walls of my house. I like it.
  

Hollywood and Universal

Day 2 on our trip brought us to LA and Hollywood for one particular member of the family especially (that would be Kia).

We began the day in the original part of LA called Olvera Street. It's a beautiful spot with a traditional Mexican style plaza area and street style shopping.
We wondered through the Mexican shops looking at beautiful handcrafted wares and admired the culture (which has an alarming penchment for wrestling masks).
Then we headed to downtown Hollywood, where we posed at the Wax Museum, people watched the folks dressed up like dead celebrities, tried to fit our hands and feet into the prints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, and walked around the Kodak Theatre (home of the Oscars and Idol) which is surrounded by a lovely outdoor mall. We surprised that directly across the street from the Kodak Theatre is Jimmy Kimmel Live, interesting location we thought.
I liked seeing Kia's hands fit into Judy Garlands spot, but she had her sights set on on another pair of hand prints...Michael Jackson's star was the hot spot of the block for sure, Kia was more interested in Queen Latifah's which is right beside Michaels and of course Mickey Mouse was also a happy find. We drove around Rodeo Drive, the Sunset Strip, and Beverly Hills. For lunch we stopped at the Farmers Market located right beside the CBS studios, it not a Farmers Market it is THE Farmers Market. Much to Kia's delight one of the three American Girl stores that exist in North America was there and she was thrilled to go check it out. We had a fabulous lunch there of sandwiches with fresh sliced hot turkey and ham right off the bone, yummy!
We drove around Beverly Hills for awhile, learned a few things about where various celebrities died (um who cares?) and then we hit the Santa Monica Pier. Russ, being the ever faithful Baywatch viewer recognized the area from the show...cue wife eye roll. We had a great time checking out the hot spots, with the beach being the perfect ending to our day.

A couple days later we headed to Universal Studios, it was really quiet there and we were able to do all the rides and shows with zero wait time. Russ and Kia even managed to get me on the Mummy's Revenge ride and I must admit it was really fun.
We saw the Backdraft Show, Waterworld and the one on Animals in the movies, which Kia liked the best. She hated the Backdraft show, simply because she holds a strong fear of fire and that's kinda what it's all about. We went on the Universal Studio's Backlot tour, I won't bombard you with photos, but here's one I snapped when we were going by the Bates hotel and Norman came out to see us. Watch out Russ!

Shrek 4D was awesome and so was Terminator. Some of the best 3D I've seen yet. Kia and I were all over the Shrek and Donkey characters in the park. Donkey actually was interactive and talked, though it looks like he's completely still in his waffle cart, trust us he's not.

The Simpson ride looked so bright I had to snap a photo, though the ride was kinda boring in comparison to the outer appearance.

The House of Horrors was probably my favorite. I laughed so hard as we rounded corners and were terrified by people dressed as Mummy's and murderers. So fun. I don't know why being scared is so entertaining but this place rocked. The last photo above is from City Walk at Universal Studios, it's a really big California outdoor Mall thing-a-ma-jig, so save some time to check this place out. There you have it a couple more days covered!

Disneyland

Wow, what a trip! 11 days of fun packed in a blurring swirl of memories. Here's a few images from our first day at Disneyland:
We arrived bright and early on Monday morning to light crowds at the park. I managed to score this photo of the castle with not a soul in sight. Unheard of! Mind you if I had turned around it would have been a stampede of people. We rode at least 4 rides the first hour with not a minute wait time. Pirates, Haunted House, Splash Mountain and something else I have forgotten.
Can you tell we found Pooh bear right after splash mountain? Them are some soggy clothes. Tigger was just around the corner and me and Kia got our picture with him, I'll spare you the shot though because I look like an opera singer in it, in size and mouth.
While we were in the park they were filming the Christmas Day parade which is airing, when else? On Christmas Day on ABC. Plug Plug. We sat around for a bit and watched Ryan Seacrest work the crowd. Taylor Swift, Stevie Wonder and Demi Lavato are all in the special...so it was kind of fun to see how it all works. Sorry, the only star I got a shot of was Ryan Seacrest.
One of our favorite character couples of the trip was Mary and Bert. They were hysterical, bossy, fun and completely memorable. Kia got to hold her umbrella...she was thrilled.
Kia scored some fairy autographs in pixie hollow and we did some classic disney rides, like the jungle cruise and the Tiki room.
We truly had a great day and managed to do about 70% + of the rides in Disneyland that first day thanks to the light crowds.

More Disney and California Adventure photos:
Daytime shot by me, nightime shot courtesy of flickr user jdhilger. The place was decked out for the holidays. In fact the holiday season started on November 13th, so we got to see the Haunted Mansion, It's A Small World, and Sleeping Beauty Castle in all their Christmas glory, which is quite impressive! Daytime shot of Small World taken by me, nightime shot taken by Loren Javier. There were so many sweet little spots around the parks to discover. The white rabbits house, toon town, and the river boat to just name a few.
We loved California Adventure...I'd say my favorite rides were there...Flying over California, Bugs Life 3D, Toy Story Midway Mania and Kia and Russ loved the rollercoaster California Screaming and the Tower of Terror, all of which they did multiple times. The Muppet Theater was awesome, Russ talked to Crush in the interactive show (where he coined the name, Rockin' Russyl) and the Aladdin show was so good we saw it twice. The parades were amazing, especially the Christmas parade. Wow, it was jaw dropping, but my favorite favorite favorite thing of all was Fantasmic. So not original, but I crazy, over the moon loved every moment of that show. Worth the crazy long wait, and crazy crowds.
photo by PeterPanFan.

One of my favorite memories was on our first ride which was Pirates of the Caribbean. As we rounded a corner, a distinct memory of being in that exact place with my parents hit me and it was cool to be repeating the experience with Russ and Kia by my side. And before I start getting in trouble for not being in the photos, trust me, I was, just not so much on my camera. We used the photo pass for some great family photos. Can't share 'em till I buy 'em.

We're home!

Safe and sound and our dog still loves us. Will update with photos and stories when I get my act together...the one above is from our last day at the Disneyland Park. With days at California Adventure, Santa Monica Pier, Hollywood, Universal Studios, Knotts Berry Farm, San Diego Zoo, Disney and so much more, I really could bore the snot out of you with photos and such, so I'll try not to go overboard.

We truly had a great time.