Christmas To Do

We knocked down a few of our Christmas To Dos including decorating.

Amelia gets 2 stockings ... one that Santa fills (the Pottery Barn ballerina) and a handmade one from me on her first Christmas that we fill.  Lucky kid.

These are her advent stockings that have yet to include the goodies.  I made those last year that you can see here.

We finished our Cookie Tree that we give to Alaska Dance Theatre for their annual Tree Auction.

We included a set of the felt cookies I make.

and anything else I could think of that was cookie related :)

Had a wonderful, quiet Thanksgiving.  Amelia helped chop carrots and celery as well as made name tags for each of our place settings.  What a kid. 

Earlier in the week made a delicious Banana Bread...

Still lots lots lots more to do.  Will post on our Pink Friday events and Amelia's List to Santa.  Oh!...and Kevin the Elf has returned!  More on all of that next time...

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

We were itching for Christmas before Halloween was over.  We can't help it.  And by "we" I mean "Amelia and I",  Rob has way more self control than we do during the holidays :)  

First, some tree prep.  She has done this for the past few years now.  Every time I get the tree out she has to make her "adjustments" to it. She runs to get her toolbox and starts hammering and sawing. It is an artificial tree ... but I am guessing she remembers us going out and chopping a tree down and making some adjustments ourselves.  

Speaking of artificial trees.  We had 2 real trees before Amelia was born, but at that time we traveled around Christmas and barely got to enjoy the tree before needles were everywhere.  So we bought an artificial one (you can read about that here).  We had cut down a tree from the forest surrounding us in addition to our artificial one up until she was 4.  We stopped when she turned 5 as she had a Winter Woodlands Birthday Party and I needed another large tree for decoration.  I bought one in the after holiday sales and absolutely loved it as I always felt a bit bad at cutting down a tree.  We are now a family of 2 artificial trees and probably will replace the original after Christmas this year as it is looking a bit skinny from pieces of plastic branches coming off.

Those teeth!

Dad gave her a boost for our angel.  My mom bought it for me and it will always be our star and maybe on Amelia's tree with her family someday too.  On to some house decorating...

then play Christmas morning with Barbies, complete with wrapped presents.  We decorated their house too.

Why not get out our new sets of Christmas Legos and past years advents.

Took us a few days just to finish the trees and put out most of the decorations.  

Let the holidays begin!

Pre-Halloween To Do

As promised, a bit of our Halloween Prep.

Of course, we carved a pumpkin.  First we drew a sketch...

Then drew it on the pumpkin with washable markers ... it took a few tries. 

Then I carved.

Amelia helped dig.

And there you have it!

We had to make treat bags for our classmates too.

The photo tags were of last years pumpkin carving.

And a gift for her teacher. 

We had another Halloween Playdate, this time with neighbors where the snow was perfect for sledding and snowman building.

Until it warmed up the next day.

We had a Halloween Skating Party too ...

and had a fright at Toys R Us when these two showed up.

And on Sunday, the day before Halloween, she got to dig in to her cauldron of Halloween goodies.  She had been reaching in for a little treat each day since the 1st of October, but miraculously the cauldron produced even more merriment.  No, I never received gifts on Halloween either...but why not.  

As we move ahead to "real" time of Nov. 6th,  the Halloween decorations have been boxed up and put away.  There are 48 days left til Christmas....

...we will be ready!