We are ready!

We have wrapped everything in sight, baked everything we could think of and talked to the big man. Let's do this thing!

Merry Christmas!

Just in case you were left off our Christmas card list! Hoping you and yours have a wonderful Holiday!

Temple Square

If you live in the Salt Lake Valley and especially if you are LDS a trip to Temple Square is mandatory every December. Yesterday we made our annual trip. Bad picture, lovely night.

This view just never gets old.

Hope every one's Holiday preparations are going well!

Grandpa's Toys

In an effort to keep my boys busy on Thanksgiving my dad got out some of his toys from when he was a kid. I don't ever remember seeing these before. That is how special they are. Matthew had a great time with the erector set.

Josh loved this awesome truck that resides in its original box.

Thanks Grandpa, for sharing such precious toys and the memories they made.

Some of my Favorite Things

The house is all decked out and ready for Santa's visit, that is one requirement I can say I have met. Thought I would share a couple of my favorite spots. This is my pride and joy this year. William's mom has made us each these gorgeous, cross-stitched stockings and last year she finished Joshua's so now we have a complete set. They make me so happy whenever I look over there during the day.

My big nativity, I have several but this is the "real" one. My parents gave it to us one of the first couple of years we were married. It has traveled with us and survived the kids so far. I love it.

The Christmas tree.

The gingerbread village on the kitchen table.
I always think my house looks its very prettiest at Christmas.

Ginger Snap Village

This weekend it was time to make our traditional Gingerbread Village, or ginger snap village as Josh called it. I guess we never eat gingerbread but we do eat gingersnaps. Here is the gang hard at work. I love the Gingerbread village from Wilson. I bought it at Michaels, it comes with five houses-the perfect number for my family, the frosting and some candy. I swear we get better every year.

The finished products. I put them on my little cake platters, which were fun to decorate them on too, and now they are my centerpiece on the kitchen table.

Making an American Girl's Doll Bed

This was this weekend's big accomplishment. The American Girl Dolls are huge with just about every little girl I know this year. My daughter, nieces, neighbors and friends. One of which would like a bed. No way was I forking out for the AG version and some of the knockoffs just didn't do it for me. So when I saw a wire shelf at the thrift store the wheels started turning and this is where it lead.

This was the shelf.

I cut a cute sheet into strips. I wanted it to go around the shelf two times before it was gathered. I gathered it, and then serged the edge. You could just zig zag the edge. Then I hot glued the whole thing to the shelf.

Then I made a blanket sandwich, just as if I was making a quilt. I used two layers of batting, and two layers of the sheet right sides together cut the same size as the shelf. I sewed around leaving an opening and then turned it. I ended up hot gluing this to the top of the shelf.

I added a pillow and blanket an Ta-dah! I have to say it is the cutest shelf around. This American Girl bed cost me $1.50 because I had just about everything. This is probably more information than most would want but on the off chance that some mom finds herself in the same position I thought I would share.

New in The Shop

Wow! Time is flying this time of year! I have lots of pictures of the reasons I haven't been blogging. But first I managed to get these girls into the shop in the hopes they may find homes. I won't be making any more this season. They are here.

New Experiences

This Fall Brittany made a big change. After years of taking ballet we were at a crossroads. Ballet was going to be three days a week which meant not a lot of time to explore other interests. So we decided to take a break from ballet and try something new. She signed up for a production program called Showstoppers. They teach kids a combination of dancing, singing and acting. They have class once a week and work toward a production at the end. This week has been performance week. She is pretty hard to see but she is a little left of the center.

This was the only number I could get to photograph without using the prohibited flash. It was really a fun night. Brittany has so much enthusiasm and tries so hard to do her very best, which is usually very good.

It was fun to see her develop new talents. We may go back to ballet, we both really love it, but it sure has been fun to try something new!