So adorable!!

I snapped some pictures of the kids today on the couch, they were so cute! I love it!

Got this with my camera phone, then got out my camera and took some better pics :)

 

 

Treat Boxes

Aren't they cute?? This is a great idea for when you don't have any extra money to spend on gifts….  Not to mention people love it!! Inside are some brownies, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate covered peppermint sticks (from earlier post below)…. I hand these out with the suckers for the kids :) YUM!

Sewing Project :)

Okay so, my mom sews…AMAZING that is! She rocks! She always made us super cool costumes for Halloween WAY better than you could EVER buy at the store! Not to mention all the outfits she sewed us to match growing up… My Nanny (grandma) also sews.. like totally AWESOME as well!! She made her own wedding dress 50 yrs ago, made one (or two) of my aunts wedding dresses, she rocks as well :) So at first I had absolutely NO interest in it whatsoever because I thought “Ehh, this is for old people”! But, all of a sudden I have the urge!!! I want to sew! I want to make cute matching things for my kids!! So. I thought I would start out by making my kids pj pants, cute right? Well, Natalie’s I started on first…. my 3 kids have all matching ones for Christmas morning, then I made Justin a pair that is green since he won’t be here on Christmas morning and I figured that he would like to wear them other than Christmas :) The kids LOVE them, while I was sewing they kept asking “Are you making me some??” they were super excited to see that they each got a pair ;) So here are some photos (from my camera phone) “documenting” my first pair of pj pants that I made! Yay me!

[disclaimer]
These are NOT the best work since they are my first pant(s) that i have made… so please do not judge, it only gets better…right? Gotta start somewhere!
[end disclaimer] LOL

All cut out… NO turning back!!!! EEEEK!!!

Sewed my first leg!!!!!! YIPPPEEEE!!!!

All done! Just need to add a waist band and wa la! Done! Cute huh???

Candy Cane Heart Suckers….

Mmmmmmm!!! Well, actually not for me but the kids are loving them!! I made these super cute candy cane heart suckers for my friends, they went along with the small treat box I gave them :) Super cute and super easy! Check it out…(again all with my camera phone, so horrible pic quality)

Pop 2 mini candy canes  on one sucker stick in the oven, once they heat up a bit take them out and pinch the ends together around the stick, and at the top…. (super hot)

Once cooled, heat up some white chocolate (or candy melts, almond bark, etc) and pour in the middle of the candy canes and sprinkle some pretty sprinkles on top :)

Once cooled again, place it a cute bag with a ribbon and there ya go! Yummy treats for friends or kids!

Also made some white chocolate dipped peppermint sticks, and chocolate covered pretzels YUM!! All of these are going away to friends along with some brownies, chocolate chip cookies and fudge, thank goodness!

Our new Tradition!

So, have you heard of “Elf of the Shelf”?? Welllll we just heard about it, and now we have one!! We are so excited about this little guy! You can read about it by going to www.elfontheshelf.com Basically Santa sends a pixie elf to watch the kids, to make sure they are being nice and not naughty! Every night he fly’s to the North Pole to tell Santa about the kids! Then he comes back to the house and the kids wake up and have to find him! He’s been in our fridge, on top of the TV, on the curtains, just everywhere!! Its so exciting! The kids have just one rule though… you can’t touch the elf, because then he will lose his Christmas Magic and not being to come to life at night and fly to Santa!!!!

Here is a picture from today, we found him in a vase in the Laundry room!!

Decorating the Tree!!!

Another tradition… we ALWAYS decorate the day after Thanksgiving! Put our Christmas tree up, our lights (which weren’t done this time ugh!), we love it! Here are the kids hanging up the ornaments.

       

 

The tree wasn’t finished yet, because I needed to get some more hooks, but they had a blast! They finished the night with a movie, and some brotherly “love” haha!

 

Can’t forget about Ms. Natalie, she was with Daddy :)

 

Then Brooklyn came home and was able to help finish with the tree :)
I stinkin love my tree!!! SO pretty!!!

  

Wii Fun!

I love the Wii!!! I think when Santa brought it, it was for me.. not the kids….? LOL! Well the kids sure do love it too!!! I am so excited because Santa might be bringing some new games for the kids!! Yay for family fun night!!!! Board games and the Wii can’t beat that! My mom also might be getting me.. oops I mean the kids a super duper AWESOME game for Christmas, but I can’t share until it is for sure :)

Anyway, Justin especially loves playing the Wii, well any video game for that matter.. he’s like a video “gameoholic” he could do this the whole entire time he is at our house! I was worried that Brooklyn was going to be that way when Jason’s (her dad) mom got her a DS for Christmas… Jason even told her not to get it for her, and I told him that it would be okay, that we could monitor the game playing… so he eventually agreed and was okay with it. Well surprisingly as much as her dad and I love video games she doesn’t do that bad. I mean there are times where she is so focused that you have to snap her out of it to pay attention to you but other than that it hasn’t ever been a problem. She would much rather play outside than play video games, and I think that is when you have a problem…. when your kids no longer want to go outside because of video games, that is bad! Kids need to be outdoors, getting their knees scraped up from riding their bikes/scooters/whatever it is they ride on. I played outside soooo much as a kid and we even had a Nintendo (which I LOVED)! But then again we had 15 acres to play on growing up! We used to hide behind hay bales, it was so much fun! I loved growing up in the country and a small town. I sooo wish I could give that to my kids. I would move back to OK or TX in a HEART BEAT if I could! I would leave like…yesterday!

Anyway, check out these super cute pics of the kids playing the Wii, they are funny.

 

Thanksgiving Festivities!!!

Finally! I have them up! We had such a great time during Thanksgiving! It was our first year to have Diego’s little boy Justin for the Holiday! So that was very exciting, it was fun to share our traditions with him :) Many of them came from my family just because Diego and his family really didn’t have Thanksgiving traditions growing. They are from another country, so that is mostly the reason why. My family if FULL of traditions, and I am SUCH a traditional person it isn’t even funny!! I love passing down traditions, or creating our own traditions! I love to know that things are passed down from year to year, having the kids expect it and get excited for it makes me so happy! I hope that one day my kids will value the traditions as much as I do and want to pass them down to their families :) Anyway, here are some pics! Oh! I have a new Christmas tradition to show you soon! 

Now our Thanksgiving tradition is….. wake up Thanksgiving morning, mom (or the family when I was growing up) starts cooking, and we all watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade all morning!!! LOVE IT!!!!  See when I was growing up, I was around all of my family. So I can remember being at my nanny & papa’s house and everyone was helping in some sort of way. Either with food, preparing food, setting the table, getting dressed and ready… whatever. But we always watched the parade! Then as I got a bit older, we would stay home at my house and while my mom was preparing the pies to take over to my nanny and papa’s house us kids would be watching the parade. So fun, we looked forward to Santa coming at the end, it was so fun! This year we did just that! Brooklyn was so excited to show Justin the parade, and then this year I had the kids make little candy turkeys! It was so fun!!

 

Here you have the Oreo's, reeses, candy corn, and whooper's for the Turkeys…yum!

Diego is patiently waiting to start helping…. LOL!


The kids have started their turkeys… these kids turkeys were not edible for the adults… Especially Mr. Justin! He licked his fingers soooooo much during this turkey making process, that we told the kids they could have the turkeys. We didn’t want their spit turkeys, LOL!
        

 

All the kids enjoying themselves!! Such a cute bunch! We seriously have the cutest kids EVER! Check it out, even Ms. Natalie is in the pic… sleeping! Hehe!
              

 

Now for dinner time!!!! I was so proud of myself I got ALL of the dinner on the table ON TIME!! Love my time management skills!! Whoo Hooo!!! So how I did it, I made 2 sweet potato pies, 2 pecan pies, 1 sweet potato roll, no-name salad, cranberry salad, and the corn bread (for the stuffing) all the day before! Whew Wee, I was a busy mama that day! I didn’t go to bed until 145am that was from CLEANING my kitchen from the mess!! And I was waiting on my hubby and Justin to get home, but I gave up and went to sleep, but they rolled in about 2am. Then I woke up on Thanksgiving morning at 6:45am, yes, 645am. See we were having dinner at 2pm, so I wanted my Turkey to be done by 1;30pm so I could pop the other things in the over while the Turkey was “setting”…  So that is exactly what I did. I woke up prepared the Turkey and BAM in the oven by 8am during that time we made the candy turkeys, watched the parade, the kids went to the park with dad and just had a great time waiting on our meal. At 1pm I got the green bean casserole ready, the sweet potato suffle ready, cornbread stuffing ready, and started cutting up potatoes for the mashed potatoes. I sat everything in their cooking containers next to the oven so when the turkey came out I put all that stuff in, because each of them needed to cook for about 30 minutes. Turkey came out at 1:30, so then I popped in the green bean casserole, the corn bread stuffing, the sweet potato suffle, the potatoes were boiling on the stove top and the house was smelling DELISH! While the stuff was cooking in the oven I put the Turkey on the platter then onto the table, mashed the potatoes and put them onto the table, at 2pm everything came out and went onto the table, dinner was ready. But. My in-laws got stuck at the restaurant they own, and didn’t show up until 3pm. Yes. 3pm. Oh well, what do you do right? So we just looked at all the pretty food and waited, lol!!!  Check out the pics, the kids loved their food, and of course the adults did too! We toasted and then ate!