Christmas is in the air

Well the Christmas events are in full swing around here!  It's been a busy one! A few weeks ago we went to a bell choir concert.  It was beautiful!  The Russian Orthodox Church has a real presence here and they had a choir at the concert too.  The most wonderful piece was "O Holy Night" sung by one of the churches friars.  It was so beautiful and really reminded me of the REAL reason we celebrate this season.   Reese's small command here puts together a kids Christmas party and an adult Christmas party.  Last weekend we had the kids one and tonight is the adult party.  Me and a couple others ladies are in charge of planning these parties, it's fun but time consuming!  We got mini gingerbread houses for all the kids to decorate, they were a hit!

 Estelly and Emmy.  Emmy always calls her Estelly so many of us now call her that :)

 We've had our decorations up at home since before Thanksgiving.  We are leaving town so I wanted to get things up a little early.  Our tree is huge.  I was a little annoyed when Reese brought it home, but it's grown on me.

I always have so much fun with this little table.  I love to decorate it for every season.  That was a garage sale find in Sumas, WA, when Lane was just a little guy.

I tried something new this year with these stockings and snowflakes.  Last January we were in the process of moving and while I was in WA I hit up all the Christmas clearance items.  I got lots of fun stuff!

I got the little vintage santa handkerchief at a thrift store.  

And of course we decorated the gingerbread house a few days ago.  I've started a little tradition of bringing a gingerbread house and all the fixin's to a couple friends every Christmas.  The gingerbread recipe I have makes 3 gingerbread houses so I just assemble two more and give them away.  It's been fun!  Hope you all are enjoying your Christmas season as well!!

Estelle's 3rd Birthday!

 Estelle turned 3 last week!  This year she was so excited about all the attention, presents, friends and cake!  On her birthday we had a little party with just us and I made some little mermaid cupcakes.

 Estelle's new bike!  There really is no place to ride it except in our garage.  I could also haul it to a park.  We still got it for her because the poor kid needs to learn to ride a bike!!

 On Saturday we had a little party with four of her friends.  A Little Mermaid party to be exact!  She even dressed up like a mermaid!  I kept it pretty simple, snacks, cake and a couple crafts.

Living away from family my kids get to have lots of present come in the mail around birthday time!  I took this picture of Estelle after she opened her present from Grandma Alma.  Hair clips, jewelry, and play dough are a hit with this girl!  She is all kinds of girly!

I totally copied my friend Leah and asked Estelle a bunch of questions on her 3rd birthday.  Here are her answers :)

What is your??

Favorite color: Pink

Favorite food: Sprinkles (haha)

Favorite dinner: Chicken

Favorite lunch: Mac O Cheese (that's what she calls it)

Favorite breakfast: Sugar toast (Cinnamon Sugar toast)

Favorite snack: cheese

Favorite drink: milk

Favorite animal: bear (funny since we've moved here she's been scared of bears!)

Best Friend: Emmy

Favorite thing to do: Go to the doctor (seriously, she loves it!)

Favorite song: Ariel (Part of your World, she sings it daily)

Favorite toy: Princess castle

Favorite book: Princess book

Favorite game:  Ariel game (we don't have one, but I am sure she'd like one!)

What do you want to be when you grow up:  "A princess like you" (her words not mine!)

Another funny Estelle moment.  We all went to get our flu shots the other day.  I was a little nervous about Estelle.  She tends to be super dramatic and doesn't ever remember getting shots.  So I had her go last because I thought then we could quickly make an exit if she's freaking out.  She sits on my lap, the nurse pokes her and nothing.  Not even a flinch!  Go Estelle!  

Thrifty Thursday!

 Had a great day at the thrift store today. I love a good bargain! Jeans for Lane, a Christmas dress for Estelle, a Norman Rockwell Christmas puzzle, vintage candle holder, stocking, cookie cutter and a few other odds and ends. All for $9!

Among my purchases this is my favorite. A Williams Sonoma gingerbread cookie cutter set. The picture below shows what it cuts out. I love making gingerbread houses and this will make the experience even better!  Thriftin' isn't always great here in Kodiak so when it is I get a little excited!

Halloween Week 2013

Last weekend we had a fun Halloween party with all the families from Reese's work.  Me and 7 other ladies plan holiday parties etc for our small little group of 15 families.  

 Estelle crafting with daddy!

 I love watching Lane hit pinatas!  So much intensity!  You can see the candy about to fall out in the picture too.

 Estelle was trying to figure out what to do with all that stuff that fell out!

 On Monday we carved our pumpkins.  Lane did his own this year and did a great job!

 I helped Estelle with her pumpkin.  She insisted on wearing a Christmas shirt that day, it's really never too early...

 Our finished products....

 So yesterday right after school we got the kids dressed up (actually Lane was able to wear his costume to school here!), and we headed to downtown where they do a big trick or treating thing at all the businesses.  Then we went to some friends house who live in a really busy trick or treating neighborhood hung out there.  When we moved up here that was one thing I thought of, what do they do on Halloween there, it's too cold!!  The last few years haven't been very conducive to trick or treating but this year it was probably in the 40's and no rain!  Perfect!

Lane's 9th Birthday

 We had Lane's 9th Birthday party last weekend.  Seahawks/Football theme, hence the eyeblacks under his eyes!

 One of the activities was a contest to see who could build the tallest tower out of mini marshmallows and toothpicks in 5 minutes.  This was the one thing that kept them the quietest during the party, I highly recommend it!

 Lane and his good buddy/neighbor boy, Sage.

 I get into the cake/food more than anyone else, Lane probably could've cared less.  I guess that's just my thang...  Football cake, football pizza, football deviled eggs.

 Lane's actual birthday wasn't until during the week, so he opened up some presents from us.  Can you tell he's a Seahawks fan??!!  One big one (which I didn't get a picture of) was the Disney Infinity video game from Mop (Grandma).  It is pretty cool!

Happy Birthday Lane!  I can't believe I have a 9 year old!  Lane has grown into such a kindhearted, cool kid, who is liked by all!  Love him!

Homemade Laundry Soap

Since February I have been making my own laundry soap.  I found a recipe on Pinterest that looks a little better than others.  I didn't want have a huge bucket of laundry soap, so this is concentrated, all you use is a tablespoon.  I wanted to wait a while to post about to see how well I liked it.  I normally used the Arm and Hammer detergent, I'm not to picky about how it smells etc.  I would say this works the same as the other stuff.  Mostly I like it because it's just way cheaper.

This is all you need.  And the washing soda and borax lasts a while.  I have made 3 batches of this stuff and I still have quite a bit of the soda and borax left.

Grate the fels-naptha in the food processor.

Melt the soap into 4 cups hot water.  This takes a while like 15 minutes.  Once it's melted you add 1 cup of borax and 1 cup of washing soda that has been mixed together.  Stir this all together until there is no graininess left at the bottom of the pan.

Divide the mixture up between two quart size jars.  Fill these jars with water to the rounded part of the jar.

Place lids on tightly and place jars upside down to sit for 4-5 hours

This step is the most fun!  After 4-5 hours the solids and liquids will be separated.  Take your blender jar off of the blade.  Screw the blade base onto the mason jar.  Pop it on your blender and whip.  

Wha laa!  Whipped laundry detergent.  It looks a bit like mayonnaise but gets a little more firm once it's sits for a while.  I also cut out a couple cute labels on my Cricut because I was so excited about it.   I use about a Tbsp of it in each load.  I would say the two jars last me 3 months or so.  You can add essential oil to make it smell nice, but I haven't tried it yet.  

Here is the link to the tutorial I used:  Whipped Laundry Detergent link

Wall Decor Etc.

I took these pictures a long time ago and I am finally posting them....story of my life.  The stairway was a huge blank wall just waiting to be filled.  So I got to work on Pinterest and found a really cute wall display!  I loved the colors it used turquoise, black and khaki.  So I kind of went with this for inspiration and came up with this:

The wall is white, but I didn't want to tackle painting that two story wall, nope, no thank you.  I made a coffee filter wreath and other than that I used all frames and stuff that I had on hand.

 This canvas is at the bottom of the stairs.  It's just a canvas and I painted it with chevrons.  I used a square and painters tape.  I then glued a picture frame straight to the canvas.  I love the way it turned out.

 This is the playroom.  We have a 4th bedroom/office and a bathroom right next to the front door.  So we turned that bedroom into a playroom which I love!

 This is the downstairs bathroom.  It originally had carpet in it... yuck.  So when we lifted the carpet up this linoleum was under it.  Not the prettiest, but more functional than carpet!  So there is another peak into our home.  I will get around to posting pictures of the bedrooms... once they are clean enough!  Although I started attending MOPS here in town and the theme this year is "A Beautiful Mess." I guess I could post pictures of our beautiful mess, or not.