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Every year our Christmas tree is full of gifts wrapped in numerous patterns. I have discussed my love of holiday wrapping paper (actually all wrapping paper in general), but I've also mentioned that one year I want to wrap everything in kraft paper. Last Christmas Sean gave me a gigantic roll as a gift, so this is officially the year...
I finally spent a little time this morning making tags (I am so way behind where I have been in the past) and I have to say I love having the blank canvas.
I have loved the idea of white serving ware for years, but have never gotten around to collecting any. My mom asked for Christmas lists from each of us a few weeks ago and I basically gave her a wedding registry...
bowls//square cake plates//round cake plates//rectangular platters//cream & sugar set//oval platters// footed bowl
I have a little Christmas tree in my craft room that has ornaments that I crafted up in 2004. So after seven years I was ready for something new...
A couple of packs of wood stars, Sean's drill, and raiding my collection of craft paint (don't look too closely, I'm a horribly impatient painter and it shows) resulted in a simple tree full of colors.
I figured since I will be practically strapped to my desk working on finishing up the semester over the next couple of weeks I might as well deck it out with Christmas lights...
This weekend was full of many things, including catching up on the e-mails I was frighteningly behind on. I'm pretty sure I started every single one with some variation of, "Sorry that you haven't heard from me sooner". It's kind of the same way here on the blog...sorry you haven't heard too much from me, but I'm back now just in time for all the holiday excitement to start...
I stopped by the flower market around the corner to pick out a few stems, stamped some tags, and stitched some fabric around all those jars I save...now I can't wait for tomorrow to see the seats full and the (paper) plates stuffed with food.
In the back of our big recipe binder I had a page protector bursting with Thanksgiving notes since I have kept the last few years of to-do lists and turkey cooking times. I can't remember why we started tracking turkey temperatures so carefully, but it has come in surprisingly handy when planning cooking times each year. So to keep these notes safe and have more room to grow, I decided that the page protector needed to become it's own cute little binder...especially since Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday.
It has ribbon tied on the binding with a little tag.
It's just in time for the cooking marathon starting tomorrow. There will be crafting too...tags are waiting to be made into something just like they were in 2008 and 2010.
How did life ever exist before our cell phones took decent photos? I guess it did, but man we did not record so many of the random details we can easily capture now. Over the weekend I looked through the last month or so on my phone and decided to gather a bunch of the little memories into one place...
1. First time for Facetime with Mac 2. New phones and covers 3. Does the chalkboard fit there? Not really. 4. Rainy days always make me happy.
1. Part of the process when we were tie-dying his Mac & Cheese shirt. 2. Our make-shift apple orchard tri-pod. 3. A note from Sean & Mac when I got home from class. 4. Mac's EEG hair-do.
1. A bag of dollar coins...our go-to teenager birthday gift. 2. A tray of leftovers Sean took to school to share from our three parties in 24 hours weekend. 3. Anyone need a school photo of Mr. Griffin? 4. Making apple cider with a coffee filter filled with mulling spices and sewn into a packet.
1. Mac on the field at Angel's Stadium during Caleb's Autism Walk. 2. Love when a postage stamp matches what I'm mailing. 3. Sean multitasking: checking basketball on the ESPN app while watching Mac's karate class. 4. Starting cranberry sauce for our annual Friendsgiving dinner last weekend.
1. The first tangerine from a tree we planted last spring. 2. Paddington snuggled on the cute fleece pajama pants my sister surprised me with recently. 3. A rainbow of 31 Bits bracelets. 4. Hot tea and the last Notre Dame home football game while working on schoolwork.
I've taken 1,837 photos on my phone since 2009. Thankfully they're backed up on our hard drive, but I love that I can have all these little life details in the palm of my hand. So how many photos do you have on your phone?
1. Ian's holiday gifts, 2. Fall Colours, 3. Paper Pomme, 4. autumn simplicity, 5. Autumnal Leaves, 6. fall :: in love with autumn, 7. Autumn leafs, 8. Patterned tissue flowers
The Starred posts have been a little delayed, so here are favorites found over the last few weeks...
{Starred is a post every Saturday that includes recent Flickr Favorites and the blog entries I've found & saved (with a star) in my Google Reader}
I loaded up the white board with everything that really should have been done yesterday and better get done tomorrow.
Sorry that it has been a little boring and light on the craftiness around here...I'll change that right after I get all of this checked off.
If you know me, you know I can get inordinately excited about food. So I am very excited to share that after years of searching I have found my perfect hot chocolate recipe.
I found mixes at Target and use half milk chocolate and half salted caramel. I microwave some regular milk with a splash of half and half.
This pitcher turned out to be the perfect size to make a cup or two and not make splatter-y mess with the milk frother my mom gave Mac awhile ago. Spinning the chocolate into the hot milk makes it taste better for some reason.
But the best part of all is the incredibly necessary obscene amount of whipped cream.
On one of our craft store trips Mac decided to get supplies to make a candlestick cupcake stand. He really wanted a glitter one like he had seen here, but his mean, old neat-freak mom has a strict "no glitter" policy. The stand hasn't officially held cupcakes yet, but it works well for holding a notepad on his desk.
We celebrated my brother's birthday tonight with a dinner full of family favorites. It included jello mixed with coolwhip that we have always called, "Mormon Jello". I'm fairly certain it's because my mom learned about mixing the two together from a Mormon couple my parents were friends with waaaay back in the 70's, before my brother was born. Please tell me your family has favorite recipes with ridiculous names too. And then maybe I'll tell you about our "Vomit Dip"...
1. The last Weekly Randomness post was exactly a month ago today.
2. Last night I sent an e-mail announcement out to the on-line classes I'm assisting in and did not realize I was a little too vague with the information.
3. I woke up to twenty e-mails about it this morning. That lesson is officially learned.
4. I'm just dearly hoping that the professor I work for did not also wake up to twenty e-mails. Fingers crossed.
4. After making three drafts I am 90% certain I figured out our Christmas card for this year...
5. The card has eight steps...which is way better than the way-too-detailed card of 2009.
6. I guess that's proof that I can learn from my mistakes, maybe there's hope for me as a graduate assistant after all.
Our nephew Caleb is four years old now and he's an endless source of entertainment and happiness. Auntie Nora and Uncle Seany's house comes to life the minute he walks in the door to play...whether it's immediately dumping out every single Lincoln Log, making himself into a "blanket burrito" with Uncle Seany or convincing Auntie Nora to let him watch cartoons that his mom would never let him see. Every moment with Caleb is action packed. I'm pretty sure in his entire life Sean and I have only witnessed him sleep for maybe an hour total, but that leaves much more time for fun.
Our family and friends will be having fun with Caleb as we participate this weekend at Walk Now for Autism Speaks. Mac, Sean and I will be there supporting the second annual Team Caleb Albert and I thought I'd mention it just in case you'd like to contribute. You can donate here.
Caleb's Auntie Nora can't thank you enough.
I changed around the mantle a little last week to fill it a little more with fall now that it actually feels that way around here. I also added the light-up pumpkins I had to have last year...
Unlike when I first decorated the mantle in September it was finally chilly enough to turn on the fireplace this past week...I love this time of year.
All hosting is done for a little while. Between October 28th and November 5th we had a pumpkin carving party, our annual trick-or-treat dinner, an Alumni sleepover for the sorority I was in at the UofR, a neighborhood breakfast to plan our annual holiday progressive dinner and a statistic's study group. The last three events all happened within a 24 hour span on Friday and Saturday.
I would never have imagined our dining room table could be home to eight laptops...one of my classmates joked that it was like we were launching a moon mission or something.
We're hosting a party tomorrow and are making our traditional little menu of appetizers, so I thought I'd re-share the recipes. There's Spinach Artichoke Dip, Bacon Wrapped Hot Dogs, Cheesy Corn Bites, and you have to have Cream Cheese Caramel Apple Dip too.
And, as you can see, all of these recipes combined require a vat of cream cheese.
I spent the evening grading numerous pages of Sociology papers so I figured I would share the kind of page that is much more fun...
This month we...
{G3 is a end of the month wrap-up for our little family}
Does anyone love switching to a new calendar month as much as I do?
Tearing off a page of my huge calendar to reveal a new month always makes me very happy. Cloudy morning also make me very happy until I want to take a picture, but here is November ready to go...
I'm already thinking of next year's calendar and seeing some of the choices pop up recently on Paper Crave has me dreaming of one of these...
