Thank You, Starbucks.

8:00pm
Double tall skim peppermint latte

1:00am
Finished:
1 lounge set
8 magnets
1 headband
1 pillow
1 stocking (3 more to go)

I have searched the house over and cannot find the camera cord. I'm tempted to wake Kevin from his beauty sleep and ask him, but that seems unkind....



::Update:: Picture of the stocking from my camera phone. Horrible quality, and the K is actually light blue, but I hate posting without pictures.

Christmas Cookies

Today was stage one of the cookie baking which will become gifts for our neighbors. I decided to start with sugar cookies and icing, both of which were new recipes I found online. Cole was ready to help and plenty excited.

Cole dumping in he sugar. Dumping things in is by far his favorite part of the cooking process.


I added the eggs, cracking them with one hand like my dad always does. Cole loved that. Then time to roll out the batter. Look at that fro. Good thing I'm getting my hair cut wednesday.




Cut them up and bake them.



Kevin pointed out Cole had a little flour soul patch.


Some cookies turned out great.



Some did not, and I'm not sure what happened. I did salvage these little wafer-like things and used chocolate frosting to make a cookie sandwich out of them. Very delicious use of a mistake.



The finished product. I thought I had bought red food coloring (and in fact the bottle was red) but as it turned out, it was pink. I kept adding more and more and then finally checked the box, and sure enough. Pink. Not red.



Kevin's special wreath cookie.

Christmas in July

That's pretty much what we've got here, with yesterday's high at 80, and today's in the high 70's with tomorrow bringing more of the same. So what do you do when the winter weather is on vacation? You stop complaining about how you wish it was cooler (Sarah), put on your flip flops, and get outside and enjoy it.

So the kids and I have been getting out in the back yard and playing around. Adison is walking more every day, and while she's not doing it all the time, she's definately doing it more than ever, so it's nice to take her outside and have her be mobile with some help from mama. Until it's cold again, it's hockey and slides, flip flops and sand boxes.

Me & Bou

A little self portrait of us girls. These doggies, which I will confess I complain about daily, are really the sweetest things. Adison has REALLY taken to them and is constantly crawling all over them. Today I was looking for her and found her sitting in the living room, where Irbe was resting comfortably on his side, legs out and she was all curled up inside him like an Irbe-chair. It was so cute (I know. should have taken a picture -- but she was in the Bou-chair later, so I'm sure I can catch it again later). They are so gentle and patient with her, and lay mostly motionless until they've had enough, when they just get up and walk away.

Bou is 7 and Irbe is 6 this year, and these little pups are admittedly sometimes frustrating, but they are sweet and lovable and the house would be too quiet without them.

Christmas Decorations

Here are a couple of views of the christmas decorations at our house. I think there is still more in boxes in the garage, namely our advent calendar and I'm sure other fun surprises, but this is what is out now.

Felt stars, fabric trees on the mantle, stocking holders, our advent candles, and of course the christmas tree. We had fun decorating it and I got lots of great pictures -- which I accidentally deleted last week.

I'm making our stockings this week, so that's why our mantle looks fairly bare. But I pulled out the stocking holders that I forgot I had bought last year...and also forgot that Cole pulled one down on himself giving him a black eye. Hopefullyy we'll avoid that this year.

It doesn't look like much on the blog post, but here at the house it's nice and festive. Plus you can't hear my christmas music in the background. :)