Fall Decorations

I couldn't take it anymore and I got out my fall decorations on September 3. It was a gorgeous cool day.

This is what I got out. Enjoy.

I will post this soon, this is made from dollare store stuff.

Close-up of the sunflowers.

On porch, so cute.

Wooden pumpkins from local craft show.

Also from local craft show, but these include the bark, these are my favorite.

Scarecrow, from same craft show.

I have had this sunflower for years. Our first place we lived in after we were married, I had decorated with sunflowers. This is still from that house.

Wreath hanging on our pantry door.

With the exception of the wreath above, I keep these up until Thanksgiving.

Fall definately works for me!

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

Pushing for Spring

Do you think I am rushing Spring?

Yes, that is a Vera Bradley purse being used to hold flowers on my front door. I received that one a few years ago for my 10 year anniversary. It was the wrapping and inside was a gift from Tiffanys! But I used it so much, it was starting to get really worn on the edges. So rather that just store it away, I decided to use it! I think it looks cute, my husband thinks it is really strange. What do you think?

Oh and for the record, it is in the 30's right now. Not the coldest, but I am really hoping spring comes early this year!

This was supposed to be a  Wordless Wednesday post but I used a couple of words, I think it still counts!

Christmas Photos--Thursday Thirteen

In honor of Thursday Thirteen, I am posting 13 photos from Christmas! Enjoy!

Here is my youngest with his 3 gifts from Santa.

My youngest daughter with her gifts from Santa. She was happy, doesn't look like it here.

My second oldest with her Santa loot.

My oldest with her Santa gifts. She still loves playing with American Girl stuff even though she is 9.

Tearing into his gifts.

Seeing what his sister got!

He puts everything on his head.

This is my crazy girl at the in-laws.

Always ready to pose for a photo.

My oldest, the only girl I know who wears her soccer shirts ALL the time!

She loves Polly Pockets. She will play with these for hours.

She loves her colors.

Honestly, he was happiest just playing with the paper.

We all had a wonderful Christmas, of course it isn't about the gifts. Everyone was happy though, as they all got what was on their letter to Santa. My oldest daughter asked for nothing for herself in her letter. She simply asked Santa for a good Christmas for her family. Isn't that sweet?

My husband did a wonderful job as usual on the gifts for me. However, I feel my greatest gift is my family all healthy and happy. I couldn't ask for anything more.

This post linked to Thursday Thirteen.

Oldest Daughters Christmas Choir Show

My oldest daughter is in choir. I don't post many photos of her for a reason, she doesn't really care to have her photo taken. Especially now that it might show up on my blog!

Well she had a Christmas Choir Show the other night and they all looked so mature, in their red shirts and black pants.

I am very proud of my oldest. She is gets A's in school, is good at sports and get multple awards at school for her character and being a good roll model. I am definately a proud momma.

Here is a photo of her group singing on the stage.

She is the second from the right on the top row. I know you can't see her, but she is there, I kid you not!

She even had a speaking part, ignore the scary eyes! Clearly I need photography help. Ironic since I went to an art college and even took photography. Alas, it is not my thing! I blame the camera.

Finally a good photo of her. Here she is holding her baby brother. Oh, how she spoils him! He does love his big sister.

And did I mention how wonderful they all sang? They sounded beautiful. I can't wait for the Spring Concert!

Great Gift Idea for Kids

This is a great frugal idea. I made these for my youngest daughters preschool class. It is a great way to use up old crayons, or the crayons that you receive at restuarants. What is it you ask? A crayon!

We put little gift bags together with the homemade crayons and candy canes.

Here is what we did. We took all the old crayons that we had and removed the leftover paper and broke them into little pieces. I sprayed my muffin tin with baking spray first. Then we placed the crayon pieces in a mini muffin tin.

I then placed them in a 350 degree oven for 5 minutes. After they were melted, I placed them outside, where they would cool faster.

I then brought them back inside and simply flipped over the pan, they popped right out.

I broke off the thin edges and this is what you get.

All I had to buy was the treat bags ($1.97) and the candy canes (99 cents). So for around $3 I was able to make 16 treat bags and have plenty left over.

The kids loved these, and when you color with them, you get a multi color look. Too cute.

This post is linked to Frugal Friday.

Preschool Christmas Party

This was my youngest daughters first preschool Christmas party. They sang for us and had treats and even a book exchange. They had a ball, she was so proud.

Here she is entering the class room, she got to be the line leader.

She was very excited, for the first time, she got to eat what everyone else was eating. There is another little boy in class who is also allergic to eggs, dairy, peanuts and treenuts. His mom contacted me about my recipe that I have. So she made the recipe and used the safe icing for her son and my daughter as well.

She was very leary, and kept asking if I was sure she could have it. We have trained her well not to eat anything unless we make sure it is safe. And she is used to me bringing her cake to all functions. Once I convinced her that it was safe, she took a bite and realized it was our recipe! She was so excited!

Here she is getting into the circle to sing songs.

This is her singing a song about reindeer!

They had a book exchange and here she is showing me the book that she just opened!

Here she is receiving her official "Reindeer Flying License" that was mailed from Santa to her teachers. They practiced a couple of weeks ago and they all passed and received their license.

In the photo with her is Ms. Coleen and Ms. Jean, the best preschool teachers around. We love them.

And here we are, her brother is trying to make an escape!

Skinny Tree, Fat Tree

Do you remember when I mentioned the design flaw in our Christmas Tree here?  Well below is a photo of that tree. Can you guess what the design flaw is? Well, there are actually two. Try to guess.

The first design flaw is that we have four kids. A skinny tree is not for families of six. Families of six that love to do crafts and that have 3 out of the 4 kids in school and who always bring home hand made ornaments. I love home made ornaments, I actually still have some from when I was in elementary school, just a few years ago. And they too go on the tree every year. Trying to squeeze all of the ornaments on this tiny tree was impossible, add to that the fact that we have many years to go of ornament making and we are going to run out of room. I actually think that we already have.

Now for the second design flaw, I will give you a hint: gifts . . . that is right, there is no room to put gifts under the tree! I have many nieces and nephews, extended family, friends, etc. and need to have room under the tree. This one is so skinny and so low to the ground that we cannot fit any but the tiniest gifts under the tree.

The day after Thanksgiving, I was so excited and so were my girls that we put up our tree in record time. Only to stare at it and think, why didn't I go get a new, bigger tree. Oh I know why, have you priced trees lately? We have a fake one obviosly. And this one has the built in lights. I am not a huge fan of the prelit trees. If you look closely, you can tell that the top left side of the tree has all the white lights blown on it. I had to try and disguise it with extra colored lights.

Trying to find a tall, fat tree without lights and for less than $100 was proving to be impossible. I looked all over and the cheapest I found was still going to cost about $180, and I was not willing to part with that much, I would just live with the skinny tree. If I only bought small, tiny presents, the tree wouldn't look so bad right?

Well, I was at Wal-Mart last Sunday for something else, with all 4 of my kids and I thought I would just take a peek at the trees. Low and behold was a beautiful tree, with no lights, 7.5 feet high and 4.5 feet wide. That was plenty big enough for all the future ornaments and to stuff gifts underneath. And here comes the best part, it was only $78.

Well, being a Sunday, before Christmas, their help was nowhere to be found. After standing with another lady, who was buying the same tree, only with colored lights attached, for about 45 minutes, someone finally came. But she was from grocery. Oh well, she was able to help us.

No they didn't have that tree in stock, yes we could buy the display and here is the best part, they would take 10 percent off, for being the floor model! So I paid $71 for the tree! It was so worth the wait and I simply have to buy a container to store it in as they didn't have the box anymore.

So, I went home, took all the ornaments off the skinny tree, and took off the lights. Then took the skinny tree down. Then put up the new tree, and the new lights (my husband splurged on LED lights) and the ornaments on the new fat tree.

Here is the new fat tree, with lots of room underneath!

This fat tree definately works for me!

This post linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

Black Friday Anyone? More Like Red and Green.

I know many of you cannot wait to wake up in the middle of the night, or even not go to bed at all and go out shopping. I too have done it a few times in the past.

One year I stood outside for hours in line to be able to get my husband a widescreen, flatscreen computer moniter for Christmas. The price was awesome, then since the box was open when I went to pay(after being in line again for an hour or so) they took another $50 off the purchase price since there weren't any more left. It was totally worth it for that one thing. Yes, he loved it of course. But it made for a very long day, and since I went by myself, not nearly as fun as if I had gone with friends.

This year however, my husband works, so unless I want to either go out and try to be home by 7:30 when he has to leave, or take all 4 kids with me to try and snag some deals, I will be staying home. Yes, I take my 4 kids with me all the time. To the grocery store, Target, Sams Club, the zoo, etc. However, taking them to the store to stand in line for hours, with the chaos and keep an eye on them and keep them safe and right next to me, um, no thankyou.

We will be spending Black Friday sleeping in.  Sleeping in for me is sleeping from anywhere between 5-7:00 a.m., or until my 8 month old decides it is time to get up and feed him! Depends on the day, he isn't sleeping that well lately, working on getting some teeth! So far he only has one.

Then as the other three slowly trickle out of bed, I will ward off the inevitable question while I drink a cup of tea. You all know the question . . . "mom, when are we going to put up the Christmas tree?" And why is it that you have so many helpers putting up the Christmas tree, but they all seem to scatter when you have to take it all down?

I do love putting up holiday decorations, I love listening to music, drinking hot chocolate, still wearing my pj's. It just makes the house so warm and cozy.

However this year we have a new little helper, he is an 8 month old destroyer. He loves getting into anything that he isn't supposed to. He goes right for the plugs, wires, dvd shelf, tissues, cats and dogs.  So you all know that a 7 foot tree that has lights and shiny decorations on it are going to be his favorite thing!

I am hoping that it atleast stays verticle. It might not have any lights or ornaments on the bottom half of the tree but hey, that's okay. We are used to it mainly because we have cats that like to climb the tree, a great dane/lab mix, who's tail can be quite destrucive. Not to mention the German Shephard mix that loves to chase the cats, you guessed it, under the tree.

I will post photos of my tree tomorrow after we are finished and you will notice a design flaw that I failed to notice when I purchased the new tree a few years ago. I didn't notice it at all, but my husband did and loves to point it out every year! Gotta love it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Clearly photography is not my thing. Just imagine that it isn't blurry.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! We will be spending the day with my side of the family.

The girls whipped these up above on Tuesday, I got the idea here. They are supposed to be turkeys and made with candy corn. My food allergy daughter cannot have candy corn, so I used Mike-N-Ikes instead. I think my kids did a great job, I didn't help a bit. In addition to that, my oldest made a pumpkin pie, I made mint chocolate brownies and frugal chocolate cracker desserts(I have no idea what the real name is, I will post the ingredients soon, they are delicious!

I hope you all enjoy your holiday and count your blessings.

Halloween Photos - A Little Late!

Here the kids are, minus the 7 month old, he just watched and ate Cheerios. (Yes, that is my hallway that is half painted. Sometimes life happens and you have to leave the hall way half painted! I have been banned from painting, but my husband has done a lovely job on the other rooms.) They have so much fun carving the pumpkins.

We clean and roast the seeds with salt, pepper and a little Hot Salt. We all love them, they are so tasty!

Here are the finished pumpkins. Believe it or not, it was dark outside and they were lit, but for the life of me I could not figure out how to take a photo in the dark of the glowing pumpkins. I tried every setting on my camera, so you will just have to imagine how spooky they were!

And here are the kiddos! In my crew we had a witch, monarch butterfly fairy, Belle and Superman. Their cousin was a lady bug, aren't they all adorable!

Hope you all had a fun Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Isn't she scary with her spider hat?

Happy Halloween from The Zepf Life!