I wanted to show you these fun little hats I've been making......these two tiny ones are gifts.......

And then I also made these ones for the girls...

{ Chocolate Covered Pretzels }

One of the girl's favorite things to do at Christmas (in the kitchen) is to cover pretzels with chocolate. Of course it's really messy.....but fun. This year we made 4 different kinds. We had dark chocolate w/ white chocolate, dark chocolate w/ mint, dark chocolate w/ crushed candy canes and white chocolate w/ mint! They were SUPER YUMMY!!!

{ MERRY CHRISTMAS }

Wishing all our friends and family a Very Merry Christmas! Happy Birthday JESUS!!!

p.s. my friend renee took this photo of us and then designed this card in photoshop! she did an awesome job! thanks renee.

{ TREE SHOPPING and a CHRISTMAS MIRACLE}

First, the Christmas miracle! We parked in the garage this month! Both vehicles plus the 4 wheeler.........for the first time since we moved in!!!! Well, to some this might not be a miracle.......but for us it was and is! Buck was so proud he wanted me to take a picture so we could remember this day forever!!!

This year we cheated! We got our Christmas tree from a lot in town! We told the girls to say hiked 3 miles up hill both ways in 3 feet of snow to get this tree.........but they kept telling everyone that we "got it at a yard sale"! I think the parking lot full of tree's threw them off! Anyway, we didn't hike to get tree, but we still had fun picking it out!

{ Carousel }

We went to the carousel this last weekend with Travis, Amber and Cooper! This was Cooper's first time to ride the carousel! He was honestly a Little indifferent about it.........but in his defence he was really tired! He is sooooo stinking cute I can hardly stand it!!! I want to squeeze him all the time! He is such a cute little man with all his chubs!!!!! What a sweet babe!!!

{ Writting to Santa }

We went to Macy's this weekend to drop off our letters to Santa! For every letter they receive, Macy's will donate $1 to Make A Wish Foundation! Want a good cause! It was set up really cute. They has old fashioned letters for the girls to write on, a huge old red mail box to mail the letter in and a giant believe meter! All of this is based on the book "Yes Virgina, there is a Santa Claus", which I think is and awesome book! Yes.....the meaning of Christmas is JESUS, and we celebrate that every day.....but we also enjoy the magic of Santa! WE hope your having a great week and we hope there's a little Christmas magic and JOY in your life today!!!

{ Blog Challenge 6 }

Here's some photos of a layout I just finished for My Mind's Eye Blog Challenge #6. The challenge is paper flowers. In this challenge we also had a sketch to follow, this is the sketch......




.....Now here's my version! I used the My Mind's Eye Oh la la paper collection for this layout.
I also used some my mind's eye stickers and rub-ons. Instructions to make these pretty paper roses are at the bottom of the post! You can click on any of the photos to make them bigger.

Want to make these fun paper roses????....... Here's how:

Cut a strip of my mind's eye paper 1.5" by 12 "

Get the piece of paper wet with water. Make sure the whole thing is wet, both sides.

Then wad up the wet paper, crumple it and keep wadding and unwadding it until it's really soft and flexible. Be careful not to rip it.

Flatten the wet paper back out.

You want to make the flower while the paper is wet so it's more flexible....so don't wait for it to dry.

Fold the paper in half length wise so now you have 3/4" x 12 "

Start at either end of the paper and roll it up in a circle, after you roll the first 2 inches or so up..... start folding and twisting the paper as you roll it up. When you do this you will see the raw edge and the folded edge and if your paper double sided you will see the patterns from both sides start to show.

Once your flower is rolled up put a stick pin through it to hold it's shape while it dries! On my layout I left the leaf stick pin in as decoration! Once the flowers dries ( 2 hour or so ) you can attach it to the layout and add a center to it, like a pearl or a button.

Happy crafting!!!

{ SNOW ICE CREAM }

Today was a fabulous day to make snow ice cream since we got 6-8 inches of snow in the last 48 hours!!! Some places like at my parents house got as much as 14 inches!!! Everything is beautiful and white! I thought I would post the recipe for snow ice cream in case anyone else is snowed in today!!!

SNOW ICE CREAM

1 gallon fresh snow
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 can evaporated milk
1/2 milk
stir all the ingredients until mixed. add more or less milk depending
on the consistency you want. You can eat this right away or put it in
the freezer for later!

{ fun christmas projects #2 }

Here are two more Christmas projects. The first is some old candles I covered with scrapbook paper and then added ribbon, jewels and some of Renee's journling cards to!

The second is a clipboard that I covered to hang on our fridge. I covered it with scrapbook paper, chipboard and ribbon to make a fun way to display our Christmas lists.

{ fun christmas projects #1 }

I thought over the next few days, I would show you some fun Christmas projects I've been working on .....here's the first two.

This is our advent calender......we've been counting down the days until Christmas with this fun little set of boxes. I got the white shell of the advent at the Scrapbook hide away (the company that makes it is Karen Foster). When you buy the advent it's just white, so I added paint, ink, paper, chipboard, ribbon, stickers and jewels .......well as buck would say.......I "jamified" it.........!!! Everyday the girls get to open a box and get the prize that's inside. I put things like candy, quarters, carousel tokens, stickers, etc in the box. They love it. Every morning about 6:30 when they get up, the first thing they want to do is open a drawer!!!

This is a set of dollar store buckets I glued together. I added chipboard, ribbon, paper and a bottle cap. A fun way to hold candy canes for the holiday season!!!

{ december KOTM is here }

Here are the page samples with December's KOTM available now at The Scrapbook Hide A Way.