Holiday Crafts...

I thought that I would share some of the crafts that we put together for Christmas Gifts.  I was really pleased with how much we made this year.  These are photos of the gifts that we shipped out, unfortunetly I did not complete all in time.  I am still going to get it done so I will share pictures after completing them.  I promise kids, I know that you are reading this, I am working hard on them.  I promise they will ship soon.  Now on to the gift that I managed to get done.  Well that would be with help from all of my guys.

First up my husband made a couple of mermaid dolls for the little one year olds in our life.  He got the pattern for them from the Wee Wonderfuls book.  Of course he did a great job on them. 

For one of our other little cousins we built a barn and supplies for.  I assembled the barn and Rob made all of the inside supplies.  The roof comes off and can be used as a yard for the the barn.  Rob hand painted the farmer and his wife.  A very cute job on them.  When she is all done playing with it she can put it all back inside and put the roof on for easy storage.

For our niece we bought her the book "The Best Mouse Cookie"  and  made a playset to go along with it.  It was complete with all of the supplies for her to act out the story on her own. 

For our nephew we wanted to carry on with the theme that we did for his birthday.  For his birthday we put together the fort building kit.  So for Christmas we decided to make him some gear that he could pretend he was camping in his fort with.  I got the pattern for the fire and lantern from here.

For some of the adults in our family we put together what we call "Cold Weather Baskets".  Really we were trying to be funny since they all live in the New England area and we live in South Florida. We put in the  baskets home made cocoa, chocolate covered marshmallows, cookies, and some mugs.  For a touch from the kids we saw this idea for coasters.  The kids hand painted all of them and then Rob covered the top with resin and put felt on the bottom to keep from slipping or scratching surfaces.

Have a great night everyone.  See you tomorrow.

Our Christmas...

Before it gets to far away I wanted to share a few of our Christmas photos with you.  Our Christmas was really wonderful, Simple and at home, just the way that I like it.

The boys going through their stockings first thing that morning.  Lots of fun goodies right in there.

Gabe showing off what Santa gave him.  A new imaginext set for Cars 2.  On a side note I have to mention his pajama pants.  They are the first pair he ever made on his own.  He is so proud of them, and me I can only smile when I look at him in them.

Ok now for Sam's Santa Gift.  I had to share a sequence of these photos because I do not know who was more excited about the gift Sam or Gabe.  As you can see in this first one Gabe is very curious about what he got.

This has to be my favorite one from the day.  Look how excited Gabe is and the present is not even for him actually (Sam said he would share with the whole family, Gabe did know that at the time though).

Finally Sam's impression of his Santa Gift.  I think that he was pretty pleased.  He has been wanting new pots and pans for so long and they are in his favorite color too, orange.

Finally the favorite toy that was recieved.  Affectionaly known as "Avenger Mansion" around here.  It was a basic unfinshed Doll house that I picked up at Micheals and painted for him.  Then we filled it with Avenger toys for him.  He loves this thing.  As you can see it is really large and he drags it back and forth between his room and the living room daily.  I will be back soon to show some of our crafting projects that we did for the holidays.

Halloween

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Halloween.  Alot of fun was had here.  I finally got pictures of the boys this morning.  Ever since we completed the costumes it has been raining so I could not get it taken.  Finally we had sun this morning, YAH!  Alright on to the costumes.  Did anyone guess from my last post what Gabe was going to be...

He was a parrot.  Any one get it right?  The Costume was pretty easy to make and very inexpensive.  It was just really time consuming to make.  He loved it though and that is all that matters. :0)

To make the costume I bought a 5.00 twin size flat sheet (my only expense)  and cut out a bunch of feathers out felt that I already had.  I added the zipper (also had already)  to the front for it to be easy to put on and off.

Here is a view from the back showing all the way up his head. 

As you see Sam was a red-eye tree frog.  So of course he had to pose in a tree.  LOL

I love this shot of him .  Such a good looking kid. :0)

He really wanted to have a shot next to the pool because as he put it "Mom I am a frog and frogs like water."

Then he wanted to get one with him jumping mid air.  LOL funny kid he is really taking dressing as a frog to heart.

Here is a close up of his eyes.  They were probably the best feature of his whole costume. (all though the whole thing was pretty cute)

His completed costume only cost us 5.00 dollars too.  Can not beat that.  His father made his costume for him and we had all of the supplies for it.  The only thing that he bought was some glue for the felt hands and feet so that he could double layer them with out sewing it.

I am including a very cute video from Halloween night, Sam froggie jumping with his little 2 year old buddy.

Randomness

Just wanted to let everyone now that we are still here.  Just really busy getting ready for the holidays starting up.  Of course throwing in everday life too.  Here is a little bit of Randomness that we have been up to.

Our grandmother is back in Florida, So we went to visit her for the weekend.  The boys absolutly LOVE seeing her.  They find her really silly.

Of course there has been alot of working on Halloween costumes.  This is a little peek at Gabe's costume.  Any guesses at what he is?  Hopefully I will get it completed today, then I will share what each of the boys are.

With the boys being homeschooled I do not have to make the holiday gifts for kids in the boys classes.  This actually makes me kind of sad because I love doing that kind of stuff.  So instead we make things for kids in the dance classes.  This is a picture of one of the cookies that I put into the bags.  I was so excited how it turned out because it was the first time that royal icing has ever worked for me.

When things get as busy as they do in life it is always nice when you can fix something easily.  As most of you know that follow us Sam is an avid reader.  Well one of the many series that he is reading right now is called Septimus Heap.  The first book in the series called Magyk had some problems.  It got to a certian point in the book and pages started repeating and then a forty page section was also missing.  Well my husband e-mailed the publishing company, Harper Collins Publishing, because we wanted to get it fixed.  We figured it would take a while to get the problem resolved.  Not the case though.  By the next morning the replied to our e-mail asking for the ISBN number and our address.  Then they mailed us a new copy at no charge to us.  In under a week we had the new book in our hands.  I love when something goes that easy. 

Time to get off the computer and get some more work done.  Such a busy time of year hope to be back soon with some more stuff that we have been doing.

Going Batty!!

I love reading the blog MADE.  The other day I saw her tutorial for making these pillows.  I thought that they were so cute and had to make them.  I did not have any pillow forms to fill it with so I just used the throw pillows on the couch.  I made the casing as an envelope so that I can just take them off when ever I want.  I used bat fabric to make the actual bats on the pillow.  The orange is fleece so the pillows are nice and soft.  The kids love them and so do we.  They were nice and easy to make.  The part that my husband loved the most is that they were free (used supplies that I already had).  When I do have a chance though I think that I am going to buy some new pillows to put inside them.  The ones from the couch are getting to be a little flat. 

Happy Easter

Hoping that everyone has a wonderful and happy Easter!

The Little Leprechauns say....

Happy St. Patricks Day!!!!

Happy President's Day!

Hope everyone has a great President's Day!  We saw this idea over here on MADE in honor of celebrate the boy.  There dad used her template that she offers and hand painted these.  He does such a great job with painting.  I will try and share some of our other pictures of the shirt later.

Valentines Day!

Since valentines day is only two days after Gabes birthday I never get to make much for this holiday.  I have been really enjoying making banners for the front window lately.  I put this one together pretty quick and I thought that it turned out really cute.  I just used felt and ribbon, so easy and inexpensive.

I even did some baking to send off to my nieces and nephews.  All in all it was a pretty productive valentine celebrations.  What is every ones plans for tonight?  Mine is grocery shopping, I know exciting right.  It is though because my favorite valentine gets out early today and is joing me.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S!!!

Thanksgiving 2010

Ok another really late post, please hang in there with me because I have another couple of these before I am caught back up.  On Thanksgiving we always head over to the west coast of Florida and celebrate.  The kids always have fun over there with the family.  This year was a big showing, 14 of us.

The trip is a long drive for everyone (4 hours)  so we make a stop at the rest stop on the way.  This was the morning of Thanksgiving, as you can see Gabe is very excited for the day to happen, what can I say he loves to eat.

Once we arrived his uncles were already there and he just had to take Gypsy for her walk.

My Grandmother lives in one of the many retirment communities in florida and this is of her back yard and several of her neighbors.  My brothers boyfriend took the shot on my camera using the panoramic setting.  I think it came out pretty well the yard just does bend the way it looks.  One of the great things about the park she lives in is there is always so much different things you can see when out for a walk.  So one time when Gabe went to play shuffle board with his dad, Sam and I went for a walk.  Here is some of the shots we got.

I love the bright red on the flower.  Also the fact that you can see the sun shining off the bee's back is pretty cool too.

There is a few of these spanish moss trees around the park.  I think that they are so neat.  These next few shots are of these two birds that would just walk around the park.  I just thought that they were so beautiful and we could get so close to them.  Hope you enjoy them, I experimented with the black and white on some of them.

We also had some fun at the park near by.  Unfortunetly the playground portion was closed for repairs so the boys could only use the swings. 

Gabe worked at learning how to through the frisbee.  His form is coming along really nice.

Got some more loving from Gypsy.

Listened to some books on tape with best friends.  (If you look close he put head phones on the monkey too.  He is such a cutie)

Well that was our Thanksgiving.  Thanks so much for letting me share it with you all.  I hope that you all had a great one too!