New Design

Thanks to the multi-talented Bubby for making me a new header as one of my Christmas gifts. And for figuring out how to get it to work. And for just being awesome in general.

Christmas Thrifting

Nobody told me you could find cool old Christmas stuff at thrift stores around the holidays. I discovered this on a quick run through my fave thrifty store a couple of weeks ago where I picked up this little guy. I think he is actually Pinocchio from a McDonald's meal, but I thought he was neat. His nose goes in and out.


I also got this little skater girl, a whole pile of Golden Books for Arwyn and two gifts for my MIL. I think I spent under $3.00.

Continuing the Krause Ban

Arwyn painted herself silly for an hour yesterday morning. She tried out all the colors, then just stuck with blue for the remaining 45 minutes. It's her Blue Period.



I let Bubby take my picture while still in my pj's. Have I even gotten out of my pj's this week? I'm not even sure what day it is most of the time. Ahhhh, vacation. As Bubby said yesterday, "I think I'd better take a shower today because I can't remember the last time I took one." Now that is relaxed.


The reason she wanted to paint: I had out all of my paints to finish up this gift for my cuz.


It's called 809 Dots. Yep, I actually kept a running total. Because I'm weird and anal like that.

Last Christmas Post

I may be making my Crazy Mama Double Chin Face but I am wearing one of my totally cool Christmas presents from The Bubs. Does one cancel out the other?





Hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year.

Princess Arwyn

She is patiently waiting for all of us to hurry up and open the damn presents already! This was our Christmas exchange with Juju and Big D.


Juju gave her a Disney Princess pillow, plate, fork and bowl set, and robe and slippers. She put this on and promptly twirled around and said, "I'm a princess." Indeed, it does say Princess on the back and she does have the hair fling down cold. Bubby is a lover of all things Disney, I am a hater of all things overly girly and fru-fru. My daughter would have to love the Disney Princesses. And Barbie. And Kelly dolls. And Polly Pocket. We're amassing quite a collection already.


This was her outfit on Christmas day. I love this dress and want one for myself. Why must every clothing item I love be made for small girls? Why, Target, do you tease me with your perfect green fabric with brown apples?


The Three Wise Men had a very interesting conversation on this day that ended with "Let's go! OK!"

Milk and Cookies

These pictures crack me up. We had a very lengthy discussion with Arwyn on Christmas Eve about Santa coming to bring her presents and leaving milk and cookies for him to eat. She really, really wanted to eat the cookies herself.



Here she is looking at Daddy and saying, "I eat that? Arwyn eat those cookies?" No, honey. Those are for a big strange man to eat when he comes down our chimney with no fireplace and brings you lots of toys for no good reason. How do you explain this tradition?


After we put Arwyn to bed Bubby said we had to eat the cookies. I had already eaten more than my fair share of cookies that night and on the verge of cookie overload, I really didn't want any more. I wanted to stick them back in the cookie container and be done with it. As he was dropping crumbs everywhere on purpose, he said, "We are Santa. You have to eat it." So I did. Santa left a very sweet note for Arwyn. He's such a good daddy.

If Your Last Name is Krause Stop Reading

I made a small photo baby book for my cousin who is expecting her first baby in January. If you guys are reading this, stop now!

My dining room table while I was working on this project.


The front cover.


The illustrated pages are from an activity book that I bought for Arwyn at a Starbucks in Georgia last summer and has now been dismantled for artistic use.


The back cover.


I'm still working on one last thing to add to the box before it gets shipped out.

Cheese Is Good

I don't think I have mentioned it here, but Bubby got a new job at the end of November. We have a lot of good friends at the old job (we both worked there) some who still work there, some who don't. In honor of all this confusion, we had our First Annual Ex-Employee Holiday party in mid-December. Yes, I am just now blogging about it, shut up.

Here's the newly weds, Juju and Big D. Juju is sporting one of her Christmas pressies from yours truly. They have nothing to do with our ex-workplace, but they came anyway, MOOCHERS!


Juju and moi. I tried to give her a smooch under the kissing ball, but she was having none of that. She just likes to have her picture taken next to me so that she looks even more bean-polish than usual. I have no pics of me and Bubby, but you have to get the BFF shot!


A pink frosty beverage. Juju gave me a Cosmo mix and I erroneously followed the directions. Those puppies were strong! And they came with lovely sanding sugar for the glasses, which I also later used on some cookies.


The spread. It looks like a lot, but amazingly there really wasn't that much left over. What I'm really trying to say here is our friends are hogs. I'm kidding! I love you guys. I busted out all our fancy china, dishes from my grandma, and wedding presents that hadn't seen the light of day in over five years.


These flowers are just now starting to fade and the party was 13 days ago.


Bubby chillin'.


This one's for the boys.

Holiday Baking

Here are some of the goodies I made this year to enjoy and give away. I seem to still be in baking mode; I've been craving Puppy Chow.

These were Spritz cookies that I made with my cookie press. Someone who shall not be named used to make these for me every year and has wussily copped out the past several years. That's right, I said several. There goes my chance to stuff 50 cookies into my trap in one sitting. I found a recipe and decided to try it myself. They turned out pretty well.


Arwyn thought the dough was Play Dough and demanded to get hers out and make birthday cakes.


I saw the cocoa mix that Alicia posted about and decided to give that a whirl as well. I gave these to my siblings, my sister-in-law and iMollie (and kept one for myself).


The Lemon Curd was probably the most demanding thing I made this year, mostly because I'd never made it before and wasn't really sure what to expect. Oh, and because you have to zest and juice 5 lemons and cook it for 8 eons. I made this for my sister, who claims to love the stuff, and I really hope she enjoyed it because I'm not sure I'll be making it again unless she specifically begs asks me to.


The tags were from Jenny.

Two Days Later

We now have 47 million more toys than we had a few days ago. But she is having a blast playing with everything and isn't even asking to watch tv!

Arwyn on the way to Grandma's house Christmas Eve.





I haven't uploaded all my photos yet, but here are a few from St. Nick Day. Every time Arwyn opened a present, no matter what was inside, she said "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"




I hope you all had a lovely and peaceful holiday.



Now back to doing laundry, cooking something besides cookies and finding somewhere to put all this trash.

Three Days til Christmas

We're doing a lot of cookie baking and last minute shopping around here. Not last minute frantic I-have-nothing shopping, just oh, let's go there! shopping.

Martha Stewart ornaments under a bell jar.


Vintage postcards in a shadow box frame.

Counting down the days tin sign.


Ho ho in the kitchen.


Glitterama on the tree.

Four Days til Christmas

Not able to upload pictures to blogger. Getting highly ticked off. Typepad, anyone?

Six Days til Christmas

My most favorite nutcracker (or as Arwyn calls them "crackerman"). It's a Steinbach, handmade in Germany that I was lucky enough to snag after Christmas last year. I haven't seen any yet this year that I like as much as him.


Another glittery ornament from the tree.


I don't really like regular peppermints, but I do like the soft pillowy kind. Arwyn calls these "red candy" and likes to carry them around for an hour or so, occasionally licking on it for a bit.


These are picture frames that hang on our living room wall and it was Bubby's idea to wrap them up.


Bubby bought these stacking boxes for me for Christmas last year and I could never think of a place to put them until I got out the Christmas decorations and stuck that green bow on top. Voila, instant presents.

Seven Days til Christmas

We went to the library to see Santa last week. In true toddler fashion, Arwyn was all excited about it on the way there, then when we arrived ... not so much. She was fine with him from a distance, but when I asked her if she wanted to go talk to him she replied, "Nope."


He read several books to the kids and led them in some Christmas songs. After the brave ones told him what they wanted he wisely told them he'd do the best he could and ask if it was ok if they got some surprises too.


One surefire way to get a Chatty Kathy to clam up is stick a big stranger in a red suit in front of her and try to get her to sit on his lap.


I think she was more excited to see Daddy than Santa and who can blame her for that? At least we didn't spend $14 on a mall picture.

Eight Days til Christmas

It's beginning to be a bit of a holiday whirlwind around here, but we are trying to enjoy it.

This is the other garland that I made from Amy's pattern. This one is hanging over my kitchen window. I plan to do something with those circus tent curtains sometime soon.


This is an Advent calendar I made for Bubby a few years ago. I think it was originally a Martha Stewart pattern.


These little buddies adorn my kitchen window sill and keep me company while I wash dishes. I seem to be doing a lot of that lately.


This is the first year we have put lights up outside, and by "we" I mean Bubby. We have one big bulb on each fence post in the back and along the front porch as well. I think with the light they put off you could probably land a small aircraft in our backyard and they will probably stay up year round. Yeah, we're those people.


These are the Martha Stewart ornaments I purchased this year. I had big plans for those styrofoam trees but those plans have yet to come to fruition. There's always next year, right?

10 Days til Christmas

We had a cookie baking and decorating playdate with some friends at iMollie's this week. Considering there were 6 kids, most of them shoving cookies in their mouths as fast as they could, it went really well! But it wasn't at my house so I can say that.


Here's Kole posing for me.


Baby S was unfortunately too little to enjoy the goodies. But she thought they were pretty.


Arwyn especially liked rolling and cutting the dough. Just like playdough, which I despise but luckily for both of us Grandma lets her do it at her house. That's what grandmas are for! The little rolling pin she's using was mine when I was little.


She was covered from head to toe in flour. We had to borrow a shirt from Henry, which she now calls "Arwyn's Henry shirt".


BJ and Calvin show us how its done.



The finished product. They are yummy! Thanks everyone for a fun morning.

13 Days til Christmas

Today at lunch I was squirting some ketchup onto Arwyn's plate for her frenchfries (baked, because we're healthy like that). The almost empty bottle made a fart-ish noise and she said, "Did you hear that butt ketchup?" Funniest parenting moment evah.


This is our Advent candle arrangement this year that I have remembered to light approximately twice. Oops. Maybe next year she'll be able to remind me to light it every night. The tray was from our wedding (used to hold cards maybe??) and the berries I meticulously cut off a bunch of fake berry branches. Some of them are sparkly and some are not. I'm not usually one for spending a lot of money on candles, but for this we go to Pier One and pick out some that are ... "really nice". [First one to name that quote gets a gold star.] This year's flavor flavs are Cranberry Cinnamon and Candied Mint. They smell freaking awesome. One night I forgot that I'd lit the candle and kept thinking, "It smells like yummy food in here. What is that?"

Speaking of Pier One, I went into a Christmas coma last time I was in there. All of their decorations this year are kick ass. No, they don't pay me to say that (how I wish).


This little cutie is another purchase from last year. I bought a lot of stuff last year apparently. But I love this line and this year have grievously avoided the stores where I shopped for these. After Christmas sales, here I come. I think they are Seasons of Cannon Falls, but I can't seem to find the ones I have online.


This is the gingerbread man garland that I made from Amy's pattern and the giant is one Arwyn made with a little help. We're kid crafting at home, it's crazy! That is really the only kind of crafting that seems to be going on around here lately. She loves her some glue stick. It is hanging on the bookcase in her room.


Tomorrow: Cookie Extravaganza!

14 Days til Christmas

I was going to do a 12 Days of Christmas kind of thing, but I took so many pictures that I'm just going to go ahead and start!

We currently have a white pre-lit tree that is actually meant to be used outdoors, but who says you always have to follow all the rules? It's a bit wacky and modern but we like it. I'm pretty sure we got it at Target last year, but I can't find it on their web site. When we started putting up the tree Arwyn said, "Oh, we're making Christmas!"

This is a cute little stripey number that I got last year. I always think, "I'm not going to get any more decorations this year" and then I see something I can't resist. I've only bought 3 boxes of regular ornaments this year. So far.


This is the top of the bookshelf in the living room. I've used that silver bead garland all through the house.


This little guy was Bubby's. He is pretty old and he still lights up. He is currently residing on the kitchen counter.


I'm happy to be back in the swing of things but I'm still working on figuring out my new baby.

Hmmm

Getting back to regular blogging is taking longer than I expected. We have our new computer and are getting ready to switch to DSL. I still haven't had time to play with any photo applications or even hooked up the camera to the computer. A certain husband is HOGGING it, ahem. But he is pretty helpful and knowledgeable, so I guess I can't complain TOO much. Anyhoo, hope to be back on a regular basis before too long. And I have pictures! Lots of pictures! And a 12 days of Christmas thingy in the works.

Thinking

I can't stop thinking about the Kim family and their huge loss. If you feel inclined to help, please visit the family website.

Sad

My heart goes out to the family and friends of James Kim. I'm so sorry this story did not have a happy ending.

In our Thoughts

I do not know these people personally, but many people in the crafting community have posted about the Kim family. We'll be praying for their safe return.